"No review could ever do this game proper justice. It's simply too good for words... sort of."

When EarthBound first debuted in Japan in 1994, RPGs were flat-out dominating the SNES. Series like Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy, and countless others were being pounded out one after the other, and it was beginning to crowd the genre. But along came one brilliant game called EarthBound that would take a look at every other RPG of the time and give it the proverbial middle finger. EarthBound was designed to do one thing: make fun of the various trends that were all over RPGs of the time. Little did Ape realize that they were creating one of the finest parodies of gaming pop culture that we would ever see.

Story: 10/10

The biggest strength of EarthBound is easily its storyline. First and foremost, the reason why EarthBound was so successful in the first place was because of a perfect translating team. In a time period when many games either had multiple translation errors or the English looked like it was written by epileptic seven year old girls with one functioning eye and three functioning fingers, EarthBound's translation was second to none. There are so many inside jokes, pop culture references and parodies of other RPG trends that a perfect translation was absolutely necessary to pull everything off. Without the amazing job done by the translation staff, the game would not have worked properly.

There are two main themes within EarthBound. One is the serious story involving the war against Giygas suffered by Ness and friends -- and the other are the various parodies, the inside jokes and references to the sixties that cause everyone who understands them to laugh their asses off. There are even various groundling humor jokes to keep those who may not be so educated about the sixties or their gaming history to roll on the floor. The game does a perfect job of balancing the humor with the seriousness, and it all comes to a dramatic conclusion in the latter 20% of the game that amounts to one of the best stretches of gaming in history.

A young boy named Ness is awoken in the middle of the night by his next door neighbor banging on the front door. A meteorite has fallen in Ness's hometown of Onett, but his neighbor Pokey has run off to investigate the phenomenon by himself. After Ness reaches the meteor, a bee from the future appears and tells Ness that the meteor represents a far deeper threat to the world. Giygas, the ethereal enemy of the known universe and the embodiment of evil itself, plans to destroy Ness's world by attacking from the future. There is a prophecy that three boys and a girl will be the ones to stop Giygas, and regardless of whether Ness wants anything to do with this destiny or not, he'll have no choice. Giygas already believes that Ness is one of the chosen ones, and will stop at nothing to make sure that Ness's destiny is not fulfilled. Ness has no choice but to don his baseball cap and his baseball bat and fight Giygas's minions as they harass Ness's every move.

While the story is fairly linear until the latter 20% of the game or so, the true beauty comes in the humor. There are inside jokes and random humor all over the place, and most of EarthBound is meant to be a parody of RPGs as opposed to a serious tale. Everything from the names of the cities down to what virtually every NPC in the game says and does is hilarious, and players with patience will find themselves wrapped in a great gaming experience. For example, one of the ways that Giygas tries to stop Ness and friends from progressing is turning everyone in Happy-Happy Village into cultists obsessed with the color blue.

"Happy-Happy Village is turning blue! Ha ha, get it?"

There's another part of the game in which you take control of a young schoolboy, but before sneaking out of school, you must go and get your goods from inside your locker. The key you're given doesn't work, but when you go back to the guy that gave you the bad key, he simply says "The key didn't work, did it? I thought that might be the case. So I just invented this 'Machine that Opens Doors, especially when you have a slightly bad key.' Sorry for the inconvenience." This is not only hilarious, but it's a parody of the fact that RPGs of the time did this to their players all the time. You'd get an item or a hint about how to complete your next task, yet said item usually wouldn't work and the party would have to find an entirely different route to take care of business. The constant modifications made to the airship in Final Fantasy 4 is a great example of this.

The humor also goes even deeper than the game's dialogue. The items and weapons in the game are all given hilarious descriptions, and in battle, you're almost always dealing with hilarious enemies with cooky designs and funny attacks. Watch out for the New Age Retro Hippie, because he's apt to brush his teeth in the middle of a fight, and the whiteness from his newly clean teeth may cause you to go blind and have your Guts stat temporarily go down. You may also want to watch out for the Dali's Clock (a tribute to the Spanish artist), Mole Playing Rough, the Ramblin' Evil Mushroom, the Cranky Old Woman, and any one of a hundred other hilarious enemies while on your journey.

Best of all is that even though EarthBound deliberately tries being absolutely hilarious, Ape still found it within themselves to create one of the all-time greatest stretches in the history of gaming as EarthBound winds down to its exciting close. Almost every RPG party is courageous, but it's easy to write courageous characters when making RPGs; but Ape takes it two steps farther with the party of EarthBound. Through the game, Ness barely speaks. In fact, the only insight you really get with his character are what others say about him and the flashbacks that Ness experiences at each "Your Sanctuary" location. Ness may be a mute, but his character manages to be dynamic. Crono could learn a lesson or two from EarthBound's hero, and the biggest reason why EarthBound's party is more courageous than the rest is because the characters aren't fighting because they want to. They're fighting because they have to, which is a message that EarthBound conveys much better than most any other RPG does. In most other RPGs, an unlikely team of heroes confronts evil, gets over their initial fears and eventually saves the world. In EarthBound, Ness and company have their destiny thrust upon them without having a say in the matter, and this does not change between the beginning and end of the game.

To add to this, by the end of the game Ness gives you a ton of insight into what he is feeling while on the adventure, and you're practically told point blank that Ness never wanted any part of the adventure thrust upon him. Yet still, Ness and friends march on to arguably the biggest sacrifice ever seen in an RPG. It's a very touching experience, as well as completely unexpected given the game's humor and events leading up to what the party eventually does to give themselves a chance at the final boss. There are very few stories as well-done as EarthBound's, if for no other reason than the game itself delivering one of the most dynamic and well-rounded scripts ever seen. The game isn't necessarily for everyone, but if you're a big RPG fan and this game fits your niche, prepare to be another member of the cult known as EarthBound's fanbase.

Gameplay: 3.5/10

Easily the weakest part of EarthBound, the way the game is played leaves it wide open to being very dry at times, and downright frustrating and annoying at others. This isn't to say that the gameplay doesn't have some good parts, but it's clear that the designers were more focused on making the gameplay funny rather than making it fun. The result is EarthBound taking its biggest hit in any category.

One of the lone bright spots in EarthBound's gameplay is how battles are initiated. While roaming the world, you'll see the enemies right on the screen rather than simply entering a random battle out of nowhere. What follows when Ness runs into the enemies are very innovative ideas that never caught on with other RPGs. If Ness and an enemy run into each other head-on, a normal battle occurs. If Ness is able to come up on an enemy from behind, Ness's party gets a preemptive strike to start the battle. If the enemy sneaks up on Ness, the enemies get a preemptive strike to start the battle. Best of all is that as the party grows stronger, battles don't even take place. When running into a weak enemy, the screen looks like it's about to enter the battle, but cuts off and gives Ness the win automatically. This is the idea that other RPGs should have caught onto years ago, but simply refused. Even today, RPG designers don't seem to want to copy off of this brilliant idea from EarthBound, despite the fact that those same enemies from early in the game will still give you the same experience and items as if you fought them in the first place. And without the fear of getting hurt in the slightest, no less. Some enemies will eventually get so weak that they'll turn around and run like hell away from Ness in hopes of not getting the crap kicked out of them. The one drawback to this is not seeing funny battle quotes from early in the game if you wish to revisit them, but given how the battle system is, it's not a total loss.

For a little while, the battle system in EarthBound is very fun. You'll enter battles, enjoy hilarious attacks from enemy and ally alike, and have a grand old time to the tune of almost feeling bad that you're beating the hell out of what's in front of you. But with few exceptions, the novelty can gradually wear off as the game progresses due to the extensive nature of how the battle system operates.

For those who have ever played one of the older Dragon Warrior games, EarthBound's battle system will look very familiar. The enemies will be in the middle of the screen looking at you, and you'll be attacking them from your position at the bottom of the screen. The catch here is that you won't actually see your characters on screen in battle. You'll see a little box with your character's name and stats in it. When that character performs an action, their box moves up a little. Ness's box going forward is supposed to symbolize Ness the character performing the action, and given that EarthBound was released in 1995, something this primitive is simply unacceptable and tacky.

EarthBound also tries to take the humor a bit too far, and it extends into causing a very overblown battle system that makes a mountain out of a molehill. In battle, you don't actually see the actions taking place; you merely see some flashes and effects on the screen, with narrative text at the top of the screen telling you what's going on. Everything from damage to skills to the casting of magic spells and even the effects of status are given to you in narrative form. It's cute when you first begin and stays funny for quite a long while, but by the end of the game the narration serves to drag battles out for far too long. Even those who are able to look past the narration dragging out a good deal of fights to long lengths could easily get annoyed to death when the biggest flaw from this system emerges: status effects. Since the game likes to run down every status effect on every character one effect and one character at a time, be prepared for hell in the event of your characters getting hit by multiple status effects in one battle. There's nothing necessarily wrong with the battle mechanics themselves, but the tacky nature of your characters not even being on the screen paired with narration having to give long run-downs of everything that happens can easily make one fear even the easiest of battles before the game is finished.

And it gets worse. Every RPG requires a fair amount of time getting your characters equipped and organized, yet given when EarthBound was released, its inventory system was much too outdated. Each character can only carry 14 items including what they have equipped, and duplicate items are counted separately and take up multiple inventory slots. As you progress through the game, you'll find yourself having to discard and rearrange many items, and the worst part of all is that you'll have to do this one item at a time. For example, if Ness's inventory is full and you've come across a brand new bat that you want to equip on him, you'll have to go into Ness's inventory, give one of his items to a fellow party member who is lucky enough to have a free inventory slot, then have the party member holding Ness's new weapon to give it to Ness. Then you will have to go into a separate equipment menu to give Ness his shiny new baseball bat that you plan on taking names with.

All the time. One at a time. It gets very annoying and very overblown quite quickly. It even extends past using, equipping, or rearranging items as well. At shops, you'll have to buy or sell items one at a time; there's no buying in bulk or buying quickly like in other RPGs that made sense of the system well before EarthBound came along. At the end of a battle if an enemy drops an item while you have a full inventory, you'll have to go through a whole song and dance to either make room for your new item or to let it go.

And if that wasn't bad enough, EarthBound's mostly bad gameplay is capped off by having a questionable control style. Movement is simple enough, but performing actions while outside of battle can be a hassle. Pressing A brings up a menu of six different options, and to talk to someone or check something without having to bring up said menu, you have to hit L; which is a tad ridiculous, given that the X/Y buttons have virtually no functionality in the entire game. It would have been better if X brought up the action menu and A were used to bypass it when needed, but for whatever reason EarthBound doesn't do this.

However, this is not to say that the gameplay doesn't have its bright spots. Enemies appearing in the areas rather than being invisible and only appearing in random battles was rare at the time of EarthBound's release, and the flow of the game is very smooth. There are very few spots in the game where you'll have little idea as to what to do next, and even if you do get stuck, every town in the game has a Hint shop in which you can pay a small fee to be told what to do next. This especially was a wonderful idea, and something that other RPGs would benefit from. You'll also find that while the towns and tasks within EarthBound are often rather large, you spend just enough time in each to feel like a part of each community, but not quite enough time to be bored out of your mind. The timing that EarthBound gives everything is wonderful, and each area is vastly unique in its own special way. In fact, some areas of EarthBound manage to further the humor factor of the game to a perfect level. Not only are inside jokes all over the place when it comes to game script, but the towns themselves help to add to this as well. And they need to, because EarthBound isn't like other RPGs in which towns are a safe haven and everything of note happens outside of them. In EarthBound, virtually all of the action is either within the towns or closely related to them. This will give you the feeling that the feats you're accomplishing are worthwhile, because everything is happening literally right in everyone else's backyard.

But few lights in EarthBound's gameplay shine brighter than the enemies and character variety among your party members. You'll acquire four characters through your adventure, and they're all different when it comes to strengths and weaknesses. For example, while Jeff is a master of items and can fix broken items overnight, Paula can't use items worth a damn. But Paula makes up for this by being a master of the Psi arts, while Jeff learns no Psi attacks through the entire game. Ness is a physical powerhouse with a little bit of magical ability, but is generally slower than everyone else. And Poo, while seemingly a master of everything, joins the party very late and is limited in his effectiveness.

Yet regardless of how strong your party becomes, EarthBound's enemies are unique in that no matter how strong you become, there are still enemies in this game who can easily whip your ass while barely breaking a sweat. Other RPGs will see enemies become practically obsolete by the end of the game, but not EarthBound. EarthBound is a good game in that it favors the tactical fighter over the powerhouse types, for if you charge into every battle and simply unleash your strongest spells you'll occasionally come across an enemy that will reflect all of your most powerful attacks back at you and kill you. And that's only one of the various tricks that the enemies possess. The enemies may be dynamic and funny to fight, but they can absolutely destroy you if you let them. In most RPGs, this should be the rule, but it's unfortunately the exception.

Overall, EarthBound's gameplay is nothing to write home about; in fact, it's well below average. But at the very least, it has enough bright spots to keep the game at least playable. Most games with below average gameplay can't claim this.

Graphics: 9/10

Graphically, EarthBound will be unlike most games you ever play. Very few games have the same graphic engine as EarthBound, and for good reason. It's very difficult to pull it off properly.

While viewing the world of EarthBound, you will be looking at the game from mainly three different perspectives: outside, inside, and in-battle. The main view of the world comes while Ness is exploring the world around him, and you view from a standard bird's eye view. However, what separates Earthbound from other RPGs is that while you're in a town, you truly feel like you're in a town. Towns in other RPGs are typically very small and can be explored in minutes, but towns in EarthBound are as large to Ness as a small community would be to a real person in real life. Given that one of Ape's goals for Ness was to seem humanized in comparison to other RPG characters of the time, accomplishing this graphical feat was paramount.

The towns in the game go a lot farther than simply being large, as well. They all have their own little natural features typically seen in small towns in real life, such as parks and hills. This is important to the EarthBound because the game's flow is about passing from one community to the other, not for the towns to be resting stops. In every place Ness visits, virtually all of the events take place in the town, and you the player are supposed to feel a part of each community. The size and graphical detail of each town is supposed to represent this. EarthBound also takes the extra step of angling the plane that Ness is walking on a little farther back to make said plane look more real than in other games. Typically, RPGs have a very plain top-down view that allows for very little realism. In EarthBound, it feels like you're viewing Ness's world from a 45 degree angle above Ness's head and that Ness's world looks very real -- a feat that was very difficult to implement in the 16 Bit era, and such that very few other games have been able to do it correctly.

When inside, the graphics engine becomes even more interesting. The viewpoint on Ness stays the same, but the world around him moves to a plane that converges on a distant point, as if you're looking at Ness's world while on his level. This makes every room that Ness enters feel more real, and you'll gain a true appreciation for how truly difficult it was to create the world of EarthBound. Even better are that the NPC sprites are all wonderfully detailed and very varied through the game, and that Ness's party isn't just Ness while on screen. Ness's friends walk besides him. Granted a lot of the sprites are literally grinning ear to ear, but it's a small price to pay given how unbelievable EarthBound's graphics turned out in the first place.

Last, but definitely not least, are the in-battle graphics. The way that the battle system is set up might be relatively archaic, and the enemy sprites may not do a damn thing other than sit there in their original artwork, but the game somewhat makes up for this with some of the trippiest battle backgrounds ever seen in such a battle system. Half the time you'll literally find yourself staring at the hypnotic backgrounds of the game rather than paying attention to the fight, but it will be very much worth it. It's like crack, and it helps add to one of the most overall graphically polished games of its or any other time in gaming.

Music: 7/10

Listening to EarthBound is much like beer in that it's an acquired taste; it's very love or hate and you'll rarely pay any casual attention to it unless you've actually grown fond of the taste. Some of the tracks in the game stand out, and you may find yourself humming along after you're forced to listen for awhile, but there are very few things that stand out overall in the game's soundtrack.

However, given that most of EarthBound is specifically designed to feel laid-back, the music not being intrusive and overly noticeable makes sense. In fact, all of the music in EarthBound is specifically designed to play along perfectly to the game's setting, and virtually every track goes along perfectly with what Ness and friends are doing. When you're in a casual town like Summers or Twoson, the music expectedly feels laid-back and calm. After ordering a pickup from Escargo Express and seeing the delivery guy magically run across the entire world in an effort to serve you out of thin air, the music is loud and obnoxious, just like it should be. There is not one moment in EarthBound where the music is out of place given the setting, which is an extremely large factor in the success of any RPG. RPGs are different from most genres in that the music plays a very large role in the game, and even though EarthBound's music isn't up there in terms of the greatest gaming soundtracks of all time, it doesn't need to be. The game isn't designed to have such a soundtrack in the first place, though this doesn't mean that a few of the tracks aren't memorable. The various battle tracks especially are worth noting, and given all of the time that the battle system will cause you to waste, it's a good thing that you'll have decent music to listen to while doing it.

Replayability: 6/10

EarthBound, while an extremely fun game to play the first time around, doesn't have enough variety within the play style to warrant many replays and challenge runs through the game. However, given that the game is relatively short by today's insane RPG standards -- The average playthrough will take anywhere between 30-40 hours -- it's worth playing through the game again once or twice just to catch everything the game has to offer. But other than speed runs, there is very little else to do within the game. What you see is what you get, and EarthBound's linear style and lack of sidequests won't usually give you a different experience when playing the game more than once.

Though EarthBound is so good in some aspects that one may not want a different experience when playing the game more than once, which speaks volumes for the game's staying power among its fans.

Overall: 7.1/10

EarthBound is a unique game in that it does some things better than almost any other game out there, but follows it up with gameplay elements that really leave you scratching your head in awe that you're actually playing a game from 1995. For all the perfection that is EarthBound's storyline, the fact that so many parts of the gameplay are well past outdated truly drags the game's overall appeal down a few notches. EarthBound had the potential of being arguably one of the single best RPGs ever made, and if you only look at the game's storyline when comparing and analyzing the game relatively with other RPGs, it's near the top of the list.

However, for all the good that EarthBound has to offer, it is simply unforgivable for some sections of the game to play out as if the designers were either lazy or didn't know what they were doing, especially for a game released in the prime of the 16 Bit era in gaming. It's one thing for RPGs of the NES era or the very early stages of the 16 Bit era to be flawed, but another thing entirely for a 1995 title to repeat mistakes made years prior as if said mistakes and flaws never took place. Gameplay mistakes aren't supposed to be repeated over five years later in a clunky system that does its best to ruin one of the best stories ever told in a video game.

But despite this, EarthBound is still one of the better RPGs to ever come out, and every fan of the genre should play the game at least once. The tale of Ness and friends is brilliant, and though the gameplay is horrific at times, it has its bright spots and keeps the game playable. The least that can be said is that while the gameplay is bad at times, it doesn't single-handedly ruin the game and isn't a reason not to give EarthBound a try. Who knows, maybe you too will find yourself a part of the cult before you're finished.

Ratings

Story: 10/10
Gameplay: 3.5/10
Graphics: 9/10
Music: 7/10
Replayability: 6/10
Overall: 7.1/10

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 09/29/05