Basic Story:
You are a small boy gifted with strange psychokinetic powers. You live a peaceful existence in a sleepy town called Onett where nothing really happens. This changes quickly however, after a Meteor falls into Onett and people and animals start acting strangely. You go to investigate with your friends and your dog, and you soon find out you're one of the chosen ones for a quest to save the world.
It's your classic world-saving quest with a humorous twist. There's plenty of character development and story action. 8/10
Gameplay:
The Good:
Earthbound is a very humorous game. You've got pushy cops, quirky minor characters, and friendly talking monkeys just to name a few. Much of the text in beautifully done, even in battle (Ex: Some enemies use a toothbrush to blind you). For enemies, nowhere else can you fight Hippies, Attack Slugs, Psychic Psychos, UFOs, Exploding Trees, Zombies, Cultists, and Piles of Puke (And much, much more), and I mean all of those sincerely. Add to that the realism of suffering from a sunstroke status in the desert, and being shroomed to cause disorientation after a short while, and all of earthbound is a psuedo-realistic comic gold mine. The physics makes sense, even if the enemies are unreal. With Earthbound, you'll notice its really the little things, the minute, seemingly unneccesary details that count to make the gameplay more real.
The Bad:
Earthbound's inventory system is severely lacking. Each character gets 16 individual item slots, which includes their weapon, armors, and accesory, and any key items or special weapons. This means space gets crowded up quickly, especially late game, leaving little room for healing items and heavy use of the trash option.
The Ugly:
Master Barf is pretty damn ugly. Anyway, what fits best here is the rolling HP Bar. Unlike most other RPGs where you lose HP instantaneously when damaged by an attack, Earthbound's HP bar rolls downward fairly quickly, but not instantaneously, meaning if you can get a healing spell to activate before it hits zero, you can spare yourself from being KO'd. This is good, because in earthbound you need to pay an extortionist, err, Doctor to heal your KO'd characters; you can't just stay at an Inn (also extortionists, in some places) to heal it.
Earthbound's inventory limitations can leave you screaming but for the rest of the game you'll be laughing. 8/10.
Controls:
The Controls are as confusing as any other RPG. Use Check to search items like trash cans, little text plates, etc. Use "Equip" to equip your weapons/armor. Check the "PSI" menu to view your PSI abilities, and select the out-of battle ones. "Use" and "Goods" get a little confusing though. "Goods" lets you check your items. "Use" means you want to eat an item. In Battle commands are also fairly exhaustive, but a good addition is that your "Fight" command changes based on your weapon. For instance, with a Bat equipped, Ness has "Bash" whereas a Yo-yo leads to "Shoot."
Controls have a learning curve to them like most RPGs, but are easy enough once you get the hang of them. 9/10.
Graphics:
Some are more imbellished than others. Your main overworld sprites are good enough, with insects being represented as walking specs while larger enemies are represented by something up to scale. Bears are larger than rats which are larger than slugs. PSI spells vary, with some being psychotically amazing and others being wholy lackluster. 8/10
Sound and Music:
Music is usually topical. Battle Music is usually pretty good. There's no official boss music. Some tracks will annoy you, most won't. 8/10.
Overall: 8/10
Fun, Humorous, and has hours worth of play. A word of warning: If you don't like the humor, you probably won't enjoy the game. It's one of those games you either love or hate. If you want your hands on one, picking up a hard copy is nearly impossible (and lucky you if like me, your SNES is still operable at all). I believe you can also purchase it off of Wii's Virtual Console. I don't have a Wii so I can't check if it's there, but I certainly hope it is, especially since Nintendo has cashed in on Ness' likeness is SSB, SSBM, and now likely SSBB.
