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thebrennanverse · 8 years

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Earthbound

(Been meaning to finish and post this for a while. I suppose this is an example of “better late than never.” Please, enjoy.)

Earthbound is an RPG from the golden age of gaming. It tells the story of four destined youths, and their journey to defeat Giygas, a force of pure evil. It is widely praised and revered as one of the greatest RPGs of all time. I had played it a few times in my youth, but I never beat it. I'd play it up to a certain point, usually after recruiting Jeff, then quit. I am happy to announce that I can officially add Earthbound to the list of games I have beaten. As I played it, I wondered, what exactly about the game is worthy of such praise? I wrote this to give the world an objective view on Earthbound, which is something we just don't get to hear very often.

The game starts with a young boy named Ness, awakened by a meteor that has crashed nearby. After recruiting his dog and his neighbor, they investigate the crash site. Buzz Buzz, a freedom fighter from the future, has come back to warn Ness about the impending danger of Giygas. Ness is one of four chosen ones foretold to defeat this evil force. Only then, will the world be saved.

And so, we have our quest. And it...is...HARD.

I'm not gonna lie, I got my ass kicked constantly. The beginning of this game is especially brutal for a number of reasons. The biggest contributor is Ness is alone during his journey through Onett and Twoson. One little kid with a bat against three gang members is a bit harsh. Additionally, there are these little mice that have a very frustrating mechanic.

33% chance to deal 1 damage

33% chance to miss

33% chance to SMAAASH!! (critical hit for those not in the know)

If you have the worst luck (like me), two mice can bring a rather abrupt halt to your game. There are other monsters with this mechanic, but they are few and far between (but not any less annoying).

Mushrooms were the worst, though. They can sprinkle spores and sprout mushrooms on your head. This will disorient your character's controls outside of combat. Pressing up will make you go left, pressing left will make you go down, etc. And the controls will constantly change. You could easily find yourself in a most inconvenient scenario, attempting to avoid combat until you find a hospital, only to get the attention of a nearby mob.

The game expects you to be able to clear these obstacles with ease.

Alone.

Not. Fun.

Grinding in the game is pretty well useless. The game doesn't figure level up bonuses in a traditional sense (traditional meaning that ALL of your stats scale appropriately as you level up). The way I understand it, the game uses your character's Luck stat to determine your level up bonus. Sometimes, you'll get a bonus to most or all your stats. You may even get a big bonus (denoted by “awesome!” or “sweet!”, etc.). There is also a good chance that you'll only get +1 HP at level up, and nothing else. No bonus to Vitality, Guts, or anything else. Better put that 1 HP to good use.

The inventory for your party is extremely limited. Each character can hold up to 20 items, which gives us a total of 80 items altogether. This includes equipped items. Assuming you find everything for Poo, 20% of your inventory will be occupied at all times. Additionally, Ness needs to carry the ATM card, the Soundstone (until a certain point), the Receiver Phone, and the Town Map. That limits Ness's useable inventory to 12.

I can almost hear it now.

“Well, you don't NEED the town map, you can just store it away and look for everything on your own.”

Yes, you have the option to store items using the Escargo Express. If you're nowhere near Onett, you can only store three at a time, and you'll be charged for it.

“It doesn't cost that much.”

It's the principle of the matter! Pressing X should just open the map, it should not take up an entire slot in my inventory. Ness and Paula are psychics, why can't they imprint the map into their mind? That's not a bad idea. A new area starts off with a black map. As you progress, you fill in the blanks. Ta da~~a. I just saved an item slot. We could probably save 16 more if equipped items acted as equipped items.

Buying and selling items is also very tedious. You have to buy and sell items one at a time.

Example:

-What can I do for you?

-Buy or Sell

(selects Buy)

-What would you like to buy?

(Buys item)

-Thank you. Can I do anything else for you?

-Yes or No

(selects Yes)

-What can I do for you?

-Buy or Sell

(selects Buy)

-What would you like to buy?

(Buys item)

-Thank you. Can I do anything else for you?

-Yes or No

You get the picture. It should not be this tedious. If I select Buy, keep me on the buy screen until I'm done. If I select Sell, keep me on the sell screen until I'm done. Every other RPG in the universe follows this basic principle. Buy till you're done, sell till you're done. How strange would it be to operate a store in real life like in Earthbound? You want to buy 10 items, but you can only buy one at a time. If we're applying the modern convention of waiting in line, then buying an item puts you at the end of the line. How annoying would that be to you? Is this fun? Oh, and items can't be stacked either. Got two Cookies? Each Cookie takes up its own slot.

Transferring items between characters is also painfully tedious. Again, you can only transfer one item at a time. And, for some reason, you can't trade items. This seems odd, given that all the characters are standing in close proximity during a majority of the game.

Example:

Ness has 19 items, Paula has 19 items, and Jeff has 20 items. We are in a dungeon, as far away from the entrance and exit as possible. Ness just picked up an equip item that only Jeff can use. These are my options:

-Make Jeff drop an item, then let Ness give his new item to Jeff

-Make Jeff use an item, then let Ness give his new item to Jeff

-Make Jeff give an item to Paula, the let Ness give his new item to Jeff

Why can't we just trade items? “I'll hold on to this, you take this.”

Simple.

Easy.

Non-tedious.

“Uh, it's a little strategy called item management. Learn to do it.”

When has that ever been fun? Why should I have to choose between dumping an item and picking up a new one? Items should stack, trading shouldn't be an issue, and equipped items should not take up space.

One thing that really annoyed me about items is that descriptions are not made readily available. You need to use the 'Help!' option on an item already in your inventory to determine exactly what it does. Why can't the shop provide me with a brief description? Why do I need to buy something before I know what it does? Again, how annoying would it be in real life to be forced into buying a product with unknown qualities? After buying it, you discover that this isn't what you really wanted. You just wasted your money.

Even something as simple as talking to NPCs is needlessly tedious. Yes, TALKING.

There are two ways to do it:

-Press A to open your menu, and select Talk

-Press L (L...? The freaking L button?!)

Again, Earthbound ignores the pre-established harmony of A being the universal talk/investigate button. Instead, A is your menu. You are given the short-cut of using L to instantly talk/investigate without having to open the menu, which I had not known for the longest time. Even then, this is the ONLY game I can think of that utilizes L for talking to people. When I pick up a new game, my first instinct is “A is for talk/investigate/progress text/accept, etc.” You know, the things the A button had been doing for years prior to Earthbound.

Oh, by the way, I'm going to be getting into spoiler territory here pretty soon. So if you wish to avert your eyes, do so now or forever hold your peace.

Let's talk about Poo for a little bit. He's great as a back-up healer and PSI support, but he really doesn't contribute much else to the team. Ness has unique PSI abilities, Paula has powerful elemental PSI and the ability to Pray, Jeff can make stuff and shoot rockets.

And Poo...well, he's just not that interesting.

He has a very minimal PP (PSI Points) pool, and whatever he can do, Ness and Paula can do better. He eventually leaves the party temporarily to learn Starstorm Alpha, a PSI attack that hits all opponents for a decent amount of damage. Prior to invading Giygas' realm, he automatically learns Starstorm Omega. And...I'm gonna be honest, I never used it. Not once during my foray into the Giygas HQ did I think, “I should use Starstorm Omega.” Why even give it to me? There are opponents on the road to Giygas who automatically have PSI Shield Omega, which will completely reflect the full force of a PSI attack. Wanna guess how I found that out? Go ahead, guess, it will amuse me...

There is gear that is tailored specifically for Poo, the Kings gear. There are four pieces hidden around the world. I found three of them on my own. Earthbound veterans probably already know which one I bypassed. For those who don't...

The one item I could not find was his weapon, the Sword of Kings. I combed the entire game, looking everywhere I could think to look. Along the way, I did find some items I had bypassed, but nothing of exceptional importance. I was stumped, so I checked GameFAQs for the second time (the first was to figure out which Sanctuary I missed...kinda embarrassing, but I completely skipped over the Liliput Steps). Anyway, there is a section of the game that is occupied by Super Starmen. Tough bastards, let me tell you what. As it happens, they have a 1/128 chance of dropping the Sword of Kings. To put that into bare numbers, that's a 0.78125% chance that it will drop.

I let out a heavy sigh, then thought to myself, “challenge accepted.” However, there was one problem. Defeating the boss Starman of that area (Starman Deluxe, if I recall correctly [I'm sure someone will take the time to correct me if I'm wrong]) clears the area of all enemies, including Super Starmen. No Super Starman, no Sword of Kings. Maybe that would have made Poo more useful. I sure as hell wasn't about to restart my file to find out, that's for damned sure. To me, he will forever be “the other guy that can heal and can also sometimes do PSI Thunder Omega.”

There is so much about the game that demands prior knowledge. I could be having problems with something, and a friend would say, “well, do it like this” or “it's not that hard.” Maybe it is easy if you bought the game in 1995 with the player's guide bundle. Hop off the high horse for two seconds a level with me here. I didn't have the player's guide. I went into this game blind. As mentioned prior, I only checked GameFAQs twice. Everything else, I did on my own. And it was not easy. So, “veterans,” please quit pretending this game was “easy” when your hand was held from beginning to end.

“Well, I didn't have the player's guide either. I thought this game was easy, and never died once. You must've been doing something wrong.”

It really sucks being a gamer and loving something sometimes. Because there will always be someone who tries to shoot you down for your accomplishments. If you think something is hard, you're doing it wrong. If something is tedious, you don't understand the subtle strategy to it. If you missed a one time item, you should have just known it was there prior to turning on the game.

These are all the things we never hear about when someone talks about Earthbound. We usually hear, “Oh, it's so good! It's one of the best games ever made! If you haven't played it, you totally should!” No one ever warns you about the tedium of the absurdly difficult path you're about to take.

Why? Why are these points so often overlooked? They're not exactly easy to overlook, since these gameplay flaws persist throughout the entirety of your journey. What is it that makes Earthbound fun? What is the appeal? What is it that people love so much about this game?

The journey.

The instant you turn on this game, you are embarking on a journey unlike any other. It is heart warming, funny, colorful, groovy, sad, bizarre, weird, creepy, obscure. It covers the pantheon of human fortitude and emotion using 16-bit sprites and MIDIs. It is easy to nitpick the many flaws that exist in the game. It is damn near impossible to properly explain my feelings through the journey. But I will do my best.

This game has a rather colorful and unique array of enemies. You will fight everything from Crazed Street Signs to Marionettes, New Age Retro Hippies to Soul Consuming Flames, Spiteful Crows to Cute Lil' UFOs. There is a certain level of creativity (if not a bit of commentary) not seen in most RPGs. One of the most disturbing enemies I fought was the Unassuming Local Guy. He actually has an attack that does something along these lines:

-Unassuming Local Guy gets uncomfortably close to Ness

-Ness freezes up

-You lose a turn

When you're 9, you don't get it. When you're 29, it's a little creepy. And it makes me wonder, “how in the hell did this make it in the game?!”

The Happy-Happy Cultists, though blue, bear a not so subtle resemblance to the Ku Klux Klan. To them, the world will only know happiness once it has been painted blue. Once everything is blue, then everything will be at peace. Even after defeating the cultists, there are some people who are disappointed that the world wasn't blue. One guy even says he has nowhere else to go, so he's just going to continue being Happy-Happy.

There is a lot about the game that you can only learn from talking with NPCs. Some of them will give you insight into what's happening and why, and others will give you clues on how to progress. Take Mr. Saturn for instance. Some Mr. Saturns have been kidnapped by an agent of Giygas, Master Belch. When you speak to Mr. Saturn, he says that the secret password to the waterfall is to wait three minutes, then enter. If you never spoke to that particular Mr. Saturn, you would never know that, and likely be stuck fighting Crocodiles and Angry Oaks for a while.

While some might consider NPC interaction tedious, I think it's kinda fun. In most games, NPCs are just taking up space, or exist just to hand out quests. And, really, there's nothing wrong with that. I love a good quest every now and again. But in Earthbound, you get the sense of an areas personality, and what the citizens are experiencing as you progress through the story. It's a rare experience that has only been replicated a few times.

I appreciated the wide variety of music during combat. It can get annoying hearing the same theme over and over again if you're dedicating a good chunk of time to an RPG. Earthbound mixes it up a bit and has music specific to the type of enemy you're fighting. I think my favorite tune was the one for robotic enemies. Each area of the game also has its own theme, but none of the area music really stood out to me. Dungeon Man's theme was really bizarre, I had no idea what to make of that. I kinda liked the Your Sanctuary theme, it was nice. Other than that, nothing really jumped out at me besides the battle themes. I will say that the music for each area was unique and appropriate to the setting.

While Poo may be mostly useless, he has one of the most interesting battles in the game. Really, it's not so much a battle as it is a test of determination. When you first meet him, he's a monk in training. His last task is to achieve Mu. To do this, he has to climb to the top of a mountain and meditate, closing off the world. Once the world is closed off, he is approached by the spirit of his ancestor. And his test is harsh. One at a time, he strips you of your limbs, until there is nothing left but your mind. When he takes your ears, the music stops. You don't even get to hear to little prompts from menu selections. That is insane, and a little scary. Definitely one of my favorite moments in the game.

The relationship between Ness and his dad, along with Jeff his Dr Andonuts, is something that kinda hits home a bit for me. You never see Ness's dad throughout the entirety of the game. Instead, the only time you interact with him is over the phone. As you defeat enemies, he gives you an allowance which is deposited into your bank account (hence, the need for the ATM card). Even after you beat the game, and the cast of characters scrolls across the screen, the image for Ness's dad is just a phone. When you make it home, he doesn't say he will be there for your birthday next week. He says he'll try to be there for your birthday next week. I guess the money in the account serves as a back-up apology, just in case. Great job.

Without a doubt, my favorite part of the game is the final battle with Giygas.

Giygas is so evil he has no idea how evil he is. He has lost his mind. You can't even comprehend the power of his attack. And I'm being legitimately serious, that's what the game says when Giygas attacks your party. His attacks have a number of random effects that they can do, anything from nothing to sudden death. So you really have no idea what's going to happen until it's already over.

Eventually, you make it to a segment that requires Paula to continually use Pray. She reached out to people all over the world in an effort to band together and defeat Giygas. It was tough, but I managed to keep Paula alive. And then this happened:

“Your prayer is consumed by the darkness.”

...oh.

I certainly wasn't expecting that. The overwhelming force of Giygas' evil had just consumed a prayer. That's nothing short of terrifying. From there, I had no idea what it was that I needed to do, so I just attacked Giygas regularly. Eventually, I started running out of healing and PP recovery items. On a whim, I decided to use Pray one more time...and then I won. Suffice to say, given the outrageous damage output of that final segment, I don't think it's entirely possible to defeat Giygas through regular combat. This is another instance of just “knowing” that you need to keep using Pray. It was an awesome fight, and the final sequence was pretty sweet. It's just annoying that, after struggling through the entire game, it turns out to be really easy.

So, Giygas is destroyed, the future is saved, and our heroes go their separate ways. And what a journey it was.

“So...you liked it?”

Yes and no.

I would say that I mostly didn't have fun playing it. Rather, I had fun experiencing it. The game is flawed, and can be frustrating at times. But where it fails in gameplay, it more than makes up for it with a unique story from beginning to end. It really is one of those games where the only thought on my mind was, “I gotta see how this all ends.” And it was worth it.

Striking a good balance between gameplay and narrative seems to be a rather difficult one. It's usually quite rare to find a game that has solid gameplay and a strong narrative. Great examples include A Link to the Past, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VII, and Xenoblade, just to name a few. Most games in this day and age seem to fall into one of three categories.

1). Wonky game mechanics, excellent story

Playing the game is frustrating and taxing, but the story is unique or interesting. A good example of this can be seen in Baroque, for the Wii and PS2. You play as a nameless protagonist in a post-apocalyptic world. You are tasked by the Arch Angel to explore the depths of the Neuro Tower to undo this catastrophe. As you explore the tower, you learn more about what caused the catastrophe, and discover your role in this bizarre world. One of the core mechanics for progressing the game is dying, and you eventually learn the reason behind that as well.

Unlocking the various pieces of this puzzling story is certainly interesting. Where it becomes frustrating is the combat system. It's about as basic as it can be. Combos are about as complex as pressing Y, Y, Y. A more complex combo system and a lock-on feature would make playing this game far more enjoyable. Most people don't have the patience for this sort of tedium.

2). Solid gameplay, stupid story

The game is fun to play, but the narrative is something of an after thought. Azure Striker Gunvolt has one of the silliest stories I've ever seen. Honestly, I'm not even sure if I remember any part of it. There's an “evil corporation” for some reason. It's never really clear what the motives are for many of the characters. It's obvious that the narrative is there just to say “hey, these people have thoughts and things, listen to them between stages and stuff.” Playing the game is fun. The action is fast paced and solid, and is a clear and true successor to Mega Man Zero. But the story is dumb.

3). Wonky game mechanics, stupid story

This is a worst case scenario. This type of game is usually made as a quick money grab, with no regard for quality. There are far too many games that can easily fit in this category, but perhaps the most egregious example would be Mega Man X6. I won't spend too much time on this (even though it would be really easy), but to put it simply, this game is abhorrent. It looks like Mega Man, it sounds like Mega Man, but this is easily to worst Mega Man game ever made. Nothing about it is fun. It's like these stages were slapped together overnight and the producer said, “okay, that's good.”

And the story does everything in its power to make X5 completely pointless. Gate is the farthest from interesting he could be. His motivations are puerile, conjured together simply for the game's need for a villain. Dr. Doppler is more threatening than Gate. Doppler built Sigma's Battle Body. Gate couldn't even properly resurrect Sigma. Everything about X6 is a joke. It's very existence is a direct insult to fans of Mega Man.

I would put Earthbound in the first category. If you've made it this far, I don't need to explain why, since you've already read the whole thing. At the end of the day, I'm just a dude. I'm not here to change anyone's mind-set or impart any sort of divine decrees on what games you're allowed to play and enjoy. If you love Earthbound, great, I'm glad you enjoyed it! This is just my perspective on the game, and not necessarily one shared by everyone.

The gaming community is not always eager to accept new ideas or opinions on beloved games. Earthbound has a very devout following, and one cannot contest its popularity. The mainstream thought of “it's good, and you should also say it's good” is not an idea I subscribe to. Critics are critics for a reason. If I feel like something is bad, I will tell you why, and I'll provide a detailed explanation to accompany it. Likewise, I will do the same if I feel something is worthy of praise.

I appreciate Earthbound for what it is.

Thanks for reading, and game on.

#thebrennanverse #Earthbound #Earth Bound #Mother #Mother 2 #Ness #Paula #Jeff #Poo #SNES #Super Nintendo #Famicom #Super Famicom #Giygas #critical analysis #Pretty sure I've just made enemies out of the entire Earthbound community

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