The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

What is there to say about Earthbound? Earthbound is a basically perfect creation. When I was younger, I might have disagreed. I’d have thought Earthbound was way, way too hard. That’s because as a young person, I was an idiot and never actually used spells and items. The game is pretty damn balanced, a lot of fun, and super creative.

The setting itself is just unique. So few jRPGs would even pretend to set themselves in modern day. While the world of Earthbound clearly isn’t modern day as we know it, being really quite crazy in a lot of respects, it’s this weird idealized modern day through the lens of like the 50s that just works perfectly. It’s a world that seems perfectly normal, yet it also seems perfectly normal for kids to be fighting sentient taxi cabs with psychic powers and frying pans. It’s pretty wonderful that it can pull off that odd sort of tone in setting. The wackiness is just how the world is. Nobody takes it as anything but normal. If anything, the general “innocent seriousness” of all the main characters just kind of supports that. It’s awesome.

The writing, too, is just… so rarely do you have a game with such creative and solid writing. You can tell that someone who actually knows how to write a thing was involved in the creation of this game. It’s hilarious in a very subtle and surreal way most of the time, and even the littlest things, like using a Protractor in combat, have funny messages for no reason other than to be funny. Being able to subtly capture strong scenes, like the first time Jeff meets Dr. Adonuts, which are funny, but also kind of have actual emotion involved is just… yeah. Great. Part of that has to be credit given to the translation team, who clearly put a lot of love into the game to make sure the jokes and style made it across to the English version, but it’s just top notch all around.

Even the combat system’s subtle changes on the Dragon Quest formula really make it interesting to play. Little things, like the fact that one of your characters probably has the Franklin Badge and is immune to lightning, but which one should it be, and bringing Teddy Bears along to distract the enemy really add depth that isn’t immediately apparent. The breaking of standard genre conventions in the game is weird. Paula has no defensive spells, and Jeff, the character without spells, is only stronger in physical attack power than Paula, and really relies on what are basically spells in the form of gadgets to be effective in combat. (Slime Generator always and forever!) The rolling HP meter adds so much drama to the game, it’s not even funny. Killing easy enemies without actually going into combat is something so wonderful, you wonder why games today don’t do it. Even the condiment system, which honestly is not something you should really deal with in a playthrough, is creative and fresh, at the very least.

It’s just fantastic. Just fantastic. I will offer the general advice that if you want to roll through the game with little to no combat issues, it is a good idea to grind up to level 10 before facing Frank at the beginning of the game. Someone taught me this trick, and in my replays (yes, a game I have actually replayed! That’s how you know it’s good) this, and actually making use of Jeff’s gadgets and spells, makes the game way, way easier than I remember it being in my youth. But seriously, I would not touch anything about this game. There are little flaws, sure, as the aforementioned condiment system that is too cumbersome to actually use. But all the flaws add character to the game, and don’t detract, at least in my opinion. Earthbound is a game I would ask anyone serious about video games to play, if I had to force one really long gaming experience on them. It’s great. Great. Great.