VTemulation.net - Earthbound

"An ordinary kid awakes to find an asteroid crash landed in his town, in which he finds a talking bee from 10 years in the future then proceeds to find a cracked bat and begins a journey to save the world, it could only be one game; Earthbound."

This game has everything from aliens to time travel and dinosaurs. Earthbound's story begins as the main character, Ness, is awoken by the fall of a meteor. As Ness leaves his house to leave and examine the meteor, he learns from an alien, Buzz Buzz, who came to Earth on the meteorite, that an evil force known as "Giygas" has been influencing the animals and people of Earth. From this point, Ness' quest to find Seven Sanctuaries and capture their songs in the sound stone that was given to him from Buzz Buzz begins. In Ness' quest, he will encounter many challenges and new friends who will help him in his quest along the way.

Earthbound's main characters are four kids. Ness, the hero of the story is just an average kid who was cast by fate to save the world. Paula, who was kidnapped by a cult and later saved by Ness, her psychic powers are definitely a force to be reckoned with. Jeff, a genius from the frigid continent of Winters who's specialty is repairing items, many of which prove useful in their quest, however he is the only character among the four who is not capable of any psychic power. And finally, Poo, a prince from the far off land of Dalaam, he uses both physical attacks and psychic attacks well. Eventually all four of these kids meet up in the story and join together to save the world

Earthbound is quite possibly one of the longest Super NES RPGs I've come across. The massive amount of gameplay is only one factor that contributes to making this a very long RPG, other factors are the transportation system and the amount of "leveling-up" needed to battle many of the boss enemies. Transportation is a big problem throughout most of the game, the characters walk very slowly and the devices that can speed them up are fairly awkward to use. Given Earthbound's massive playing field, moving from town to town can take ridiculously long with the character's walking speed; luckily Ness eventually learns a Teleportation skill. The Teleportation skill is a major help, but is still somewhat awkward to use since it requires a bit of space and hitting into any objects while attempting it will ruin the Teleport and the PP (Psychic Points) used on it will have been wasted.

Earthbound's graphics and sound are somewhat mediocre compared to other Super NES RPGs. Earthbound's graphics consist of mainly 2D playing fields which give the illusion of a bit of 3D. Given how much had to be fit into Earthbound's cartridge, the lower quality graphics are understandable. Earthbound's sound isn't awful, but it isn't exactly a symphony either, but again, considering the limited amount of space that Earthbound's cartridge had, the lack in quality is understandable.

The battle system in Earthbound is somewhat simple and very similar to its NES predecessor, Earthbound Zero. The system consists of a simple windowed options menu and HP / PP status panels for each party member. Unlike in many other RPGs, the enemy doesn't actually move in battle, the only movement that takes place are some minor lighting effects for when spells are cast and when an enemy dies or is revived. Earthbound's battle system is more forgiving than most by a slightly slower HP countdown meter. When a character is dealt a fatal blow, the character does not die instantly, instead he or she stays alive until the HP countdown reaches zero, allowing the character to cast a recovery spell or recovery item to prevent dying

The Item system is somewhat clumsy and limited. Each character is only able to carry 14 items including weapons, armor and accessories. When stocking up on items, the item system is only able to buy one item at a time, so for example if you wanted to buy 8 hamburgers, you would need to talk to the salesperson 8 times and go through the entire dialogue each time; this proves to be very time consuming. Item can either be purchased, built from other items, or simply found laying around in gift boxes and garbage cans (yes, I said garbage cans).

Characters can come down with several health conditions in their travels, most such a poison, nausea, and sunburn result in a gradual loss of HP. Other less common conditions are Mushroomization and Diamonization. When a character is mushroomized, the controls are simply reversed every few minutes to give the illusion of dizziness, this can easily be counteracted by rotating the gamepad to reflect the right directions and on top of that, the hospital healer will actually pay you $50 for the mushroom. When a character is diamonized, he or she literally turns into a diamond-like crystal, unable to fight or do anything. In a battle, if all living characters are diamonized, you automatically loose. Diamonization also has to be taken care of by the hospital healer.

Despite its shortcomings, Earthbound is in my opinion, the best RPG ever made, and however, Earthbound's style clearly isn't for everyone. Earthbound is geared toward gamers who enjoy a slow paced, good and long RPG. This game takes a lot of time, patience and skill to complete. Earthbound is definitely and adventure that you won't soon forget, and it is certainly worth a look to any RPG gamer.

Graphics: 7.5 out of 10
Earthbound's graphics weren't the best, but they did effectively depict the environment and made good use of the limited cartridge space they had.

Audio: 8 out of 10
Earthbound had a nice variety of music which fit most of the situations, although it wasn't of the highest possible quality.

Fun Factor: 7 out of 10
Gameplay leaves a little to be desired, slow moving characters in such a large environment can frustrate many fast paced gamers.

Replay Value: 10 out of 10
For those hardcore RPG gamers, this game never looses its replay value. I myself have finished it countless times and I still haven't grown tired of it.

Final Rating: 9.5 out of 10
What Earthbound lacks in Graphics and Gameplay, it more than makes up for in its storyline and massive quest, this is truly one of the best RPGs ever made.