An offbeat, almost silly RPG that pokes fun at the genre and offers the open-minded an enaging and humorous adventure.
In a way, Earthbound is not a game for the experienced RPG fan. On the levels of character depth, innovative gameplay and plot intrigue, "Earthbound" does not deliver. As a vehicle of almost pure quirk, it measures up to something like "Chrono Trigger" a little bit like "Little Miss Sunshine" did to upstager "The Departed"--it's good and funny, but no masterpiece. For the same reasons, ironically, it might be the perfect game for an RPG fan--these holes in its construction are so large as to constitute a monumental riff on the role-playing genre in general, making it kind of like the G-rated "Pulp Fiction" of video games; but that's giving it a little too much credit.
The game is visually colorful and faithfully cartoonish and on par at least with early first-party games like "Mario World" and "Link to the Past," but it's not as impressive as titles like "Yoshi's Island" and "Donkey Kong Country." The music is cutesy pop like the Mario series and though it could never hold a light to any compilation put together by Square, none of their sweeping operatic scores would fit the tone and feel of Earthbound's world.
The game probably feels dated and a little repetitive today (it certainly does if you have played it through more than once, which I have now), but I think that it deserves a place of honor in a category just beneath those RPGs generally recognized as the peak of their genre.