At War with the Mystics
Ness was just a typical boy in a dull, little town until one night a meteorite crashed and turned his world upside down. Ness is pushed into a journey across the world to stop a nefarious alien force called Giygas with the help of friends he has yet to meet: Paula, Jeff, and Poo. Their quest is be filled with many obstacles including a giant pile of belching puke, new age retro hippies, malevolent street signs, skate punks, and a cult dedicated to the color blue.
EarthBound’s quirk definitely throws out every possible opportunity for being epic, but that’s what makes it so fun. The RPG scene is oversaturated with titles where something sad happens and all the characters look down and melodramatic music plays, but there’s plenty of room for games where NPCs will admit to cutting the cheese. EarthBound is packed full of such bizarre dialogue and gags ranging from a pack of five moles that all claim to be the third strongest to a bothersome photographer that without notice drops from the sky and asks you to yell “Fuzzy Pickles!” Basically, if you’re goofy enough to giggle at the thought of a secret club where customers pay high prices to drink water and philosophize while glaring at a stone, then EarthBound’s humor will be a welcome breathe of fresh air from the likes of Squaresoft’s 16-bit catalogue.
But while EarthBound’s story and setting may break from standard RPG territory, the mechanics are at its core the same as Dragon Quest right down to a first person perspective during turn based combat and menu-based commands to talk, check things and such on the overhead map. This isn’t a problem at all; especially since the game has its own tweaks and a balanced challenge that doesn’t require mindless level building between dungeons. As for improvements, during movement on the map, all enemies can be seen beforehand allowing you to try and evade encounters. This also means you (or your foes) can try and sneak up from behind to earn a free unopposed turn. Additionally when you become significantly stronger than your opponents, you can walk into enemies, instantly defeat them, and gain experience without wasting time or resources in combat. More interesting, however, is the use of the ‘gas meter’ display for HP. Attacks will cause your HP to slowly tick down, which you can use to your advantage. If the game informs you that you’ve been mortally wounded, you can stay alive by either frantically rushing to end the fight or heal up before your health ticks down to zero.
Like many balanced and challenging RPGs, your party members aren’t customizable and fall under distinct classes. Ness is the versatile fighter with tons of HP and psychic abilities (read: magic) to heal HP, cure status effects, and bash aliens’ brains out. Paula is your token mage class with low defense and HP, but a bundle of Psychic Points to employ a wide arrange of telekinetic fire, ice, and thunder skills. The brainy Jeff lacks psychic abilities, but he can fix many broken devices discovered throughout your adventures that can be used in combat to boost the party’s defense, temporarily freeze enemies, or absorb HP. There are also special attack items like bombs and bottle rockets that only Jeff can handle to inflict ridiculously awesome amounts of damage. Then there’s Poo, who excels at nothing. Poo has a mix of Ness and Paula’s skills, but his stats pale in comparison to the two making his contributions to fights minimal. He eventually learns the powerful Star Storm attack, but it eats up so much PP that you won’t cast it often. Poo is actually nothing more than a walking suitcase.
Unlike his three friends, Poo only has a scant one piece of equipment because you’ll seriously use him as your personal closet. EarthBound’s one true blunder is its terrible inventory system. Each character can only carry fourteen items and four of those slots will be eaten up by equipment for Ness, Paula, and Jeff. Soon you’ll find your inventory being consumed with key items like keys to dungeons, your ATM card, and the ever important receiver phone needed just to progress the story numerous times. There are also tons of key items that you’ll use maybe once or twice and the only way to get rid of them is to call Escargo Express and pay to store it. Several of these will be needed much later forcing you to grudgingly retrace your steps from a dungeon to town and call for them back. It also doesn’t help that healing items do not stack to one space, but that’s a moot point considering the game offers a ludicrous range of items spanning every piece of food imaginable. One large, limitless inventory for the entire party would have worked better.
Fortunately EarthBound is worth the headaches over inventory space. The cutesy, colorful world is befitting of its screwball humor, and the excellent soundtrack delves into a variety of styles including blues, ambient, and techno. EarthBound’s memorable characters and events though are what will keep you playing. Years later, you’ll still reminisce about such things as the walking labyrinth Dungeon Man, the ever unlucky blues band The Runaway Five needing their $100000+ debts to be paid off by children . . . twice, and, of course, the fan favorite act of digging into trash cans in search of delicious hamburgers. You can look at the title in two ways: a fine traditional console RPG and a humorous break from fantastical epics.