EarthBound
Overview
EarthBound isn't the best Super NES JRPG (far from it—strong competition), but it's charming and I've replayed it multiple times, something I can't really say for other JRPGs (except Super Mario RPG).
Review
Because EarthBound (or Mother 2) has been so mainstreamed (after all, Nintendo of America finally added it to the Wii U Virtual Console), it's difficult to call it a "cult classic" anymore, but that wasn't the case back in the day. Rather than give some sort of review that you've heard elsewhere, it's the year 2015 now and EarthBound was released 20 years ago, I'm going to tell you how it affected me. This review does contain some minor spoilers, but not much.
I first played EarthBound back in late 2004. Now, granted, I did have some cheats in effect to prevent dying (I used an emulator), but even so, it was an amazing and memorable experience, from living marionette dolls in Threed soon segueing into the brief segment of how Jeff escaped from the boarding house and came to join the heroes, and continuing onto Magicant, the world of Ness' past and present, and frankly, I think pajamas over nudity was the better choice. I think that part of what made it appealing in the first place, or maybe was just a coincidence, was that I was about Ness' age at the time. Now, I tried Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI in the same timeframe and those had similar sticking features to me (namely the music and themes, but I never progressed very far at all in either one, the prison and Figaro Castle, respectively), but for EarthBound, man, I was there (including mandatory Starmen.net membership, the site that helped EarthBound rise back to prominence). I mean, I never imported expensive Mr. Saturn plushies from Japan, but EarthBound would remain on my top five for a long period of time.
Fast forward five years, and I decide to start playing EarthBound again, but this time on the big screen—a Wii running homebrew! And this time, no cheats! That's when things fell apart. It wasn't the running of the software (there was no way for Virtual Console, of course), which ran admirably, is I had to come to grips how screwy the difficulty was. At times it was ridiculously easy and at times it was crazy difficult. (TVTropes, which I linked to, put it this way: "It starts out fairly challenging, gets extremely easy after Happy Happy, gets hard when you reach the mines and stays hard all the way through Moonside, drops insanely low all the way through Scaraba, gets a bit more challenging in Deep Darkness, and finally gets pretty nasty once you reach Fire Spring through the end.") The final straw came in the last "dungeon", where waves of the most highly-powered Starmen would come in waves to attack you before the final boss. Basically what it amounted to was grinding. Now I've heard some people tell me that "Oh, you just didn't use your PSI attacks more effectively, at your level, you should have wiped 'em out" (those weren't their exact words, but that seemed to be the sentiment), but those attacks were not unlimited and I was trying to save them for the final boss, which I did end up beating for a long and fairly satisfying ending (you actually took Paula home and then returning home yourself instead of just cutting to the credits).
EarthBound ends on a cliffhanger, which would lead to years of frustration by fans (I think I first found about EarthBound in a June 2001 issue of Nintendo Power, where fans sent in a lot of EarthBound fan art that month, probably because the cancellation of EarthBound 64 was fresh on everyone's minds. Anyway, I do hope to intend to sit down and play Mother 3 sometime, EarthBound's sequel, and write a full review, mostly focusing on what could have been for Mother 3.
Player Notes
The review was originally written April 21, 2015. In January 2024 it was somewhat edited to remove some irrelevant information. It has been played through again on a 3DS circa 2018, with Mother 3 being completed the following year and a review written. In the old version of this review I noted my favorite enemy was Mr. Molecule (he just looks cool), as well giving it a "GOOD" rating (basically 4/5).
Port & Rerelease Notes
EarthBound, like many Super NES games, received a Game Boy Advance port as Mother 1 + 2 with NES game Mother along for the ride. Despite the fact that the game was localized back in 1995 nobody has bothered making a translation patch for it.
Screenshots
Recommended Guide
If you have the Player's Guide that's the first choice, but the way it's formatted I wouldn't recommend it if you don't have a physical copy. Plus it has a number of typos and says the Kraken can drop the Gutsy Bat, when in reality only the Bionic Kraken (later in the game) can. Overall, I'd recommend the Starmen.net EarthBound walkthrough as it is print-friendly and addresses some of the things you might need to watch out for (like getting the Sword of Kings).