The way this game handles money is pretty similar. Then, no matter what godforsaken dungeon in the middle of nowhere you’re trudging your way through, an NPC will come running up and offer to purchase stuff from you. Another way to whittle down your full inventory is to put out a For Sale sign. By the end of the game we’d filled that extra inventory as well. One is to call Escargo Express and PAY them to take only 3 items at a time away from you for safe keeping. There’s two ways to circumvent the inventory nightmare. His main use in battle is using items, so between his equipment and battle items he doesn’t have room for much else. It doesn’t help that one of the characters, Jeff, is a packrat. You have to cycle through each character’s menus to find what you’re looking for and give it to whoever you want to equip it provided that character’s inventory isn’t already full. Equipped items still count as part of their inventory. Each character can only hold a certain amount of items (a dozen, I think). The inventory management system in this game is so bad that I get the impression the developers went out of their way to make it painful. Especially since healing items are hard to come by in the beginning and you don’t have enough inventory space to carry the items. Well it’s more like an invisible “Miss” or “Accuracy” rating, but you get my drift.Įnemies will be able to one-shot a couple of your party members with a crit throughout the ENTIRE game. Yo-yos have this invisible “Worthless Item” stat. If you make the mistake of equipping yo-yos you’ll miss enemies so much you’ll probably bust your television screen. You choose attack, magic, defend, or item, take turns, and take almost-totally random amounts of damage from things. The battle system is pretty standard fare. Which means attacks are just flashes of different colored lights and effects on the screen. They’re only represented by boxes with their names, HP and PP (Psi Points). Like DragonQuest, you don’t even get to see your characters on the screen. The battle system in Earthbound functions much like old-school turn-based RPGs. Psychic abilities serve as magic attacks in the game. Ness, who has psychic abilities (because reasons) is, of course, some prophecy’s proclaimed savior who will rescue the world from Mr. Ultimate Evil Alien, Giygas. And this is just the start of the strange events that will unfold in Earthbound. When you go investigate it, an insect named “Buzz Buzz” informs you of the greater “Save the world from ultimate evil” main plot. If you go by the default name, you play as Ness, awoken from slumber by some crazy happenings in the middle of the night. A little different than the standard “Name Your Character” stuff from games of yore. Your favorite food, favorite thing, and YOUR name (The game breaks the fourth wall in a crazy way that I won’t spoil). This sets a trend for the complete randomness that permeates a lot of Earthbound’s elements.īefore landing into the game world, the menus will ask a few important questions first. Yes, whoever makes these decisions thought it’d be best to only translate and release the middle installment of a 3-part series. To start from the beginning Earthbound is actually “Mother 2.” It’s also the only Mother game that was released in North America. To slog through certain parts of the game requires you to be especially patient and familiar with JRPG tropes of the past. It’s one of those games that is great when its great, and terrible when its terrible. I think it is a very polarizing game one that many people either really love or really hate. I have very conflicting feelings about Earthbound. I did just that, propelling Earthbound from near the bottom of my to-play list to “Must Play Now” status. A month or so ago, Club Nintendo notified me that I could download this game for FREE as a Platinum member. Over the years I heard a lot of buzz about this game that’s acquired a sizable cult following, so I added it to my “download and play sometime later” retro game list. Thus, I never experienced it during my impressionable youth. Check out this ragtag bunch of kids out to save the universe.Įarthbound is an old-school RPG that was first released on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, before I got into turn-based role playing games.
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