>>3975356
I don't know I haven't played it.

>>3975356
The contemporary setting and (by 90s standards) off-beat humor made it stand out among the crowd back. With that said, the plot is nothing special and the combat system feels rather barebones aside from the rolling HP meter which feels underused. It's worth playing from a historic standpoint but if don't have time to play many JRPGs there a better choices out there.

Mother 3 still slaps though.

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The people who like it are the same people who think AI is trained on "stolen" data.
Even though musicians have been sampling tracks for decades. Earthbound is a great example.

You'd think they'd paint themselves into a corner by appreciating something so unethical. But they learned how to split their soul from J.K. Rowling.

>>3975387
begging you to get off fucking twitter

You guys still talking about this game? I haven't played since before most of the people on this board were born.

>>3975405
Kek yes, but I fear he's a lost cause

>>3975387
>a human intentionally using part of another work of art in the creation of a new work of art is the same thing as sovlless corporations hoovering up literally the entire internet and every book and document they can get their grubby VC paws on for the purpose of generating an infinite amount of slop and replacing human thinking and creativity, forever, with LLM "AI" garbage
One, you're fucking stupid. I don't even think you're baiting, you genuinely thought this was an insightful comparison.
Two, this song is mournful existential dread personified
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXLwI9uAUws
>You guys still talking about this game? I haven't played since before most of the people on this board were born.
Not much else to say about it. It was great back in the day, but I can't see replaying it more than once every fifteen years or so.

>>3975356
Yes.

>>3975439
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7xMfIp-irg

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>>3975356
It's a charming little game and holds up despite nostalgia. Don't play it expecting the best game of your life, especially since the gameplay is fairly dated, but I would say it's worth playing for the soul put into the game.

>>3975439
Bro it really is mournful existential dread. Good on you anon. Brings me back to the days of playing EarthBound and grinding for the fucking Sword of Kings and Gutsy Bat. I actually lucked out and got them fairly easily.

>>3975592
Yup this dude has it correct. EarthBound is just a wonderful experience with a ton of soul and love. It has a crazy amount of charm all throughout, the soundtrack is fantastic, the story is interesting, the humor and light touches make you smile, the aesthetics are superb, and there is a challenge to it. It's not SMT or Dark Souls difficulty (which I happen to love) but it plays perfectly.

I still remember getting this game as a kid, the big ass box from Toys 'R' Us. My cousin had the game first and I had a little sleepover at his house. I wanted it, and being a spoiled little shit you bet your ass I got it within a week. Thanks mom and dad.

So yeah, go play EarthBound kids.

>>3975592
That's all RPGs. The genre eschews "gameplay" in favor of cerebral experiences. The story isn't the action or the process. The story is what happens within you as a response to what the game presents.
>>3975356
It's an important experience in video game history, especially if you are familiar with the context of that historical period.
It's also an extremely crystallized example of Jrpgs as they were in that time, and so if you like the genre at all, it is the first and last word on the subject. Other words in between would be Mother 3 and Final Fantasy 6.
Is it all nostalgia? No. But after you've played it, you will always look back on it fondly. Nostalgia isn't a bad thing. It's a sign of having had a significant and fulfilling experience. You aren't nostalgic for the morning shit you took in 1995.

It's a game that coasts by on its setting, themes, and presentation. If you're looking for mechanically developing and customizing your character or a more indepth battle system, it isn't found here.

If you want something more straightforward in mechanics and story progression then it'll be a good fit.

>>3975356
Should I answer if I haven’t played it since it came out and I beat it with the help of the bundled guide?

>>3975387
When you make /vrpg/ trannies seethe I give a (you)

>>3975356
I like coming to /vrpg/ after playing an RPG (something I don't do often) just to see if there's a thread about a game.
I really enjoyed it playing for the first time, so I wouldn't say it's nostalgia. Maybe in the sense that when playing any SNES game, I can really feel the time period it was made in shining through. It's got its issues and some things made me want to pull my hair out, but I also don't play JRPGs often so I don't know if I'm the bad guy for getting mad.
Honestly, one of its greatest strengths is its humor. It almost always presents the joke straight-faced, which makes it much funnier.

>>3975356
Earthbound is gaming's Seinfeld

>>3975356
no, but mother 3 is

>>3979925
... a total mess.

>>3979921
How fucking dare you. Seriously. Shut the fuck up.

Every time I try to play earthbound I end up getting filtered as soon as paula joins my party, why is this foid following me around. A lot of gameplay aspects just feel so insufferable to me, too. Having to spend $400 just to heal at a hotel and then if a party member dies having to spend hundreds more at the hospital. Seems insufferable. Mother 3 just had those hot springs.

>>3979933
Fuck you.

>>3979985
Earthbound has hotsprings, too. Why are you dying, though? It's an easy kids' game, anon. Also it's set in Eagleland (America), so expensive healthcare and housing are literally fundamental parts of the game's story.
But for real though, if losing being expensive is "insufferable" to you, then kill yourself because you're a loser.

>>3975356
Simplistic Dragon Quest clone carried by the writing. I'ts definetely worth experiencing at least once though

>>3975356
jarpigs all suck
this one is even more dogshit than the rest

>>3977562
There's an NPC that actually gives you hints on what to do next in exchange for money
It's so sovlful

>>3975356
Yeah, it's good if you just take it for what it is. The Mother series is really just Persona for an earlier generation. It has the solid traditional JRPG mechanics with a couple of semi-interesting twists and doesn't take itself too seriously despite trying to tell a fairly emotional story. Play it for a couple of hours and see how you feel.

>>3981227
>There's an NPC that actually gives you hints on what to do next in exchange for money
>It's so sovlful
There is one in real life too. Her name is Ms. Cleo

I preferred it over Undertale.
Having played it after the fact, I noticed how much it borrowed from Itoi.

>>3982151
I mean I barely consider Undertale a JRPG, RPG even.
Earthbound might be a DQ1 clone in combat but everything else feels fresh and open-ended unlike DQ.
Sadly being DQ1 clone also means the combat is braindeadly boring.

Mother 3 is incredible. It's gamingwise got a few ugly grinding moments, but if you cheese through them with ano emulated superfast speed, it's playable.

Beyond playable, the themes are incredible and dark with the complicated twists and turns that a long rpg should have. Mother 3 will make you feel something.

>>3983081
After I posted that, I looked her up and she died like ten years ago. RIP. She was a circa 2000 middle school meme for us

>that one sound stone where you see ness's thoughts
yeah it's soul

>>3986132
>a few ugly grinding moments
Oh yeah. I sure loved slogging through an entire fucking chapter, because we really needed that busywork and tedium to fully immerse the player, and indicate the person torturing animals was an asshole. Because after showing you the newly widowed man was also down one son, I wasn't sure where the tone was.

It sure made me feel something alright, but I wasn't looking for tonal whiplash that reminded me of Fable 3. At least it keeps the theme of clashing elements.

>>3986179
The increasing decay of the nursing home, the potempkin New Pork City, the final sword pull.... There's a lot of good moments in there while the tone does its heavy carrying of how confusing it is to be alone even with a mission.

Like I said, grinding sucked. Sorry you got filtered by your own stubbornness. Maybe try not channeling your ssuperiority complex next time.

>>3975356
I did eventually play the original Earthbound and it doesn't hold up. There are some neat mechanics like the way they do battles in town and random battle selection, but it overall gets carried by story that is disjointed, obtuse, hamfisted, and blocked by the interaction methods within the story. The humor and vibes are neat, but you gotta really want to complete it.

I hate the way that a lot of parts have no payoff and get dropped. The hippie boss for example exists for next to no reason, the city section is obnoxious and I found myself rushing through because I just wanted to be to the end of the game. Aliens are hard af and there's no good reason why you have to do that. There's a lot that has that problem.

>>3986132
>>3986179
grinding? just time the a presses

>>3986193
Having mermen air machines who kiss you to refill your air is fine. A game going "EVERYONE YOU LOVE SECRETLY HATES YOU" is fine. Putting these two less than 5 minutes away from one another is tonal whiplash. Earthbound handles it better. By generally staying away from blatant extremes, it's able to make its heavier moments land better.

The tone is too overbearing in the wrong ways to be called deep. It's constantly telling the player what to feel, rather than presenting the situation. If it had actual depth, it wouldn't feel the need to do lazy nonsense like, when the team's goal is a few dozen feet away, freeze everyone in place long enough for Pigmen to literally lay out a path for the Masked Man. It wouldn't need to tell you to feel annoyance at Porky's childishness by making you slog through his games.
Speed up isn't an answer, because at some point, you're just skipping everything that could possibly make it deep in the first place.

>>3986179
the only real problem with chapter 3 is "happy box" is too clumsy a metaphor. the atypical ludonarrative making your character functionally useless in battles and dependent on the unreliable captor npc to do damage is interesting. you see new characters and different sides of existing ones, take another outsider's glance at their society, doesn't overstay its welcome.

I dunno how people enjoy RPGs like Mother 3 where it's 70% dialogue

>>3986472
Pathetic. Try again. This time, keep in mind that you have to make us believe you aren't trolling. Ok? Right. Take two. Action!

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>>3986472
They're for lowlifes and fake gamers who want to "have something to talk about" but don't feel like engaging with actual gameplay because they don't have the vocabulary to talk about that, but did just well enough in English class to have really shitty opinions on long, overwrought, contrived stories that no one wants to deal with.
The patrician's choice for playing EarthBound is with the Ludicrous Text Speed patch applied so you can blow through all that shit at godspeed.

>>3986472
It's not dialogue, M3 has too much set pieces / cutscenes.
However still more gameplay than FFXVI at least.
I doubt it's 70% of the game, you overexaggerated it to shit on JRPGs as usual.
>>3986509
shits on M3 and JRPG fans then proceeds to boast about playing Earthbound with patches.
Pretentious shitheads like you are worse than wikireaders

>>3986516
Mother 3 just feels like you're on a lame rollercoaster ride for kids a lot of the time. If you're gonna shove me through some setpiece, then it better be an awesome setpiece or I'm just gonna be bored.

>>3986472
It's not a real RPG, games like this target similar audiences to VNs or walking simulators

>>3986228
Imagine not understanding that going through a literal ocean kissing people and then immediately after doing drugs and hallucinating everyone hates you was supposed to be taken without thinking about nor comparing with what a socially normal person experiences. You have gone through life completely blind complaining other people are hallucinating.

I played it on my laptop when it was a well-known cult classic, but before it exploded in popularity post-Undertale (about 18-19 years ago). I found it incredibly engrossing; I distinctly remember staying up until 3am just to see the nightmare mall place through. For the most part, its pacing was perfect — so many JRPGs are slogs. IIRC, Earthbound got a lil sloggish near the end, but to nowhere near the same degree of its contemporaries.

It was fun, meta but sincere long before every game became an insufferable ironyfest. It's just an extremely solid title, and definitely one of the best examples of the "four niggas in a row" genre.

>>3986555
>when it was a well-known cult classic, but before it exploded in popularity post-Undertale
This has helped me to understand why many anons in this thread are retarded, thank you.

>tonal whiplash
A lot of this is gallows humor or dissociation. The second half of Chapter 1 being the first example between Alec's nervous fart jokes, the incomprehensible Magypsy encounter and fighting nonsense creatures in the mountains as Flint permanently loses his shit

>>3975356
Last time I played this I was a kid and it was still a relatively new game. I remember my party getting constantly raped by status effects and doing a lot of grinding. The world itself was vaguely fun and charming.

>>3975356
It's definitely overrated, but I also think it's extremely misinterpreted or whatever the right word for it would be.

99% of people, when they talk about Earthbound, talk about it like it's some sort of story focused game. They always talk about the "Amazing story" or "Atmospheric elements" or "Soul' like it's some sort of story driven narrative game.
Then you actually play the game and then 99% of the game is either walking around or fighting enemies. Considering that Final Fantasy 6 was already out, which had a lot more focus on "Cinematics", it actually has way less story than other popular RPG games at the time.

I think the thing with Earthbound is that the vast majority of the game is forgettable or uninteresting (Basically everything related to gameplay) so people hyper focus on specific story related moments. Things like Youtube videos are mostly focused on the story/atmospheric elements (Because that's what's actually interesting to share). Combine that with story focused games like Undertale/Omori claiming they have a heavy Earthbound inspiration, and now we have an entire generation of people who are convinced Earthbound must be some sort of super story focused masterpiece of a game, when in reality it was an outdated RPG game even for the time where most of your time would be bashing your head against enemies and crawling through repetitive dungeons.

It was a friggin kids game. This is like reading critical analyses of Chex Quest.

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>>3987317
>Combine that with story focused games like Undertale/Omori claiming they have a heavy Earthbound inspiration, and now we have an entire generation of people who are convinced Earthbound must be some sort of super story focused masterpiece of a game
this. it also pisses me off how many "earthbound-inspired" games have very few similarities with earthbound, not just in terms of gameplay or being story-focused when earthbound wasn't, but in the fact that they also completely miss the tone and humor that earthbound had, and the fact that earthbound is ultimately a lighthearted and optimistic game even if it has some dark undertones in some moments.

>>3975356
It's a solid 8/10 RPG for the time. Good and one of the more notable SNES rpgs for sure. It's also extremely obvious why so many people found it charming and enduring and why it's legacy is as big as it is but realizing that would require actually playing it and engaging with it in good faith which a lot of people refuse to do because they're brainwashed by politics and they see the things that spun off of this game 'tools of the enemy'. See >>3975387