Earthbound: Just when I think I'm out...
Jun. 29th, 2012 09:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indigozealI'm considering taking up Earthbound again on a limited basis. I can't name one single guiding reason for doing so: for better or for worse, it's a definitive and unique title for my pet genre, despite its severe and severely overlooked flaws, so it seems I should follow through on it to the end, if only to have a working knowledge of it; I believe I'm almost halfway through its 20-hour playtime, so finishing it off might not be that big a deal; folks are promising smoke on water and fire in the sky for the ending, and while I don't believe them, I've read a couple things that have my interest piqued*; Moonside does look nifty, doesn't it. I'm wishy-washy on all of the above reasons, and yet they add up to something taken as a whole, so I might play the game a bit on the side until I encounter the next series of idiotic play decisions. Or until I get a copy of Silent Hill 2 for the used PS2 I just bought, whichever comes first.
I'm not playing the game with fresh eyes and a fresh outlook anymore, though. I'll treating it as a broken game, to an extent, something against which to protect myself instead of something with which fully to engage and experiment; I'm considering a no-extraneous-items run for the remainder, where I just stock my characters with healing items and chuck anything else that comes into my inventory. I've also Googled the game a bit to see what I' be missing in the second half of the game (which didn't yield much in way of plot points, honestly, but did spoil me a bit on locales). In that respect, my reactions aren't gonna be from-the-gut babe-in-the-woods anymore, so I might as well do a write-up regarding my reflections on the game at the midpoint or the last time I really cared or whatever; I don't think anything from here on out is going to alter my fundamental opinion on the game.
The positives: Earthbound was one of the first games to eschew any attempt at cutting-edge graphics in pursuit of a deliberate artistic style, and I admire it for that. It does make its conceit of an RPG set in a comedic version of suburban USA work, and I very much like the "kid on an outdoor adventure" feel when it's present. I think this was one of the first RPGs (if not *the* first RPG) with enemy groups visible in the overworld, and the concept of having autowins for battles where you're significantly stronger than your opponent, while it doesn't have much influence on the game per se, is neat all the same. I do like the concepts behind a few of its more peripheral systems - being able to pay in advance for an HP refill a set period of time later; being able to boost the effectiveness of healing foods with auxiliary items (i.e. condiments); being able to buy a dummy party member via teddy bears to absorb a limited number of blows. There's good variety in its strategically-limited number of spells - all offensive techs differ in area damage; some have a non-negligible chance of OHKOs or other worthwhile status effects. Nearly everything in the spell pool's useful in some manner. I like the parts of the main plot where you're gathering pieces of a melody from nature and seeing flashes of what I presume is your own birth; there's a sweet respect for the specialness of children and their world here I haven't encountered in any other game.
The problems: Luck plays too much of a factor in combat, allowing little chinks in the gameplay armor to snowball into worst-case scenarios. Your attacks miss all the freaking time; enemies can be pussycats in one encounter and invincible beasts the next; foes that can call for backup have such a high success rate that you're too often caught in impromptu boss fights against an endless horde. The luck issue extends to level-ups; on one level-up, Paula got her ~100 HP upped by a whopping 34 points; after I had to reload following a party wipe, the same level-up netted her an HP increase of *2.*
The limited inventory is a HUGE problem, and while I can envision a good game centered on forced frequent item use, the parts aren't in place for it to work in Earthbound. (You don't have enough MP to rely on magic near-exclusively for healing and thereby neglect keeping a stock of restorative items, and the big hand luck plays in combat makes it too easy for you to get in a desperate situation where you need lots of healing.) As noted copiously below, many of the gameplay systems are broken, but the game, as in the boss-of-Threed situation, expects you to pay serious attention to those broken systems to survive. The supposed ability to run from or avoid enemies is nonexistent due to the enemies' alarming speed. Despite a couple killer sound effects (bleching), the music's not great, though that wouldn't have bothered me here had the other stuff worked. The humor goes for broad strokes when it'd be better laser-focused, and the game thinks it's a little more clever than it really is.
Other:
- I liked the surreal bit where the chief of police deals with the annoying kid hero by shoving him in a back office down at the station and having the goofy kung-fu cops come at him one by one in a teeball bat-versus-nightstick brawl. That was more Pete & Pete than anything.
- Everyone ooh and aahs over the supposed innovation of the rolling HP meter - the numbers roll up and down like those on an odometer to subtract health after an attack, and you can theoretically save a party member dealt a mortal blow if you can heal them before their meter ticks down to 0. I found that the dials on the meter rolled way too fast to pull that off, though. Supposedly, saving the walking dead in this manner is a big gameplay mechanic in the final area, but obviously I never got that far.
- I found that you could sometimes avoid unfavorable enemy encounters if the foes hadn't yet seen you by scrolling them off the screen and then walking back to have different parties respawn, but I'm pretty sure that strategy wasn't intended by the programmers.
In brief: Earthbound's missteps are often excused with the claim that the game just wants to put a smile on your face, but if so, then the gameplay shouldn't sabotage itself in ways that make playing the title actively irritating.
...And now I'm off to play it again.
* Not the porn movie thing, jerks.
.
I'm not playing the game with fresh eyes and a fresh outlook anymore, though. I'll treating it as a broken game, to an extent, something against which to protect myself instead of something with which fully to engage and experiment; I'm considering a no-extraneous-items run for the remainder, where I just stock my characters with healing items and chuck anything else that comes into my inventory. I've also Googled the game a bit to see what I' be missing in the second half of the game (which didn't yield much in way of plot points, honestly, but did spoil me a bit on locales). In that respect, my reactions aren't gonna be from-the-gut babe-in-the-woods anymore, so I might as well do a write-up regarding my reflections on the game at the midpoint or the last time I really cared or whatever; I don't think anything from here on out is going to alter my fundamental opinion on the game.
The positives: Earthbound was one of the first games to eschew any attempt at cutting-edge graphics in pursuit of a deliberate artistic style, and I admire it for that. It does make its conceit of an RPG set in a comedic version of suburban USA work, and I very much like the "kid on an outdoor adventure" feel when it's present. I think this was one of the first RPGs (if not *the* first RPG) with enemy groups visible in the overworld, and the concept of having autowins for battles where you're significantly stronger than your opponent, while it doesn't have much influence on the game per se, is neat all the same. I do like the concepts behind a few of its more peripheral systems - being able to pay in advance for an HP refill a set period of time later; being able to boost the effectiveness of healing foods with auxiliary items (i.e. condiments); being able to buy a dummy party member via teddy bears to absorb a limited number of blows. There's good variety in its strategically-limited number of spells - all offensive techs differ in area damage; some have a non-negligible chance of OHKOs or other worthwhile status effects. Nearly everything in the spell pool's useful in some manner. I like the parts of the main plot where you're gathering pieces of a melody from nature and seeing flashes of what I presume is your own birth; there's a sweet respect for the specialness of children and their world here I haven't encountered in any other game.
The problems: Luck plays too much of a factor in combat, allowing little chinks in the gameplay armor to snowball into worst-case scenarios. Your attacks miss all the freaking time; enemies can be pussycats in one encounter and invincible beasts the next; foes that can call for backup have such a high success rate that you're too often caught in impromptu boss fights against an endless horde. The luck issue extends to level-ups; on one level-up, Paula got her ~100 HP upped by a whopping 34 points; after I had to reload following a party wipe, the same level-up netted her an HP increase of *2.*
The limited inventory is a HUGE problem, and while I can envision a good game centered on forced frequent item use, the parts aren't in place for it to work in Earthbound. (You don't have enough MP to rely on magic near-exclusively for healing and thereby neglect keeping a stock of restorative items, and the big hand luck plays in combat makes it too easy for you to get in a desperate situation where you need lots of healing.) As noted copiously below, many of the gameplay systems are broken, but the game, as in the boss-of-Threed situation, expects you to pay serious attention to those broken systems to survive. The supposed ability to run from or avoid enemies is nonexistent due to the enemies' alarming speed. Despite a couple killer sound effects (bleching), the music's not great, though that wouldn't have bothered me here had the other stuff worked. The humor goes for broad strokes when it'd be better laser-focused, and the game thinks it's a little more clever than it really is.
Other:
- I liked the surreal bit where the chief of police deals with the annoying kid hero by shoving him in a back office down at the station and having the goofy kung-fu cops come at him one by one in a teeball bat-versus-nightstick brawl. That was more Pete & Pete than anything.
- Everyone ooh and aahs over the supposed innovation of the rolling HP meter - the numbers roll up and down like those on an odometer to subtract health after an attack, and you can theoretically save a party member dealt a mortal blow if you can heal them before their meter ticks down to 0. I found that the dials on the meter rolled way too fast to pull that off, though. Supposedly, saving the walking dead in this manner is a big gameplay mechanic in the final area, but obviously I never got that far.
- I found that you could sometimes avoid unfavorable enemy encounters if the foes hadn't yet seen you by scrolling them off the screen and then walking back to have different parties respawn, but I'm pretty sure that strategy wasn't intended by the programmers.
In brief: Earthbound's missteps are often excused with the claim that the game just wants to put a smile on your face, but if so, then the gameplay shouldn't sabotage itself in ways that make playing the title actively irritating.
...And now I'm off to play it again.
* Not the porn movie thing, jerks.
.
