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chuckroSNES-era rpg aficionados will remember Earthbound, the quirky modern-day semi-parody rpg with an advertising campaign that focused on gross-out humor. Earthbound was actually the second game in the Mother series, the first being the NES game that was eventually fan-translated as "Earthbound Zero." After several failed attempts at another sequel, Mother 3 finally came out for the Game Boy Advance, at the end of the system’s lifespan. It, too, was never officially translated, but fan translators came to the rescue again. (Also noteworthy: The game was made by Brownie Brown, who also did Sword of Mana and Magical Starsign.)
A lot of the Earthbound elements are there, just in the first few scenes: Visible/avoidable enemies, colored-swirl battle transitions, amazing technicolor backgrounds, rolling HP meters, and SMAAAASH! attacks. Then the very first enemy telegraphs an expected difficulty level: You have one person in your party, and this first enemy can paralyze you but also occasionally confuses itself. Feeling lucky? The previous two games also loved this sort of Random Number God defined difficulty.
The reliance on the kindness of the RNG is impressive, actually. Most enemies have a really nasty attack and a "waste a turn" move. In the first few chapters, most of the available healing items are random drops. In the first store, there's only a random (low) chance that a better weapon will appear!
Not long after you begin, there's an area full of enemies that can both poison and paralyze you. Now, I'm a bit iffy on poison when you have a limited inventory / limited access to antidotes (and this section has both), but the fact that you need to get through an otherwise-totally-manageable area with these things wandering through it with only one character in your party? That’s just annoying. I ended up dashing through most of the segment poisoned, hoping I got to a recovery spring before I ran out of healing items.
In chapter 4, you get your first real exposure to "enemies you must run away from". In classic form, the game gives very little warning that this is what they are, it just puts them in your path and expects you to figure it out. This isn't a beef gate--they're just mixed in with the enemies you can defeat. Final Fantasy 13 does the same thing in a few places, and it pisses me off there, too. I think somebody decided that they needed to make use of enemies being visible on the main screen to add to the "challenge" by including ones you just had to avoid.
There's a timed hits element to the game, which allows you to hit hard by timing to the beats of the background music. This is problematic when playing with the sound off, to say the least. Also, there doesn't seem to be an in-game tutorial for it--there isn't even a mention of it until chapter two! It's rather difficult to do and really should have had a tutorial, because doing it well makes the game significantly easier--you can double the damage you do each time you attack. This system synergizes very poorly with the rolling HP meter, though--you want to take your time to get lots of rhythm hits, but if you HP is rolling down, you want to speed through each round as fast as possible.)
An annoying feature they added is that your PSI-using characters learn new powers by "feeling feverish" for a couple of minutes of real time. (It triggers shortly after you gain the appropriate level to learn the new power.) During that time, you can't dash to avoid enemies or get places faster. I'm not sure why this is an "improvement" over just learning new powers at the end of battles.
I don't remember buff/debuff magic being particularly useful in Earthbound, but then, I played it during a time when I mostly ignored such spells because they were useless in most games. The Defense Up/Down and Offense Up/Down PSI and thief abilities are massive useful during boss battles in this game, turning really painful threats into minor annoyances. Bosses are also occasionally vulnerable to status effects, which means you really should be using them.
There's a kindness to the number of save points (frogs), at least. They appear pretty much every five to ten minutes. This is much less of an issue when playing on an emulator (as those of us playing the fan-translation kinda have to), but it's nice that it's there. The save frogs also function as ATMs, allowing you to access the money that accumulates from killing enemies. There’s pretty much always one there when you need one (near stores) but that begs the question of why they needed this mechanic at all, rather than just giving you money after battles.
This game and FF13 are also similar in that neither has a world map (though that's another staple of the Mother series), and both are very linear. There really aren't towns to retreat to; instead you'll find hot springs to heal at and random shops in the middle of dungeons, and you'll probably want to do your grinding at these points periodically.
There are some similar elements to Dragon Quest 4, in that the game is divided into chapters and you have a different main character/party makeup for each one. This also limits your ability to grind and prepare for the next chapter: XP obviously doesn't transfer to new characters, items only carry over when you eventually get those characters back (but with a 20-item carrying capacity, that's less of a concern), and money...well, for the first three chapters, there is no money! (Characters don't receive "leaked experience" when they aren't in the party, so if you get a character back after not using him for three chapters, he'll still be at the same level and with the same crappy equipment as when you left him last.) Your party is pretty constant from chapter 5 on, though.
DQ4 was more about giving you several different perspectives on basically the same time period / series of events and a "how we got here" for the party. While this does a bit of that (chapters 2 and 3, specifically), the chapters are also used for time-skips and just generally to break up the story. Chapter 6 is a five-minute vignette; chapter 7 is almost as long as the previous six combined. Chapter 7 is also the time when, far and away, you'll gain the most levels and see the most generations of new equipment.
I've been using a FAQ based on the Japanese version, so it's pretty obvious that puns in the original have been localized into puns in the translation, and I think the translators did a great job. I particularly liked one bit where you break into a music club and have to fight a Gently Weeping Guitar. (They also seemed to be trying hard to keep things in-line with Earthbound translation conventions, despite the lack of strong connections to that game until the very end.) Another monster name I particularly liked was a monster the FAQ calls a "pig bean" (a pig with a super-brain) getting translated as "Einswine".
One of the taglines attached to the game is “Strange. Funny. Heartrending.” And I think that’s an accurate way to describe the plot. From the very first chapter, you get a mix of wackiness and light-hearted humor, and heart-wrenching tragedy. I’m going to break out a second post to discuss it in depth, because it’s hard to do without spoilers.
Overall: If you liked Earthbound, if you don’t mind old-school jrpg conventions (limited inventory, RNG abuse, annoying difficulty if you don’t use cheat codes), and you want a story you can really get into, give this a go. And seriously, the fan translation really is excellent, among the best I’ve seen.
A lot of the Earthbound elements are there, just in the first few scenes: Visible/avoidable enemies, colored-swirl battle transitions, amazing technicolor backgrounds, rolling HP meters, and SMAAAASH! attacks. Then the very first enemy telegraphs an expected difficulty level: You have one person in your party, and this first enemy can paralyze you but also occasionally confuses itself. Feeling lucky? The previous two games also loved this sort of Random Number God defined difficulty.
The reliance on the kindness of the RNG is impressive, actually. Most enemies have a really nasty attack and a "waste a turn" move. In the first few chapters, most of the available healing items are random drops. In the first store, there's only a random (low) chance that a better weapon will appear!
Not long after you begin, there's an area full of enemies that can both poison and paralyze you. Now, I'm a bit iffy on poison when you have a limited inventory / limited access to antidotes (and this section has both), but the fact that you need to get through an otherwise-totally-manageable area with these things wandering through it with only one character in your party? That’s just annoying. I ended up dashing through most of the segment poisoned, hoping I got to a recovery spring before I ran out of healing items.
In chapter 4, you get your first real exposure to "enemies you must run away from". In classic form, the game gives very little warning that this is what they are, it just puts them in your path and expects you to figure it out. This isn't a beef gate--they're just mixed in with the enemies you can defeat. Final Fantasy 13 does the same thing in a few places, and it pisses me off there, too. I think somebody decided that they needed to make use of enemies being visible on the main screen to add to the "challenge" by including ones you just had to avoid.
There's a timed hits element to the game, which allows you to hit hard by timing to the beats of the background music. This is problematic when playing with the sound off, to say the least. Also, there doesn't seem to be an in-game tutorial for it--there isn't even a mention of it until chapter two! It's rather difficult to do and really should have had a tutorial, because doing it well makes the game significantly easier--you can double the damage you do each time you attack. This system synergizes very poorly with the rolling HP meter, though--you want to take your time to get lots of rhythm hits, but if you HP is rolling down, you want to speed through each round as fast as possible.)
An annoying feature they added is that your PSI-using characters learn new powers by "feeling feverish" for a couple of minutes of real time. (It triggers shortly after you gain the appropriate level to learn the new power.) During that time, you can't dash to avoid enemies or get places faster. I'm not sure why this is an "improvement" over just learning new powers at the end of battles.
I don't remember buff/debuff magic being particularly useful in Earthbound, but then, I played it during a time when I mostly ignored such spells because they were useless in most games. The Defense Up/Down and Offense Up/Down PSI and thief abilities are massive useful during boss battles in this game, turning really painful threats into minor annoyances. Bosses are also occasionally vulnerable to status effects, which means you really should be using them.
There's a kindness to the number of save points (frogs), at least. They appear pretty much every five to ten minutes. This is much less of an issue when playing on an emulator (as those of us playing the fan-translation kinda have to), but it's nice that it's there. The save frogs also function as ATMs, allowing you to access the money that accumulates from killing enemies. There’s pretty much always one there when you need one (near stores) but that begs the question of why they needed this mechanic at all, rather than just giving you money after battles.
This game and FF13 are also similar in that neither has a world map (though that's another staple of the Mother series), and both are very linear. There really aren't towns to retreat to; instead you'll find hot springs to heal at and random shops in the middle of dungeons, and you'll probably want to do your grinding at these points periodically.
There are some similar elements to Dragon Quest 4, in that the game is divided into chapters and you have a different main character/party makeup for each one. This also limits your ability to grind and prepare for the next chapter: XP obviously doesn't transfer to new characters, items only carry over when you eventually get those characters back (but with a 20-item carrying capacity, that's less of a concern), and money...well, for the first three chapters, there is no money! (Characters don't receive "leaked experience" when they aren't in the party, so if you get a character back after not using him for three chapters, he'll still be at the same level and with the same crappy equipment as when you left him last.) Your party is pretty constant from chapter 5 on, though.
DQ4 was more about giving you several different perspectives on basically the same time period / series of events and a "how we got here" for the party. While this does a bit of that (chapters 2 and 3, specifically), the chapters are also used for time-skips and just generally to break up the story. Chapter 6 is a five-minute vignette; chapter 7 is almost as long as the previous six combined. Chapter 7 is also the time when, far and away, you'll gain the most levels and see the most generations of new equipment.
I've been using a FAQ based on the Japanese version, so it's pretty obvious that puns in the original have been localized into puns in the translation, and I think the translators did a great job. I particularly liked one bit where you break into a music club and have to fight a Gently Weeping Guitar. (They also seemed to be trying hard to keep things in-line with Earthbound translation conventions, despite the lack of strong connections to that game until the very end.) Another monster name I particularly liked was a monster the FAQ calls a "pig bean" (a pig with a super-brain) getting translated as "Einswine".
One of the taglines attached to the game is “Strange. Funny. Heartrending.” And I think that’s an accurate way to describe the plot. From the very first chapter, you get a mix of wackiness and light-hearted humor, and heart-wrenching tragedy. I’m going to break out a second post to discuss it in depth, because it’s hard to do without spoilers.
Overall: If you liked Earthbound, if you don’t mind old-school jrpg conventions (limited inventory, RNG abuse, annoying difficulty if you don’t use cheat codes), and you want a story you can really get into, give this a go. And seriously, the fan translation really is excellent, among the best I’ve seen.
