I do think sticking to shorter sessions for SNES RPGs makes for a much better experience, I think there’s nothing to be gained by bingeing them, treat them like a serial you check in on every few days and their rhythms become much more palatable and sensible…in my opinion
Also yes turn the music way up
its even built into the game! if you play for too long your dad calls and suggests you take a break!
threed/winters/desert/fourside/desert is a pretty punishing stretch of adventure game logic and jeff and paula constantly dying. everyone i know who quit put it down during this stretch
the monkey cave is a final sadistic fetch quest before getting teleport and going to summers after which everything really picks up
i can’t really fault it because its development came together miraculously but mother 3 has the benefit of a decade of editing
oh yeah, the portraits are garbage
i still don’t 100% know what flags you have to trip to open up the gold dig dungeon. which is imo the game’s nadir
Mother 3 is wonderful in many ways (and mechanically one of the most taut, satisfying turn based RPGs ever??) but i really can’t full throatedly recommend it anymore and yes a large part of that is the magypsies whose name im spoiling because it is literally a slur and who are just fundamentally transphobic to the core no matter how well-intentioned theyre meant to be. the major macguffin subplot of the game requires you to delete every genderqueer person in the world from existence. i mean fuckin yikes.
and thats not even getting into how they overlap with yokuba/fassad who is just a, big problematic heap of “where were you going with this Itoi??”
and god that hot springs scene. oh an ambiguously intimate encounter between a heavily stereotyped magic transvestite and the vaguely queer-coded 13 year old protagonist?? huh. again: where you going with this dawg
Its mostly just threed imo, threed is the worst part of earthbound
huh but how do you delineate Threed from the rest of the game? genuine question because the Threed Arc is one of the structurally weirdest and most broad parts and to me comprises Jeff’s solo adventure in Winters and Saturn Valley, which are absolutely highlights
like i said i think the gold dig is the worst dungeon, and i think i’d put everything that bookends it from your first half-assed visit to Fourside up through infiltrating the Monotoli building as the low act of the game (with the huge exception of Moonside smack in the middle)
In terms of grindiness/difficulty it’s been many years since my one and only playthrough of Earthbound but isn’t it always viable to just buy bottle rockets and blow up every boss
yes once you have endless money and the ability to PK Teleport and Poo you should be filling his inventory with brain food lunches, and Jeff’s inventory with multi bottle rockets. it’s inelegant but you can kinda have win buttons among your items until the end of the game
threed, the mine, department store, monotoli building are all fine tho
worst dungeon in the game is the pyramid in scaraba — just an endless procession of slow, boring, easy fights
the best part of the game is entering stonehenge before you’re “supposed to” because the game will just let you ignore the sanctuary dungeon plotline for most of the mid-game if you want (or are dumb like me)
The parts not in threed, like winters and saturn valley, aren’t a part of threed
yess these are the deep cut Earthbound opinions i CRAVE
i dislike the gold dig because it is a generic feeling mazey cave that repeatedly recycles the same (already recycled) boss, 3rd strongest mole jokes aside. and the enemies are a random jumble of whatever and half of them can poison you. it could be cut from the game without issue
the 3 dungeons right after Prince Poo joins you (pink cloud cave, the sewers/magnet hill and the pyramid) arent super exciting, but they’re short, linear and imo together have a place in getting your 4th party member integrated and up to speed at a point in the game where it’s still novel to have the whole crew. (only to yank Poo away from you again at the very end of the pyramid, making you miss him until he rejoins with Starstorm) i guess for me it is a difference of filler vs intentional grit lol
but you spend so little of that section of the game in Threed proper… you get there, get kidnapped by zombies, play as Jeff until he unites with and rescues the party, and then hang out a bit until Apple Kid mails you zombie paper before heading off to Saturn Valley
That does entail some awkward wandering around until the quest flags kick in but it’s never egregiously held me up from continuing the game like the early Fourside events have. and i love that Threed is a Halloween zombie town until you liberate it, i enjoy being in the area. idk different strokes ofc
Having given up seeing it through with a controller we watched the longplay of Treasure Hunter G. Maybe I should do this with every SNES RPG I am never gonna bother with. Coming for you 7th Saga and Robotek. And you Brain Lord. How many SNES RPGs can I name but haven’t played?
Anyways THG looks cool but playing it looked like an absolute chore as we scrubbed across 16 hours of footage. Frequently beautiful graphic flourishes that show of Square at its SFC height. The last boss actually takes your healer out of the party which is a neat mechanic. You see some of Sting’s Sicko mechanics but it never really pays off.
Feel like I experienced the game in the best way.
The ending is weird and spoiling it just for posterity It turns out the monkey was one of the 6 special faeries the dark lord needed to capture to awake BONE DINO. In the last boss the girl is frozen and you defeat them. Then the girl goes “you need to leave and ai can’t bye.”
It affected me more than I expected. Just the curt misogyny of this girl character who has been given so little to do for the entire plot and it turns out they are probably just a homonculus for the faeries. This isn’t spelled out but also the heroes are uncerimonously kicked out of The World Tree and sent back to their normal lives. The End.
yes, there’s very few events in Threed, just wandering around dealing with endless random encounters against the most boring enemies in the game until you trigger all the flags that are required to get kidnapped by zombies. It’s bad and the only way it isn’t overlong is if you have played the game before and know where you’re supposed to go and what events are required to trigger the end of it
I hate threed so much, it’s the part of the game I’ve stopped at the most often
mr saturns are the best. when can i move to saturn valley
i think moonside looks great but i hate fuckign navigating it and dealing with the exploding enemies that hit you for 2934823949230 damage. it’d be worse than threed for me if it wasnt so thematically nuts
all i like about threed is HOW COOL the lady in the black dress is, the face on the tent, and everyone inside the tent being dumb as hell
Well lol i feel exactly the same about Fourside right down to the enemies sucking and the quest flags being confusing, im comfortable conceding that Threed-Fourside is generally a squishy uncertain part of the game where the links between events are arbitrary and ymmv what gets you hung up
Like i said i still dunno what unlocks the mine, i remember having to walk back and forth between dusty dunes and the city multiple times until i could get the fucking game to continue. That’s around where i dropped EB the first time i tried to play it
you give food to the mine worker who needs food so he has energy to work then talk to the manager in fourside about how much debt the runaway five is in and i think he specfically says itd take a big ass diamond which is what the mine has