Anyone who has played Earthbound can attest to the fact that it takes the genre of RPG and puts one of the best spins on it ever. Pure and simple, Earthbound is fun. The Setting: The towns of a modern world and some more exotic locations. Onett, Twoson, Threed, Fourside are just a few of the places your gang will travel along the way. Anyone who plays this game will tell you how cool Moonside (the reverse Fourside) area is or about kickin' back in Summers in the Stoic Café. The Gang: Ness, Paula, Jeff, Poo are four kids brought together by some mysterious force for the same purpose. Each brings their own flavour to the group. Ness attacks with a baseball bat and has some cool magic, Paula will kick the crap out of you with a frying pan and tear you apart with some fire, freeze, and thunder magic, while Jeff is inclined to fire a bottle rocket in your face and Poo will use crazy magic (like Starstorm). The Purpose: A meteor has crash landed in Ness's hometown causing weird stuff to go down. Your pesky neighbor causes a bit of trouble and the chain of events starts. A little bee named Buzz-Buzz helps beat down on a Starman but gets beat down himself by your neighbors mother. On his death bed the bee gives you a "Sound Stone" to collect the tunes of various Sanctuary locations in order to fix all that has gone wrong. The Style: Comedy and sappy adventure rolled into one beautiful package. The array of people you will meet along the way will remind you of people you know in real life. The fun and simple world they live in will make you wish you could leave your hectic lifestyle and join them. Items like Brain-Food Lunch or a good ol' fashioned Hamburger will cause you to realize how trite "cures" and "potions" are. SMAAAAAAASH!!! becomes one of the greatest sounds for the player (when you get a critical hit). The Battles: Random encounters aren't always that fun, in my opinion… so the designers at Ape Studios decided to use all on screen enemies. And depending on how strong you are and how you approach an enemy you may get a sneak attack in or even an instant victory! Instant victory is probably the coolest thing in the world. Why fight when you know you're just tear them up anyway? Also, the "auto" fight command is very cool. The Rolling HP Counter that actually counts down your loss of HP when you are attacked is another brilliant idea which adds dynamic to the strategy behind quite a few of the game's enemies. I picked up my copy the first time I ever went to a Best Buy. It was on a bottom shelf because the box was too big to fit in the normal racks (since it came with a strategy guide) and was discounted. Best 10 dollars I've ever spent. I doubt anything could be more worth it.
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