EarthBound Beginnings is a game that never came out in the West until the Wii U, but fans had begged for the game to come to the West for a long time, and now it’s also available on current-gen Nintendo hardware. Here is our EarthBound Beginnings Review.
The game was developed by Ape Inc. (now Creatures Inc.) and Pax Softnica and published by Nintendo, it was released on July 27, 1989, for the Famicom as a Japan exclusive, but in 2015 it finally came to the West for the Wii U. In 2022 it also came out for the Switch in the Nintendo Switch Online service.
Earthbound is a game I have been hearing about for years, and now I finally understand the appeal, but at the same time, I don’t know why it’s still being talked about. The game is dated, and it really feels that way in its clunky gameplay, but after a few days of playing, I did get used to it. What this game really needs is a remaster with updated systems and a tiny tune-up on the visuals, because most of the game is honestly pretty perfect.
There was 1 thing that did annoy me other than the dated controls and that is the way the story of the game is, because the game doesn’t really guide you in any way and it just sets you on this path without any clear goal of what to do, so I did have to pull up a walkthrough to get through the game. For me this was a big issue because I like the game guiding me and just telling me where to go and with this pretty big world, it was a drag to find stuff out without the right tools.
Its combat system just screams Pokemon, It is a fun and easy-to-understand system and doesn’t take much to master and just like the Pokemon games, training up the characters is a big help to get further in the story, and using the system to your benefit is a must. I kept my money in the payphone thing because I quickly noticed that losing just cuts your money in half that you have on you, so saving it up to buy a new weapon and only getting the amount you need is a massive help. There is even a PokeCenter-type thing where you can heal up, but sadly this also cost money, so I just ended up battling until I died every time because there didn’t really seem a downside to it.
The game is complicated and easy at the same time, but for me, it wasn’t really worth finishing after a few days of playing and I kind of just wanted to move on. It’s a slow game but still fun and I really had a hard time just getting any real opinion on it mainly due to how much praise the game has had over the many years I’ve heard about it. But this is a very advanced game for the NES and for sure one of the best games on the systems I’ve played so far.
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