The graphics are frequently on the unusual side, which can be good or bad depending on the person playing. But for someone used to traditional games in this genre, they can be the first problem with really getting into the game. Now, I've been playing videogames for a long time, and I like to think that I can see past a game's visuals to enjoy the gameplay that remains. But it even took me about an hour of play to adjust from the typical RPG graphics style to the unique, less serious, style used for Earthbound. Once I did, the game's way of doing things started to seem perfectly normal, and I was able to appreciate a few things about the way it looked.
First, the problems, though. The character sprites, including both your party and the NPC's in town are really on the simple side. Some would say that this is completely intentional, and I can believe that to some extent, but I think the unique style the game is trying for could've been preserved even if a more detail was used. Also, a lot of the dungeons and such that you find yourself in are really on the simplistic side with a minimum of detail to make you take notice.
But there's a lot that looks impressive, too. The towns are really large, fairly detailed, and not what you might expect from an RPG... you've got sidewalks, streets, cars, buses, all sorts of real world things, since the game takes place in the 1990's. You'll also travel to quite a variety of interesting looking areas, from a summer resort to a more isolated snow covered land. There's a prehistoric setting complete with a unique zoomed out point of view, a huge desert, and stuff that's a bit stranger. Enemies aren't terribly impressive for the most part, but there are some that are detailed, especially the larger bosses.
Now, you can see enemies before you fight them here, and try to avoid a battle by going around them. You can also get an advantage and attack first if you're able to sneak up on the enemy... and if the enemy does this to you (you have to be pretty careless), they strike first. A more interesting feature though is that once you're strong enough, the enemies will actually run from you... and you'll be able to defeat some of them instantly without going into battle mode. This is great for when you're backtracking and don't want to deal with enemies that give useless amounts of experience and no challenge. A feature like that should be standard in RPG's.
The game uses a battle system not unlike that of the Dragon Warrior series. Combat is first person, with a fairly simple menu system. You can fight, use Psi Powers where available, use items (one party member's main method for dealing heavy damage), use a character's special ability, or attempt to run. What makes it more interesting is that when your character takes damage, the HP isn't deducted all at once. Let's say Ness has 200 HP, but gets hit for 450 damage. The HP starts decreasing at a fairly rapid pace. But if he can get healed or the battle is finished before the number counts down to zero, you'll be able to save him. This actually comes into play during some random battles, making them more exciting. Some enemies might do critical damage when destroyed, so you have to leave them for last, or else have an extremely efficient plan for finishing the battle quickly. With more frequency though, you'll be doing the same thing you do in any other RPG... setting battles to automatic or pressing the attack button as fast as you can.
You'll encounter some tough boss battles here and there, but most are a little too simple to beat once you get some party members and decent Psi powers. Freeze, for example, does high damage to the majority of the game's bosses. For those it doesn't work as well with, you can simply use a command from one of your party members to find out what might do damage. The combination of the two things makes nearly every boss simple at decent levels. There are some really challenging random battles though, especially near the end of the game. Some of these can be tougher than the bosses, mostly because they can show up in large numbers, and because you can't waste all your Psi Points in dealing with them. But all in all, as long as you've been fighting the random enemies throughout the game, it's really not terribly challenging to make it to the end. There are very few situations where you'll have to stop and level up before you can survive the next area... mostly near the beginning when you only have one party member, and right before the last boss, since everything there is tough to beat.
One complaint here... the game tends to give you several weapons with higher damage but lower accuracy. And from what I can tell, it's not possible to determine this simply from the equip screen. So you might sell your highly accurate bat for what you think is a more powerful weapon... and then only be able to hit enemies around half the time. This seemed a little on the unfair side to me, since you don't get anymore information than whether the power is higher or lower when you make a purchase. It's only a problem the first time it happens, since you learn not to get rid of a weapon without making sure the new one is an improvement.
The story involves a kid names Ness (as the default at least) who finds out that he needs to save the world from a force of unimaginable power by first visiting several Sanctuary Locations scattered around the world and joining with three other people. This involves going to lots of different towns, increasing the size of your party, getting through a variety of dungeons, and solving lots of smaller problems for the townspeople on the way. So as you can see, the basic gameplay is not much different from any other game in this genre. It's just the setting that makes Earthbound different... aside from it taking place in modern times which is unusual enough, you'll see a religion obsessed with the color blue, travel on a UFO, see the Saturn Village where the residents have an... unusual...way of speaking, travel to the frightening mirror-image city of Moonside, battle what amounts to talking puke and "his" zombie army... and much more. The game has been described as funny, but I think strange is a better description. I don't know if I ever once laughed at anything I saw during the game, but I loved the wacky locations and enemies. At the start, you get to name several characters, items, and abilities, making some of the battles and dialogues a bit more entertaining if you make creative choices. If you don't feel like it, the game does give you a number of perfectly workable if not funny names for things.
While the events you need to do to finish a particular part of the game can be complicated, and maybe not all that obvious, there's a fairly interesting solution. The Hint Man available in most towns will solve pretty much any problem you might be having. You pay him a fairly small amount, and he tells you what you should be doing at the time. It's obviously more fun to figure the stuff out yourself, but if you find yourself a bit lost, it feels less like cheating to get help from the game itself than from some strategy guide.
The game somehow manages to be extremely long without getting overly boring. Even if the gameplay doesn't change much, the way the story develops is so unusual that you always want to keep going to see what's coming next. And by the time I was really feeling like it was time for the game to end, it was about time to go to the final dungeon. The game being lengthy was my biggest concern, since I sometimes have trouble staying focused when a game goes much beyond the 20 hour point.
Anyway, Earthbound is a fun title, but I can see that it clearly isn't for everyone. I can understand why some people may not like this kind of story, or that they might prefer a more complicated battle system, or less goofy style of graphics. If you want to give the game a try, I recommend playing it for at least three or four hours before you decide to quit... being a long game, it does take a while to really get going. But if you don't like it by that time, then maybe it's just not the kind of RPG for you. After playing the same kind of RPG for so many years though, it was a great experience to have something that truly stands out as being different.