Should I try playing Earthbound? I've universally hated every JRPG I've ever played (other than Pokémon I guess) for a variety of reasons, but Earthbound seems to be one of those ones that everyone loves and brings up often

@nytpu I did like the one quality of life mechanic it had, where if you were over leveled, it'd skip the battle and just give you the exp.

@jhwgh1968
Well, I guess I don't know really, I've never played that far into any of them for one reason: for the most part the ones I've played on people's glowing personal recommendations have had cutscenes that were literally over an hour before a single buttonpress of gameplay. At best you get a tutorial in the middle of that hour long intro. Or a really boring and repetitive playable prologue instead of a non-interactive cutscene. And then after that already making me irritated, the first few hours of real gameplay just feel so repetitive and such a slog that I give up.

@nytpu It's got a unique sense of humor, and some interesting gameplay changes from most JRPGs - your characters don't die the moment they take lethal damage, their health scrolls down so you can heal them or finish the fight before it reaches zero; you get attacks that hit one target, a row, every enemy or even someone at random; you can sneak up behind enemies (mostly when you've exited a fight and they can't see you) to get in a free turn before they can act; if you find butterflies you can restore your PP (psychic points) on the go.

But if you hate JRPGs for how combat works or inventory management, then the fact that you're poking around in garbage cans and using cute little mice to escape dungeons instead of chimera wings isn't going to change that.

@jhwgh1968 Yeah, I guess somewhat grindy gameplay doesn't necessarily bother me (since I at least tolerate Pokémon), it's just when the game is already doing its best to irritate me as much as possible before I even start playing that I refuse to tolerate even slight grind

@nytpu I liked Earthbound when I played it. It has a specific charm to it. I did get a little tired of playing the game by the end, but I played it all in a pretty short period of time (I'm bad at being in the middle of things and am driven to quickly finish them).

I think it's worth a try, though I liked the sequel, Mother 3, better.

@nytpu the only JRPGs I really liked was Paper Mario and its TTYD sequel.

Tales of Eternia was good too.

@athousandcateaus I did actually download Mother 3 and patched it with the English translation but then said “I should try playing Earthbound even if I'm fine skipping Mother” but then never did play Earthbound lol

@nytpu yeah i'd recommend playing Earthbound first. I think I had a similar level of dependency there x3

I don't think you need to play Earthbound for a lot of the story, but I'd recommend playing it before Mother 3 because a lot of it does relate to it.