Topic: Earthbound Beginnings

I'm trying to get into this game, but I feel like I'm missing something. I'm barely into the town, and getting royally trashed in every fight. There's no way to heal, and I just keep dying. Is this just the game?

In the early game, to heal, you need to go back to your house, and talk to your mother. She'll feed you your favorite food, you'll rest and heal.

Some advice, don't go into town yet, stay close to home, battle to level up, return to mother to heal, and use the phone to save your game. Once you level up a bit, then go exploring into town.

I've actually been playing this on the Wii U, but since I'm not terribly far into it I think I'll just restart on the Switch. That will be much easier and maybe I'll actually play it more often and get through it this time. Third time's the charm.

I played and beat this on the Wii U VC back when it released. It's a decent game for its time, but it definitely comes with all the baggage of an early JRPG. I highly recommend using a guide. Be prepared for a lot of grinding.

@Tyranexx Its kinda why I want to leave it for last, i'm sure the SNES one has this issue as well, but games like earthbound, suffer from some real early JRPG syndrome, and I didn't even need to play the game to know this.

@Snatcher Earthbound improved on this in nearly every way IMO, namely with QoL improvements (For example, this uses random encounters, whereas the SNES entry does not; you can see the enemies on-screen) and more interesting scenarios. That said, Beginnings is still worth exploring, has a decent story overall, and helps build up Giygas for their later appearance in Earthbound.

@Tyranexx I can't stand random encounters, Pokemon made sure of that.

I heard that this game is alot harder then Earthbound. I never had a chance to play it but is that true?

I made a start on this last night. It is very weird and the weirdness makes it feel ahead of its time in a way, but the battle system is so boring and battles are so constant, I am not sure how much more I can take lol.

@Pizzamorg I heard grinding is pretty er, boring, thats why I'm going to play this game last, because I don't think I want to sour my first time with Earthbound.

I got this on Wii U VC back when it first released there, but I still have yet to finish it, so I'll probably play through it again on Switch... after I finish replaying EarthBound. I'm glad both are on Switch now!

Since some people are talking about this game being really difficult/obtuse and I'd imagine there will be a lot of newcomers to the series, I'll say that going off of what I played, I highly recommend just playing EarthBound first and then coming back to Beginnings only if you really liked EarthBound and want to see how the series began. Especially for anyone new to NES JRPGs, they can be pretty rough. EarthBound is a much more polished experience overall. Also, definitely use a guide for Beginnings. They kind of feel mandatory for NES JRPGs in general, but Beginnings in particular really needs one. It's unfortunate it never got a nice one like the guide included with EarthBound, but there are plenty to find online!

I got through the game by doing lots of grinding. I put a movie on while I grind to make the process less tedious.

@Snatcher Then I'd indeed only give this a shot if you decide you like Earthbound. It's a NES JRPG through and through.

Thanks for the heads up, @Tyranexx.

@Snatcher No prob. I had fun with it overall since I went in knowing what to expect and used a guide, but it hasn't aged the best. Like many RPGs from the NES era.

Does Beginnings come with a guide like Earthbound? I'd love to have it on standby just in case the game decides to get friggin weird.

@Link-Hero Really? If that's true, I'd love to see it resurface one day! I really like how EarthBound's player guide was themed perfectly for the game, so I'd wonder how similar the one for Mother 1 would have been if that was in the works.

I should mention I actually have this game on Wii U as well, never finished it. I actually had to check the game the other day trying to remember what I named my character and party members.

@Snatcher You can play EarthBound first fine. While I never finished either game, I did play EarthBound before Beginnings. Just look as Beginnings like a prequel, since it was brought to the west much later on than the first game.

I'm thankful I have both on Wii U, hoping to get EarthBound on my New 3DS just to have it there, hopefully before the 3DS eShop ever closes down.

I'm going to start this today. See if it catches me like Earthbound did.

@komodo182 I think you need to have realistic expectations. It’s very much a nes rpg and whilst it was amongst the best of those - and it has some of the quirky innovative things that Earthbound would later iterate on - it has an insane amount of random battles.

Early in the game it’s not too bad but the approach to the final boss is not fun.

Seriously if you want to experience the game and think you might want to finish it I’d suggest playing a version patched to have the encounter rate & experience given adjusted (also probably a better translation whilst you’re at it).