Your Friend Who Likes Games

Realizing that this week’s block of play sessions began in the town of Fourside is wild to me. Earthbound is the type of game (maybe this perception comes from the way I’m approaching it) that can feel like you’re not going anywhere because there’s always more. But this writing already can help celebrate the journey to this point. My approach is very forward looking – onto the next guide page and then into the next town or dungeon. But to avoid burnout and value my experience, I’ve found it healthy to take a break and think about what I’d just accomplished. Because in Earthbound, accomplishment isn’t always an easy task.

The game told me it would be tougher from here on forward and it certainly has been. Less often are battles passive with enemies, and I’m really keeping close tabs on PP use and HP. The second half of the game feels a bit more dungeon focused, where you have to make sure you’re enduring all of the little battles and saving enough juice for the final boss fight. I haven’t strayed far from the player’s guide, but I am also getting used to the structure of entering into towns, buying upgraded equipment, resting to rebuild stats, then pursuing the dungeon/area/puzzle required to move through to move forward.

I can’t say I love how this game makes me feel, or if I’d recommend the experience to someone who wasn’t already interested in the game and its history. I’d say I’m intoxicated by it. I feel a strong desire to beat it. When I complete a section, it feels like I got my homework correct and it came back with a passing grade. It’s a journey I’m continually curious about, and I enjoy that the guide has the answers, and then it’s your responsibility to execute. When I’m successful and progress forward, I feel validated and that I’m good enough to keep up with the Earthbound culture. Purists would tell me not to use save-states, I’m sure, but I either use save-states or not play the game. There’s no way I would tolerate the game’s save and game over structure as it is in 2026.

Note that being I am deeper into the game at this point, the following writing will not be completely void of spoilers. I’ve noticed from Fourside forward that the game increases the challenging dungeon structure – again, something I wouldn’t understand to complete without the guide. Each section completed recalls a night rigorously checking the guide back and forth, battling with balance and making sure I’m doing it all in the correct order.

Employing manual auto-save

The Fourside alternate universe in the dark would be a tough one without a guide. It’d be a lot of trial and error alongside some unnecessary battles. I suppose you get stronger each time but there’s always risk of that looming and brutal game over. Because of that fact, I’ve employed a healthy habit of a manual auto-save through the NSO save states. I try to save after each battle or before what I might feel could be a tough one.

I made a big mistake in the Fourside department store blackout that prompted this manual auto-save practice. I got myself locked into a for-sure game over and hadn’t created a save-state in a while. I hadn’t created a save state after I upgraded all my gear, and backtracking to an earlier save state would be worse than a game over. So I did a pure game over backtrack, traveled back to Fourside with some necessary battling, revived characters with a hospital visit and paid for a hotel stay to reset stats. A painful process just to get back to where you were. But that was the game’s old school and brutal structure. Alas, much more careful about saving from there on out.

It’s going to be harder from here

The Desert Gold Mine felt like a proper introduction to what the second half of the game’s intentions would be. Tougher, more risky battles, and a long-haul endurance dungeon in which you have to defeat 5 moles who all claim to be the 3rd-strongest of them all – I very much enjoyed that humor. I found out after a tense night of barely making it out alive with only Jeff remaining, that there different tiers to your attacks that I had not been using up to this point. They cost more PP, but I would not have been in the painful situation of just scraping through if I’d realized you can create more powerful attacks. Growing pains.

One thing that became necessary to my exit of the gold mine was something I taught myself. I’d come to a desperate situation in which there was no way I could take on more battles, but I was 2 turns away from the exit of the mine. With having put so much work into defeating all 5 moles, I was determined and told myself, ‘this can’t be it.’ I discovered then that if you walk away in the opposite direction of an enemy until they are off screen, you have a chance of de-spawning them from the dungeon/overworld. So as I very carefully traversed toward the exit and I’d see an enemy, I put the walking opposite to practice. Did it work every time? No. But you better believe as I got closer and closer I was smashing the two trigger buttons simultaneously to create save-states.

Learning that the spawns of the enemies were not final or the same all of the time was the only way I was able to exit successfully. With this experience and the ones I’ve had after, I’ve become very careful as I inch my way forward. I should say too, that in this window of playing I was very happy to rescue Paula back into my party and Poo is a very welcome addition. A unfortunately brief addition, as he goes and trains to master an attack that’ll be necessary later. Hopefully he won’t be away from my party for too long.

Another thing that I found interesting in regards to save-states, is that like the behavior of the overworld not being exactly the same each time, the behavior of battles is not exactly the same each time. This was shown to me blatantly when I battled the Kraken. I of course saved right before the battle, and after I took on the monster the first time, I had some serious thoughts about whether or not I was strong enough and wanted to continue the game. My characters got pulverized in the first round. ‘What do I do now?’ I took a breath and tried again later, and with a slightly different sequence of opening moves on my end, I defeated the Kraken within the second round like it was nothing.

I exhaled a laugh out loud knowing that the first time around, without a save-state, the game would have sent me way back to do repetitive work in order to get back to that same point to try again. But I simply tried again with the modern save feature and it was cake. Frustratingly comical.

More influence to Eastward

As I’ve continued to navigate the town shops, I’ve noticed that various frying pans are available to purchase as weapons. I thought then the choice to have one of the main protagonists of Eastward, John, have his main weapon being a frying pan was definitely a nod. It’s interesting to play a game like Earthbound now, knowing it was heavily influential to Eastward, a cherished experience I had in 2021. Earthbound continually gives me that ‘I kinda wanna play Eastward’ feeling which of course would be inherently true as its influence was deeply soaked in. Playing Earthbound also now has Deltarune on my radar. I’ve played Undertale, but have yet to experience the chapters of Deltarune. Toby Fox, another developer who’s very transparent about Earthbound’s influence to his games.

Fear, headaches, stress… why keep playing?

Earthbound has been an interesting game to write about and think about. I mentioned earlier how I wouldn’t recommend unless you’re already interested. I think this game just feels like something I have to do. Eastward is one of my favorite games of all time and it’s quite literally a love letter to Earthbound. It just feels big. Feels like a cultural phenomenon of the 90s that’s understood as one of the best and most foundational RPGs of the Super Nintendo era. And I’ve come too far just to quit.

It’s true that game instills a constant anxiety that you may not be ready for this next battle. The framey nature of the overworld movement is unfortunately headache inducing, and there’s no way the trippy battle backgrounds are good for your eyes. I’ve noted multiple times the question of how long I’ll tolerate the stress and difficulty… but…

I’m discovering that I’m not approaching the playthrough of Earthbound critically, but rather as a studying of a historical document. One that keeps me curious to keep discovering what was. So the stress, the difficulty, the fear, it just is. And there’s no changing or influencing an Earthbound update through player feedback – feels silly to write that.

With that truth, it feels all-the-more rewarding to accomplish and do it right. Yeah, it can be tough, but following the guide and cracking the code to do it right feels great. It has kept me connected to the beloved game. I’m also proud of my patience as I slowly chug toward the end.

Practicing patient gaming

In an episode of Post Games by Chris Plante titled “What’s the Point of Video Game Reviews?”, guest Harper Jay states that all video games are metaphor. And through my interpretation, playing them is too. I’ve been attempting to put to practice a method of consumption my therapist and others call patient gaming. My conversations with my therapist around this topic often revolved around purchase addiction and riding hype waves. And Earthbound has been a great opportunity for me to settle into a long game and play it paced. A year ago, as soon as a game like Earthbound would present any sort of challenge, I’d use it as a reason to bounce off and buy something else to play.

That behavior, if we look at games as metaphor, can translate to habits I keep in my life too. Life is full of stress, headaches, and fear, and it’s not healthy to just run away from them. Life is full of things you don’t want to do, but have to do. Earthbound presents challenges I don’t always feel like taking on, but feel a strong sense of accomplishment when I do. Feels in contrast to games that release today that manufacture your success as long as you put in your time and attention.

But I think the reason I keep going is that Earthbound feels like what I’m working on right now. I’ve settled into the process and am practicing patience. I’d like to see how that translates into my relationships to consumption of media and how I may settle into uncomfortable parts of my life and problem-solve.

Splatoon Raiders is certainly on the horizon. I’ve been looking forward to it for a while, and reviews are very positive after release. But I know if I purchase it now, I’ll jump in and that would jeopardize my completing of Earthbound. My therapist has expressed that patient gaming is an effort to separate the hype from what your experience will be. I often succumb to the hype of game culture and jump in to try to be a part of the zeitgeist wave. I was guilty of that with Saros, but would eventually like to revisit and actually give it some time. But with outlets presenting new games every week, it’s all impossible to keep up with. So this remains an effort to keep value on my own experience, and know that games will still be available for purchase when I’m ready to play them. They won’t go away if I don’t purchase them right at release.

As always, we’ll see what actually happens. Words are just words.

Thank you for reading,

Your Friend Dillon