By 16-bit RPG standards, Earthbound is not a particularly taxing game. Its puzzles are lightweight, mazes are usually fairly simple and the best equipment can be attained without having to grind for rare items. Compared to modern games, though, there are a whole bunch of limitations that can trip you up if youre not careful. The first one youll notice when playing is that you have an extremely limited inventory just twelve inventory spaces per player, and thats including any weapons or armour youre not actively using, as well as key items. Since whatever you grab get handed to the next player with a free slot, theres a lot of juggling to be done. If someone happens to leave your party and youd given them all of your food to hold, youre going to go hungry. And probably dead. Thatll happen a lot, requiring a trip to the local hospital with the spirits of your friends in tow, ready to be reunited with their bodies. The enemies in each new area arent so much a smooth difficulty curve as a series of gut-punches; youll be sent scurrying back to the emergency room (which, in a pre-Obama world, will require you to pay for treatment) until you level up and figure out how to deal with the enemies effectively. Oh, and some areas will give you heatstroke or poison effects just by being in them. As a consequence, its actually slightly daunting to enter a new area, and all the more satisfying when you finally get strong enough to walk the streets of Eagleland without being savaged by grannies.
