open/close all folders
EarthBound Beginnings
- EarthBound Beginnings in general is this, due to the game's more open-ended overworld and nonlinear gameplay. Only a handful of events are actually required for progression, such as needing Lloyd to destroy the rocks blocking the train tracks, but beyond that, the game has next-to-no handholding whatsoever.
- Finding the Eight Melodies, which is the one thing that's absolutely required to beat the game. These melodies are scattered throughout the tremendous overworld, and usually at the most random of locations. One of the melodies, for example, is located in the Yucca Desert but you have to use Telepathy on a cactus that has a face on it. Literally the only indication that this specific cactus exists is if you either happen to spot it during one of the plane flights in the desert or speak to a random NPC in Youngtown.
- Getting the key to the Rosemary's house, which holds one of the aforementioned Eight Melodies, requires talking to a woman in Spookane. Said woman, however, is completely unremarkable from all the other NPCs, so the player may not think to even speak to her.
- Unlike its successors, this game doesn't tell you or even give hints as to what any of the PSI moves do (although some, like Lifeup, are pretty self-explanatory). This is especially bad when it comes to the Healing moves, since here, they only cure specific ailments; for example, Healing γ cures petrification and only petrification.
EarthBound
- While EarthBound (1994) is beloved by fans, it might be that nobody complains that you need a guide compared to the other Mother games because the English release came with one. Even the Virtual Console and Nintendo Switch Online releases link you to a digital copy of the guide. The problem comes if a player's playing on an emulator without a walkthrough, so they might not know the guide even exists!
- About three quarters through the game, the player finds a weapon called the Casey Bat. It's Ness' strongest weapon, but unless you know the story the bat is referencing, you'll have no idea why Ness suddenly becomes incapable of hitting anything. The game never informs you of the bat's absurdly high miss-rate.
- Admittedly, using the Check command on the Casey Bat mentions outright that it'll whiff a lot. But why would you do that when almost every other weapon in the game has a Check description that simply tells you who can equip it?
- You can, if you want, buy an egg. After a while, the egg hatches into a chicken, and starts making a beeping noise (obviously supposed to be chirping/clucking). Unless you already know that the egg hatched, it can be a nightmare to work out what's causing it.
- And then there's the infamous Gutsy Bat Lie. In the player's guide, it mentions how you can get a Gutsy Bat, an extremely powerful weapon for Ness, in the Sea of Eden, 1/128 times off the three Kraken there. Turns out, no, you can't get Gutsy Bats off the Kraken. Instead, you can only get them off the Bionic Kraken in the Cave of the Past!
- In Twoson, there's two inventors, Orange Kid and Apple Kid. Apple Kid is a chubby little guy who lives in a house full of garbage and mice. Orange Kid is a richer guy with a cleaner house. If you're used to the game's quirky humor you might (correctly) guess that you need to enlist the help of Apple Kid... but Orange Kid says his invention will be vital on your journey. The invention is also fairly expensive for that point in the game. Orange Kid's invention breaks down after one useless use.
- At one point in Threed, to get the next story event to happen, you need to talk to two Zombies blocking your path. They don't even say anything, and why such an action causes the next event is never really clear.
- To get into Master Belch's factory, you have to talk to the door guard and say the secret password. The password turns out to be 3 minutes of silence, that is, no inputs from the controller. While NPCs do eventually tell you this as you progress through the story, it can be frustrating to reach the door guard, and have seemingly no way of entering anything.
- Defeating Giygas requires Paula to pray during the second phase of the fight, and that's specifically after doing enough damage to Giygas to trigger his breakdown. For pretty much the entire game up until this point, Paula's prays have random effects in battle, ranging from minor health restoration to status effects. There's no indication whatsoever that praying is the key to taking down Giygas.