Ok well I thought I should start this topic cause it's the most over looked game of the series. Most of the fans make things Earthbound/Mother 2 or Mother 3 related things but hardly ever Earthbound Zero. To me I think it's the coolest of them all reason being it is on the NES, it's pretty dark and competitive. So in this topic post our opinion or what you like and/or dislike of Earthbound Zero/Mother.

Couldn't agree more. People who know me know that MOTHER 1 is my favorite in the series. It was the beginning of it all, it's mysterious, the music is fantabulous, and the story is pretty awesome for a Famicom game.

Have not had an opportunity to play it yet.

I really think its my favorite RPG on the NES. It was very dark and mysterious. There were plot twists that kept me playing and the music was always suited the situation. I found moments were I felt sad during the game since it was pretty emotional. I don't know if anyone else thinks this but I almost felt as though you were solving a mystery about george/maria and what happened to them, as you progressed through the game you found out more and more about their interaction with giegue and just why he was attacking earth. The game made you do some level grinding but to me that was just a minor inconvenience. Its a really good game but it seems underapreciated even by some fans of the series.

The thing that kinda ruined it for me was the grinding. I really hate it when games do that. I like games more when they have very minimal grinding or none at all. Besides that, it was fine. Though, I'm still convinced that they could have done better with the graphics. Sure, graphics hardly mean a thing to me, but it sorta felt like it shoulda been called MS Paint Adventure.

Not really, actually the graphics where pretty good for a late NES game.

@Ryuka
The game contains many solid colors in the environments. Yes, you could probably draw all of the graphics in MS paint. However, both Super Mario 2 and 3 shared the same solid-color graphic style.
http://www.js-kunou.net/home/misc/videos/1hp.gif
http://www.videogamecritic.net/images/n ... ros__2.gif
http://www.videogamecritic.net/images/n ... ros__3.jpg
As you can see, LOTS of solid colors.
I think it gives the game a nice, crisp, clean look, unlike some games like Ninja Gaiden, with lots of grainy textures.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_OeTJZaOEsZU/S ... enshot.png

Oh, woops. But, still, I could've sworn I've seen things that look better. Well, whatever, I'm not an expert on the subject.

So, what did you guys think of the grinding? Was it a hassle or could you cope with it?

I kinda liked the game. It had a lot of the good things that made Earthbound so memorable, and most of its faults can be attributed to the system, not the game itself, eg. graphics, music, and character dialogue. For a game nowadays, no, it doesn't have a full string orchestra to back it up, so one could say the music is weak. But for an NES game, I thought it had pretty good music. (For example, I got SO sick of the music in the original Legend of Zelda, but EB0 didn't have that problem because it actually had different overland songs... but that's a rant for a different day...) Anyways, same idea with the graphics and dialogue- people complain because they aren't up to today's standards, but for an NES game, I'm actually pretty impressed. More people should give it a standing chance, in my opinion.

As for the grinding... Personally I didn't notice a whole lot in the grinding department. I had to to quite a bit at the beginning to get into the graveyard, and Ana was prone to death for most of the game so she might have been a bit underleveled, but other than that it wasn't that bad. I tend to run through RPGs really fast and get underleveled really bad, so the random encounters forced me to actually level up, which was nice. I kind of missed Earthbound's rolling counters, battle backgrounds and attacks moving if an enemy dies, but then again, EB0 has bread crumbs, so I think it all evens out.

I don't consider 8-bit graphics and especially 8-bit music a "Fault". I consider them assets.