I finished Earthbound, and it was probably one of the funnest, well made games I have ever played. (I'll try my best to keep this spoiler-free but there's going to be a tiny bit of very light spoiling. xD
When you start off, your first thought is, "What is this this is the weirdest game ever..." But as you keep playing, and you most likely will because it's very engaging, everything just somehow works. The music is outstanding and very catchy, the graphics are pretty simple, even for it's time, but I think the simplicity was perfect for the game. The dialogue, oh my heck. It was hilarious and I laughed out loud more than once. The bosses and enemies were fun and creative, the final boss was... well... very scary and very awesome and insane. The way you beat him might bug some people (LIGHT SPOILER) because they used some religion-y stuff but I thought it was perfect the way the game went and all that. (END LIGHT SPOILER)  It's a pretty short game, probably around 30 hours, solid, and it's pretty dang challenging. I had to pull up a walkthrough more than once. But the thing is, even when you die, going back and doing that part over again wasn't as much of a chore because it was so light hearted and really, really fun. It's one of those games where you hit a really hard place with lots of hard enemies and kept dying, you just shut it off and come back a while later and beat it just fine. The dungeons you went through to fight bosses to get to the next "Your Sanctuary" location weren't that hard, besides the enemies inhabiting it, and it didn't take long to get to the boss. The cities and towns were diverse and fun, and it was also fun to meet other intelligent species like the Tenda and the monkeys and the Mr. Saturn. The Mr. Saturn were probably my favorite people ever to exist ever in life. If there's one complaint I have, it's that the main characters didn't interact much. The people in your party just sort of followed you around and helped you fight and every once and awhile they would say something about something. But even so, I cared pretty deeply about them, every time one of them would fall, I was not complete until I went to the hospital and revived them, but even without much character interaction, it invoked a lot of emotion. The ending was so sweet and I just sat there watching the credits pass with photographs that were taken throughout the game. Oh, that's another thing. There was this photographer guy that would pop up EVERYWHERE and make you stop and take a picture. It was pretty annoying, but they used the photographs in the credits and that was also emotion-invoking. The weapons used throughout were really fun too (the characters used things like baseball bats and yo-yos and frying pans and bottle rockets). The side characters were really fun too, like the Onett policemen who wanted a world record for closing up the most roads, and Runaway 5, the band who seemed to always get into debt into every theatre they'd perform at. Anyway, if you're looking for a light hearted, clever, really really fun game, I would highly suggest it. I admit, it's pretty weird, but that helps to make it such an incredible game.
Phew. Glad I could get that off my chest!!