EarthBound high playthrough log part 9 (ending)

I basically have unlimited money now, so I bought a bunch of Horn of Life from Saturn Village and Brain food lunch from Dalaam to prepare...

- Onett part 2 -

This place has become dark and creepy... everyone is locked indoors and you can't go inside any of the buildings anymore... you can go south to Twoson and everything is still normal there. I think Onett has a giant UFO hovering above it. A bunch of really strong alien enemies are running around near Ness's house... Ghost of Starman's PSI Starstorm attack can almost beat everybody but Ness in one hit, and Evil Eye will always give most of your party an annoying status unless you get lucky with Jeff and manage to PSI-block him.

Ness's mom is trying to act fearless, and gives Ness some of weed to relax... Ness's dog says

At this point, you guys just might be the strongest force in the world, don't you think?

I had to go all out on PSI powers to make it through to where the meteorite landed... when I checked the meteorite, I found a meteorite piece... fortunately Ness's new Teleport beta power lets you teleport with only a small circle of space around you...

levels are now 82 / 72 / 71 / 68

Went to Deep Darkness to buy some Multi bottle rockets for Jeff.. Phase Distorter completed... now it's the point of no return...
The Phase Distorter took me to that floating land mass at the Lost Underworld I couldn't get to...

- Giygas -

That tornado riding guy showed up again, and Poo was able to instantly learn Starstorm beta

Some bad guy kidnapped a Mr. Saturn and brought him here with a different phase distorter that has crash landed... Suddenly, Andonuts and Apple Kid get here with a 2nd phase distorter and rescue the kidnapped Saturn...

EarthBound high playthrough log part 8

Reading the Scaraba/Deep Darkness part of the guide now... lol I really like how the first section introducing Scaraba highlights all of the things Ness's party does there in the form of newspaper headlines...

Some thieves raided the pyramid and stole the rare and mysterious Hawk Eye.. A group of traveler were seen running through the desert at extremely high speed, before vanishing... a man-shaped tower came to life and was seen heading south...

The guide suggests a snake bag from Scaraba is useful, but I never found it to be that useful at all. it just does weak damage.. The Deep Darkness introduction page has some minor spoilers on what's happening behind the scenes during this part of the game... The map of this place shows where all the hidden truffles are... I decided to walk back through Deep Darkness using the guide and stocked up on truffles and leveled up a bit... this place becomes so easy once Poo is back on your team.

Bought the Combat Yo-Yo for Ness here to replace the terrible inaccurate bat he had before...
lol oh yeah, I never used that "Monkey's love" item yet, should try it out...

The Stonehenge Cave was now ridiculously easy compared to the first time I tried it. of course having a decent weapon on Ness helped a lot... it turns out I didn't even need all those magic truffles and bottle rockets I saved up. Even the Starman DX was a piece of cake... I guess those few extra levels helped a lot, or I was just playing badly last time. I noticed how if you stand still when the starman enemies warp over to where you are, you'll likely get a first-attack on them. also it's really easy to take advantage of the invisibility frames to get first attacks on enemies that would normally be hard to sneak up on.
By the time I got to the end of this my levels were at 70 / 63 / 62 / 58

EarthBound high playthrough log part 7

Reading the guide for the Summers/Dalaam section now... it seems that I'm not yet finished the "6th melody" chapter of the game. I stopped at getting the rabbit key. I recall the enemies in the game are getting much harder now, and it expects you to use your teleport ability often in order to stock up on items from all the different shops.
Stopped at page 79 in the guide for now and resume playing

- Dalaam part 2 -

Now at level 51, 42, 42, and 36
Actually the enemies in this Dalaam cave aren't hard at all.. the franklin badge helps a lot, but even without that, the amount of healing capabilities that Ness and Poo have now, and the sheer power that my party has overall, makes these enemies a joke. I explored the whole cave, falling down all the holes...

6th sanctuary boss is quite appropriate... thunder and storm.. two demons interlocked in a yin yang. It was actually kinda tough.. but I managed to beat it in one try with everyone alive, by using good strategy. PSI Freeze is legit.

Sanctuary 6 is on a cloud, hanging on the edge of the floating island...
Ness had a short vision of seeing his mother when she was young. Ness's sound stone recorded the melody of the Pink Cloud.

I just intuitively guessed that the next place you're supposed to go from here is across the ocean, from the port town Toto.. an NPC in Summers earlier said:

Are you from Eagleland? If you like adventure, this isn't your kind of place. You should travel across the sea to Scaraba from Toto, the port town.

This one npc in Toto is acting like he's discovered the big revelation that "dinosaurs existed"...

This sprite zoom out is unexpected. I love this sailing music...

The captain gets seasick for a bit.. is

EarthBound high playthrough log part 6

Reading through more of the guide now...

I didn't notice that the dinosaur museum in Fourside was hinting at the next plot development, as they've been receiving fresh dinosaur bones from a place east of Fourside called "Scaraba".
But at least when you're on foot, Fourside is a dead end oceanside city... after you finish saving the Runaway five, defeating the evil statue, and saving Paula there's nowhere else to go except back across the desert to Threed, where your UFO is.. and that leads you to getting the 4th melody and taking the UFO to Summers. This part of the game is kinda cool cuz it's not very obvious where to go next unless you are paying attention.

- Summers/Toto -

Now at level 47, 36, and 37
Time to explore Summers... no idea what to do beyond that. There's a lot of expensive stuff to buy here.. I actually drained out my whole 50k savings

Some bird on the beach has a lot of random dialog if you keep talking to him...

Wake up in the morning, fall in love. Eat lunch, fall in love. And at night, fall in love. That is my dream life!

Are you from Eagleland? If you like adventure, this isn't your kind of place. You should travel across the sea to Scaraba from Toto, the port town.

To go to Scaraba, you need to cross the sea. However, a monster named Kraken lives in the open sea. He attacks ships that pass through. Are you scared?

The guy next to me is really bugging me. He keeps following me around.

Scaraba Cultural Museum... a lot of cool but useless stuff to see here... the curator mentions the Fourside museum curator called him..

Getting

EarthBound high playthrough log part 5

Several more attempts at the Dept store, still no progress... guess I'll check the guide and see if there's anything I can do here besides grind.

Actually, looks like I just need to get to the Dept store boss with both Ness and Jeff alive, then I can defeat him in one turn with Ness's PSI and Jeff's Big Bottle Rocket... er wait no, I only have a normal bottle rocket. But I do have the counter-PSI unit which would be really useful against the boss who mostly only uses PSI.
looks like there are Super Bombs I can get for Jeff to make the enemies more manageable. but I have to deposit some items and run back and for the revive Jeff and then travel to Threed.. Oh wait, those are only normal bombs and normal bottle rockets I can get there... I missed my chance at buying big bottle rockets and super bombs at Fourside Dept Store before this event happened... damn

Also I learned these present enemies can only move in a straight line, so it is possible to avoid them if you can't despawn them.

There we go.. I got there with both Ness and Jeff... the strategy is just to spam PSI Weed beta and bottle rockets and he's dead in two or 3 turns.

At this moment, PAULA should be... Monotoli...

It looks like staying on the inner sidewalk when you're on the outskirts of Fourside lets you avoid running into angry taxis and other enemies... I gotta be careful here with NESS at very low HP and no PP.
Hotel newspaper:

Mysterious Dept Store blackout caused by mouse.

So hint guy says to go to the Cafe... nothing I can do at Monotoli building yet... oh yeah I recall someone there was specifically saying to me "Monotoli is definitely not here."
Someone else is hanging out here trying to find Monotoli.. and the woman here says she hears something outside...

People

EarthBound high playthrough log part 4

Oh... so Jeff starts fixing things at each rest stop once he gets to 10 IQ. I guess he'll be able to fix more things as his IQ level gets higher. So far I haven't found anything else in this section of the guide that I didn't already know about from my playthrough, I was very thorough...

The Saturn Valley part of the guide also blends into the desert section, which I haven't done yet... but before that there's also the Milky Well part that I haven't done yet... I stopped right before that part.

NESS is at level 29, Paula is at level 23, Jeff is at level 24.

Wow, I'm actually really under-leveled for this Milky Cave area... I keep having to go back to heal at the hot springs again right after fighting that first set of enemies in the cave. it doesn't help that I can't revive my PSI without a butterfly... er, actually I can heal PP easily by staying at the hotel at Saturn Village, duh

The 3rd melody boss is the Trillionage Sprout. This boss battle is interesting. Jeff says it's weak to fire.. and since Ness is feeling strange, I'm only having him defend and heal (so as not to accidentally hit my own team with him), while Paula uses her PSI Magnet to gain PP from the enemy and using that to shoot fire and shield everyone.. and Ness used the temp guts boost on Jeff so he could be more on the offense in place of Ness... at the beginning, I just used Ness to paralyze the two mini sprouts so they can't do anything but use PSI on us, and used PSI Shield Omega on everyone with Paula, and used Spy on the Trillionage Sprout with Jeff.. then I kept the two mini sprouts alive so I could drain their PP with PSI Magnet beta, and once they were paralyzed and out of PP they became useless/harmless plants. now I just have the boss himself to worry about... but Ness is running low on PP to heal with and sometimes even heals the enemy accidentally. oh, and Trillionage used PSI shield on himself before I got the chance to do any damage to him with fire... so now I'm just buffing Jeff and relying mainly on him.

Sheesh this is intense... you really gotta focus on strategy the whole way through...
Oh man it's getting close... Paula got diamondized before she could manage to fully drain the boss's PP.. and both Ness and Jeff are close to dying... I have to take risks with Ness now and use him to fight as well... just barely made it

Ness's sound stone recorded the melody of the Milky Well

Saturn Valley's stink problem is now fixed... some of the Saturns have different dialog now.
"i HaVE nO SOmEtHinG."
"YOU wait tHREE minUtES! ZOOm! YOU COmE HERE tO wait tHREE minUtES? nO?"
"nO SCaRED."

EarthBound high playthrough log part 3

Reading the recap of part 2 now... the guide describes the happy happism people as "Pokey's friends"

The guide also mentions the egg->chicken money making strategy I learned. and it suggests doing the 2nd melody after rescuing Paula, like I thought...
Stopped reading after the page that tells you how to get to Threed.

- Threed part 1 -

Someone at the hotel warns you about the monsters outside... it's especially dangerous at the graveyard.
Someone outside the hotel:

There's a rumor that there is an underground path at the edge of the graveyard that takes you somewhere. When you get through the path, you'll meet a dirty, stinky, ugly powerful monster.

Everyone is hiding out here at the center of town.. near the circus tent that is the HQ of zombie relief corps.
lol this guy in this one house... a double agent for the zombies, gives lore/spoilers on this zombie creator named Belch, who is a follower of Giygas, who "is female, I think."

Hmm, exploring the town is the obvious next priority here... I checked out a bit of the south graveyard, fought some zombies, found a photo...
Then went around the upper right gated graveyard and found a hint house... and a teddy bear in a trashcan... score!
The hospital has a sign saying the cure to being bitten by a zombie is to bite back... but this theory hasn't been tested.

lmao I love this dialog this game is amazing

EarthBound high playthrough log part 2

This "Strategy" part of the official guide is written like a travel guide brochure that kinda spoils what happens when you go through the game... it's very well written. it doesn't even feel like I'm reading a strategy guide, but rather just reading more material that would fit right in as in-game content. The first few pages of each section don't actually spoil all that much, it just gives you the general gist of what happens in the game, in the style of a travel guide or newspaper column...

There's a little column section about the mysterious "Giant Step" that has some sort of psychic power emanating from it... and an add for real-estate that ties into that useless NPC near the west cliff of Onett... Then there's a flyer section telling about all the attractions at Onett.. There's a lot of real-life photos of areas being used as Onett pictures.

Every so often on this version of earth a fanfare breaks out and a black-coated photographer drops from the sky.

lol I love how the canonical explanation of the photographer is exactly what it looks like... he literally just drops in out of nowhere and then takes a picture and flies away.

There's a side-column that lists the exact steps needed to get through this first chapter of the game...

Woah, I didn't know about this... that kid who asks if you want to take his place guarding the clubhouse, but then takes back the offer... you can go into that clubhouse hidden in some trees. The trees show an opening where there usually isn't one as a clue... you can get a free Baseball Cap there.

Oh and if you stay at the hotel, you can get the newspaper read to you while you're there... I probably missed some extra dialog in chapter 1 before defeating the gang.

Next is some more detailed instructions on the steps that were given just now.. still in the format of the Onett brochure. It also gives you detailed info and strategies on all the enemies you can encounter here...

And now I'm at the page that shows the linear path between Onett and Twoson, where you can get an Exit Mouse. The part that I'm just about to play through myself...

- Twoson -

Damn these mushroom enemies gave me "mushroom" status. It literally puts a mushroom on your head and makes your walking controls randomly flip around, so you have to rotate your controller to orient yourself...

A nice lady at twoson tells you about the town... east of here is Peaceful Rest Valley, and after that is Happy-Happy Village... gotta find a healer, this mushroom is really annoying... lol someone at the hotel has a mushroom on his head... he asks you if there is one there. "Yes". he says he finds it fun having messed up controls so he's leaving it on.

EarthBound high playthrough log part 1

I've played through this once before, but I was kinda just rushing through it back then, and a lot of the details never stuck with me. Now that I've done a playthrough of Mother 1 while high and I'm a lot more into the story of this series, I'm gonna do a full high replay of this game.

First of all, to get fully immersed in the game, first I gotta read through the intro part of the player's guide.
http://earthbound.nintendo.com/playersguide

lol this guide is great... even the description of the controls have a lot of charm and flavor to it...
the R button's only function in the entire game is ringing the bell when you're on your bicycle. the only use of the Start button is to start the game... the only use of Select/B is to cancel out of menus (also it shows your HP/PP/money when you're out of the menu)... L is the shortcut button for talking and checking... A is the open menu/confirm button... L also works as the confirm button, and since R is unnecessary and Select can be used instead of B, that means you can basically play this game with one hand... although you do need the A button if you want to access items/PSI powers outside of battle.

The 4 playable characters:
Ness, the balanced one with mysterious psychic abilities.
Paula, the famous psychic whose mother is a preschool teacher.
Jeff, the son of a famous scientist, a mechanical genius who can repair/use items that nobody else can use.
Poo, the prince from the east, very mentally, physically, and spiritually strong and has his own unique psychic powers and unknown weapon/equipment preferences.

oh cool, there's a chart showing all of the default name/fav entries for when you pick "I don't care"

Your "Guts" level is like "Luck" in other RPGs, it affects the frequency of critical hits
"Vitality" and "IQ" are kind of like Pokemon EVs... affect how much your HP/PP increase with each level
"Luck" is your accuracy. the rest of the stats are self explanatory...

Evil people can be distinguished because their faces will be blue... and the people/animals you defeat don't actually die, they become "normal" again and leave.

It also explains how the battle command menu is different for each character...
Paula has the unique "Pray" command, it has mysterious unknown effects.
Jeff has a "Spy" command that tells you what PSI powers enemies are vulnerable to, if any... Jeff is not very strong and has no PSI command, but he's the best person to use items with and there are some battle items that only he can use.
Poo has a "Mirror" command that is like Ditto's transform...

Phones, ATM, Colds and medicine.. these all work just like in Mother 1.. although there are now pay phones that charge money.
Also in addition to just calling Dad to save the game, now you can also call Mom or Ness's sister Tracy... Tracy works for a delivery company, and you can get items delivered or picked up from wherever you are, instead of having to going all the way back home...
Doctors and Healers are the only way to recover from certain status conditions... Nurses are the only way to revive unconscious characters...
Hint Stands are like fortune teller shops in Zelda games...

Sometimes you can find butterflies out in a field or cave, that restores 20 of everyone's PP.. they're basically like the equivalent of healing houses that you'd randomly find out in the fields in Mother 1...

omg I love this player's guide