I just have to put this in writing somewhere.
... ... I don't like EarthBound.
I played through the entire game because I was curious as to why it is so beloved by a lot of people. I didn't enjoy it. It felt like crossing a dirty river, wading through waist-deep sludge to get to the other side.
It's been about a year and a half since I last touched the game, but I honestly don't remember anything that happened in the story. The story just made no sense whatsoever.
You travel around the world and... fight different things? The final boss is something called "Giygas?"
Honestly, I have no idea what the hell I was fighting Giygas for.
I suppose I could live with a story that's impossible to comprehend, just so long as the game is fun to play. Unfortunately, it wasn't.
The battle system was painfully boring. It features menu-based controls which have you read a lot of text describing all the events happening on the battlefield. You can't see your party members. The enemies are all that are visible, and they're not even animated; they're just static images that flash whenever an action is cast on them. I suppose the battle system is technically functional, but it really doesn't excite me. It's largely text-based, and yet the text scrolls at a very slow pace. (Luckily, you can choose a faster text speed when you start the game, which makes the boring battles at least a little shorter. But... Holy cow, the default text speed is obnoxiously slow. I don't know why anybody would want to use it.)
Controlling your party members is also annoying. It's nowhere near as engaging as other RPGs wherein each party member has an individual speed stat. Final Fantasy had been using ATB gauges, so you'd anticipate when every one of your party members's turn is coming up.
But in EarthBound? Ugh.... You have to wait for your time to move, and then command all four of your party members in one long turn. You can't even anticipate who in the battle will attack in what order. One battle is just a random clusterf#%k.
The background images during battles just seem lazy. I suppose they're meant to look like acid trips... But it seems like the artists had no idea what they were doing. Was there any thought on composition? All I saw were patterns of geometric blobs scrolling from one part of the screen to another, like a Jackson Pollack painting panning by. No sense of unity with the organic objects in the foreground.
The inventory system is horrible. It's way too easy to reach max capacity on the items each party member is carrying, making you use the "escargot express" feature for storage space.
.... Honestly, I'm more interested in exploring the game's world. I don't want to micro-manage the items I'm holding.
The characters were uninteresting. As many Nintendo characters, they appear to be silent protagonists. As such, they're meant to be avatars for the player. That's fine, I suppose, but I really had no clue what their motivations were. They're just four kids, coming together... for what reason? Did I miss something? Why did they join forces? Am I really supposed to feel empathetic for any of them?
... The button mapping was incredibly stupid. Pressing A will bring up a window asking what you want to do. Talk? Open? Use Item?.....
... If there's a present on the field screen, and I walk up to it and press A, why would I want to "talk" to it? Why can't the game just recognize I want to interact with the present by opening it???
Likewise, there shouldn't be so many steps to talk to NPCs. Why does this have to be such a cumbersome menu system?
Of course, you could do the default interactions by pressing the L button instead. Pressing L will open presents or talk to NPCs automatically.
... ... Okay. Question: .............. WHY? WHY THE L BUTTON OF ALL THINGS?
It makes no sense -- every other game I can think of uses one of the face buttons on the controller as the confirm/interact button, which just feels natural for human interface. The L button does what the A button should do, and it just feels way too arbitrary.
One of the biggest talking points I've heard is that the game has a contemporary setting instead of a medieval or sci-fi world. You have weapons like yo-yos and baseball bats instead of swords.
Okay, that's neat, I suppose. But honestly, it's not enough to make me excited.
There are wacky monsters to fight, like blobs of puke, or a new-age hippie.
Eh.... If the battles weren't so obnoxiously boring, I might be more amused. Until then, I'll pass. I'm not interested in playing the game a second time.
I played the game through to the end, and nothing resonated with me. I didn't care for the characters. The story was just random crap happening with no rhyme or reason.
What feeling did I get playing the game? Perhaps the closest feeling I could compare it to is that feeling you get when you drink orange juice right after brushing your teeth.
What I just don't get is why so many people like this game. How can people enjoy it?
..... I FEEL LIKE I'M TAKING CRAZY PILLS!
BB Flowerchild Community Member 
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