Must be great to be a young gamer these days. They'll never have to deal with the medium back when it had to make up for its lack of technical sophistication by hiring writers.
The Japan-only prequel to Earthbound was basically carried by its marketing. It wasn't a great game by any stretch of the imagination.
Big (empty) world with innovative (terrible) graphics, a challenging (unbalanced) combat system, an interesting (impossible to follow) story and packed full of content (grinding) that will keep you playing for hours (because you keep game-overing)