Cairn: Mathair's Curse

So I only ever played the SNES Earthbound, I never experienced the first NES one or the one on Gameboy Advance that was never released in the US. This game is nothing like the SNES game. The gameplay is slow and boring. partly this is the case because the combat is so awful that I wasn't able to enjoy the story because getting to the next part was awful. Monsters take 2-4 hits to kill with the skills barely doing anything more than a base attack. Equipment seems to have little effect on doing more damage or taking less damage. If you do use the skills which can do things like heal you or stun the enemies (which does nothing on multiple enemy combats) you have to basically use a (limited) amount of healing items to increase health and spirit (mana). A fight will take 1/3 to 1/2 of your health and then you have to use 3 sandwiches that heal 12 each to get back to max. The alternate to this is your healing skill which takes 10 spirit and heals for maybe 20 but the spirit healing item only gives you back 12 so you're almost always at a net negative from fighting. Enemies will drop roughly 2/3 of a new healing item so you're always at a limited gain doing combat. The …

I really loved this game. It's a lovely homage to Earthbound/Mother games and told a great story with lots of moments of humour, sadness and darkness. The only change I'd want is for the dialogie boxes to be light backgrounds with black text, instead of black backgrounds with white text but otherwise, no notes!

A little hard but I really enjoyed it, I would recommend it to anyone looking for a good RPG with an interesting atmosphere

This has got to be one of the best Mother-like games I have played in a long time. The gameplay is fun, the enemies are all unique, the dialogue is fun to read, and the number one thing I love about this game is the turned based combat, sure it's a little slow, but it's only such a tiny issue. The game frames do stutter a little bit, but I never see it as much of a problem, but one thing I do hope get's added in the future, is the option to toggle Alex's flat cap in the options menu. Maybe one day we'll get another great game such as this one, keep up the amazing work.

Great game! A few frustrating mechanics, like healing at a doctor only heals your health. But that's pretty easy to circumvent, just buy more spirit healing items. Loved the crazy story, not only is the art style like earthbound, but the insanity is pretty similar. I'd grade it a B, some frustrating points, but I overall enjoyed it.

Nice RPG