The Random Encounters Aren't Bad You Are All Just Spoiled

now that i've made everybody mad with that title: I was lucky enough to be born with the “early jrpg gene” as it were but the grinding was fine and I genuinely don’t get why people complain about it - I think that the only time where the player could use more directions wrt leveling is at the very beginning grind for the second bat. playing this made me honestly re-evaluate earthbound in part - so much of it is indebted to its predecessor and while the presentation is much better, mother 1 was a lot more ambitious. seeing even the final boss mechanic present in the original was shocking to me. my takeaway? if mother skipped the famicom entirely and started development in 88 we might have seen the best game of all time. oh well, onto mother 3