It's just a quirky RPG with western culture as understood by the Japanese. You fight with baseball bats and frying pans instead of swords and bows. Your enemies are zombies, cultists, aliens, and bike gangs. Your dad gives you your allowance which you collect over ATM. The towns you visit are called Onett, Twoson, Threed, and Fourside, because their only importance is the order in which they appear in the game. Depending on the version you play, you run around in your pajamas or birthday suit because you just got out of bed.
It's not a game you play so much for the mechanics, which are not bad, but not hugely novel. At the time, when all console RPGs were based on high fantasy, a quirky RPG based on a bunch of silliness was very different.
Thanks for the explanation - maybe I'll give it another try. I am totally open to quirky JRPGs. I think I was just measuring this one against Chrono Trigger (another quirky JRPG for the uninitiated, which oozes charm) - which I went into with a skeptical attitude and 10 minutes later was completely drawn into the story and felt like some kind of magical child. Didn't have the same experience with my 15 minutes of Earthbound, but maybe I just needed to give it a little time.
The story in Earthbound doesn't make a lot of sense. You play it more for the individual story elements than the actual overarching plot. Kind of like how the plot in The Big Lebowski is ultimately irrelevant.
Chrono Trigger isn't particularly "quirky". It's a pretty straightforward presentation of a somewhat different story. Earthbound plays with the medium in a way that games a decade later still aren't very good at (see the love for Undertale, which I don't think is all that good either but does paint the fourth wall in a way that feels fresh and original because of the relative rarity of it).
It's not a game you play so much for the mechanics, which are not bad, but not hugely novel. At the time, when all console RPGs were based on high fantasy, a quirky RPG based on a bunch of silliness was very different.