I think EarthBound is glorious, so hearing that a sequel is “everything it was meant to be”…well holeee shit, it must be somethin’ then.
That being said, I sincerely doubt any video game plot would really get to me these days. When I got into video game plots as a teenager there were so many serious plays, books, movies, etc. that I hadn’t tried yet and as such it was so easy to get engrossed in a video game’s plot. Now I cringe thinking about how much I dug some of this shit. Certainly I could only hold a passing interest in Final Fantasy Tactics’ plot, and the game is still wonderful to play so thank God for that.

I can’t remember if there were any serious hard parts later on in FF7, but I do know that the final Northern Cave dungeon is nothing special, I remember that for certain…and I can’t remember what the trouble with Sephiroth at the end would be. At least, not if you’ve done lots of levelling up.