I found the charm/humor/story of Earthbound to be enough for to see it through to the end and I plan on revisiting it again at some point soon... The battle system is certainly nothing really interesting, and at some times just flat out boring, but I do like the fact that you never have true random battles and can get through the game without ever really having to grind, so your time with the battling is kept to the minimum (I think there were maybe 1 or 2 times I had to grind and level up to beat a boss). I also like the fact that you can skip battles and still get the exp when you're way higher in level than the enemy. There are definitely more interesting games out there in terms of gameplay, but there are few games that have made me feel the way I felt when playing that game. If you don't get that feeling, I could see where the game where the game wouldn't be worth the time
And I think most of the feels I got were evoked mostly from the fucking amazing music in the game. Probably my favorite SNES soundtrack ever.