DLC for Eastward
Sam and John return in an all-new adventure! In this heartwarming story-driven farming sim, players can grow crops, tend livestock, and turn an abandoned fairground into a thriving village, with the help of the weird and wonderful cast of beloved Eastward characters.
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I would have given the game a 4, but I couldn't complete it because of a bug (couldn't get the last fruit after credits). Still, heartwarming, sweet and funny.
This review contains spoilers
To help me cope with the ending of Eastward I bought the $6 expansion where it promised, and delivered, that nothing bad would happen; I've processed my mourning and I'm absolutely enraptured with these characters more than I was before. Getting to live a peaceful farming life with Sam, Alva, Isabel, Solomon, William's Family, and Mung's Family has brought me much joy. I am now a huge fan of Eastward, part of me hopes Pikpil will continue the story of Eastward but I wouldn't be surprised, nor would I be mad, if they moved on to a different game.
Chill and enjoyable farming sim at the beginning that unfortunately, once you finish all of the areas and are pretty much able to print money and buy anything you want, becomes a matter of passing the days until you reach the ending, even more so if you decide to 100% the game.
A farming sim DLC of one of my favorite games in recent history? Sign me up!
I was so excited, and, sadly... this didn't really live up to my hopes. It's a neat concept: John and Sam, in an alternate universe, come to an old, rundown town called Octopia, and work together to build it up to what it can truly be. Fan favorites like William and the Daniels, Alva and Isabel, and more show up and make the town a lively place. There's a big focus on gathering ingredients and recipe to make delicious meals, which you can share with your neighbors and visitors.
To be fair, I did enjoy both the mining minigame and the fishing minigame, and I really enjoyed some of the little scenes with William and the Daniels, Alva and Isabel, and Mung and his sons. There's a lot of really sweet, charming writing here given that this is an alternate world where everything is nice and peaceful, and I really enjoyed getting to see these characters again.
There's a lot of neat trappings here, but overall it just kind of... falls short.
There's a part early on where you have to make curry, but curry involves chicken. Where do you get chicken? Well, you have to buy a chicken coop. Only then do you unlock the ability to buy chicken at the shop in town. I only ended up doing this around day 40 or so because I had looked it up and I had a surplus of salt (money) to do so. Early game, money is tight, and I didn't want to buy a chicken coop because I imagined I'd also have to buy a chicken (not true, you can just adopt one on your farm) and feed, all while managing growing crops and fishing with a low money supply. I think some light signposting towards that would make things a lot easier to help move along, especially since making curry IS the opening to unlocking more construction, characters, and visits. It might just be me, but it feels like a strange oversight.
The other rough part is that the story and visitors are ploddingly slow. I was surprised there was real story at all (and what there was, I mostly liked!), but it crawls along at a snail's pace, where even after completing all my construction and all the major quests for the people in town, I still had so many days before it just kind of, unceremoniously reached the end of the story? It felt really strange to me. It just hit out of nowhere and then it was done.
Every so often, visitors, well, visit Octopia. You can see who's visiting when you press start and when you check the map to see who might be where, but at a certain point they visit... very slowly. I had a character who wanted a certain dish, but I didn't have the ingredients, couldn't get them and make the dish in time that day, and they didn't show up again for 15-20 days. That just. Doesn't feel great. Now that I'm in the post game, I'm just feeding animals, watering crops, and gathering crops and sleeping immediately to try and get to the next visitors, who are coming every 3-5 days. I'm very close to 100%ing the DLC, but I just think I'm going to stop because it feels like a waste and lack of respect for my time. I'm not saying I need them all one after the other day after day after day, but they definitely needed to show up more often to make Octopia not only feel thriving as a town and tourist destination, but to make me WANT to keep coming back for more as Octopia the DLC.
Also, I don't know what the patch did, but on Switch, the game runs kind of abysmally now. Every 20-25 seconds, the game will just hitch and freeze for a second or so, which really sucks not just because it makes fishing kind of a crapshoot, but also, it's just, terrible performance in every way. Eastward ran pretty flawlessly for me when I played it on Switch last year, so it suddenly performing very poorly is strange. I had a bug where, while catching a fish, the game ticked over to 20:00 (at which point you go back home for dinner and to go to bed), but I also remained in the fishing minigame, with the sounds and everything. I would automatically get pushed out of the eating/cooking menu, and since I couldn't see the fish, I couldn't catch it, so I had to hard quit out of the game and THEN reset the switch because my switch started lagging. As a result I lost a day's worth of progress (which might not sound like a lot, but given a lot of crop gathering, the mining minigame, crop buying and planting... it sucked to lose all of that, and it almost made me just want to quit. Were it not for it automatically saving each night, I definitely would've.
I also had numerous crashes at random times, while fishing, at the farm, it just felt very weird and it makes me wonder, given it's been over a month since the DLC released, if they even realized the issues that suddenly popped up on the Switch.
I really, REALLY wanted to like Octopia. Maybe I'm being a little lenient with my rating, but I do love Eastward a lot, and there are parts of this DLC I like, but it just... doesn't feel well designed in parts, in my opinion, and the technical issues really drag it down. For the price, I would recommend checking it out (It's $4.99, I think?) and seeing if you vibe with it more, and I definitely got my money's worth of it, but I think I'm gonna stop just shy of 100%ing it and move on.
I was so excited, and, sadly... this didn't really live up to my hopes. It's a neat concept: John and Sam, in an alternate universe, come to an old, rundown town called Octopia, and work together to build it up to what it can truly be. Fan favorites like William and the Daniels, Alva and Isabel, and more show up and make the town a lively place. There's a big focus on gathering ingredients and recipe to make delicious meals, which you can share with your neighbors and visitors.
To be fair, I did enjoy both the mining minigame and the fishing minigame, and I really enjoyed some of the little scenes with William and the Daniels, Alva and Isabel, and Mung and his sons. There's a lot of really sweet, charming writing here given that this is an alternate world where everything is nice and peaceful, and I really enjoyed getting to see these characters again.
There's a lot of neat trappings here, but overall it just kind of... falls short.
There's a part early on where you have to make curry, but curry involves chicken. Where do you get chicken? Well, you have to buy a chicken coop. Only then do you unlock the ability to buy chicken at the shop in town. I only ended up doing this around day 40 or so because I had looked it up and I had a surplus of salt (money) to do so. Early game, money is tight, and I didn't want to buy a chicken coop because I imagined I'd also have to buy a chicken (not true, you can just adopt one on your farm) and feed, all while managing growing crops and fishing with a low money supply. I think some light signposting towards that would make things a lot easier to help move along, especially since making curry IS the opening to unlocking more construction, characters, and visits. It might just be me, but it feels like a strange oversight.
The other rough part is that the story and visitors are ploddingly slow. I was surprised there was real story at all (and what there was, I mostly liked!), but it crawls along at a snail's pace, where even after completing all my construction and all the major quests for the people in town, I still had so many days before it just kind of, unceremoniously reached the end of the story? It felt really strange to me. It just hit out of nowhere and then it was done.
Every so often, visitors, well, visit Octopia. You can see who's visiting when you press start and when you check the map to see who might be where, but at a certain point they visit... very slowly. I had a character who wanted a certain dish, but I didn't have the ingredients, couldn't get them and make the dish in time that day, and they didn't show up again for 15-20 days. That just. Doesn't feel great. Now that I'm in the post game, I'm just feeding animals, watering crops, and gathering crops and sleeping immediately to try and get to the next visitors, who are coming every 3-5 days. I'm very close to 100%ing the DLC, but I just think I'm going to stop because it feels like a waste and lack of respect for my time. I'm not saying I need them all one after the other day after day after day, but they definitely needed to show up more often to make Octopia not only feel thriving as a town and tourist destination, but to make me WANT to keep coming back for more as Octopia the DLC.
Also, I don't know what the patch did, but on Switch, the game runs kind of abysmally now. Every 20-25 seconds, the game will just hitch and freeze for a second or so, which really sucks not just because it makes fishing kind of a crapshoot, but also, it's just, terrible performance in every way. Eastward ran pretty flawlessly for me when I played it on Switch last year, so it suddenly performing very poorly is strange. I had a bug where, while catching a fish, the game ticked over to 20:00 (at which point you go back home for dinner and to go to bed), but I also remained in the fishing minigame, with the sounds and everything. I would automatically get pushed out of the eating/cooking menu, and since I couldn't see the fish, I couldn't catch it, so I had to hard quit out of the game and THEN reset the switch because my switch started lagging. As a result I lost a day's worth of progress (which might not sound like a lot, but given a lot of crop gathering, the mining minigame, crop buying and planting... it sucked to lose all of that, and it almost made me just want to quit. Were it not for it automatically saving each night, I definitely would've.
I also had numerous crashes at random times, while fishing, at the farm, it just felt very weird and it makes me wonder, given it's been over a month since the DLC released, if they even realized the issues that suddenly popped up on the Switch.
I really, REALLY wanted to like Octopia. Maybe I'm being a little lenient with my rating, but I do love Eastward a lot, and there are parts of this DLC I like, but it just... doesn't feel well designed in parts, in my opinion, and the technical issues really drag it down. For the price, I would recommend checking it out (It's $4.99, I think?) and seeing if you vibe with it more, and I definitely got my money's worth of it, but I think I'm gonna stop just shy of 100%ing it and move on.
i love eastward so i love this a lot, and it does a lot of clever tedium-cutting-out. the graphics and UI and audio are all fantastic of course
that said, i don't know if it hit the perfect timing and balance with its core loop. its very possible to end up with nothing to do but skip days until you get certain NPCs arriving to round off the recipe book, with no real incentive to keep the farm going, which was a bummer and sort of soured the end of an otherwise very fun very cute experience
none-the-less a very good audiobook game
that said, i don't know if it hit the perfect timing and balance with its core loop. its very possible to end up with nothing to do but skip days until you get certain NPCs arriving to round off the recipe book, with no real incentive to keep the farm going, which was a bummer and sort of soured the end of an otherwise very fun very cute experience
none-the-less a very good audiobook game
Aw, I loved this! It's just exactly what it says on the tin, a 15-20 hourish expansion (and you can keep playing after the credits) that takes the Eastward characters, world, aesthetic and fits it into a stardew valley-esque experience that also leans on John's expertise as Sam's chef. It has a nice well paced gameplay loop with plenty to do and interact with each day and lots of fun story sequences. The stamina bar is honestly a non factor after the first hour and this really is just a fun lazy time. Big thumbs up!