Reviews from

in the past


I've never before seen a game where the presentation is so leagues better than everything else it has to offer. Eastward is gorgeous in terms of graphics, music and art direction. Phenomenal. The gameplay, however, is bland and uninspired, and a story that starts pretty strong is bogged down by some absolutely horrendous pacing, and a lot of things which leave the player confused. So much of this game feels like nothing would be lost were it cut. Thanks to plot, characters met in one part of the game are often left behind to meet new ones. However, the main cast NEVER acknowledges the peiple they left behind with few key exceptions. WHY DID I SPEND FIVE HOURS IN THIS AREA IF NOTHING I DID THERE AFFECTS THE WIDER PLOT!?!? The gane also didn't feel well optimised for the Switch. This is ine of if not the only game I've played that just crashed decently regularly. There was also a weird effect where the game didn't seem to cover the screen at the edges for whatever reason. This game is frustrating, because there is a lot to love, but the pacing most of all made me avoid playing quite a bit. A 20 ish hour game should not take me ten months, but Eastward is one I couldn't bear to sit down and play regularly, and also one I think could have been five to ten hours shorter, making kt a much better experience. I will say I love the presentation, a number of characters, and the story's high points are pretty good, but I can't seem to ignore my issues.

Played this for 2 hours and it's certainly charming, but it's also way more reading than I expected. Very cute, great visuals, and excellent music but not the vibe I'm looking for right now.

Eastward made me sad. Not because the game wanted it to but because it's missing so much of its potential. I had been excited for this game for years, I remember seeing it pop up on my Twitter feed several years before it came out. Every new image and video, every new character, every piece of music had me increasingly excited. As time went on I forgot about it and it came to my attention again when it was added to Game Pass. It was finally time to satisfy this urge and play one of my most anticipated games in a long time.

And it was boring. Almost everything in this game is boring. The combat, the exploration, the writing, the side content. Almost nothing about this game is engaging. The art is downright gorgeous and straight up alive at times and the music is phenomenal and fitting at just about every single moment, but other than that this game just doesn't work. There is very little about this game that I will remember fondly but godDAMN this game is so good artistically. I want this team to make more games but I want them to learn how to make it fun first.

EDIT!!
I've followed the developer since they first started making the game and I think we can agree with that the environment, overall graphics and the OST to the game are fantastic.
You can see the hard work they put into the game and honestly that's all my brain remembered.

I never looked at other reviews of the game until now and a lot of people have made rather valid points about the game. I noticed that some compare this game to Earthbound? (I have not played it before so I am blinded by the comparison between the two)

From the little I can remember of the game, I agree that the story towards the later half of the game becomes....ambitious and the combat left me frustrated at times...

It's still a game I enjoyed even with all of it's flaws. 4/5!

Zelda-like with clear "Earthbound" influences. My biggest gripes of the game is how slow the game is, and the easy combat loop. The animation of the combat can be looped infinitely because there's no limit to how often you can swing, nor is there a pause between swings (unlike many fighters, or hack and slash games). That makes the game ridiculously easy.

I'd say it's definitely a fun game, and you should try it but at the same time you might as well play Zelda.

If it wasnt' so drawn out I think I'd be more willing to recommend this game.


La personalidad de este juego es lo que intensifica el gameplay influenciado por A Link to the Past y Earthbound en medio de uno de los mejores Pixel Art en la historia. De los mejores juegos de 2022.

Pls I don't want to read anymore, let me play the game.

Eastward é lindo. Uma pixel art incrível com bons personagens e uma história interessante. Combate é bem simples, do inicio ao fim, mesmo quando temos novas ferramentas o combate do jogo continua bem simples com um ou outro inimigo mais chato. Puzzles bem legais, nada muito complexo, mas são bem interessantes.
O ponto negativo é a quantidade de vez que o jogo poderia ser mais direto e ele faz o jogador andar em círculos para resolver alguma quest. Tem alguns lugares que isso é bem frequente e parece que o intuito foi de inflar o jogo.

3 years from now someone, somewhere on youtube is going to release a video essay about this game and title video is gonna be call something like, "Eastward, a flawed masterpiece"

was kinda into it at first and then realized oh right i dont even like this kind of game. mfw every single new idea a game introduces is clever nod to the audience that, dont worry, its taking influence from games you probably love. zzzzzz

Eastward ou Jornada para o leste é um dos melhores indie games que joguei nos ultimos tempos, contando com uma historia divertida e com boas pitadas de misterio e personagens cativante(sério AMEI a Sam, ela é MUITO FOFINHA!! <3), belos graficos em pixel art e uma trilha sonora muito gostosinha de ouvir. A gameplay do jogo é basicamente um dunngen-crawler estilo Zelda, na verdade eu diria que ele é um adventure-crawler(nem sei se esse termo existe) já que ao inves de termos um mundo ''aberto'' como em Zelda, temos um mundo dividido em capitulos na qual cada capitulo somos apresentados a novos personagens e lugares, fora isso de diferente o resto é tudo muito Zelda, temos corações pra conquistar que encontramos durante o jogo ou adquirimos ao derrotar algum chefão, temos tambem uma pequena variedade de armas que vão desde uma PANELA até um Lança-Chamas e as classicas bombas de Zelda que assim como em Zelda servem não só para derrotar inimigos mas para abrir caminhos e resolver puzzles, alem disso temos os poderes psiquicos(?) da Sam que são usados tanto para resolver alguns puzzles como para deixar inimigos presos nos lugares pra podermos descer o pau neles. Por falar em poderes da Sam, essa dinamica de dupla, de termos dois protagonistas é uma coisa que foi muito bem feita no jogo, é muito gostosinho fazer os puzzles com eles e alternalos pra derrotar inimigos, alem dos dois serem muito carismaticos, mesmo o John sendo o classico protagonista mudo, você percebe que ele é um personagem de verdade atraves de suas ações, seus poucos gestos e seus atos fazem você se importar com o personagem. Eu ja falei que a trilha sonora é muito gostosinha, ela junto com o estilo visual do jogo fazem você parecer que esta jogando um game do studio ghibli(a inclusive um personagem que é uma clara referencia a Hayao Miyazaki) ou um classico desenho dos anos 90, destacam-se as musicas ''Eastward''(tema do jogo), ''Cooking'', o tema da Sam, Wheather Talk, Bar, Ruin, Relax, entre tantas outras, a trilha sonora foi composta por Joel Corelitz o mesmo comporsitor de Halo: Infinite e esta disponivel no Spotify. Alem disso tudo o jogo é uma verdadeira homenagem aos classicos RPG's de video-game de era SNES/NES como The Legend of Zelda, Earthbound, Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, etc...com varias homenagens ao logo do game a esses jogos. O jogo conta até com um ''mini-game'' chamado Earthborne que é uma bélissima homenagem aos crassicos Dragon Quest, Earthbound e Final Fantasy e que poderia até muito bem ser um jogo a parte visto o quão ''profundo'' ele pode ser. Apesar da historia ser bem fechadinha, ela fica com um gostinho de quero mais no final de tão bem construido que o mundo de Eastward é de tão carismaticos seus personagens são, mesmo os NPC's como Alva, Samuel, Daniel, etc... tem seus momentos de brilho.
Enfim um PUTA JOGO indie, muito gostosinho de jogar que recomendo a todos os fãs de Zelda ou de RPG's da era SNES.

Classique jeu qui se renouvelle sans cesse, des mécanismes apparaissent régulièrement rendant impossible de s'en lasser. Histoire bien écrite sauf qu'on est une chialeuse qui peut pas rester concentré sur un dialogue plus de 10 secondes (matrixé par tiktok).
Bref, Classique jeu, excellent RPG, je recommande.

Played up until the last part of the game… then dropped it. Don’t know why. It was your fun and charming and the pixel art is AMAZING! Character were charming and I really wanted to learn more about them and the world. Oh well maybe I’ll return to it someday.

This zelda-like started super strong with great presentation and unique characters but throughout the half point the pacing starts to drag and the story becomes nonsensical with some clear plot holes and questions that never get answered.

Adding to that, there are some weird difficulty spikes throughout the game that almost made me drop the game several times before powering through them. The game was almost on track to become great but it sadly falls short.

Rapaz, esse jogo é um caos de decisões boas e ruins, a um ponto que eu nem sei direito por onde começar a falar, mas vamos lá…

Primeiramente, no peso geral que senti, EastWard é um jogo bom, isso principalmente em favor de todo o visível carinho e cuidado que os desenvolvedores tiveram com o projeto. A parte artística é, de longe, um dos pontos mais fortes do jogo: Diferentes estilos de artes belíssimas (variando entre as diferentes mecânicas e elementos do jogo), uma introdução animada extremamente bem-feita, pixelart detalhada e muito bem trabalhada, SoundTrack agradável, etc. Na Gameplay, porém, começa o caos.

Iniciemos pela história: A história do jogo é boa e consegue manter a curiosidade e interesse do player em vários momentos, porém ela é repleta de “Fillers” (Ou: Trechos de história que parecem pura encheção de linguiça). Há capítulos inteiros, que possuem um tempinho considerável de gameplay, onde 90% da história é irrisória. Quanto a parte de história, também, não dá para deixar de mencionar uma das principais críticas que vi quanto ao jogo, que é: Tem muito diálogo e cutscenes. Eu, particularmente não vejo problema quanto a essa parte (estou acostumado a jogos ricos em história), mas não vou mentir que um botão para acelerar diálogos faz bastante falta em várias cenas.

A exploração e mapas do jogo são bem-feitos, os puzzles são simples, a progressão as vezes é meio enrolada (te jogando em uns mini-games, como parte da história, que não tem nada a ver com nada) e na parte de batalha, bem, quanto a ela temos mais problemas: Inimigos spawnando em cima do player, inimigos em cenários com pouco espaço que não tomam nenhum knockback, hitbox dividida com o personagem que fica te seguindo (Não importa o quão bem você desvia de um ataque, o personagem que está te seguindo vai tomar dano e isso vai te matar várias vezes), etc. Ao que percebi, isso tudo existe para tentar equilibrar a dificuldade de um sistema de batalha que, no geral, é muito fácil (a ponto de você nem usar todas as armas que o jogo te oferece), porém essas “soluções” adotadas são horríveis e, infelizmente, perduram ao longo de toda a gameplay.
Outro fator muito estranho do jogo é que, mesmo ele sendo marcado como ‘Livre para todas as idades’, ele possui vários elementos e humores ácidos mais adultos perdidos aqui e ali. Esses elementos, mesmo que em boa parte indiretos, são BEM perceptíveis e não se encaixam nem um pouco com o resto do jogo, dando a sensação de estarem perdidos em um mundo ao qual não deveriam pertencer.

Mas então, vale a pena jogar EastWard? Sim, se você gosta de jogos mais descontraídos e história, mas se você procura algo mais dinâmico, não-linear e/ou profundo, nesse caso é melhor procurar outras opções de jogos.

Com um olhar puramente técnico, é o típico 7/10. Mas tem alguma coisa nele que mexe comigo, é como aqueles clássicos que, atualmente não são grandes jogos, mas tem algo ali que te marca.

Essa é provavelmente a pixel art mais linda que eu já vi. Fora isso, os puzzles e combate são simples, os personagens legais (eu iria adorar uma animação disso aqui), e a história mantém você preso ao mesmo tempo que é a parte com mais erros do jogo.

A história começa legal, mas desanda em alguns momentos, tem acontecimentos grandes que são completamente esquecidos, sem falar que dava pra tirar 50% da história e o jogo ficaria melhor. E lá pro terceiro capítulo é como se tudo fosse um grande filler. Os diálogos longos acabam cansando também, e lá pro meio do jogo eu nem estava mais lendo, só em momentos chave.

Mesmo com essas barrigas e problemas de ritmo na história, não foi um fator que me fez parar, valeu a pena, por que os personagens são carisma puro!

Ah, how many games I have lined up on my list to play by year's end, a list full enough it's likely I won't even get to all of them even if I tried! Yet, here I was, seeing the Nintendo Switch Online offer to play Eastward--for free! For a week! A game I've heard fairlyyyyy good things about before! How could I say no to that? On a whim, it was written, Poochy is playing Eastward.

God I wish I liked it.

Eastward is a post-post apocalyptic adventure game that, like many of its kin, explores that value of human connection. Kinda. It's depiction of the world is so rich, both in terms of the ideas presented in each area and the . Just look at any screenshot of the game, it's got some of the best pixel art work I've ever seen, with a ridiculously level of animation work and lighting that makes everything feel so alive. My Switch album is filled to the brim capturing every luscious landscape and setpiece it has in store. For that alone, it made my time in the world not regrettable.

Prior to finishing, I was under the belief every other element of the game besides its aesthetics and world design undershot what they really should have been by like 20%, but unfortunately then the ending happened. The game makes a really dangerous gambit, by spending almost the entire game setting up question after question that are all loaded onto the final act to pay off. Plenty of my favorite games go forward with this structure and are so beloved precisely because of their gambit. Eastward, however, does a number of things throughout that makes its story not just rote but kind of actively bad!

Its compulsory need to layer on mystery after mystery without explaining even fairly rudimentary things that happen. Stuff as simple as how the two main characters met each other, or basic character motivations are barely touched on and the game just treks along as if it doesn't matter. Major characters, including who could best be called the primary antagonist of the game, drop in and out of the story without much elaboration on what their deal is, and then reappear way later on having undergone radical changes that still are barely given any elaboration. So often, the perfect opportunity for characters to discuss what their deal is with each other is set up and then they just... walk away? For no real reason???

In place of focusing on its story, the game loves sending you on adjacent objectives with side characters that don't really amount to much of anything, like the beginning section of Twilight Princess strung out across an entire 20 hour adventure. In general, the game's pacing is totally fucked, with a largely nonsensical chapter structure and a really bad gameplay-to-cutscene/fetch quest ratio. There is an entire chapter where basically all you do is go through an entirely inconsequential dungeon to save two completely inconsequential NPCs, something that in any other game would be a side quest. At another point, you're going through a section about cooking food, then while you're in the middle of cooking the food the characters decide to fuck off and do something completely unrelated. Then, when they get back, the food is, predictably, ruined! So much of the game feels like its strung together via a series of disconnected "and then this happens..." instead of being based in the realm of cause and effect. It results in a story experiencing experience that often feels like pulling teeth.

Then, I reached the final chapter, the game rapidly approached the end, and... as you can probably imagine, did not stick the landing as I hoped it would. The ultimate answers to the questions it proposes are either the most obvious ones they could be or left more or less unanswered. It ends up being so frustrating to see these scenes with some absolutely jaw dropping, beautiful visuals play out with amazing music accompanying, and yet I just don't care for the emotional beats they depict. It hits all the story beats you would expect a game like this to hit, but the game hasn't done the work needed to really make me character about these characters. And the unanswered questions... I did a bit of digging afterwards to make sure I didn't just miss out on elements of the game's story, but no! The subreddit is filled with people left confused about fundamental aspects of the world and characters with responses that amount to "well I think it might be this but idk that's just my best guess".

I want to make a particular shoutout to the bizarre lack of characterization given to John, the father figure in the main playable father-daughter duo. He's a silent protagonist, which I do not have any issues with on the face of it, but the game barely gives any texture to him beyond the first 10 minutes of the game outside of a sparse few scenes. Sam, the daughter of the pairing, is talkative as all get out though. The way this ends up playing out in the vast majority of cutscenes is John being a mindless automaton following Sam while she makes every decision, including several that a father figure really should provide at least a little pushback to her making! It's hard to shake the feeling he ended up being silent because it wanted to recapture the vibe of playing as Flint in Mother 3 and his legendary cutscene at the beginning of the game. Yet, much like Mother 3's handling of Duster and Kumatora, it feels like his silence just comes at the expense of having a character that's way less fleshed out than he really should be.

Anyways, as I said before, a far larger chunk of the game is dedicated to cutscenes and fetch quests than the quality of the writing mandates. When it's not that, however, the duo goes venturing into areas fashioned similar to Zelda dungeons--and they're pretty solid! It's a good enough time exploring each beautiful looking area, uncovering secrets, and going through puzzles that often rely on switching between the two different characters. None of it is particular novel, and I do wish the game had a few more tricks up its sleeve than the switch puzzles it loves so dearly, but it all remained fairly chill and just taxing enough on the brain to remain interesting.

The combat is similarly decent enough, but really starts to strain itself towards the end of the game. Your main methods of dealing damage are almost all short ranged or take an annoying charge up time until close to the end (and the option you do get then is... too weak to depend on). When enemies start getting more aggressive and agile, it becomes increasingly hard to keep up, especially considering that your hitbox consists of both the character you're controlling AND the follower. It's never frustratingly difficult with how many resources the game dumps on you, as well as a cooking system for more healing dishes I never really bothered with, but still. Why doesn't the game have a dodge roll or something? It would fit right in. Again, it's one element where it feels like the game falls 20% short of where it really should've been.

So here I am, left just feeling rather deflated by the whole experience. The most I dwell on it, the more frustrated I become with the story and writing. There's clearly a lot of effort and passion put in from top to bottom, plenty of stuff I enjoyed in the moment, but it just doesn't come together into a cohesive product. What a shame.

Adendum: I forgot to mention this, but the game crashed SIX! times over the course of playing. Fortunately, the game had a good autosave system that left me only losing ~10 minutes of game time total, but it was still a tad frustrating.

This review contains spoilers

I’ve never been so emotionally toyed with by a fish sandwich.

When I saw Uva made that stupid sandwich for John, with twenty signs pointing to her dying by the end of the chapter, I just knew I could never use it like any other consumable item. Look, maybe this is just one of my unhinged tendencies. Whenever I play through Pokemon’s Unova region, no matter the context, I never use any of those Fresh Waters, each a punchline the gym guide’s silly little jokes, or even buy extras that would meld into the “canonical” stash. But that sandwich, representing the blissful life John will never have, the woman who couldn’t profess her love to him until it was too late, was a memory that felt too powerful to wipe away like any other health item.

On that note, I initially wrote off those save quotes as intentionally indulgent filler, like “oh what if your memories were someone else’s really makes you think”. But even without any explicit story presence, they hint at the overall discussion of memories and the journeys we take to make them. You never get to stay in one place forever, so eventually the little events along the way, no matter how silly, are all that will be left of the characters cast aside by the story. The game’s own quirky side mode RPG, narratively, starts as a promise to interact more with the kids of Potcrock Isle until Sam is exiled, but after a while meets more kids because of their shared interest in the game.

I mention this because games and this sort of self reflection around them come up in this game’s narrative a lot more than I expected going in. The side mode RPG classes are echoed both by the New Dam City leaders’ knight and princess relationship, and the elders of Ester City having nerdy alter egos they don as they help you. I didn’t think much of it until the end, where due to some time loop shenanigans, everyone in Ester City fades away, as they would have if not for their one day in the city always repeating. The mainish antagonist Professor Solomon questions Sam on whether it’s worth anything to take the advice of what were basically illusions in her repeated effort to defy his end plan. And for fairly obvious reasons, those inhabitants of the city, and everyone in this game are just illusions to me too. Considering most people take it as a given that media can influence you, I wasn’t expecting to be asked across the screen whether any of that even matters when it’ll inevitably slip out of my mind for the last time.

But, well, behind the digital puppet show, a bunch of 0’s and 1’s remained unperturbed once two characters shared a fish sandwich. So my answer’s been laid bare.

I have so much to say about this game and I still think about it 2 years later. Amazing soundtrack, amazing visual style, great gameplay, but a story that shits itself halfway through the game. The story is a big detractor, but everything else about the game is so well-crafted and almost tailor made for me that I have to let it slide. I’d encourage anyone to at least give it a shot, because as much as it does become a weirdly dissonant experience, there’s something here I think anyone could enjoy

The gameplay is meh and the story is a huge disappointment. 90% of the time you're doing side-quest-ish things but it's in the main storyline. When you have done enough random chores for NPCs a sudden catastrophy will engulf you and everyone else thus forcing the plot forward. So basically the quest structure of the game is mostly irrelevant to the plot.... and the main character is literally a mute who displays no emotion at all throughout the entire 20hr campaign.

The only strength of this game is the art, which is a nostalgic acid trip back into a mixture of 1960s Japan's retrofuturism and 1980-90s JRPG and anime references. I really wish the beautiful world it built didn't feel so empty and devoid of meaning because of how weak the writing is.

Eastward é um jogo 2D com uma Pixel Art incrível que conta a história de John, um minerador que é um cozinheiro habilidoso e cuja principal arma é uma frigideira, e Sam, uma menina fofinha com poderes cinéticos que John encontra e resgata enquanto explora uma mina. Ela estava "incubada" dentro de um trem, e parece que estavam fazendo experimentos com ela. O jogo tem diversas inspirações e referências, como Earthbound, Final Fantasy, Zelda Clássico e Zelda Snes/GBA. O combate principal e a exploração são inspirados em The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. O jogo apresenta um minigame chamado Earth Born, que é tão bem feito que poderia ser um jogo standalone. Nele, você joga com um protagonista chamado Hero, que precisa derrotar o Rei Demônio em sete dias antes que ele destrua o mundo. Earth Born faz diversas referências a Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy e ao Zeldinha Clássico.

A dificuldade do jogo base é seu ponto mais fraco, sendo muito fácil, especialmente se você usar e abusar do sistema de itens. Como John é um cozinheiro, é possível cozinhar usando materiais para recuperar sua vida ou ganhar buffs temporários. A arte do jogo é impressionante e muito bem detalhada, com expressões muito detalhadas dos personagens, especialmente Sam. Se você gosta dos filmes do STUDIO GHIBLI, certamente irá apreciar a arte deste jogo. A trilha sonora também é incrível, com destaque para a música tema do jogo, "Eastward", que transmite uma sensação de aventura épica e desafiadora. Outras músicas notáveis incluem "Go! Daniel!", que passa a sensação de "o que você aprontou agora?", e a minha favorita, a música de Sam, que transmite com perfeição a personalidade da personagem, uma criança ingênua, boa com todo mundo e muito curiosa. Terminei o jogo em 25 horas, ao longo de duas semanas. Recomendo fortemente o jogo, mas se você não tiver condições, sugiro que aguarde uma promoção. Há pouco tempo, o jogo estava com um desconto de 30% na steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/977880/Eastward/

OBS: Este jogo não tem tradução oficial. Usei a tradução do TraduçõesPKG.

https://pkgtraducoes.com.br/traducoes/

Aqui está o link para a minha thread no Twitter com alguns gameplays de Eastward:

https://twitter.com/evilbala/status/1649162915189075968

Porém, vale ressaltar que o link pode conter pequenos spoilers.

If a game has a train full of monkeys on it, then...

about 5 hours in, don't really want to play this anymore.

it's like the sort of referential mish-mash i would have thought up when i was like 8 - borrows very transparently from the nintendo-gamer canon (ww, botw, alttp, mother 3, probably nes dq/ff, gacha games, etc...), but nothing ever fits together right. i feel like i'm being forced to wade through someone else's fangame, where like i can respect all of the moving parts (esp the artstyle which it nails) but it just feels like it was made in such a way that i was never supposed to interact with it except from afar - like all of these things have the right spirit to it, but were compiled together carelessly. engine is just-busted-enough, puzzles so far are overloaded and pretty uninteresting, and the game doesn't seem to be going anywhere. that and then like the reviews seem to be suggesting the worst is yet to come - i think i'm out

This has been mentioned a lot already, but there's no way to overlook just how great Eastward's presentation is. Its pixel art is one of the best I've ever seen, and the music is versatile and mostly feels fresh across the game's lengthy playtime.

This makes it even more unfortunate that the story didn't reach its full potential, which I could sometimes catch a glimpse of, but never fully grasp. The pacing is really slow, but even with the game dragging along so many moments, I never felt like the story beats were developed beyond a shallow level.

There were many characters that I really liked, but they lack a context around them to really shine. One aspect of that is the plot itself, with few and badly paced interesting situations for the characters to act upon. Also, the there's almost no world-building on this game, especially on a smaller scale basis like towns, character relationships and past events, which weakens the characters surroundings story-wise.

That last bit, especially, could be greatly expanded upon, even more so if you consider Eastwards' graphics, and how capable they are of depicting the game's post-apocalyptic world as lively but cohesively as it does. This would allow for truly unique and well fleshed out sceneries.

The gameplay is decent, but quite bland and derivative, almost not evolving conceptually throughout the entirety of the game. It works and I was able to vibe with it at times, but there's not a lot worth mentioning.

I really wanted to love Eastward. But the truth is that, while I don't love it, I actually do like it. I really like the characters, it's just a shame that they don't come to full fruition. And the story, inconsistently developed as it is, allows for glimpses of something much more interesting as a whole. Even though it may seem that I like Eastward just for the potential of a game that isn't actually there, I in truth do enjoy it for what it is, since even if there is a good amount of wasted potential written all over it, that is only so because the game underlying it all is charming, enticing and unique most of the times.

Maybe it's my fault that my expectations were too high but beside the art which is amazing everything else is just a mixed bag

The Kojima-esque cutscene to gameplay ratio might be bearable if the dialogue didn't reek of half baked fanfiction. I looked past these annoyances until it set in that the combat was not at all entertaining, and the story seemed to be going nowhere fast. I adore the music and art style but I forced myself to play this game for about 4 hours before I couldn't bear the boredom anymore.


I wanted to like Eastward a lot more than I did. The story, setting, and characters were really interesting, and the architecture design and art were stellar. But the combat, oh that combat really sucked, and was never any fun. The game also just went on far too long, and the ending really didn't pay off the hours of frustration that went into playing the game.

Lots of ambition and promise that mostly lands or pays off. The game feels let down by its combat, should have been turn based imo

Great pixel graphics plus a soundtrack that’s charming and genuinely catchy go a long way, but this ultimately needs an editor to chop it down by at least half. The writing just isn’t good enough for there to be so much of it, sort of like a 700 page book that could have been great if only it were 300 pages instead. The plot is ambitious and odd, which was exciting for a while, but it just kept going without going anywhere particularly interesting, and then it decided to make me slog through not one but two different tedious Groundhog Day time loops in the final third when the story should have been accelerating to a finale instead. The combat and puzzle-y dungeon gameplay are similarly plagued by just not being deep enough to avoid becoming tedious well before it passes the twenty hour mark.

This might have been a really great 10 hour game, though, and still might be if you can make yourself stop after chapter 5 (of 8ish total).

holy fuck the boring dialogue... like... hours of boring unskippable dialogue. the combat is meh and the story is alright, until a character starts talking about seafood for 30 minutes fucking hell... and people compare it to loz..blasphemy istg