Not every game is going to click with people, especially when they're incredibly experimental or when their tediousness is part of what makes them so special. A slow pace, as an example, can be used to do some very interesting things, like creating a bond with other characters or getting much more immersed in a world. This can backfire spectacularly, obviously, if none of that is interesting. Golden Sun is a good example of that. I can't help but adore it when it does shake out for me, though.
I understand that Eastward is a fairly divisive game. It is confusing, complicated, and incredibly overwrought in some aspects. But I think there's something really special about the world that you exist in in Eastward, the way you just live there.
There are several junctions in the story where you stay in one place for a brief period of time, and have ample room to talk to everyone there whose dialogue updates with the story, each one with their own unique sprite art and their own lives. The presentation in this game really sells how everything feels like a diverse and unique world. Taking in the atmosphere, learning about the daily troubles of random people... this is where Eastward shines.
As you go from place to place, you're powerless to do much of anything besides bring joy to the lives of these people, too. The main characters aren't particularly special, they can't stop the world-ending threat that seems to follow them everywhere. All they can do is make the world a little better, and I think that that's far more interesting than if it were some grand heroic quest.
Unfortunately, the last few hours of the game decide to make it a weird, save-the-world plot instead of just an experience of two people traveling. It doesn't work for me at all, especially since it's so starkly different to the rest of the game. But I think that up until that point, this story of this father and daughter who take in the wonder of each location they go to is just wonderful. A train full of film-making monkeys, a feudal Japan infused steampunk city, a quiet village ravaged by an apocalyptic force of despair. It's beautiful.
Eastward is a portrait of a dying world, and a testament to the natural wonder of life.
I understand that Eastward is a fairly divisive game. It is confusing, complicated, and incredibly overwrought in some aspects. But I think there's something really special about the world that you exist in in Eastward, the way you just live there.
There are several junctions in the story where you stay in one place for a brief period of time, and have ample room to talk to everyone there whose dialogue updates with the story, each one with their own unique sprite art and their own lives. The presentation in this game really sells how everything feels like a diverse and unique world. Taking in the atmosphere, learning about the daily troubles of random people... this is where Eastward shines.
As you go from place to place, you're powerless to do much of anything besides bring joy to the lives of these people, too. The main characters aren't particularly special, they can't stop the world-ending threat that seems to follow them everywhere. All they can do is make the world a little better, and I think that that's far more interesting than if it were some grand heroic quest.
Unfortunately, the last few hours of the game decide to make it a weird, save-the-world plot instead of just an experience of two people traveling. It doesn't work for me at all, especially since it's so starkly different to the rest of the game. But I think that up until that point, this story of this father and daughter who take in the wonder of each location they go to is just wonderful. A train full of film-making monkeys, a feudal Japan infused steampunk city, a quiet village ravaged by an apocalyptic force of despair. It's beautiful.
Eastward is a portrait of a dying world, and a testament to the natural wonder of life.