Eastward

The storytelling, art and music masterfully connect to create a real sense of the world that the Eastward characters inhabit.

A wonderful homage to classic RPG gaming that takes classic concepts and polishes them up with a level of care that is rare to find.

All of that said, denouncing Eastward’s strengths and successes for any of the above would be disingenuous. It is a remarkable game that, while retro in ambition, will paradoxically go on to inspire the drive and uniqueness of future projects. It is clever, vibrant, and unapologetically original, and unless some magnificent twist of fate occurs over the next three months, it will undoubtedly go down as one of the best games of the year.

While the combat isn’t anything special and the puzzles wear out their welcome, Eastward’s characters, setting, and sounds craft an unforgettable experience. If you’re looking for something quirky, captivating, and somewhat surreal, you’ve found it.

Eastward is a marvelous action-adventure game designed in 16-bit pixel-art and set in a future and collapsed cyberpunk world. You play as Sam and John, two characters linked by a mysterious bound that decide to travel around the world to solve the strange things happening in the underworld. The art style is clearly inspired by 16-bit jRPGs and animation of the 90s. The adventure is full of smart puzzles to solve using the powers of the two friends, and will keep you busy and entertained for several hours.

Although its gameplay is a bit flawed and its narrative can feel slow, Eastward is a game that rewards us for sticking with it with unique moments that become memorable.

Eastward is charming and offers a surprisingly dark story, but is bogged down by stale combat mechanics and too much boring and non-sensical dialogue.

It's a charming, very story driven game. The gameplay is mostly puzzle based, very 2d Zelda like. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

The Eastward es un RPG de acción a la antigua usanza. Tomando los viejos The Legend of Zelda como modelo nos cuentan una historia de ciencia ficcion ubicada un un mundo postapocaliptico. El juego está muy bien, el único defecto que le encuentro y por el que le bajo la nota es que la historia se nos revela de forma lenta y esto hace que el juego se alargue demasiado, a mi modo de ver, de forma innecesaria.

Initial impressions, after prologue and fair way into chapter 1. The game has unmistakeable charm and has some engaging gameplay elements that are fundamentally robust. So far though, there are several issues that mar the experience. There are enemies that can drop on your head and there seems to be literally zero sign that it's going to happen. I don't find this to be a satisfying 'challenge'. The text sometimes has a tendency to auto advance with very little apparent reason, posing major problems for slower readers. The menu has a very strange arrangement, which can make it confusing to find the item you want to inspect. why aren't the cooking ingredients in the cooking tab for example? why isn't the backpack just on the same tab as quest items? why is the quest screen and the map screen, inbetween the quest items and the backpack? bizarre and nonsensical. The pacing also seems really slow so far. despite that, the pace at which I'm collecting quest items seems to suggest the game is really short. Other issues... The stuttering. I'm playing on an R7 with a rtx 2080 and 32gb ram. My system should not be struggling with this game. when I see electrical cables sparking, I tend to avoid them, yet the game wants you to interact with then, connecting and disconnecting live wires. to say this is irresponsible is an understatement. kids will be playing this.

I was excited to play Eastward. It looked gorgeous. Unfortunately, the rest of the game is boring. After 7 hours it has lost my interested. The combat is rather repetitive and the story is moving at a snails pace. Date Dropped: 2022-10-12 Playtime: 7h Enjoyment: 4/10 Recommendation: Nah

Really really disappointed there is no way to go back to previous zones to get the chests you miss, literally missing several achievements.