Minigames like a quick aside to rally some floating pigs for a farmer by hitting them with your frying pan, or the Breath of the Wild style cooking minigame where a slot machine would determine the quality of your dish were really innovative and fun. It’s really too bad that a game that put so much work into creating beautiful landscapes and interesting puzzles would have areas skipped because of irritating gameplay issues.Īs I mentioned, the best sections of the game are where it strayed from its normal gameplay loop. However, because of the combat issues, I would often leave areas unexplored. I particularly liked a brief section where you had to sneak past a bunch of guards, it was little asides like this that broke up the gameplay and were, in my opinion, some of the best parts of the game. In general, they felt challenging but never so much as I had to look up how to solve them online. By the end of the game, I dreaded going into the dungeon areas because the combat was so frustrating.ĭespite the issues with combat, Eastward’s many dungeons did have some really nice puzzles that made them a little more bearable. Bosses were often easier to beat than regular mobs because they, at least usually, had consistent mechanics. Frequent healing also required opening a menu that would pause combat, throwing off the flow. With no dodge roll or evasive maneuvers, your best bet is to back up and wait for enemies to come to you or heal through the damage. Enemies rarely give you time to charge your weapon or abilities, and unclear hitboxes or invulnerability frames would often lead to missed hits or accidental damage. But the speed at which you unlock new weapons and abilities and the difficulty spike of enemies in the mid-game felt uneven. For instance, your main weapon throughout the game was a frying pan. You are armed with an arsenal of interesting weapons. Every objective had character development which did help flesh out the world, but as I’ll talk about later in this review, despite the attempt I think it mostly failed in that regard.Ĭombat in Eastward was frustrating and often felt unfair. Fetch quests and mandatory side missions would make areas quickly feel stale. At times, the slow pace felt like a meditation that added to the feeling of making the best of a tough situation, but mostly it felt constipated. Eastward really likes to take its time with its story. Unfortunately, the great graphics and style did not make up for frustrating gameplay particularly in regards to combat and story progression. In particular, the water, foliage and “miasma” were just so cool and while the game felt like an homage to the old titles, it certainly lived up to a modern aesthetic in that regard. Overall, it’s dripping with nostalgia but still has some amazing 21st century graphics. It wears those references proudly on its sleeve, it even features an entire playable game within the game called “EarthBorn,” that I’ll come back to later. However, a convoluted story, flat characters and frustrating gameplay mechanics mired this game to the point where, by the last chapters of my playthrough, I wasn’t having fun anymore.Įastward is a game with huge potential, it has so much going for it: a cool visual style that harkens back to great old Nintendo classics like EarthBound, Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy. It has undeniable charm and offers some innovative gameplay particularly in its minigames. I was drawn into the world of Eastward with its fantastic visuals and unique character design. Eastward is a top-down, pixel art, narrative-driven role-playing game published by Chucklefish and developed by Chinese developer Pixpil.
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