Eastward

With its eye catching pixel art, quirky characters and a world designed with an eye for Asia's myriad cultures, Eastward easily makes a strong first impression for those who have a love for retro 16-bit aesthetics. Similarly, how you’ll see the game behind that presentation depends on if you share a soft spot for the inspirations that it openly wears on its sleeve. The gameplay loop will be familiar to anyone who has played classic Zeldas, or to a lesser extent Square Enix’s Mana series. The player explores dungeons, fighting enemies, solving environmental puzzles and opening chests to find currency, HP upgrades and keys to advance further. After finding the new weapon or tool or ability that lets you get to the end, you’ll face off against a boss before moving on to the next story beat. Eastward’s spin on the formula comes in its dual protagonist design. John is the standard warrior type, fighting with guns, bombs and a frying pan for melee. Sam is more of a mage, mostly using her energy projectiles to stun enemies so John can finish them off with ease. While the game isn’t particularly difficult, you will need to make full use of both characters to advance through the game, with many puzzles requiring you to use both protagonists separately. Sprinkled throughout the game are a few minigames to add variety, but the most significant one by far is Earthborn. A send up of Dragon Quest where you have only 7 in-game days to level up your party before having to fight the final boss. While devilishly difficult to do on its own, purchasing pixballs throughout Eastward’s world grants you disposable items that give heals and buffs to your party in Earthborn, making it easier to win its turn-based battles. Eastward’s plot has a lot of ambition and a few strong moments that deliver on it, but I feel that some of its backstory is inadequately explained. Like the story was so interested in asking questions and building intrigue that it forgot to provide the answers. I don’t know if that was a matter of time and budget constraints or the writer thinking a lack of information would make the plot deeper than it really is, but some additional scenes to lay out at least the most important whys of the world would’ve been much appreciated. [spoiler]The Octopia DLC provides a little more context to the main game, but asking people who just finished an action adventure to play a farming sim for a few more bits of lore is kinda weird.[/spoiler] That said, the characters are likable enough that you’ll want to see it through anyway. To that end, if you’re the type that hates reading a lot of text in video games (and therefore, exactly the sort of person who won’t read this review! Huh…) then Eastward’s focus on dialogue and character moments will probably put you off. Had Eastward released in the 90s, it would most likely be remembered today as a seminal classic. As is, its legacy will be that of a hidden gem for genre enthusiasts. It should take around 20-25 hours to clear the game. Afterwards, a chapter select feature is added to the main menu, allowing you to go scoop up whatever collectibles you missed along the way. Recommended.

I loved this game! The art is great, I really liked the story, I'm very happy I played it. I did have a bit of an issue with the achievements for it, I like to 100% games and I've done all the achievements in the game but I didn't actually have one achievement pop up in my steam account; I even replayed the whole story again in hopes of that fixing it, but sadly it didn't. I also liked Octopia, it was really lovely to play it after the main story. Makes you a bit less sad about some of the things that happened in the main game :)

Bellino

你们怎么知道我刚买完本体cdkey就等到了dlc打折哈哈哈哈哈哈😋

meu mto bom esse jogo 10 de 10! vai ter gnt q vai reclamar de que os puzzles são fáceis e sei la oq, mas eu achei a jogabilidade maravilhosa, os gráficos maravilhosos e a história maravilhosa também!! amei, meio confuso às vezes, mas dps que vc entende que é sobre seguir adiante e recomeçar, fica top! podia ter tradução em pt-br? sim, mas valeu muito a pena mesmo em inglês! com certeza vou jogar de novo no futuro kkkkkkk

my heart both full and sad at the same time

El juego es sencillo, hay muchos diálogos pero la trama no me resultó extraordinaria, es buena opción si buscas algo tranquilo