I bought this game on a whim to use up my Gold Points before they expired based on the cover. I do not regret it.

Eastward is a story focused action adventure game in the style of old Zelda games with an art style inspired by Mother 3. The combat is ehh, left to be desired, partially because this game lags on the switch and partially because some enemies will just stick to you. A minor annoyance, nothing more than that. The shining star of the game is the story. Act 1 is predictable but for good reason, Act 2 is boring but for good reason, and Act 3 is where it all pays off. Most people I talked to about Eastward dropped it around Act 2, Act 2 is where the game sticks in one area for a majority of the game. You are there to get immersed, live with the city folk, and absorb the atmosphere. It's worth it, I promise.

Good game, definitely recommend.

P.S. This game is surprisingly raunchy and kinda vulgar even though the game looks very friendly. For example, there is a merchant that is a repurposed sex machine and whenever you complete a transaction, the display on the machine plays an animation of a woman climaxing. It's not graphic or anything...that's just what happens...

Eastward es un indie con el que es probablemente el pixelart más bonito que he visto. Visualmente es un escándalo, con detalles, animaciones y sprites de una calidad excelente de principio a fin. Una delicia visual que va acompañada de una banda sonora inspirada en los juegos retro de los 90 y que encaja a la perfección con las dinámicas del juego. El diseño del mundo me parece muy original y te invita a seguir explorando. La historia, desgraciadamente, no va de la mano. La premisa es interesante pero la trama se desarrolla de una forma excesivamente lenta y algunos momentos se hacen pesados. Eso sí, la mayoría de los personajes son carismáticos y bastante memorables. La jugabilidad tampoco es su punto fuerte, basándose en la resolución de mazmorras (tipo Zelda) y, aunque es entretenida, peca de demasiado simple, sin contar que para mi los combates tienen problemas de diseño a la hora de enfrentarse a enemigos. El juego de Earthborn tampoco me ha gustado. Como conclusión, el juego posee una bonita portada pero un fondo mejorable, pero al finalizarlo tras 20 horas de juego debo reconocer que he disfrutado del viaje. Recomendado para quienes quieran maravillarse de un apartado visual excepcional y un viaje entretenido. 7,9/10 (03/2024)

Maybe the single biggest disappointment I had in 2021. I'd been excited about this game for literal years before it came out and forced myself to play through the entire thing - hoping it would get better. The visuals are outstanding but the gameplay is... flat? The puzzles are fine, the action RPG gameplay is dollar-store Zelda, and the story fails to live up to its billing. I also got mad that we spent an absurd amount of time in one setting after the game set up that this is a road trip narrative.

I will support the studio's next endeavor, but I hope that they spend as much time thinking about the systems and plot for that game as they clearly did on the visuals and aesthetic (again, they're amazing)

While I had my Xbox controller out and the PC all ready to play games, I figured I may as well keep on chugging away at PC games that I've been meaning to play for ages. Eastward is a game my partner got me on Steam a good few months back, so it's been one I've been meaning to play for quite some time. I'd only ever heard good things about it, and though I wasn't super familiar with it, from what little I did know, it seemed right up my alley. It took me around 23 or so hours to beat the English version of the game while doing as many side quests and such as I can.

Eastward is the story of John, a miner living in the underground town of Potcrock Isle, who one day finds a little girl underground. Taking on the name Sam, this strange, white haired girl who he found in a strange yellow pod underground quickly becomes close to John, and they spend their days at the mines as John works out a meager living for the two of them. However, Sam's adventurous spirit combined with the turning hand of fate quickly make things difficult for the two of them, and they're forced to journey, as the title says, Eastward, for better or worse.

Eastward was a game I absolutely bunched in with games like Undertale or Omori (two games, mind you, I haven't played) when it came out. It wears its inspirations on its sleeves, and the Mother/Earthbound series is very transparently one of them (to the point there's even a game-within-the-game called "Earth Born" that you can play). However, unlike many other Earthbound-inspired games, Eastward shares its genre with its other big inspiration, The Legend of Zelda, and with its other main inspirations very clearly being Japanese anime like Studio Ghibli films (as if the extremely obvious Hayao Miyazaki didn't make that clear enough), it certainly sets a quite high bar for itself both narratively and mechanically.

Narratively, unquestionably so, I'd say it really lives up to the task it sets out for itself. Where something like the Mother series often uses a tale of growing up to communicate about the main themes of the respective title, Eastward uses being aged to do that. Honestly, I'd say the Studio Ghibli inspirations feel a lot stronger than the Mother/Earthbound inspirations in this regard, since the overall messaging and themes veer more towards contemplations on daily (especially family) life rather than the larger philosophical themes that Shigesato Itoi's works usually focus on. Eastward's main themes of responsibility and guardianship really impressed me. There's so much care and attention focused around the the different aspects of leadership and adult life (whether it's being the head of a settlement, a loving partner, or a parent to a child), it weaves a nuanced and heartfelt story masterfully. It's a story that's not afraid to get dark, but it's also a story that is never needlessly cruel or gratuitous, and that's something else I really appreciated it for. Eastward is easily one of the best written games I've ever played, and it's definitely one of my new favorite stories in media, hands down.

While the narrative of Eastward may be more in the vein of a Studio Ghibli film, the gameplay is unquestionably more along the lines of The Legend of Zelda. It's a top-down 2D action/adventure game where you go through dungeons, solve puzzles, do sidequests, talk to townsfolk, all that good stuff. That said, given that this is a more linear game where backtracking to old areas is generally impossible, I suppose you could say it has more in common with games like Illusion of Gaia than Link to the Past. As a big fan of these types of action/adventure games, I found this to be a really fun one! The dungeon and boss design is really good, and the pacing of the story vs. action segments is also handled very well. There's a fair bit of side content to involve yourself with as well, and you very well might want to, because this is honestly a pretty tough game quite frequently.

You can swap between John and Sam on the fly most of the time, and you can even split them up to operate them independently for puzzle solving. Sam has some attacks, but her main arsenal is a ranged stun move. John is your main pummeler and dispatcher of baddies, and his melee attack of a pan combined with the several guns you get over the course of the game will be how most bosses and such are fought. Rushing blindly forward into battle is often not the best course of action, however. John will step forward with each pan strike, which will usually stunlock most lone enemies, but it's not very helpful for fighting groups. Using Sam to stun enemies as well as dealing out your ammo (your guns all draw from the same pool) and bombs wisely is the key to surviving combats well, and the large enemy variety and well designed bosses make combat always something that's fun, even when it's hard. The game even has a very clearly Breath of the Wild-inspired cooking mechanic to top it all off, so you can always sure up your health bar with big healing items should you need to. On the whole, Eastward's mechanical design is just as well thought out as its narrative design, and that is to say: absolutely excellent.

Aesthetically, Eastward is part of the modern trend of pixel-art indie games, but it's a very nice looking one of those. The music is fantastic and compliments each area and scene very nicely. The pixel art is also beautiful, and the enemy and especially NPC design is done so well that it brings each area to life in a way that feels different from the last. So many small touches and flourishes to each NPC, especially Sam, had be grinning ear to ear more times than I can count in just how well they add character and voice to a game with no voice acting. To that point, the localization in this game is REALLY well done. I honestly never would've guessed this game wasn't written originally in English with just how well done the dialogue writing is, and this Shanghai-based indie studio could frankly teach a lot of AAA publishers a thing or two with just how much care and attention can really bring a game to life in a new language.

I'll finish this review off with talking about the game-within-a-game, Earth Born. Rather than being some tacked on little mini-game, Earth Born is a properly fleshed out little game (as well as a not super subtle framing device for the rest of the game), and a really competently put together little rogue-lite RPG. This is where the Earthbound-inspired mechanical design is, and you, the knight, have 7 days to train up, get equipped, and assemble a party before the demon lord's ritual is complete. It's a pretty involved little game, and you could easily spend a ton of time learning its ins and outs and optimizing routes if you were so inclined. You can also get little in-game amiibo-type things in Eastward to use as extra items in Earth Born if things get too tough (and I know I needed them), but you thankfully never actually have to play Earth Born for any real period of time. I played it once and got lucky enough to get the normal ending in it (but good gods was it close), and that single full playthrough took me almost an hour! With how good Eastward already is, Earth Born is just icing on the cake and one more thing to get invested in if you're so inclined~.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. This is the 3rd year in a row that I've ended up playing something very early in the year that becomes an all-time favorite game. Two years ago it was Dandy Dungeon, last year it was Disco Elysium, and this year it's Eastward. Eastward is a master craft of storytelling and an excellently put together action/adventure games that's absolutely deserving of standing tall amongst its inspirations. Not many dev teams could've put together something that works this well, but these folks have managed it, and I'm super excited for whatever it is they put out next. If a bit of difficulty doesn't turn you off to it, this is one you definitely don't wanna miss out on if you're at all into quality story telling in games or 2D Zelda-likes because it's one of the best non-rogue-like indie games out there right now, as far as I'm concerned.

Muy buen indie con claras inspiraciones en Mother 3 y con graficos a los de gba.

La historia si bien arranca muy lenta, a medida que vas avanzando se va acelerando y entra a ponerse a mi gusto muy interesante. Puede ser un punto muy a favor o en contra el tipo de historia ya que no a todos les puede llamar la atencion el tipo de desarrollo que tiene.

Ame que tenga un sidegame directamente inspirado en dragon quest 3, la verdad que no me lo esperaba y lo ame por eso.

Este año agregaron un dlc muy baarto que añade un farm simulator y la verdad que esta muy adictivo y es bastante comfy.

Visualmente un despelote, se fueron muy para arriba con este nivel de sprites y son de lo mejor que he visto en un indie.

En switch tiene leves caidas de fps por alguna razon pero nada de otro mundo.

La musica tambien es muy buena y recuerda mucho a los mother.

El gameplay es el de un arpg onda los zeldas de nes y snes, y si bien es muy simple se le agradece. Tiene varias armas para elegir de corto y largo alcance para poder usar.

Y por ultimo decir que hay bastante puzzles interesantes que a veces requiere de usar a ambos pjs principales.

i want to like this game so badly. the artstyle is gorgeous, the music and sound design are both incredible, and it had the best first hour of any game i played in 2022. sadly, the story cant sustain the intrigue it builds up over the course of the first hour or so, and a game supposedly about a Last of Us style journey across many different locales stops dead in its tracks by the third new space, and 70% of the main story takes place in one hub area.

character writing and dialogue is consistently strong, but the actual overall story becomes utterly incoherent by the end of the game. i genuinely did not understand the literal moment to moment events and exposition.

so much story potential sadly not put to proper use

Larga fetta del gioco non è scritta bene, il suo essere estremamente derivativo sotto ogni aspetto con mother 3 per giunta non aiuta. Si intuiscono sia i pregi (sostanzialmente l'estetica e più in generale l'uso della pixel art, ma anche la sua atmosfera molto nostalgica) ma questi non tengono in piedi il gioco, seppure devo dire che né i puzzle ne i combattimenti abbiano reali problemi il gioco mi crolla immediatamente sulla scrittura. Manca completamente l'aspetto tragico che una situazione del genere merita, si cerca di far provare empatia costruendo dei rapporti in 5 secondi. Il gioca ti urla, ti prega, di provare qualcosa per loro ma semplicemente è impossibile perché oltre alle scritture assolutamente anonime dei protagonisti anche i rapporti che hanno sia tra loro che altri sono acerbi. Comprendo comunque le ragioni di chi lo ama ben più di chi lo odia, perché per quel che riguarda estetica, citazionismo e nostalgia è stato realizzato un pacchetto ad hoc