Would've loved a New Game+ but regardless, playing through again feels rewarding. Aside from that brand of issue, the Monkollywood chapter is just a chore, didn't do much for the story, and I would have rather had flushed-out character arcs in New Dam than this. A homeless character is presented drooling which implies intellectual disability there's just not great disability rep in general & this particular thing feels like it's supposed to be a "joke". really? Any fat characters are animated eating or have food-related plots. The only black child npc is named "Jackson". The boob animation was just eye-rolling and the "glory hole" kiosk was out of place and just uncomfortable. The retro feel is wonderful, but there are some retro ideas that should've been left in the past: the very straight "adult humor" could've been left out and the game would be better for it. The characters and story were really engaging to me, and it almost goes without saying that the game is absolutely gorgeous and features a fantastic soundtrack. I personally enjoyed the text/cutscene-to-gameplay ratio. I truly adore Eastward and am playing it through a second time already. This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Read more about how I do my game reviews here. I was provided a review copy of the game in order to write this review. Quote: Eastward may have some great art and music, but the gameplay is barebones and the story is so overwritten that the game could easily be completed in a third of the time if the filler were cut away.Įastward retails for $25 USD on Steam and is also available through GOG and on Switch. Overwritten dialogue and story does not equate to good writing and that’s ultimately what killed the experience for me. What was once one of my most hyped indie games of the year quickly devolved into a boring loop of barebones combat, running from point a to point b, and so much dialogue that the game could easily be completed in a third of the time if the filler were cut away. It’s just sadly bundled with some boring story elements and barebones gameplay.Īnd it’s with that said that I unfortunately cannot recommend Eastward. Exploring this city and seeing all the characters, the small details, the coloring – that was some great stuff. It’s unfortunate, because chapter three also highlights the game’s biggest strength: it’s art and music. This becomes more prominent after you reach chapter three, which has you running to and from a city completing the most mundane of tasks It becomes this pattern of: read a bunch of dialogue, go from point a to point b, sometimes engage in combat there, more dialogue, head back to point a, more dialogue, and repeat. The entire thing is overwritten and prolonged, with too much unnecessary dialogue, tons of slow panning camera shots dragging out scenes, and a surprising lack of substance given the sheer amount of words used in the game’s conversations.īundle this with the gameplay and you get a pretty boring game loop. The plot and setting are fine (and were actually part of the reason for why I was interested in even starting this game), but there is so much filler that any interest I had in the characters or where the story was going quickly dissipated. Conversations or scenes that could be cut to just a few lines are instead extended to last for dozens and it’s honestly worse than some of the bloated visual novels I have read. You get this really cool setting and base plot and then an overall story that moves at glacier pacing and with some of the most overwritten dialogue I have ever seen in the genre. As a visual novel fan, I am very used to this approach, but at the same time, that also makes me very susceptible to poor writing and that is unfortunately the case with Eastward. You unlock new weapons as the game goes on, but instead of being better weapons, they’re just more gimmicky and clunky compared to the one you started with that does the same job in half the time.įortunately, the gameplay makes up a mere fraction of the experience – the bulk of your time (like 80% or so) is going to be spent reading dialogue and going through the story. You simply hit your one button to swing at things until they are dead. I mean, the puzzles are decent enough, but the combat is laughable. It’s less “good” and more so just “basic”, without much depth or really anything noteworthy about it. In reality, it’s more of a visual novel that just happens to have a little bit of Zelda -like action RPG gameplay and some puzzles too. Because if you look at the trailer and the screenshots and all that, you might get the impression that this is some sort of Zelda -like action RPG. Okay, first things first – it’s important to understand what exactly this game is before going into it.
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