Eastward feels like going back to the days of the 80s anime on VHS, where you could experience a clandestine and unusual medium that you won’t find anywhere else. As John and Sam, players have to travel east (whoa, that’s the title!) Through a strange and surreal universe. While the characters and the lore have a lot of passion and complete this journey with ease, the fights, puzzles and boss encounters leave something to be desired. An excellent score provides an incredible backdrop for pixel-perfect art and creates a quirky and enchanting atmosphere for this quirky role-playing game that openly pays homage to titles like Earthbound. In fact, there’s an entire game inside Eastward called Earth Born, complete with its own (in game currency) gacha system, which is a great thing if you just want to take a break from progressing the main story.
The story begins simply with a frying pan weapon to swing around secretly, a Zelda-like structure where you can get heart containers, find keys to move through dungeons, and switch characters to solve puzzles and fight battles. John handles the tough fighting initially, using ranged weapons and a few types of bombs to break through walls and take on bosses. Sam can manipulate the world with bursts of energy and receives even more powerful energy attacks that must be recharged before they can unleash them throughout the journey. The fight remains simple throughout the game and is not really satisfactory.
Many dungeons contain puzzle segments in which the player must control the characters separately and move them to interact with the environment in order to get past elevators, overgrowth, and a host of other obstacles. Most of these puzzles are straightforward to solve, but some involve enemies attacking your characters while they are defenseless (force you to switch controls between them) or involve time trials exceeding their greetings late in the game. Overall, John and Sam’s control feels fine both in and out of combat, but there are few really interesting boss encounters and puzzles, and these are mostly found in the late game.
Surprisingly, Eastward does not live and die from its struggles or riddles. Eastward is building a world that feels real, warm, and fascinating. Many game worlds are based on archetypal building blocks that fall back on established fantasy, sci-fi and other well-traveled areas. Refreshingly, Eastward goes in a bizarre and bizarre direction and took me on a ride where I never knew exactly where the journey was going. On this journey around the world, you escape a penetrating and deadly miasm. Sometimes they untangle other threads that lead you into the world of organized crime, concepts of time travel, the joys of simple farm life, and making movies with a downright unusual crew.
The locations and characters that fill these environments are unforgettable, and I wanted to explore the city thoroughly to make sure I spoke to every single NPC. I can’t remember the last time I did this in an RPG, and it’s testament to what a beautiful world Pixpil created. Those cozy lore elements probably would have worked with any art style, but Eastward’s combination of spectacular music and pixelated look creates an atmosphere that proves you don’t need 4K resolution or ray tracing to do something magical. Some of the coziness seeps into the gameplay with the cooking mechanics where you can prepare some amazing meals that offer strong buffs to take on the more difficult bosses. I would like to tell more about this world, but the less you know about Eastward, the more you get out of exploring this enchanting landscape.
While the fights are nothing special and the puzzles tire their greetings, Eastward’s characters, backdrops, and sounds create an unforgettable experience. If you’re looking for something quirky, captivating, and something surreal, you’ve found it.
