Eastward video game1/7/2024 ![]() However, there isn't nearly enough space in your backpack to store your cooked items or enough stoves to cook at, making it hard to heal up in dungeons.Īs a tribute to RPGs of the '90s, Eastward is wonderful, with an atmosphere to be savoured. ![]() Cooking and finding new recipes to create healing items is another fun distraction and features a lovely bouncy animation that's as joyous as the one in Breath of the Wild. It's surprisingly deep, and hearing various characters enthuse about it on your journey makes the world Sam and John are exploring feel even more real. John's stoic steadfastness stands out because he's the only one who never speaks.Īlongside the main story are terminals that let you play an old-school 8-bit RPG called 'Earthborn' that features classic turn-based combat like in early Dragon Quest games. It’s a shame as individually the cast are all brilliant, but they have to compete with each other for your attention. They're unnecessary and overbearing-without this whole bit out the story would flow a little better. Relatively early on John attracts an admirer called Uva, and the romance element is sudden and simplistic, with a group of grannies who meddle in it, each one needing to have their own 'bit' as part of the comedy. Plus, getting to really know certain characters only for them to never be mentioned again means it becomes hard to feel attached to anyone. It feels like being hit with a constant wall of chatter where it's hard to tell what's important, because everything is given equal weight. The downside is that when everyone in the room is weird and kooky, no one really stands out. These are essentially play-to-win, gacha style microtransactions, but if Eastward is trying to make a point about their use in games with real money it doesn’t come across clearly.Eastward is brimming with unique characters, and even NPCs who are just going about their days get to shine. It’s not entirely retro though as you can retain newly recruited characters between runs and buy ‘Pixballs’ at random before starting. There’s even an entire game-within-a-game called Earth Born, which is a highly addictive roguelike dungeon crawler that looks and plays like an 80s era Final Fantasy. There’s a lot of blowing up obviously fragile walls with bombs and messing around with switches, but as with the combat there’s little substance or originality to any of the obstacles.Įastward also has lots of mini-games to punctuate different moments, and while none of them are very complicated the rafting, baseball, and cooking events offer a welcome change of pace. Or at least a Fisher-Price version of it. While John takes the lead in combat, Sam comes to the forefront when puzzle-solving, which, as you’ve probably guessed, is also inspired by Zelda. The combat is clearly inspired by Zelda, and like everything else looks gorgeous in action, but it’s ultimately very simple. Unlike EarthBound though you don’t fight them in turn-based combat but real-time, with John employing a range of melee and ranged weapons, starting with a frying pan, and Sam utilising her psychic powers to help him, with her ability to freeze them in place being especially useful. Just like EarthBound, enemies are all extremely silly, from flying, two-legged pigs to man-eating plants and frog people.
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