Eastward

Gorgeous pixel art, lovely music, mysterious story? Check, check, check. I thought I would have a great time with this game, unfortunately I'm not. The gameplay is mediocre (aiming that energy bubble is a challenge in itself), and some monsters are just irritating, especially when they spawn right under you. You're put in situations without explanation or do-over (I only realized I had to power strike the ball after the baseball game was over). You're often locked out of places without warning. And it's so chatty... twenty minutes of pressing a button for dialogues to more forwards is not the best use of my time. Well, it could be a good use of my time if the dialogues were witty or funny like in Death Trash or Disco Elysium. Right now I'm suffering through a "hide and seek" portion in a train, where you have to start all over when you are found. Riveting. Technically, I'm experiencing framerate issues with a GTX 1070. The game doesn't support 4K and in order to have a crisp image one needs to run in windowed mode in 720p and use "Lossless Scalling" (Available on Steam) to have it blown up to 4K. I'm pretty far in the story, so I'm gonna finish it, but I don't think I'll play it again.

game is beautiful, love it, but what about updates? the latest game patch version is 1.0.5c... I bought the game a few minutes ago and was in 1.0.4.

I was looking forward to this and hoping for a good time. But it's just.. so boring. This is not a videogame. This is a story being told to you, that you occasionally get to play. Every conversation and cutscene takes forever. And I have no attachment to any of the characters. They're just 2D stereotypes and caricatures that would feel right at home in a kid's anime or light novel. I'm just waiting for each inane conversation and nonsensical cutscene to end. It's unbearable even after trying to put everything at max speed. This would be forgivable if the actual gameplay were entertaining. But the combat is dead simple and unsatisfying, there's so much backtracking, and it feels like a chore to complete. All this just to get back to another unforgivably long cutscene as your "reward" makes me dread both the gameplay as well as its inevitable end when more story comes around. I made it to chapter two before I gave up. Even the idea of reopening the game to try to keep going fills me with so much dread I can't power through.

As far as I'm concerned this game's presentation is an easy 10/10: the graphics are detailed and varied and the soundtrack is really solid. The gameplay is mostly solid and responsive. The reason for my "low" score is that unfortunately this game is incredibly incoherent. The progression of the story is a mess, indulging in displaying its quirky characters and zany situations at the detriment of the pacing, and the gameplay is interrupted too often and for too long. There are plenty of points of no return, which cast a constant shadow of doubt over everything you're doing: will I have the time or chance to explore this area again? Am I missing anything? Is it normal that I haven't found an upgrade station or a new weapon for so long? It's a game that brims with love and passion, and criticizing it feels like kicking a puppy, but playing it often feels like a chore. If this studio was tasked with remaking old SNES games it would be nothing short of a dream come true, but if they want to work on an original title they seriously need to find a way to correct their course.