Eastward

Pros: - good Legend of Zelda inspired gameplay - gorgeous pixel art - outstanding soundtrack Cons: - too many cutscenes that often drag for too long

Charming story, so-so combat, gorgeous graphics and art direction. The story doesn't explain everything, and there's seem to be some filler content, but it's quite charming nonetheless. The only gripe I had was having to backtrack a lot in some parts, like having to talk to a character, then go back from where I came to see some dialogue, then go back to the place I just left to see the rest. It doesn't happen often, but it breaks the flow. Other than that, the pixel art and the art direction were incredible. As someone else already said, it looks like a pixelated version of a Ghibli movie. If the story didn't have pacing issues, it would've been a 5-star for me.

Lovely graphics, amazing music that brings back memories of Final Fantasy VII's soundtrack, likeable characters. The overall atmosphere has a very Ghibli movie feel, and the story is substantial.

The game's been updated to version 1.1.5, and as far as I can tell, that's the latest version on ANY platform. Visually, the game is akin to Mother 3 (the sequel to Mother 2 a.k.a. Earthbound), and plays a lot like a Zelda game. John eventually has access to 4 different weapons, and Sam gets up to 4 different psychic abilities; maybe not as much as your typical Zelda game, but you still get plenty to play with, and you'll use these weapons and abilities to solve relatively basic environmentally-based puzzles, besides just fighting. The pace with which your characters move and attack is relatively fast and responsive. The text-scrolling speed CAN be considered slow; you're just going to have mash "X" (or "A") to speed up and advance the dialogue a lot, and you're just going to have to be patient with it. The game's post-apocalyptic world is interesting to explore (especially the towns and cities), and the soundtrack is really catchy. Search "Eastward Full Intro Cutscene" on YouTube; if that doesn't get you psyched to play it, nothing will (SHOULD be one of the trailers available on this game's page, why isn't it?) For a Chinese game developer, they're definitely taking a lot of queues from Japanese game design; heck, there's even a Dragon Quest-styled RPG side game you can play, too.

The game is very beautiful but every cutscene lasts litteral hours. The text is very slow to display, making it even more boring. And you have to press a key every 30s, so you can't just do something else. I would still have loved the game if the gameplay was worth it but this really feels like a game for young kids where it's impossible to die. On top of that it kept crashing every now and then, making me go through extremely long cutscenes all over again. Even the game start time is long because there's 8 logos that you can't skip (removing the files from the disk breaks the game).