Eastward Reviews
Eastward: Octopia may not bring many new ideas to a crowded genre, but this is an impressively well-executed expansion that nicely ticks all the boxes for a satisfying and relaxing farm sim. Although it has some rougher edges, the decent gameplay variety, interesting story, gorgeous visuals, and surprising amount of content all come together to make this one an easy recommendation to any fans of the original Eastward. Even for those of you who fell off your playthrough of the original for one reason or another, we'd encourage you to consider coming back for Octopia-this is a much better-paced game and, some performance issues aside, it's lost none of the charm that made the original so popular.
Eastward has been in the works for a while. Finally, it's time to head eastbound across the train tracks to an action adventure game filled with stunning visuals and an endearingly quirky cast.
The fully realized world has its charm, but it hardly breaks the mold anywhere else. While it doesn't do anything necessarily offensive, it does demand more when the rest of the game is so well done. It's clear Pixpil have got the writing chops down, now let's tighten up some of the stuff around it.
An old-school mix of adventure and RPG in the immortal pixel-art 2D style. Only that compared to similar titles, Eastward can pull in completely providing great fun for more than a few evenings.
Review in Polish | Read full review
Eastward is a gorgeous looking adventure game that features a great mechanic of synergy-building between characters during fights and puzzle-solving, and a welcoming combat system. Its level design is mostly simple, but the settings look so beautiful it's worth just to marvel at the art style. While there are some performance issues on a television screen when there's a lot of characters on display at the same time and there's a lot of backtracking involved, Eastward is a very interesting and captivating experience for anyone looking for a good adventure game.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Whether you do or don’t recognize these callbacks, though, Eastward feels like a game charting its own course. Rather than the bucolic paradises of Studio Ghibli movies or the sword-swinging fantasy fare of Dragon Quest, the dominant aesthetic of the game is a sort of cutesy calamity. The apocalypse it depicts through gorgeous pixel-art graphics is vibrant, warm, and almost hospitable.
Worth playing for the atmosphere even though its pace and plot are uneven.
Eastward is a good game, very good even. While taking inspiration from certain models, he manages to show originality, in particular by staging an adventure advocating the importance of links with others. However, it's impossible not to experience some frustrations along the way.
Review in French | Read full review
Despite a few limits that stop it from becoming an instant classic, Eastward is a fun and relaxing ride that we believe it's worth taking for every 2D action adventure fan.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Eastward invites us to go on a unique and beautiful journey. The biggest highlight is the setting: the locations are fascinating and full of unusual and charismatic characters. The stunning pixel art look and attention to detail bring the world to life, making it very immersive. As an adventure, the game offers snippets of exploration punctuated by puzzles and combats in which we alternate between two protagonists to advance. The dungeons are nice, but the simplicity and repetition of the mechanics makes them uncomfortable after a while. The real focus is on narrative with numerous non-interactive scenes and a story full of mysteries. Unfortunately, the balance is not good, resulting in too many drawn-out moments and dialogues that barely develop the plot. Even so, Eastward manages to transport us to a peculiar universe with its exceptional setting. The game is far from perfect and may require insistence for some players, but it is still a unique and immersive experience to some extent.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Eastward contains phenomenal art and colorful writing, yet the plot meanders breezily from moment to moment with little care for pacing and an unoriginal core storyline. Factor in average combat and puzzle-solving and a couple bugs that should be addressed, and Eastward is not quite as fun to play as it could be. That being said, a lot of people are going to fall completely in love with it anyway for the things it does right, and you might be one of them.
Overly beautiful graphics, overly long dialogues.
Review in Turkish | Read full review
This is an impossible game to rate on a numbered scale. The score below ultimately reflects an arbitrary placement, one that makes the game seem merely middling when it’s really like a full-course meal that was delicious but an absolute pain to work through. Eastward is far from the YIIK class of terrible “Earthboundlike” games, and certainly deserves more attention than that mess. If you have a lot of patience, this is an easy recommendation. And if you have none, I would stay far away. I’m not sure if I’ll ever head Eastward again, but the journey will always remain fresh in my mind.
PixPil deserve to have a stellar career ahead of them following the release of this game, and as long as they can keep releasing games that have even half of Eastward’s visual individuality, compelling narrative and satisfying pan-smacking action, then the studio will be without a doubt one to keep an eye on. The apocalypse might be old news now, but Eastward shows other games exactly how it's done when it comes to presenting dystopia in a charming, fascinating light-hearted way.
Eastward is a charming RPG with a colourful cast of characters, but unfortunately leaves a lot of questions left unanswered. However that doesn't mean you should skip this one, as up until the ending it is enjoyable.
Review in Dutch | Read full review
She has an immediate chemistry with Eastward's cavalcade of supporting characters, which are numerous and varied in their importance. I wish the game paid more mind to letting her character breathe, and allowing her to engage with the plot on her own terms. Instead, I'm left feeling like Eastward is a bunch of beautiful puzzle pieces that fail to come together.
All the pieces are here for an engaging JRPG with real-time dungeon action, but weak writing and repetitive gameplay drag down what could have been an excellent game. If the aesthetic doesn't speak to the depths of your soul, you're better off skipping this one.
The 2D visuals are absolutely stunning, but the simplistic action and pretentious storytelling undermine what could have been a true neo-retro classic.
Eastward wouldn’t be this frustrating if it didn’t get so much right when the narrative stays on target. There are numerous moments here that are truly alive to the strangeness of this world that might have truly inspired our awe, even our empathy for the characters, if we weren’t also being saddled with the frustration of wondering when the game is going to get on with the program. The payoff for the player’s patience isn’t without its power, but it’s also a bit of a missed opportunity. There are riches aplenty scattered across its protracted campaign, but you may remember Eastward most for its disrespect for the player’s time.