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  1. Eastward has all the signs of a passion project: a small development team drawing some clear influences from classic 2D games with a ton of attention poured into the little details of the adventure. When you're so focused on a project though, you might end up losing sight of larger issues and forget to edit your work into the most polished version it can be. Eastward has some charming, unique ideas, but pacing issues and uninspired gameplay mechanics drag down the experience. You play as silent protagonist John, a stoic miner in an underground town who has adopted a mysterious little girl named Sam. Soon enough Sam begins to exhibit strange powers and the pair are banished from town to the surface world, a post-apocalyptic setting under the constant threat of deadly miasma. From here the duo travel from town to town and gradually learn more about who Sam really is. Emphasis on gradual, because Eastward has an extremely slow, meandering storyline that instead places emphasis on more picaresque interactions in each town. There is a huge cast of side characters and John and Sam are constantly getting involved in their lives. It's an odd structure that puts too much emphasis on side stories at the expense of the main narrative. It's like a TV show with a few too many filler episodes, despite the fact that the central mystery is under-explored. The quirky characters are definitely charming, but Eastward is in desperate need of some editing to tighten the story and mystery into something more cohesive rather than constantly throwing away its own momentum with little tasks like cooking the best possible meal or starring in an action movie. The gameplay is more or less top-down action-adventure, albeit with a very linear structure. John starts off equipped with a frying pan to bash enemies and gradually gathers a few more weapons to attack or solve puzzles, while Sam's powers can also be used for puzzles or for defensive purposes. You can swap between the two and separate them, which is sometimes necessary for puzzles. The combat in Eastward, though, is extremely underwhelming. Even when you've got a couple of weapons/tools at your disposal it never really evolves from "just whack enemies until they're dead." Early on, you can easily stunlock enemies by hitting them, so combat feels completely mindless, then when you start fighting stronger enemies that don't flinch from your attacks you're left with the basic loop of hit, walk away to avoid attacks, hit again. There's no dodge action or blocking mechanic so you're literally just moving away a bit, outside of an enemy's range. Fighting monsters never feels rewarding or exciting, and most of the time just walking around them makes a lot more sense than swinging away with a frying pan. You'll also do a lot of exploring in dungeon-like environments filled with simple switch puzzles or sometimes blockades that require a new weapon to get by. These puzzles are pretty simple as well, with solutions that should feel obvious to anyone that's ever played an adventure game like this, but I can't criticize the game too much for relying on tried and true adventure-puzzle mechanics. And when you need to use John and Sam separately, there are some satisfying challenges to overcome, they're just few and far between. There's also some light exploring you can do in the overworld, though be warned: the game's progression is highly linear and you can't return to previous areas. Try to explore as much as you can early on lest you hit a cutscene that pushes the story forward and you miss out on health upgrades or money. One thing that I do have to point out though: this game loves sending the player on back-and-forth fetch quests, i.e. go from point A to point B and back to point A with the only gameplay interaction being talking to NPCs. This comes back to the game's editing and pacing problems: sure the quirky NPCs are fun, but there are too many long stretches where you're either clicking through cutscenes or are simply walking to the quest marker indicated on your map. Obviously a game doesn't need to be 100% action all of the time, but too often the main path of Eastward just meanders and squanders any sense of urgency or momentum that the core mystery offers. I'll also mention that the game crashed on me fairly consistently every few hours. Turning the game off completely instead of putting the system to sleep seemed to help alleviate the issue at least. Thankfully the game does auto-save pretty frequently, so I rarely lost more than a minute or two of progress, but it was still a constant annoyance while playing. Eastward also features an entire mini-RPG within it called Earth Born. You can play it at specific televisions found in each city and also collect Pixball items to use within the mini-RPG. It's pretty neat to have an entire miniature adventure within the world of Eastward, and it's easy to kill time within it. If you're mostly sticking to the main story though, Eastward should last around 20 hours, more if you're spending a lot of time talking to NPCs and whatnot. The game's presentation is an obvious highlight. Eastward features some of the most beautifully detailed pixel art I've seen, with lovingly crafted scenery that adds so many fun little details to the world-building as well as tons of creative character sprites. The animation is frankly stunning—very rarely do you see such detailed, fluid animation for pixel art, not to mention so much of it. There aren't just a couple of all-purpose character animations here: there are a surprising amount of animations that are only there to add personality, and all of them are fun to see. The soundtrack is also well done with some clear influence from classic games. The music can be a little inconsistent though, and not in terms of quality but just in terms of sound balancing. Sometimes the background music is so understated that you forget it's there at all. Eastward is a clearly ambitious game that tries to explore a unique, detailed world in its own way. The approach misses the mark a bit though, and the game's good ideas are marred by a poor sense of pacing that could have used a lot more editing to tighten up the whole experience. The gameplay leaves something to be desired as well, with bland combat and decent but not terribly inspired puzzle design. The visual design adds a ton of charm though, and if you're willing to sit through a lot of slow, drawn out scenes—both cutscenes and gameplay—Eastward's unique atmosphere has its appeal. Rating: 6 out of 10 Frying Pans
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