Are Almost Perfect Games Worse Than Good Games? (Eastward Review)
100You can buy the game here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/977880/Eastward/
background music: https://joelcorelitz.bandcamp.com/track/ni-hao
Eastward is a nearly perfect game. It's as if it was engineered in a lab to be Game of the Year Material. It's a single player adventure puzzle game centred around a father figure taking care of a "chosen one" girl.
I have started so many reviews for Eastward over the last two years I'm still not sure where to start with it. But the trailer for the new Octopia DLC came out the other day so I figured now's as good a time as any to flop my bare ass out there to talk about it.
Made by three buddies in Shanghai it takes inspiration from earthbound and 2D Zelda. It has light combat and puzzles punctuated with breath of the wild cooking. It's not scaring anyone away with it's skill curve but it will kill you enough to make you feel bad ass after defeating a boss. Likewise puzzles will give you the illusion that your smart which is all I ever want in a videogame. Because after going to the fridge this morning to look for my undies I sure need something to make me feel smart.
Mechanically your hot swapping between the two leads, one armed with a frying pan and guns and the other with a ranged magical stun which has a crazy amount of applications during exploration. I could charge my phone or bring my dead dog back to life if I shoot em enough with this magic I swear.
It's all just enough friction to give you time to take in the incredibly lush world they've spread out in front of you. The visuals are as decadent as melting an entire block of butter onto a single slice of toast. My arteries are quivering in excitement just thinking about it.
The story is chopped into distinct chunks based on the places you visit and it's totally immersive in it's world building. The characterisation is on point and the story gets surprisingly dark.
This game got me to do all the feelings. If I had to review it with emoji I'd end up using most of them.
The end of Eastward punched a hole in me and now it's getting a cute farming sim alternate universe full of characters I got invested in. Maybe if this does well we can get some stardew style DLC for Alien: Isolation.
The music is incredible and has been one of the default soundtracks of my house, and I think that's part of the reason this game has pestered me for so long. So let's get into what's bothering me.
There are certain pacing moments where the game either feels slightly too rushed or conversely like it's padding for time to hit it's 30 hour gameplay goal. thats not even mentioning this game also contains an entire other game. It's a dragon quest inspired roguelike jrpg called earth born. This game must have got council consent to build entirely on the nose.
The pacing issue isn't the majority of the game, but it comes hot on the heels of two spectacular story chunks that floored me. It's such a finely tuned perfect product that the slightest issue is so easy for a reviewer to spot and pick away at. And it's a good thing too cause otherwise you'd have to give it a perfect ten. And perfect tens are reserved exclusively for Alexandra Daddario
If this same issue was plopped into a game racked with as many design flaws and narrative inconsistencies as something like Starfield it wouldn't even be mentioned. You'd have such a hard time getting through all the issues with that game that you just end up saying "yeah it's pretty fun if you let it be" in a high pitched voice and leave it at that.
What I'm trying to say is Eastward should have been a worse game, so people could say it's a great game. Instead of what it really is, a nearly perfect game.