Eastward

Eastward opens with a genuinely charming premise — a gruff excavator and a mysterious young girl navigating a declining underground society — and for its first several hours, it's easy to see why so many reviewers reach for comparisons to beloved Mother and Earthbound-style RPGs. The question this review has to answer honestly is whether that early charm sustains itself across the whole story, and the game's own reviewers give a remarkably consistent, if mixed, answer.

Some of the best pixel art the genre has produced

There's no real dispute about Eastward's visual and audio craft. Every enemy and NPC gets a unique sprite rather than a palette-swapped template, towns and cities are distinct enough to feel like genuinely different places rather than reskinned versions of each other, and the music carries the game's mood consistently from its cosier early towns to its more unsettling later areas. This is the kind of detail work that explains the game's devoted following on its visuals alone, and it holds up throughout rather than front-loading its best work into the opening hours.

Where the story loses its footing

The honest, widely repeated complaint concerns pacing and narrative coherence. A large share of reviewers, including many who describe genuine early affection for the game, report the story becoming increasingly chaotic through its middle chapters — several specifically cite a slower stretch around the game's casino and circus sections as the point where momentum stalls. A related complaint concerns the ratio of dialogue to actual play: cutscenes are unskippable and frequent, and more than one reviewer describes stretches that feel like reading punctuated by short bursts of gameplay rather than the reverse. Some frame this as the game trying to be several distinct things at once — a gritty sci-fi narrative, a JRPG homage, a puzzle-driven dungeon crawler — without fully reconciling them into one consistent pace.

Mechanics that arrive, by most accounts, a little late

A related thread notes that Eastward's most satisfying gameplay systems — its puzzle and combat variety — genuinely improve as the game progresses, but several reviewers wish that improvement had arrived earlier, given how much of the early-to-mid game leans on dialogue and exploration over active play. That's a fair, specific pacing critique rather than a claim the mechanics themselves are weak.

Final verdict

Eastward is a genuinely beautiful, well-composed pixel-art adventure that a large and consistent share of its own reviewers say doesn't fully deliver on its narrative promise once the middle chapters arrive. It settles at 7 because the visual and audio craft are exceptional enough to carry real recommendation weight on their own, while the story pacing complaints are specific, widely repeated and fair enough that this review can't simply wave them away in favour of the game's undeniable charm. Go in for the art and the opening hours, and temper expectations for how the story holds together as it goes.

Price and review data checked 5 August 2026.

If you'd rather your adventure's pacing stayed in your own hands rather than a fixed narrative script, Wanderer lets you set your own rhythm entirely.