Eastshade

Theres a bug at the start of the game that stops you from saving and softlocks you, forcing you to reset your save file and start from the begining. I ran into it twice and im considering giving up on this game. I really really want to enjoy and recomend this game but it is literally unplayable for me. :(

I love the concept—a game about exploring and meeting interesting people and painting beautiful things—and the setting and characters are charming (though anthropomorphic primates can often seem a little Uncanny Valley). But so far there just… isn't enough to do? I can't paint much, because I'm limited by supplies. (Also the “painting” is really just taking a cropped screenshot. I don't have to do anything to make it work. I think I wanted some sort of minigame, or at least more choices to make about the composition.) I've already talked to basically everyone in town, and done favors for a few of them, and I still don't have a coat for the cold or enough money to pay the toll to go to Nava. Nor can I avoid paying the toll, even though the bridge seems unguarded. In most games, you'd be able to sneak across, or swim across, or persuade the guard to accept an IOU, or something. But in this one, you just [i]have to pay the toll[/i] and that's that. When faced with a problem, you must solve it in [i]precisely this way[/i]---which more or less defeats the purpose of being an open-world RPG. This also gets at what feels like a deeper structural problem with the game: [b]There just aren'…

Relaxing, simple, combat-free RPG. Upfront, this is a very basic RPG. No skill trees or similar, and not a lot of demand on you - puzzles and obstacles are solved one way, don't think you can climb over fences instead of finding a key to a door, is what I mean. This is a game that's intended to be a simple stroll around a beautiful world with fairly basic RPG gameplay, and it succeeds at doing that. This isn't Kingdom Come Deliverance II or Skyrim or similar, so don't expect that kind of scale (there's a reason you're not paying £60 for it). The story is simply that you've come to the island of Eastshade, an island your mother loved, to explore and paint. Along the way, you meet people, do simple quests, and traverse the world, including finding some absolutely gorgeous hidden areas. As you progress, you get better transport (bike, boat), which will help you move around faster and to wider locations. I find the game absolutely lovely to look at, the music is soothing, and even though the NPCs aren't particularly fleshed out, they're still cute and I found interactions fun. I do wish there was more rain, as that's the weather I find the most relaxing. There's one bout of rain …

This is a great game, I'm playing it with my 9 year old daughter to see if she likes this sort of game that will make her think and enjoy the story rather than the type of games they play on ipads. I'd actually play this alone!

One of the best atmospheric exploration games, with beautiful storytelling.

This review will have spoilers. This review will be in-depth. 5/10 for $25 8/10 for $15 10/10 for $10 I have a mixed review, but an overall positive one. I have fully played it and have done all but 5 of the achievements. I was excited to complete the game on stream, so I wasn't thinking about achievement hunting at the time. This was the first game I believe the developers released, other than the one that was introducing this world that came out in 2017, which I think was possibly the developer learning how mechanics worked in order to create THIS game. THIS world is a small open world map. You basically travel a very small island you get shipwrecked on. It is NOT a large game by any means. I finished it in 3 streams. (Maybe 15 hours worth, but I was flailing around. Now that I know what to do, it probably would be a quicker game like 7 hours, 10 hours max.) There are 2 towns you will be in, Lyndow and Nava. Lyndow is a small town with about 7 buildings. Only 3 of which have inhabitants. One inn, and 2 residencies. Nava is the "big" city, which I would say is about 3 times as big as Lyndow. That is to say, not very big, but bigger than the intro town. Your mission? Is to rel…