Neawoulf
 
 
'Look behind you, a three headed monkey!'
Review Showcase
20 Hours played
After about 19 hours of fun i finished Eastshade and want to give you folks a little (probably very subjective) review, no spoilers of course:

Easthade is like a virtual vacation. It's a beautiful game, i expected a nice looking 5 hour walking simulator with lots to see but little to do, but Easthade is a lot more than that. It's like The Elder Scrolls mixed with Myst and lots of beauty instead of darkness, combat and politics.


What i liked:

- The peaceful, almost fairytale like atmosphere with lush vegetation and beautiful architecture. The music, the colors, the overall mood of the game is so insanely beautiful.
- You travel around, you paint, you talk to people who tell you interesting stories and give you interesting quests, you solve some puzzles, a bit of crafting. The gameplay is overall simple, but never boring.
- You can't die in this game which makes it very relaxing to play.
- The art style and world design are great. Not the highest texture resolution or the highest polygon count, but the great design makes these technical details almost obsolete. Eastshade looks awesome.
- The voice actors are doing a very good job. Lots of different characters, different accents, different moods. Very well done, not a single case where i thought: "Mh, maybe they should have asked someone else to record this."
- No cutscenes and scripted out of body events around every corner that interupt the flow of the game. Many modern games do that every few minutes and i have to admit: Sometimes that's really annoying. Eastshade always keeps you in control of your characters and i really like that design choice.
- It's not a short game. There is so much to do and so much to discover. Took me almost 20 hours to finish the game.
- There is some progression system that keeps you motivated. You unlock area by area during the game by solving quests or buying and building tools. So there's a lot of stuff to discover even later in the game.
- Did i mention the great soundtrack and the immersive sound design?
- The main story was simple, but it felt good and i liked the ending.


What i didn't like:

- The performance on my system (Ryzen 1600x, 16 gb, GTX 1070) could have been better. Mostly it's fine at 1080p and 60 fps, but there are areas with some nasty framedrops. It doesn't make the game unplayable (there is no need for quick reactions), but the framedrops combined with some input lag just don't feel good.
- The Unity Engine. I have to admit: I hate that engine for several reasons. Main reason is that there's always trouble with the USB control devices connected with the PC. Since i play racing and flight simulations i have lots of these devices and i have to unplug or disable them all to play this game. Otherwise Unity seems to think "oh, here is a controller, lets take some completely random input from it and ruin the players experience by letting the character rotate all the time" ... yeah, that's Unity. Didn't bother me though since i unplugged and/or disabled all my usb controllers. But this is imho still a serious issue in many games based on the Unity engine.
- Another Unity related issue: There are some closed indoor places where some random light from outside seems to cast reflections on walls. It's not pretty, but it's rare, so i can live with it.
- Some minor bugs with collision meshes. Nothing gamebreaking though.
- The game had to end at some point (yes, this one is a joke ... it was so good, i was a bit sad at the end that there was nothing else to see and do)

Final words: If you like the world design in Morrowind and Oblivion, Mysts atmosphere combined with a fantasy/fairytale like peaceful experience ... this is the game for you. For me Eastshade certainly is one of the most beautiful games i've ever played. Like i've said earlier: For me it was like a virtual vacation in a beautiful land on my monitor. I can't wait to see more from these devs about this world. The lore could be a nice foundation for some very interesting novels. Maybe ... some day?