Eastern Exorcist
- NeX
- Mar 29
- 4 min read
Introduction
Disclaimer: It’s heavily inspired by Eastern culture, specifically Chinese. As I am not quite knowledgeable about it, some errors may occur. They are not intentional, and if you let me know what they are, I will gladly correct them.
Eastern Exorcist is a 2D side-scrolling action-adventure game. It has two separate stories in a unique fantasy world filled with demons and spirits.
Story
The first story follows Lu Yunchuan, an exorcist from the Cangshan school. He and his fellow disciples were looking for King Mandrill when they spotted and captured a fox demon. Everyone but Lu wanted to kill her, but as their senior, his word was final, and they let her go.
They split up to search the mountain, and upon returning to meet, Lu finds his party brutally murdered. Only one other member survived and claimed the fox demon had alerted the king, and they were ambushed. Lu carries his disciple back home.
Back at the Exorcism school, Liu is expelled. He then seeks to prove his innocence, while also carrying the ashes of the fallen disciples back to their home villages.
The story then unravels over 3 acts, which I will not spoil for you. You will help villagers, explore mystic caves, solve mysteries and much more.
The second story follows half-demon, half-human siblings as they attempt to become full-fledged demons. You control the younger sister, Xiahou Xue. The prologue puts you into the snake castle, trying to steal the magic artifact from the snake king. As you succeed, the brother heads off first.
What you didn’t know is that the artifact is cursed and has poisoned Xiahou Qing, Xue’s brother. Snake King retrieves the jewel, but leaves the curse to be resolved by the Xiahou family. Xue and her brother (now in spirit form) head out to search for the cure.
You visit some of the same locations as in Lu’s story and find more details about the world. Some quests are complementary and let you find additional information about different characters. Xue’s story also unfolds over 3 acts.
Gameplay
Gameplay is pretty standard for a 2d game. You go from room to room, battling a predetermined set of enemies, trying to reach the quest boss. Upon defeating bosses, you unlock more areas, receive key items and progress further into the story. There are optional quests as well, giving you additional information about the world.
Combat
This is where the game shines the most. Combat feels great, animations are good, parries are tight, and abilities flow well. Even the enemies are fun to fight, from the basic grunts, flying bats, ranged casters, to huge bosses. When you defeat an opponent, you have to dispel it, or it will return with improved stats, and you have to fight it again. Upon a second defeat, they dispel automatically.
Characters have the same controls but play completely differently. Lu focuses more on the parry system and punishing enemies with precise timings, while Xue’s aerial combos can decimate even the most powerful foes in seconds.
These playstyles are further diversified by the Skills. It’s up to you to choose which skills you want to play with; you can equip up to 4 and change mid-combat. They range from enhancing your attacks with elements (Fire for Lie, Lightning for Hue), to teleporting around, to using summons.
Additionally, once you beat the bosses in story mode, you unlock a more difficult version you can fight when resting at shrines. These versions won’t stagger and have timed challenges. Upon defeating them, you unlock special boss items you can equip, which will provide some minor bonuses.
Character
You can level up your characters at shrines. Standard level-ups increase your health and damage, so you don’t have to worry about min-maxing your characters. You can use Spiritual Energy to unlock ability aspects such as dispelling an enemy restores stamina, your combo finisher deals 50% more damage, or straight up a 5% damage increase.
Positives
Animations
Responsive controls
Balanced gameplay
Straightforward level-up
Negatives
Soft-locking bugs
Some translation errors
Feels like it's 2 games meshed into 1
Video, Audio & Sound
The story is shown as a Chinese Opera. So if you want animated cutscenes, this is not for you. The game looks good, animations are great, motion is fluid, and enemies are diverse but never look out of place.
Now the voices are in Chinese, which I didn't mind, but I can't really share any details as I'm not familiar with the language. For me, it sounded alright. Sound, on the other hand, was great, hitting enemies had weight, and all the minor things had appropriate sounds (resting, sheathing/unsheathing and similar).
Personal Thoughts
I loved playing this game. Took me a couple of attempts to get the flow of the game, but once it clicked, I was blasting through everything. Both characters are great; however, I did expect something with both of them at the end (Spoiler alert: It didn’t happen). Challenge runs are not too hard, fun to attempt, and even on hard difficulty, it never felt too difficult.
Conclusion
Eastern Exorcist is a fantastic game, slightly on the shorter side but with a very satisfying world and story. The combat is great, lots of options to play with. It has some replayability with the amount of stuff they put into it, but with 2 stories, you already feel like you are playing the game again…
Factors | Rating | Description |
🎮Gameplay | 8 | Best aspect of the game, fantastic combat |
🎧Music | 7 | Very adequate in all forms |
💲Price | 8 | 25 euros is the new norm for indies, at 15 its a steal |
🎰Overall Rating | 8 | Try it, it might surprise you |
Rating: 8/10
Gaming PC Specs
CPU: I5 14600 KF GPU: Nvidia RTX 5070
RAM: 32GB of DDR5 @5600Mhz
