I heard this game is like Skyrim but with painting
...and yeah I can see the similarities, a fairly big open world (though bit smaller and with a few bottle necks), exploration, stuffing your pockets with every grabbable item in sight (mostly plants in this case), and npcs with little and big quests.

Though the real star of the game is indeed the painting and beautiful world. You're a painter that travels to the land of Eastshade to fulfill the last wishes of your mother; To paint her favorite sights. Painting is your main tool to solve quests and earn money. It works much like screen capturing, frame the sight and watch your painting appear before your eyes. Painting comes at the cost of inspiration (which can be restored by drinking tea or beholding a beautiful sight), and a canvas (which can either be bought or made with materials. You can also paint over a painting). Anyone who enjoys taking screenshots will no doubt enjoy the painting mechanic, and may spark the enjoyment of screen capturing to those who don't normally do it. I dare say the biggest reward of a quest is not necessarily the money, but seeing the npc display your painting.

The world is fun to explore, you never know when you'll stumble onto a stunning sight that begs for a painting. (even if the painting is just for yourself) Extremely impressive for such a small studio.

The music is also lovely, it's not the most memorable (as in, I don't really find myself recalling much it outside of the game), but revisiting the ost has always been wonderful. (Such a rich cello and flute)

Alas not all is beautiful in Eastshade. The thing that brought it down for me was it's inhabitants. I am not talking about the visuals (though the monkey (and to a lessor degree the deer) people are pretty uncanny). There's like a certain underlining cynicism; not with all the characters, but enough to color the world grey. Eastshade also isn't free of it's own political and social woes and tensions that dimly reflect our world's own, but even ignoring all of that, there was still an odd subtle cynicism nearly everywhere you go. I'm certain that cynicism wasn't intentional, but yet there it was found.

While I am torn on the thought of a second play through, I found the first play through well worth it for fun painting, and exploring the beautiful land, and hearing the lovely music.

A very relaxing, sweet game with a nostalgic amount of jankiness <3

A super nice and peaceful RPG. Completely different to what is usually out there to play.