Trek to Yomi

Trek to Yomi honors all its best references and the result is an aesthetically brilliant game, with a solid combat system (even if it may seem repetitive in some parts), a safe exploration model and a narrative cadence faithful to the great works of the genre. As a whole, a worthy and memorable experience.

Trek To Yomi is what happens when you’ve got a compelling creative vision, and build a game around it, rather than the other way around. Everything you see, sense and experience in this game contributes to the overall experience, with absolutely no fat or waste. It’s intense, dark, and unforgiving, but it’s also the kind of haunting experience that will stay with you for a long time to come. If Menchiari continues to work with the right developers, and continues to deliver to this standard, he’s going to be one of the all-time great video game artists.

Trek to Yomi is a short but sweet action game and a love letter to 1960's era Japanese cinema.

Trek to Yomi is a game that recreates the samurai movies with Akira Kurosawa in the lead, it has a black and white aesthetic with great camera shots. The gameplay forces you to calculate each movement of the characters. It's like any other revenge story but it will keep you interested. This game is another strong candidate for best indie of the year.

Short but ever-so-sweet, Trek to Yomi is a pretty linear affair that respects your time. The combat is nuanced, evolves over time and is entertaining to learn. Small bursts of exploration are rewarded with collectables and upgrades but your main path is never obscured. It's cinematically beautiful and what's done with perspective and setting up each scene is really unique. Trek to Yomi is unlike anything else I have played recently, it's not bloated, pure and I appreciate that a lot.

At eight hours in length on a single playthrough Trek to Yomi is a compelling enough story that makes strong use of cinematic techniques to tell a samurai tale in a novel way. Its approach could easily be imagined on the silver screen but its interactive medium makes for a compelling combat-heavy side scroller with enough mechanical depth to warrant multiple playthroughs.

If you would call Trek to Yomi a poor man’s Ghost of Tsushima, you’d be gravely mistaken. This game „emulates“ an old-style Japanese samurai movie to perfection. While the combat is a bit clunky and the game is not that long, the overall experience is excellent and easy to recommend to anyone interested in such a theme.

Trek to Yomi is a marvel that uses its black and white art style, wonderfully designed environments, and Japanese setting to convey the spirit of samurai tales better than many games employing color and full 3D. The game would be perfect if it had better combat animations.

Trek to Yomi is a challenging, relatively quick trip to the past that is sure to entertain fans of old samurai films. The mechanics are easy to pick up, but difficult to master. The story is engaging, and surprisingly branches with different endings. With a campaign length of around 5 – 7 hours for most players and priced right at $19.99, this is a game that doesn’t overstay its welcome. Repeating sections is not easy with no real save management, and the 2D combat may not appeal to everyone, but it’s hard to ignore the authentic look and feel that such a design choice adds to Trek to Yomi. If you’ve got a day or two to spare, this is one to not overlook.

Trek to Yomi is a game that lives up to its samurai film inspirations in a way that few others do. Endings that are a little too tidy and a few compromises in game design mean it doesn’t quite leave the impact it should, but the trade off is a game that’s a lot more playable and “fun” than it might otherwise have been—for better or worse. I’d still love to see how Leonard Menchiari’s original, presumably much less accommodating vision might have turned out, but Trek to Yomi is nonetheless an impressive game and a worthy homage to the samurai cinema classics.

There's no shortage of reasons to praise Trek to Yomi. The aesthetics, the combat, the soundtrack, not-so-complex puzzles that come up in the second half of the game. We're talking about a fundamental title for fans of samurai stories, despite the fantastic elements.

A short but sweet adventure, you might replay Trek to Yomi to collect all of its collectibles and upgrades, perhaps even on a harder difficulty to test your skills. It has multiple endings to discover, too. And so for its modest price it’s easy to recommend to action adventure fans, especially if they also love samurai movies. Its stunning presentation is just the icing on the cake.

Trek to Yomi has been a game that I quite enjoyed from the moment I started it, until the end credits were rolling in front of me. What I would tell you again is not to expect a title as sophisticated in its core mechanics as we have seen in other similar ones, here, the experience is rather focused on its own visual and sound presentation. If you are one of those who love to be consuming indie experiments, it goes without saying that you should try the new Devolver as soon as you have the opportunity. In case you are one of those who was waiting for a game full of action and frenzy, I am afraid that you will not find it here.

Black and white graphics, traditional music and combat system, based on parries and counterattacks, make Trek To Yomi the closest experience to classic samurai films. A beautiful, yet short, experience.

Enjoyable to play and absolutely beautiful to look at, Trek to Yomi is a perfect homage to a piece of Japanese film history and culture. Linked as much to the world of the living as to the land of the dead, the protagonist's journey does not offer particularly surprising narrative implications, but despite this it lets itself be followed and is the backdrop to a playful and audiovisual experience in the name of historical fidelity. Rich in breathtaking views and long shots capable of enhancing an exploratory component not free from imperfections and the beauty of very evocative scenarios, Leonard Menchiari's adventure has been able to intrigue us with his combat system which, while relying on choices that are not always in focus, made you feel like real samurai. Fans of Kurosawa's works, as well as those looking for a style full of style but with more staid rhythms, would do well to wear the kimono and leave with Hiroki.