Trek to Yomi

Trek to Yomi's outstanding visuals and presentation are quite enough to make up for its fairly straightforward and simplistic gameplay.

Another growth and revenge story set in ancient Japan, with gorgeous B&W visuals and cinematic slasher gameplay, flawed by input-lag issues and minor balancing issues.

Menchiari and the Polish division of Flying Wild Hog manage to offer a very personal experience, a tribute to the samurai cinema of the last century that will delight all those who enjoyed films like Yojimbo at the time and that could well work as a sequel to Rashômon.

Trek to Yomi is a very beautiful cinematographic work. It doesn't have to pale before the giants who inspired it. Its use of the camera and black and white grain allow it to present us with particularly sumptuous paintings. Add to that some eye-popping fight choreography and you've got a little nugget of artistic mastery. If a game was judged by this, Trek to Yomi would undoubtedly top the charts. But unfortunately, the game is, in comparison, too little pushed in terms of gameplay. Its superfluous choices and its repetitive fights prevent it from expressing his full potential. That said, it is still worth the detour and even more so if you are sensitive to this kind of video game work.

Trek to Yomi is a no-brainer download for anyone wanting a simple yet cinematic action game that harks back to classic PC adventures and 2D blade-action titles.

While Trek to Yomi excels at drawing the player in, it struggles to retain that level of engagement and engrossment throughout.

If you are at least a little sympathetic to the aesthetics of the samurai cinema, Track to Yomi certainly deserves to be tried. Preferably on a big screen with good sound.

Trek to Yomi is a beautiful and sombre title that is full of death and destruction. Its story is amazing, as is the cinematic. However, the controls, combat, and repetition hold it back and are disappointing.

Despite its repetition and frustrations, I warmed to this grainy, gore-soaked journey after the tedious early hours. Thanks to a smattering of player choices, the game offers just enough of a hint at player agency to make you feel involved in the narrative, too, giving Trek to Yomi’s surrealist slaughter a sense of purpose. There’s a strong argument that a Japanese-made attempt at this genre would come closer to doing the samurai fantasy justice, but as with the many Japanese takes on virtual America, there’s a schlocky charm to Yomi’s tropey inauthenticity nonetheless.