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| Trek to Yomi - Before You Buy |
today, we're just gonna do a quickie. We're gonna take a look at "Trek to Yomi." I've been playing this. I'm two playthroughs in.
This is a game now available on PC, Xbox, on Game Pass, too, and PlayStation platforms. It's 20 bucks.
It's not a super lengthy experience, but it's a cinematic, beautiful, cool, stylized one with some disappointing gameplay behind it. Now, as you can see onscreen here, this is actually the PC version I captured. This is a 2.5D, fairly linear, action, cinematic thing.
You progress fairly linearly with occasional optional routes and secret areas. And no story spoilers, but the general setup here is you're playing as Hiroki, a young samurai trainee who goes through a tragedy and then you fast-forward to being an adult badass samurai who goes on an adventure that quickly descends into complete madness.
Now, the story embraces some classical Japanese folklore, and frankly, it's pretty simple but also pretty interesting. The questions it gently pokes at, like the clash of duty, honor, love, and just survival are pretty cool. And it's all presented extremely well. It's really fun to walk or run through all these incredibly detailed environments. Whether the camera is up close or all the way zoomed out, the graphics on display here are really impressive and detailed, and everything is pretty smooth.
I didn't really have any technical issues. Now, the graphics go hand in hand with the style here, black-and-white film grain that actually looks really damn good. It doesn't just feel like a cool filter. It feels like an integral part of the visual design and graphics. The way this game uses light and dark, coupled with the cool camera perspectives, is straight up really incredible to look at and play through.
And if you like this type of stuff, it makes for a really fun experience. So, yeah, I guess the game is technically just kind of ushering you from left to right to see some cool things, but there are plenty of other great games that do this well, like "Limbo," "Little Nightmares."
There is a market for these types of games, and I think "Trek to Yomi" is a mostly strong example. The style on display here is awesome, and the cutscenes are cool, some of the bad guys are cool, and I really like how it ended. If you like this stuff, it really is worth experiencing this cool little collection of samurai cinematic moments with compelling voice acting and some music. It's a nice little digestible experience. My first playthrough took me four and a half hours, but I also suck.
You might be a master pro gamer and beat it even quicker, but thankfully, it does have four difficulty modes. Now, with the cool factor, this game is actually a double-sided coin because a significant part of it is combat, and that's where I found the game the most disappointing. Combat is a basic block/parry system, heavy attack, a light attack, and a mostly useless dodge roll, and a button to switch facing right and left. There's projectiles and occasionally using the environment to your advantage, like slicing a trap to kill some enemies, but that's few and far between. It's all structured fairly well, at least.
As you progress and explore, your move set builds, and having more moves and combos and capabilities does help the combat out a little bit, you know, some cool stun combos setting you up for a cool finisher animation that'll give you some health back. And there are some important moves you shouldn't miss, like the ability to block people attacking from behind you automatically. You also progressively unlock a couple of ranged weapons, and exploring finds you extra ammo and carry capacity increases, as well as finding items that increase your health and your stamina, which can be pretty important in the challenging spots. This is all simple, but it works fairly well.
Now, the growing move set and combos are cool as a simple gameplay progression, but actually pulling it off is not. Something about the combat timing doesn't feel quite right. It's like something is undercooked here. It's hard to describe. It's floaty and chunky at the same time. Sometimes, attack animations are really stilted and slow with how they chain together, and you can see a new move clearly, awkwardly transition, and the timings and indicators are all off.
Now, I love a challenging game, and this game does have some challenging, good moments, but there is a level of frustration with combat input timings, and a really finicky perfect parry to strike that just feels so unsatisfying and then ultimately repetitive because a lot of it boils down to the same thing. There are only a few enemy types, and each has a repetitious pattern where you parry at the right time and use a certain attack that is good at cutting them down quickly.
It gets old fast, and I think part of the reason is because what I described before, none of it feels quite right, and most of the time, it's just not satisfying and kind of a buzzkill to everything else going on. There are moments, of course, and that's where you can see the potential, which almost makes it more painful. Sometimes, a really well-placed encounter with enemy placements, two perfect strikes to a finisher, when it's good, it feels good. But most of the time, it just felt kind of flawed and annoying, for lack of a better phrase.
And really, the more I learned new move sets and then practiced them and figured them out, the more I found myself just wishing for stronger gameplay overall, just better inputs, better timings, more interesting enemy types. It kind of bummed me out, especially 'cause the finishers can be really satisfying in conjunction with all the cool style. Everything is brutal and gory, and it's amplified by those cool locations and the visual effects. And I don't think it's like an, oh, you you don't get it, you're just bad at the game type of thing. It just doesn't feel quite right, along with some bosses towards the end that are just all cheese.
Even playing on the harder difficulties, I picked up on a bit more nuance to some of it all, but it didn't really make it any better. Maybe it's just me. It might not be you. I'm going by feel here. This is just my opinion. Now, I think it says a lot about the rest of the game, though. The style, the coolness, the structure, the pacing, the experience, all of that is great if you like this genre, and it sort of, not completely though, but sort of makes up for the stumbles in combat, enough where I think you should still check it out if you like these types of games. The stakes aren't super high, and I'd like to see what else this developer can cook up with this style.
Now, if you like the style of "Ghost of Tsushima," if you haven't been exposed to too many things like that and you wanted a game to go even more into that style, that vibe, if you like this type of classical Japanese stuff, then yeah, man, it hits all the right notes there. I've gone a long time without using the corny overused reviewer phrase. "It's a mixed bag," but hey man, this is a mixed bag. But again, it's just my opinion. The combat thing is really a matter of feel. So it might click with you more, or you might not be like me, where you don't think all the cool style and story is worth it.
But that's where we're at here. We've been playing a review copy, and that's the gist of "Trek to Yomi." But it is out today, so we wanna hear from you guys in the comments because this is a "Before You Buy." We give you pros, cons, and some personal opinion. So let us know yours.