Trek to Yomi

I'm a fan somewhat of this type of mysterious RPG but then various reviews which seemed to change perspective from release date changed my mind. Buying it recently on sale to make up my own mind put it to rest in terms of how good the game is. It is good. Sense of humour in the right place, nice turn of old film to stop frame animation sequences. Tricky combat, sensible levels and a good plotline. Does not deserve to be underrated this way.

As a huge fan of game's style movies, I strongly appreciate that Flying Wild Hog revived and brought this poetics into a computer game. I would overlook also a medicore gameplay. But here, the gameplay somewhere around fifth episode accumulates so much repetition that it become frustrating and significantly ruin the experience. Basically you are applying still the same think on same sequences of enemies where winning is kind of a random, again and again. Moreover, the story is somehow uninteresting, even the (good) black and white samurai movies always had something more than the style, e.g., "Seppuku" was more realistic and had social and psychological overlap, "Kiru" put more stress on humorous aspect and so on. Here, the story is so bland that it does not even motivate to go further, or to care about characters. It is a pity, with a more various and better designed gameplay and more interesting story, this would be my personal game of the year.

Style (Audio, Soundtrack, visuals) is overall superb. Story is great, perfect for Samurai Movie and Japanese history fans. Gameplay is OK, I decided to play on easy mode, enjoyed it perfectly this way.

Huge samurai movie nerd here. When I saw the trailer I just had to buy this game. I am the person this game is targeted at. And did I like it? Yeah mostly. In terms of visual storytelling this is a top notch. The visual effects reminiscing of old samurai movies, the usage of set pieces both static and dynamic to create breathtaking vistas, the character and environmental design and architecture and the story. And hey, your former swordmasters name is Sanjuro and resembles an aged up Toshiro Mifune. It is clearly a very faithful love letter to these movies. The combat fits into this aesthetic with enemies generally not having that much health and the core mechanics surrounding parrying and coutering, lots of blood, pained screams and death. The gameplay however is where the quality takes a pretty big dip. The gameplay consists of exploring fairly linear set pieces with some minor secrets to find. This is overall pretty enjoyable. The fixed camera is awkward at times but by being so it creates really nice scenes which your character traverses. The combat though is pretty clunky. There are certain parts that do not fit together and mechanics were not polished enough to work properly and consistently. Trek to Yomi is an experiment. A short visual experience with unpolished combat but extremely high quality set design. It stays faithful to the legendary directors such as Akira Kurosawa, but it fails to deliver on the interactive action part. I reckon if one day someone uploads a perfect playthrough it mirrors one of these movies. It almost seems like that would be the true purpose of playing and mastering this game, I hope to see that one day. But playing it casually is "merely" pretty enjoyable.

I can't really understand all the complains about the fighting system - it takes some time to master but at some point it begins to be a real fun. The story and the way it's being told brings to mind Kurosawa's movies. Framing, camera position makes it a real piece of art. A true gem.