From: Leonard Menchiari, Flying Hog Games
For: PS4, PS5, XB1, Series S/X, PC
Rating: ★★★+
You know what? I’m going to say it. Black and white style games are still cool. While the medium of black and white being a necessity has long passed, there’s still some merit to going back into the past for ideas.
Trek to Yomi is a 2-D side-scroller with a distinct old samurai movie feel to it. From completely black and white visuals, to music reminiscent of the era, to Japanese voice acting, the game aimed for and succeeded in creating its aesthetic. I especially like how some screens in the game have a purely still camera, having some rather beautiful looking shots.
The combat is simple, yet effective. You have a light and heavy attack button, a block and parry button, and a button that turns you around, which you’ll be doing a lot to combat enemies on both sides. Variations on these attacks can be unlocked and performed with either timed button presses or pressing moving keys at the same time, like pressing forward and light attack to do a stab instead of the usual slashes. It has a good feel to it, and while a bit overwhelming at times, is a solid combat system.
The areas between combat are usually just straight paths, which is a bit disappointing, though they are well crafted and nice-looking. There’s some light puzzle elements but these are so sparse that they’re almost not worth mentioning. There are some points where the path does split, but often this leads to an unlockable or an environmental trap to make a future battle easier, before forcing a backtrack to the main path again. It does feel like the game has built these lovely scenes but failed to connect them in a way that isn’t just a simple path.
Alongside the combat and exploration is a strong story holding it all together. You play as Hiroki, a young samurai in training defending his town, and you play him after he’s grown up and going to defend another town from bandits. There are a few branching paths later on in the story as you have to choose between difference facets of being a person and an honour-bound samurai, adding some replay value as it’s a rather short game otherwise (about five hours).
The only thing that really annoyed me about the story was the fact that Hiroki seems to blame himself for a ‘‘mistake’’ he made, when it really wasn’t a mistake at all, nor something that could even be listed as his fault, as apparently the same outcome would have happened regardless. However, the game continues to insist that this is a mistake of Hiroki’s and it took me out of the experience a couple of times.
What kinda kills the game for me are the boss fights, in which blocking and parrying are immediately put to one side. Instead, you are expected to roll through the boss’ legs. This could be more forgivable if these bosses weren’t rather difficult, requiring multiple deaths to finally understand the patterns they use as they move quickly, attack quickly, and blocking won’t prevent damage from their attacks. The bosses that you can parry are also extremely abusable and fights with them end up with you spamming one really fast combo to lock them in.
Additionally, the side weapons were kind of useless. There’s a shuriken, a bow, and a gun, none of which I used much as the sword was decent enough for everything I fought, especially as the sword gets constant new attacks, whereas the side weapons just get capacity increases.
Trek to Yomi has a few bumps in the road in regards to some story beats, combat mechanics, and boss fights, but it’s held together by it’s generally solid execution throughout.
If you can deal with no colour for a few hours, Trek to Yomi is one to have a look at.
- By Michael Robertson
