Trek to Yomi Review: Is It a Good Game?

This Trek to Yomi review is a deep dive into a samurai side-scroller with spectacular visuals. Find out more about this captivating game, from great camera angles and a gripping revenge plot, let down a little by enemies who rapidly become monotonous.

Developer: Flying Wild Hog creator Leonard Menchiari

Publisher: Devolver Publications

Release date: 5th of May

Software: Windows

Available on: PC, PlayStation 4 & 5, Steam, GOG, and Xbox Game Pass.

Price: £15/€18/$18

Multiplayer: No

About this game

In an effort to defend his dying master, the young swordsman Hiroki has pledged that his community and his beloved people will be protected against threats. A lone samurai must voyage beyond life and death to face his fate and decide his path forward to success.

Trek to Yomi’s cinematic presentation combines breath-taking cameras and striking visuals in the spirit of traditional Japan Samurai movies for an authentic cinema experience. Its stylish combat engage vicious swordsmen and supernatural beings through a streamlined combat system based on traditional weapons.

The lone samurai must voyage beyond life and death

Trek to Yomi is a visually engrossed thrilling action adventure. Experience a heroic return to fulfill his failed promise of preserving those he promised. As a pledge to his dying Master, the young swordsman Hiroki vows to keep his town a safe place from the threat of his enemies. A lone samurai faces tragedy and faces duty to discover and decide his path forward.

The game is short, with the credits rolling in around three to six hours, but Hiroki’s voyage is packed with a touching story. The plot appears to be an age-old tale of retribution at first glance, but if you scrape under the surface, it transforms into an ethereal quest to dissect the nature of samurai society.

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Trip to Yomi Review: Critique on the Storyline

Now let’s bring this Trek to Yomi review to the game’s storyline.

The plot is your typical retribution story, replete with a stoic protagonist torn between duty and personal wants and a horrible childhood massacre in the first chapter. To be sure, it’s a cliché, and if you’ve ever seen a classic samurai film, you’ll recognize a lot of what happens. However, given all of the other ways this game pays homage to the classics that inspired it, an overly conventional story isn’t such a bad thing.

This mythic storytelling experience may feel like stepping into a warm bath filled with your favorite samurai-scented candles if that’s the kind of stuff you’re into. It has its twists and turns, and it did something unexpected on at least one occasion — moments that helped redeem an otherwise predictable plot.

We want this Trek to Yomi review to be as honest as possible. And to be honest, Trek to Yomi isn’t the most enthralling story. It’s effective as a stylistic framework, but it’s sluggishly paced and conceptually confused. It has its bits of interest, but you can sense it forcing you through beautifully appealing set pieces.

Trek to Yomi alternates between side-scrolling combat and fixed camera “exploration” sections. It uses its camera angles to provide the best views of its beautiful and haunting backgrounds. However, the exploration feels a little forced.

It is a linear game, but collectibles, upgrades, and traps can be triggered against groups of enemies if you look around the edges. It has a habit of saying things like “hurry, everyone is in danger” while urging you to examine every doorway for anything suspicious.

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Combat is never bad, but too much of it makes the plot incredibly simple.

Most of this feudal Japan game is spent slashing enemies in stylish combat with young swordsman Hiroki’s lethal katana. Light and heavy attacks, parries, dodge-rolls, and ammo-limited ranged weapons like a bow and shurikens are used to carve through each enemy encounter.

You could improve both health and stamina by exploring and finding pickups off the beaten path. As you progress, you’ll be able to unlock new combos, such as one that allows you to swing backward, which is useful for dealing with enemies who appear from behind. Another that starts with a heavy attack before transitioning into a series of lightning-fast strikes.

It’s not that the fighting is horrible; it’s just that it’s overly simplistic and doesn’t grow enough as you progress to keep things interesting. It’s also pretty similar to many other 2D action PC games, with no real hook or unique idea to set it apart from what’s already out there. It’s a good thing the journey is only six hours long because battle grows old in less than half that time, so it doesn’t have much of an opportunity to become frustrating.

Further critique...

While the actual enemy variety is diverse, the dozens of combat encounters per chapter can rapidly make even this large bestiary feel shallow. As the player is charged with killing many adversaries in a single playthrough, this is one of the few issues it faces. The issue stems from the fact that combat encounters become boring after each chapter.

Trek to Yomi’s stuns and finishers are one final aspect of the battle that could be criticized. These can help gamers speed through many confrontations by allowing them to effortlessly dispatch some of the more challenging adversaries. The criticism is that one early-game combo can rapidly paralyze and kill harder adversaries, allowing you to skip combat. It’s a terrific addition to the combat’s richness, but it has the potential to become the sole tool players need to complete the game.

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To continue with the Trek to Yomi elements that are lacking, many of the puzzles are simple enough that they appear unneeded. A couple is as simple as shoving a cart out of the way and going to the next screen. Other puzzles need you to locate glyphs and align them on a grid, but even these are uninspiring and simple to perform. These puzzles can also be brute-forced with minimal effort.

Take away...

We hope you enjoyed this Trek to Yomi review. We encourage you to give this game a try. It’s not perfect, but you’ll still have fun with it.

Trek to Yomi’s cinematic presentation is one of the game’s most appealing features outside of the action. Classic samurai films, such as Akira Kurosawa’s work, are referenced throughout the presentation, from the surface to deeper. The reference to other classics is shown not just in the black and white images but in the flavor added to how Yomi is portrayed, the thrilling soundtrack, and the artifacts that a player can find throughout.

Will trek to Yomi be on PS4?

Trek to Yomi releases on Xbox One, PS3, PlayStation 4, and PC in May 2022. The game is a no-brainer download for anyone looking for a simple yet cinematic thrilling action game that pays homage to classic PC games and 2D blade-action adventures.