Hands on with Trek to Yomi - Preview
When I first saw Trek to Yomi, my first thought was along the lines of, looks alright, little did I know how much I would be wrong. Having had the chance to play through the games first two chapters, I am totally besotted with the game and for good reason, it is amazing.
Trek to Yomi could easily be described as a side scrolling hack’n’slash, where you move from one side of the screen to the other and while technically that is true, it feels more than that. The story, at least what was accessible to me in the two chapters I got to play, was pretty standard stuff, you are Hiroki a young samurai, who attempts to aid his sensei when bandits attack. Having defeated most of them, he grows overconfident and when he is about to be killed by the bandit leader, he is saved by his sensei, but who then dies protecting him. Vowing to never be weak again, he grows up and becomes the protector of the village, but when a new gang start to approach, he heads out to cut them off, protecting his people and those who live around the village. Like I said, simple stuff, with how the second chapter ended though, I can’t wait to see how it progresses going forward.
While the story seems basic, the combat is, but that is where the charm lies, you don’t need to master one to one movements in order to strike down enemies, you just need to pay attention. Hiroki has a light attack and a heavy and it is in the combining them, along with the parry mechanic that you battles can be won. Parrying attacks is critical to surviving, because each parry will take a small amount of your stamina away, but if you just block the attacks, you will lose a lot more. Keeping your stamina levels up is key, because without it, you are wide open to be hit and as enemies can attack just as quickly as you, you can take a lot of damage in a short window. The game does give enemies a moments pause after a successful parry, in order to allow you to counterattack, but you have to be right on the timing, but if you do, you can generally take them down in a single hit.
What I thought was great though, was the presentation, there is no denying that the game sports a unique artstyle, and while Ghost of Tsushima added a mode that allowed for things to be in black and white, like old school movies, here it feels natural. The camera is mostly locked onto a 2d plane, which means that it gives the game a side view, but there are times when it pivots to new angles, which help add depth to the world. In my roughly 50 minutes with the game, I took over two dozens screenshots, because the game just looked so damn good. There is a scene in Yojimbo, a film by Akira Kurosawa where the character Kuwabatake Sanjuro takes on a gang in a street fight, flowing from one enemy to the next and here, there was a scene where something very similar took place and I just remember pausing the game afterwards and thinking how amazing it was.
On the audio front, the music was great and felt authentic, beyond that though was the fact that all the dialogue is in Japanese, meaning there is no English audio, only subtitles. This was something else that helped bring me into the world.
Trek to Yomi has plenty of secrets left for me to discover and I can’t wait to learn them all, the combat is simple yet requires balance to be successful, the world rich and briming with amazing views. Most of all though, the game has a charm about it, that trailers don’t capture and even before playing, I thought it looked like it could be fun, now though, I know it is amazing and I want more.
The game is set to release sometime this Autumn for PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5, with Xbox Game Pass members getting access to it through that.
