If you’ve been hankering for a samurai game since Ghost of Tsushima came out, Leonard Menchiari and Flying Wild Hog might have you covered with their upcoming game Trek to Yomi.
Trek to Yomi opens with a young Hiroki, who’s studying to be a samurai under his sensei Sanjuro and his friend Aiko. Instead of immediately throwing you into the thick of it, the game instead has you exploring Hiroki’s village and getting to know a bit about him and Aiko. You’ll meet villagers, and basically, poke your head around the place until bandits attack and Hiroki has to graduate samurai school immediately. The plot takes a pretty typical beat of your sensei being killed, fast forwarding a couple of years where Hiroki is all grown up and a proper samurai guarding the village, and a new group of bandits are terrorizing the countryside again so you go stop them. I didn’t get too much of a look at the directions the game will go in my build’s two chapters, but you get some hints it’s probably not going to go the typical route.
Combat in Trek to Yomi is quick and surprisingly loose. The game plays on a 2D plane and fights can end in an instant if you’re not careful. Combat’s quick, but methodical as you want to bait opponents to attack so you can follow-up with a parry and counter back. Doing so however, didn’t ever really feel particularly good. It just never felt snappy like you’d want a parry to feel, and it sometimes felt like the animations and the parry timing didn’t quite line up correctly. I’d sometimes pull off a parry and be surprised about it. Enemies tended to run up in my face at times too, which made watching their animation for the parry particularly annoying but that’s a nitpick mostly.
When the combat’s flowing, it feels really cool. Popping counters off, getting some slices in, and ending it with a bloody fountain finisher Kurosawa would be proud of. Later on, the demo introduces armored enemies that really put you on your toes. Unfortunately, when the opposite occurs it’s not as fun as your character can feel a bit “floaty” at times.
The game features an upgrade page where I unlocked new techniques as the game progressed, from being able to throw shurikens to new combos, but from my short time, it didn’t seem like you’ll actively hunt for “upgrade points” to acquire these abilities. Instead, it seems like the game will dole those out at appropriate moments, but we’ll see when the full game releases.
Being able to explore the areas you’re in is a welcomed surprise I wasn’t expecting from this sort of game, and while it isn’t anything crazy, just slight detours to optional fights or hidden upgrades, it helps break up the linearity. At one point I took another path down a cave system and came across a pallet of boulders I was able to drop on an unsuspecting group of enemies, completely eliminating that future fight. The introduction in your village, as you explore it and get to meet some of the villagers, is something I hope to see more of in the full game as it was fun to just chat with folk in the village.
My time in Trek to Yomi was brief, but full of gorgeous vistas and fountains of blood. Despite my issues with its combat, I’m eager to see how the full game pans out when it releases later this year.
