For those of you that aren’t walking antiques like myself, know that video games have been desperately chasing the label of “art” as long as I’ve been writing about them. Despite the massive size of the gaming market, one senses developers still yearn to be taken seriously alongside film makers, writers, and fine artists rather than as code monkeys churning out the yearly installment of sports games. Here is where Trek to Yomi poses an interesting dilemma to me, your intrepid reviewer: What if the game is so sleek and stylish as to be visually impressive and an interesting artistic experience…but isn’t that much fun as a game?
Trek to Yomi
Developer: Flying Wild Hog
Price: $20 USD
Platform: PC (Xbox Game Pass), Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Playstation 5, Playstation 4
MonsterVine was supplied with Xbox code for review
Of course, the definition of fun and whether games should even be fun has been the subject of many a drunken GDC session and Twitter thread and my only use for Twitter anymore is shitposting (not that I ever did much more).. But that is the dilemma in trying to critique Trek to Yomi.
And that’s because Trek to Yomi is absolutely dripping with style, most of it cribbed from Kurosawa and other samurai movies. It is interesting to look at and experience. The sound design is also excellent. If you walked in the living room when I had it on, you’d have been hard pressed to determine whether it was a video game or something I’d found in the high numbered stations on a Sunday afternoon.
The grainy texture and damaged “film,” the subtitles, the fact that it starts with the kid being mentored by the older samurai. I’ve seen this game before and I am a fan of the genre. It was fantastic to watch it hit the plot beats it needed to hit. And the voice acting, fantastic, I don’t know if any of them were Japanese samurai film actors, but they damn well should be.
It also brings in a supernatural angle: Your would-be samurai ventures into Hell and walks the line between life and death. Without getting into it too far–I’ll let Spencer go weeb mode, if you want the full Japanese bit–Yomi is the Japanese land of darkness or world of the dead. You see how this is going, but it’s very interesting, and again, almost indistinguishable from the samurai films it wants to be. And it might very well have been an interesting one. There are even three distinct endings (shades of Clue!) depending on how Bat Out of Hell you want to get (RIP Mr. Loaf), all of which are thematically interesting.
But the damn game just isn’t that good as a game. The combat is parry-counter-parry-counter…when it works, and it often doesn’t. And that’s it. You can either learn the timing and pretty much win (assuming you can deal with the glitches) or you can keep reloading. Games built around combat need to be fun and fluid, but they spent so much time turning the Unreal Engine into a Kurosawa film that the combat is inconsistent at best. You will frequently “miss” even though your sword should be slashing the other guy to bits. And, nope, your sword goes right through him, it just doesn’t quite register.
I think of games like the Arkham series or Shadow of Mordor/Shadow of War where just wandering around killing things or starting fights was a blast. Actually I’m playing Destiny 2 now, which has very rewarding combat where, as you learn to play, you go from frantically trying to stay alive to trying to look cool as hell using your finishers or hit specific goals with specific weapons or complete runs without dying. Trek to Yomi is kind of the opposite. A lot of the fights just don’t work right or don’t require a lot of thought once you figure out the timing, assuming the hits register. One of the big things is turning around to fight enemies coming from the other direction, but your samurai frequently doesn’t turn. He’s not an ambi-turner.
The other big feature is exploration, but the puzzles are pretty simple and it’s not so stimulating I’d want to explore the world and deal with the combat to keep unraveling the mysteries and whatnot.
In the end, I’m disappointed, but I kind of want to recommend it anyway because it’s so stylish and really shows what an artistic vision and style can be. Sure, it’s cribbed from Kurosawa, but one of the biggest and most popular franchises in film history is, too. This is like a film you watch because the director does interesting things visually. But it’s a game that’s kind of annoying to play and not that interesting as a game. Everything BUT the part you play is great. Fortunately, I don’t have to go to GDC to defend my artistic ideas anymore. Take THAT, game developers!
The Final Word
Great visuals, great voice acting, great sound, great music, shame the game is mediocre.
– MonsterVine Rating: 2 out of 5 – Poor
