Super stylish samurai slasher that sort of hits the spot.



Right off the bat, the problems and joys of Trek To Yomi are made plain. Many elements are too damn small and the world is exquisitely rendered. There's no doubt that when you stand up and get real close to your screen this game is a visual feast. With the added screen effects and the black and white presentation, it is obvious they were aiming for the look of an old Japanese samurai film. Well, they nailed it. Shallow depth of field plays a major part in the visualization as well as dramatic lighting that hearkens back to the quirks of analog films. However, a number of elements are sacrificed to get that look down. Whenever menu text appears on the screen it is unforgivingly tiny. Your main character varies in size, as well, and spends a good amount of time as a pretty dang small icon in the expanse of a wonderful-looking background. Items are also tiny flashes of light and can be pretty easily missed. I think a balance of background to foreground would have served the game player better.

As I was playing through this game, I was starting to realize that maybe fighting games are just rhythm games, you know? Once you discover a pattern that works for each type of enemy (like block, block, slash, slash) then you just repeat that pattern whenever you see it. The difficulty is remembering what button to press and executing at the right speed. I never could get the hang of some of the combos and made it through with a limited skill set, really, but wasn't too disappointed in the battle system. I was starting to get annoyed with all the whining, crying, and screaming villagers after a while but luckily the game is not tremendously long. Maybe it could have been one level shorter but the story was generally interesting enough to forgive a game that barely overstayed its welcome.

Not a bad game for a huge samurai movie aficionado that doesn't mind some kind-of-repetitive slashing but it fell a bit flat for me.