Trek To Yomi is the kind of game I either love or despise, no middle ground. The decisions made here to turn this mediocre 2D slash game into an artistic experience with its shot composition, filters and coarse reference to classic Samurai films are rather poor and make this seemingly harmless indie game into one of the practices I hate the most in modern entertainment; the stupid homage.
This game doesn't try to get what Kurosawa says in his Samurai films, let alone his style beyond black and white and grain. The magic of Yojimbo, Seven Samurai or RAN is never present here, only able to be thought of while playing this by the sheer abundance of comments made by the press and the users. Even with its soul not being there it tries so hard to remind you of what you may think this movies were. There is love here, the shots made with the fixed cameras on gameplay are a few times astonishing and they let the journey flow at the beginning; and the voice acting, while being held back by a barebones script, is pretty on point and works to sell you on part of the atmosphere. If this just were a bad homage with some love and a bunch of good shots put here and there this may had been a serviceable poor game that tries too hard but at least has basic but fun level design and good visuals.
But the combat.
I'm not gonna rant much more because I don't like to discredit something made with care by a team, and I feel much more at ease critizing things like The Avengers game than an indie project built, I'm sure, with the best possible intentions; but this combat can't make the cut. It doesn't feel good at all, it's clunky, unresponsive, on hard the game turns at times into an spiral of almost instant deaths, the parry is awful (the game doesn't even count it as it should a lot of times, and you end up dying while listening to the sound made by the swords clashing). I don't get why this game based almost entirely gameplay wise on combat encounters has some of the worst sword combat I've experienced on a not amateur game; it's just bad.
Flying Wild Hog is better than this, and the tiny bit I played of Shadow Warrior 3 makes it imposible to me to understand how this was released in this state. Let's hope the next thing they do has the same level of focus but on the right places.
This game doesn't try to get what Kurosawa says in his Samurai films, let alone his style beyond black and white and grain. The magic of Yojimbo, Seven Samurai or RAN is never present here, only able to be thought of while playing this by the sheer abundance of comments made by the press and the users. Even with its soul not being there it tries so hard to remind you of what you may think this movies were. There is love here, the shots made with the fixed cameras on gameplay are a few times astonishing and they let the journey flow at the beginning; and the voice acting, while being held back by a barebones script, is pretty on point and works to sell you on part of the atmosphere. If this just were a bad homage with some love and a bunch of good shots put here and there this may had been a serviceable poor game that tries too hard but at least has basic but fun level design and good visuals.
But the combat.
I'm not gonna rant much more because I don't like to discredit something made with care by a team, and I feel much more at ease critizing things like The Avengers game than an indie project built, I'm sure, with the best possible intentions; but this combat can't make the cut. It doesn't feel good at all, it's clunky, unresponsive, on hard the game turns at times into an spiral of almost instant deaths, the parry is awful (the game doesn't even count it as it should a lot of times, and you end up dying while listening to the sound made by the swords clashing). I don't get why this game based almost entirely gameplay wise on combat encounters has some of the worst sword combat I've experienced on a not amateur game; it's just bad.
Flying Wild Hog is better than this, and the tiny bit I played of Shadow Warrior 3 makes it imposible to me to understand how this was released in this state. Let's hope the next thing they do has the same level of focus but on the right places.