Trek to Yomi is without a doubt a loveletter to the chanbara of 1950s Japan. Most notably Kurosawa's body of work but also contains sweeping shots reminiscent of Kenji Mizoguchi.
It tells the story of a young ronin, Hiroki, who promised his dying master that he would protect his town from bandits.
Lured away, he returns to find the town razed and his childhood friend/love Aiko missing.
He begins his journey to find her but encounters soon start to take a twist toward the supernatural.
When you realise that "Yomi no Kuni" is Japanese for the "land of the dead" it all starts to make sense. The trek to Yomi is Hiroki's journey to the Shinto underworld to rescue Aiko. It's a little bit like if Kurosawa reimagined the story of Orpheus and Eurydice.
The story is well told and fantastically voice acted. The audio as a whole is incredible, background and environmental sounds really bringing scenes to life. Meticulous attention to detail, such as the sounds of Hiroki's footsteps changing with the environment; from the crunching of gravel, to the creaking of old wooden floor boards. The Foley team, really did an impressive job.
Then of course there are the visuals. The entire game is rendered in a moody black and white, complete with film grain, flicker and artifacts. These attempts to make the game look and feel like vintage film land well and add to the experience, never becoming too frequent or intrusive.
The environment and backdrops are just gorgeous.
Depth of field is used in conjunction with fantastic fixed camera cinematography to create an eerily beautiful world. In fact having a fixed camera is strangely liberating, allowing the player to immerse themselves into the game without having to worry about constantly scouting their environment with the right thumbstick.
Gameplay itself is well executed too, various pickups and victories expand your health, stamina and combos allowing for an increasingly more comprehensive moveset and robust protagonist as the game progresses. Difficulty is moderate, however there are options to increase or decrease this. There's a slight learning curve at the start as you get to grips with the controls and the weight of your attacks, but it soon becomes second nature. Within no time you're prioritizing enemies, rationing stamina and firing off combos almost instinctively. Should the unthinkable happen and Hiroki is killed, checkpoints are very generous and "bosses" are never really more than a change of tactical approach the second time to beat.
Trek to Yomi is a beautiful game, well put together and an absolute must for fans of the OG chanbara movies. If your not such a big fan then your milage may be a little more limited but it's still great fun and an exceptionally well crafted indie.
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