Trek to Yomi review: Moving story cuts through weak action

digitaltrends.com:

Trek to Yomi is kind of deceptive. I previewed the game this past March, trying out its first hour or so of gameplay. As it turns out, that’s practically a fifth of the game and it’s the least entertaining fifth at that. Trek to Yomi starts out as a highly stylized action-adventure game where you deftly dispatch bandits with your trusty katana. But that eventually got tiring for me; enemies became nothing more than obstacles I cleared with two quick swipes.

After that first hour, the game switches up. It brings players to the depths of Yomi, the land of the dead in Shinto mythology. Bandits are replaced by ghoulish creatures, wraiths, and skeletons wearing armor. It’s the change-up the game needed for me to enjoy it. And then it switched back to bandits, having me fight the game’s very first enemies, but they’re ghosts now. That last switch made the game feel very thin.

And for what it’s worth, Trek to Yomi is, by and large, a thin experience. It’s not incredibly varied, combat is somewhat dictated by the few combos that are actually worth doing, and the world is essentially a railroad. All the same, I couldn’t help but finish Trek to Yomi‘s journey through what is basically Hell and enjoy the surprising choices it offered me.

Trek to Yomi‘s quirks are apparent as soon as you start the game. It’s entirely monochrome, and while the world is 3D, the main character, Hiroki, is usually locked to a 2D plane. All of the game’s combat is essentially 2D, with enemies coming from the left or right. Similarly, in combat, you can’t turn to face another direction with a flick of a joystick. Instead, you have to press the game’s dedicated turnaround button to face any enemies behind you.

Despite that wrinkle, Trek to Yomi‘s combat is