Trek to Yomi for PC review: A unique action game despite a cliché story

Will it be love, duty, or revenge that leads you to the World of Darkness? Trek to Yomi is an interactive love letter to classic Japanese samurai films, designed with a cinematic aesthetic in mind. Creative director Leonard Menchiari leaned heavily on inspiration from Akira Kurosawa's movies, particularly 1954's Seven Samurai. Combined with fluid, side scrolling combat sequences hammered out by the developement team at Flying Wild Hog, Trek to Yomi's monochromatic cinematography creates quite an impressive experience. That narrative does rely heavily on some classic samurai movie tropes, namely a village massacre that kicks off a revenge fantasy adventure leading straight to the World of Darkness while embracing some Japanese mythology for good measure. However, it leans into its cinematic aesthetic by maintaining a grayscale color palette complete with an optional film grain filter. Each scene of the roughly 5-6 hour run time is constrained by a fixed camera that continues to push...