A short action game that's all style and no substance. Underneath a really faithful Kurosawa look is a dull combat system, chunky animations, boring puzzles, and maybe the worst-feeling parry I've felt in a game. The controls don't feel responsive and the lack of enemy variety means the 4-hour game somehow feels padded out. I liked the story, by the end it actually had some interesting things to say about stories of revenge, etc. But I don't think that the spectacle of the visual presentation made up for the dreary game that was underneath it.

A arte e a ambientaçao sao bem atrativas neste jogo, acho que é o ponto mais forte, em quesito gameplay ele é básico mas dá uma diversificada em uns combinhos, mas nada muito elaborado

Ponto negativo pra alguns pode ser que ele seja muito monótono, a história é meio óbvia com os acontecimentos que vão ocorrendo, então isso pode tornar o jogo meio chato mas eu gostei do jogo mesmo assim

Se não me engano o jogo possui mais de um final, entao talvez isso possa diferenciar a experiencia de um ou outro

I won this game through SteamGifts.

As a vow to his dying Sensei, the young samurai Hiroki is sworn to protect his town and the people he loves against all threats. Faced with tragedy and bound to duty, the lone samurai must voyage beyond life and death to confront himself and decide his path forward.

The story was compelling and interesting, with beautiful monochromatic artstyle and frustrating combat, the game offers a pretty okay-ish experience. I really did want to enjoy it more honestly, but the combat and the fact that there was multiple endings that didn't really differ in any other way other than ONE choice right at the end of chapter 6 and the ending scene with the final boss, it was an experience I wished I could have gone through faster.

I managed to play through the game once on ronin difficulty while getting the no hit boss achievements, and a second run with the kensei difficulty. I save scummed for one of the endings to avoid the need to run through the game again, since I didn't really see a need for it. My favorite ending was probably the love route, and it really was heartwarming at the end.

I honestly think people who can manage through the combat will really enjoy the game, but I don't think it's worth almost 20€, so if you do decide to get it, get it at a big sale for sure or a bundle. That being said, I do think it's worth a recommendation from me anyway.

This is a really neat stylized Samurai game, that looks like a Kurosawa film. The story is pretty simple for the most part, but the combat is what makes it interesting. You essentially have a bunch of combos and ranged weapons you can perform against your foes, that have a range of effectiveness depending on their armor or weapons they are equipped with. I feel like I can't say much about this game as it would ruin the entire plot. It does feature an early ending option which is always neat if you unlock it by happenstance.

I wanted so much to like it, but the impeccable artistry of the cinematography and score were not enough to fully make up for some of the more frustrating gameplay. The swordplay felt tight and somehow off at the same time, but easily exploitable either way. The puzzles were not really puzzles, and the collectables often highlighted some of the most annoying quirks of navigating the beautifully laid out world. While it gets high praise for storytelling, the underlying game was somewhat disappointing.

A fine enough game. I see what they were going for but it kind of falls flat a bit. The combat is really easy, like you can abuse the hell out of the parry system and just beat every enemy you come across that way. Also, film grain and bloom being on automatically are understandable since they were trying to go for a Kurosawa film look, but coupled with the monotone colors and the camera, it just makes things harder to see, especially subtitles. I don't really know what they could have done better. The story is fine as well.

Some style, almost no substance. Attempts to capture the feel of classic samurai films with a monochromatic style but a short and dull story and combat that starts awkward and bland and gets worse makes it hard to recommend.

Combat lacks a visceral feel as even some of the weakest enemies can just ignore and attack through your hits, all getting worse halfway through the game when you start to fight undead and spirits. Combos and parries don't respond well, and parries don't really time like they do in normal video games while also being much easier to do than in most games that have them. Dull collectible hunting, a lot of useless lore items but you can also miss health and stamina increasing items as well as some combos of which there are already few of. All but the most basic enemies will likely have you just using a light, light, heavy combo to stun them to allow for an instant kill finisher that will also regenerate some of your health, these finishers tend to be the only hits that have weight and good looking contact to them but there aren't that many and you will see the same ones even among different styles of enemies. The larger bosses from the later chapters seem to barely function in this style of game and can even just be beaten through sheer brute force on the normal difficulty.

Going from more free explorations to the fights that lock you to only moving left and right once enemies attack leads to some odd moments as enemies can get in each others way and you find you can't quite hit some targets that haven't fully entered the locked plane of movement when other enemies or the environment is in the way. You have to manually turn around with a button press to fight enemies on both sides of you but you quickly get the ability to block from other direction and attacks that can attack behind you and turn you around, that combined with most enemies being in front of you anyway tends to make being surrounded a fairly pointless feature. When it is always easy to just charge the ones in front with a stunning attack anyway I never found much use for all the backwards spin and attack combos you can do, some even coming near the very end of the game when they no longer matter at all. You unlock three ranged weapons that can get you some easy kills while you have ammo for them but none feel particularly satisfying to use. There are some nice visual moments often involving a way an encounter is framed or the background or by the use of fire and water effects but just as often an odd camera angle or the brightness of a certain area can make it difficult to make out enemy attacks.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1733994635239080025

Video: https://youtu.be/1Jla94SsHeg?si=nizpyrRAWYZYiIpe

The art direction and visuals for this game are ridiculously good. Love seeing the way the scenes shifted perspective as it went on.

The combat however, was too ambitious and too inconsistent with its weird parry timings that it was just frustrating with the hordes of enemies past chapter 3.

Game is best experienced on easy mode and treated as a beat ‘Em up so you can actually enjoy the visuals and get to the end.

Not a terrible game, but also not great. Having not seen a single Kurosawa movie, any kind of reference this game might be making that could elevate the experience are just completely lost on me. I liked the visual presentation, the black and white does work pretty well and the game had some decently memorable vistas on its 5 or so hour runtime. Even at this length it did feel padded out a times, you really spend a long ass time before you actually get to the titular Yomi. Once you are there though the game gets fairly more interesting with the levels being more creative and introducing several enemy types that make the combat a bit more varied right when its starting to get on my nerves. By the end of the game I was kinda sick of it again, its just too simple and clunky. One of the most consistent strategies I found was turning around and spamming the move that hits anything near my back, and that worked for like 90% of encounters. Story was also pretty whatever, just a revenge plot with no memorable characters.

Que jogo horroroso!

Uma das piores experiências recentes que tive em um jogo.

Apesar de uma cinematografia linda, tem um combate horroroso que transformou a jornada de dor do protagonista em uma tortura pra mim também.