When Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai collides with the game: The Yellow Springs Road review

When it comes to works with The theme of Japanese samurai, "Seven Samurai" directed by the famous Japanese director Akira Kurosawa is probably an existence that cannot be ignored. This film depicting samurai and mountain thieves shows the chivalrous spirit of the samurai with its exquisite character portrayal and extremely elaborate "long shot" shooting method.

In the process of trying out "Yellow Spring Road", I repeatedly unconsciously projected my thoughts between the game and the movie. If you're also interested in the game, take a look at what I think of the game.

I would like to thank Leonard Menchiari, creator of Yellow Springs Road, and publisher Devolver Digital for the opportunity to play the game first.

>>> exquisite lens language and ultimate audiovisual enjoyment

For Leonard Menchiari, the founder of The Yellow Springs Road, and the team Flying Wild Hog, their avant-garde creative concept and retro graphic style make me sigh the word "brave". Imagine that in today's game industry, which is constantly rolling in from the perspective and content, the team can sketch a delicate and impressive game scene with only black and white, which can be said to be a sense of "deviance".

In order to ensure the unity of the scene and the art style, the development team abandoned the fixed camera position commonly used in horizontal action games to follow the protagonist, and adopted a fixed perspective design that changes with the change of the game scene. On the one hand, the developer's considered lens language can better highlight the subject of the environment, thereby greatly enhancing the player's visual experience; on the other hand, this change reduces the player's visual fatigue, which can better extend the player's play time.

In addition to the art design in the style of black and white films, the development team also carefully prepared a lot of careful thinking. For example, on a stormy night, the player's seemingly inadvertent swing of the knife can be synchronized with the time when the lightning strikes the branch, or a certain linkage with the mountain during a block attack, resulting in the collapse of the distant mountain peak at the same time as the block counterattack. Multiple coincidences blend the player's controlled characters with the game's background, creating a natural and comfortable mood.

Delicate scenes can attract the player's attention, while Zen-filled battles can make players experience a different kind of experience of struggling in a chaotic world.

>>> there is no gorgeous sword and light sword shadow, only plain death

In order to create an original game experience, the team not only conducted a lot of investigation and reference in the scene and content, but also made consideration in the fight. Moves based on real samurai movements are crisp and clean, and the enemy is slashed under the knife at the snap of a finger. As the game's story continues to evolve, players will also learn more moves. Unlike other horizontal action games that pre-read commands to accurately trigger skills or moves, the combo moves of Yellow Spring Road place great emphasis on the rhythm of the action. Triggering too fast will only trigger the most common combos, while too slow will interrupt the attack rhythm and cause the trigger to fail.

In terms of battle, the battle of "Yellow Spring Road" is different from the one-shot of "Samurai Zero" which is mainly blocked and killed with one sword, nor is it the move of "Masashi Tsumura: Legend of the Demon Sword" that is so gorgeous that it is a little dazzling, and its battle scene is even simple and unpretentious. Combat actions are nothing more than flicking or heavy slashing, or achieving high-level offensive skills through continuous segments.

However, in my opinion, the design of the samurai to exchange blocks for offensive opportunities when the samurai are short-armed is to deepen the experience and feeling of the player when they enter the samurai, and this simple combat system just fits the original design concept of the development team: in the chaotic world, the samurai are just ordinary people with some martial arts. When the two sides are opposed, life and death are only a line apart.

However, due to the historical facts of the creation, the game has a large number of reuse of enemy actions and models. In particular, the mob tactics used in the later part of the game are indeed somewhat boring, but fortunately, the game's rich attack combos can make up for the lack of enemy types.

The difference between the light and heavy strike triggers in the attack time makes the character pay attention to each move, and the change of move after the block will also affect the direction of the battle. Of course, in the later stages of the game, the most common attack combo I use is the upper or lower tap and then the heavy combo, which is used to kill the enemy and return the blood by triggering the execution. The game also carefully prepared three kinds of ranged weapons, bitterness, bow and arrow, and fire hammer, but I often ignore them due to habit problems.

>>> Yellow Springs Road is more than just a game title

If the battles of "Yellow Spring Road" can still be regarded as decent, then the game's plot mixed with the development team's understanding of the samurai spirit and the study of myths and legends really surprised me.

The plot of the game is very straight, telling the protagonist Hiroki due to defeat and fell into the Country of Huangquan, which only the dead can enter, in order to be able to revive from Huangquan to prevent Yingyan's inhumane behavior. The player will learn the importance of love through the protagonist and his Aiko, the responsibility of carrying righteousness from his master, and the meaning of virtue from the protagonist's own past experiences. In the end, the player will have to choose the mission they want to carry and achieve the corresponding ending (the game is still a multi-ending).

Not only that, but the development team also incorporated into the game the stories of Izanami and Izanagi from Japanese mythology. In Yellow Springs Road, there are a large number of collection elements, which in addition to the daily necessities that supplement the character's life, there are also a large number of mythological items to continuously fill the background setting of the game. Props such as the Ten Fist Sword and the Multi-Toothed Wooden Comb that have appeared in myths and legends can find corresponding item descriptions in the game, thus displaying the Huangquan Kingdom in detail in front of the player.

However, due to the game's fixed perspective and weak map design, the player's experience in "licking the map" is extremely uncomfortable. As a map collector with obsessive-compulsive disorder, I tried to search every area I could while playing Yellow Springs Road, but even then 40% of the content was still not found. And there are a lot of areas in the game that don't make sense to me personally and are only placed to provide ammo, which makes me feel helpless in the process of overall exploration.

>>> conclusion

Overall, the art design and the study of Japanese culture in Yellow Springs road are eye-catching, and its smooth and neat combat system is also very suitable for the film-level storyboarding. However, the slightly complicated map and the ability to open a new round of the game after completing the level, and the inability to select chapters to play the design are inconvenient for the Achievement Party. However, when the fixed perspective switches smoothly between character close-ups and panoramas, the shock brought to me by "Yellow Spring Road" has far exceeded the game itself, and it is not easy to experience such an elegant and retro game in 2022. If you're interested in black-and-white scenes and life-and-death battles, consider starting.

Merit:

-We will try our best to restore the traditional Japanese settings

- Black and white movie level graphics

- Excellent sound and picture performance

Shortcoming:

- There are some meaningless map designs

- Card viewing angle often occurs