You are invited to review the game's Content Warning in Part 1. Oh, and don't forget to click the screenshots to enlarge!
Strange how we're not getting any more date captions. Chapter I was explicitly set on April 4th 1999, but I know Alex had slept at least once during that chapter. I'd have thought a game called 'Y II K' ('that's why-two-kay!') would be all about the approaching millennium.
I like Alex and Michael's relationship. They're just talking about... stuff. These guys feel real to me. And I like that Alex is being completely open about what happened the first time he entered the factory, not that there'd be any point to hiding it since they've both come face-to-face with the not-Starman now.
The bros upload their photos to Michael's website, the most reliable conspiracy theory/paranormal sighting web forum online: "ONISM1999". I can't find any reputable sources for the word 'onism'. It seems like a word made up by some art guy to sound all deep. I'm sure it's supposed to be pronounced 'one-ism' to do with 'oneself' (not 'on-ism', how it's pronounced in this game), but it also looks like a different word which I suggest you don't try to look up.
Distored Space Creatures and Elevator Girl
VERAFormer
VERAFormer
Everyone's favourite mod, and @SNESMAN99 here. Few days ago @SNESMAN99 noticed that the elevator in the Elevator Girl video looked really similar to the one in an abandoned factory North East of Frankton. We went to check it out, and surprisingly the elevator still worked by it only took us down to the basement level. This is where things got really weird. Look at the fractured ground, and all the strange hostiles running around. We continued on hoping to find Sammy or a clue of some sort, and this is where things got weird. The star creatures from the Elevator Girl video? Yeah, they were down there. We tried to take a few pictures of them, and they were completely distorted... but if you look closely, you can see the colors are the same and you can sort of make out it's face!
The first time I played this part, I didn't know you could go back to the computer and browse ONISM1999 yourself so I missed Michael's pictures entirely. I was about to ding the game for describing them and not showing them, but they're there. There's a whole bundle of forum posts to read in fact, all presented within the lovingly remembered lens of the internet of '99.
Alex's failure to find any clues leading to Sammy is hitting him hard. It's been two weeks and he can still barely think about anything else. If Michael wasn't as obsessed with her as Alex, I'd wonder how the two of them put up with each other. The boys' investigation eventually turns up something of interest: there's photos of a girl with psychokinetic, dimension-travelling powers who might be connected to the elevator disappearances! And she lives in Frankton!
It doesn't take long before she gets completely sick of us both...
Panda was banished to floor Mysterious Vella of the Mind Dungeon
Not even the mighty Panda was able to withstand her attacks for long! (I have no idea what this text means.)
RELOADING A SAVE LATER:
You know, I should flee from battles more often. It's more entertaining than the battles themselves.
Completely coincidentally to her sonokinetic talents, she also happens to be privy to the deepest darkest secrets of the multiverse, knows how to physically travel into metaphysical space, and can confirm that the not-Starmen are real since she's also had an encounter with one. Which is all friggin' bloody convenient if you ask me.
We used a telephone and got teleported here. Strange how Alex monologues at length to the player in his over-eager poetic way over the most mundane things, and then has nothing at all to say about the weirdest things. Maybe from Alex's perspective, this would just be a circular dark room with no windows and he has no idea he's materialised inside a giant Toby jug of himself.
Let's see what we've got here. There's a save game phone, a brain in a jar that lets us toggle the monologue settings, a blue figure that levels up the party, and... Marlene the Krow! Hello, Marlene the Krow!!
Marlene warns me the Mind Dungeon is not to be taken lightly, but I think I'm ready for it, since it seems that's where we'll finally advance beyond Level 1. I've got the best vinyl money can buy; Michael's got his digital camera. Let's go!
Every 100 EXP opens the gate to the next set of doors. Each door gives you a small advancement to a stat of your choice (HP, PP, STR, DEF, SPD or LUK). You're allowed to open all four doors on each level, but each stat can only be advanced once for each level. Sometimes the interface offers you bonus points in certain stats (I haven't worked out why), so it works out a bit like Morrowind or Oblivion's level up system.
The way the characters were bigging it up, I thought there'd be an opponent in here, rather than just a convoluted menu. You can get here from any save telephone (they're all over the place), but it would be handy if the telephone suggested coming here when you're ready to level up, rather than you having to check the stats page manually.
As Alex tries to leave, the lights flicker on and off, momentarily revealing a yes-sinister not-Starman residing in Alex's own house. I'm sure it'd be scarier if I could see it. Alex himself is oblivious.
From cleaning up all the Rats and things at the factory and in the Monster Dens on the world map (they're small featureless grassy rooms), I had tons of unspent EXP to get myself up to the required level to continue the game. When I did, we received an e-mail from an ONISM member in the next city over who claims first-hand experience of an abduction! It's Mystery Time!
I tried going back to Vella's arcade to play the games, but they're all unusable. Weird. I'm too used to games like Short Circuit, Shenmue or The Touryst where you can fiddle with every arcade machine you find. Don't try to speak to Vella at the arcade while she's working there or she'll tell you to go away, but call her at home and she'll tell you she has the day off and is ready to leave any time. Inconsistent writing, or maybe she's avoiding us as much as possible? Or perhaps there's two of her! That'd be spooky!
I'll leave my readers to imagine what Alex said to get this response. It wasn't an option I deliberately picked for kicks either - there are no dialogue options in YIIK, it's been all Alex so far, except when I donated to the ZINE guy. It wasn't even all that bad, what Alex said, it was just the kind of thing an awkward guy would say, trying to explain something but always reaching for the wrong words, but I can practically feel Michael trying to cringe up in a ball. Good on Vella for not flying off the handle.
I like hearing the characters talk together. The script and the voiceover both could've been a hell of a lot worse (despite some of the audio sounding poorly mastered). But it doesn't half feel like I'm missing out on hearing the characters express themselves, their personalities and their motivations through their own dialogue when Alex cuts in to talk to the player in the middle of it.
Vella points out that since Alex neglected to ask this guy online what he looks like, where to meet him or where he lives, we're going to have to go to each person in town one by one and just ask them if they know the guy and hope they are willing to help. Good job, Alex.
The bosses in this game don't really have a variety of cool moves, they just do the same one thing over and over so it gets really boring. There's no patterns or different damage types; no different postures they shift into that indicate they're going to do something special in so-many turns time. They hit you, you minigame out of the way. You hit them, you either critical them for 10 HP or do basically nothing.
Vella's warning about needing to train ourselves in the Mind Dungeon was spot on. We'd be dead several times over if we hadn't. And you really won't believe this, but Vella has a lot less HP as a party member than she did as a boss!
I don't know why the Hook Handed Jock is represented by a weird smiley face here. If this means the enemies don't have individual graphics for the minigames, that's really lazy and lame. Put the effort in, YIIK.
Underpaid Cashier Smells like cigarettes!
I was wrong. Wind Town is a boss rush. Every single person here has a bone to pick with Alex and crew, and we're going to have to beat 'em all up to get the information we need to find this ONISM guy.
The battles continue. The turns pass slowly. There's no decisions for me to make. There's no way to steal items from the enemy, no taunts, no elemental special attacks: just Panda and his Barrier, and you get him once per battle.
I'm not quite sure how this one works - you've got to centre the enemy's face, tell them to change their expression and then snap an unflattering image to destroy their ego. Every time I've tried this I've managed to poison the enemy, which sounds nice until you work out it's barely as powerful as a normal attack. There's a buffing counterpart named 'Glamour Shot' where you try to inspire a party member (with a similar grey polygon face for some reason), but every time I've tried it on Alex it's poisoned or killed him. The guy must just be that ugly.
It's fine, he still shows up in the town so maybe we only killed him metaphorically or something.
I know I just moaned about the gang not having any skills, but now that Alex has something that seems useful, the chances of me ever using it are nil. Alex has hardly any max PP, and the rewards from the Mind Dungeon are so small and infrequent that it seems like a huge waste to use any of them increasing the PP stat. Alex doesn't naturally grow in ability - assigning those +1s and +2s to his attributes (including HP!) are the only advancement he gets. The other guys get +6s and +7s constantly - Michael's shot past Alex in almost every stat now, to the point where his SPD is high enough for the game to automatically put him in the party leader slot in battles instead of Alex (which looks weird and is confusing).
Rory is convinced that his sister was abducted by extradimensional beings, but he's found a way to contact her again, and that sounds right up our Scooby Gang's alley. (Strange how nobody's made a Scooby gag so far at all in the game.)
Vella takes charge and starts asking sensible questions like 'Did you call the police when you realise your sister had vanished for weeks?' and 'What about your parents?' and Rory starts to close off on us. Given the kind of people we've found in Wind Town, I could take him at his word when he says his parents don't care.
Despite the cartoony appearances, the scene feels strangely unsettling and intimate when Rory talks about his sister and his family. I feel like I'm really invading this person's privacy by showing up here and making his complete misery our business.
While we're enjoying Rory's lectures on the atomic composition of the human body, nobody points out the giant not-Starman towering in the distance. Does that kind of thing happen every night?
The final destination on our tour of Wind Town is...
We'll never stand a chance of finding Rory's sister's soul down here without some powerful dungeon exploration techniques, so Vella gives Alex a 'spare guitar' (?) and teaches him how to blast away obstructions with sound. That's neat. Our new friend Rory also contributes to the team, giving Alex lessons on how to execute a dazzling hair-flick that can cut through unruly sewer foliage. What.
Neither of these abilities have a battle counterpart, which is just stupid. C'mon, YIIK. It's like Pokémon - the dungeons are already blocky and basic like Pokémon Red & Blue, so where are the HM moves? You even did it right already with Panda as an object on the map and a shield power in battle. Why can't I use Dali, the guitar, or the (sigh) hair-flick the same way?
Also, why is it that Alex has to do all of these things? Surely it would make more sense for the other characters to perform their own signature techniques themselves?
I was expecting these guys to be part of a larger comic relief scene so the player could take a break from Wind Town and Rory's endless misery, but this is it - just a gag name-drop. The game semi-sets them up as important characters by having them spread out over the sewer like a set of optional bosses, but...
Johannes Vermeer: "God, I LOVE *BEING AN ADOLESCENT MONSTROSITY SAMURAI TORTOISE*!"
That's all there is.
It's actually really useful! Despite the hint text, Rory covers the entire party and takes almost all the damage that you don't avoid through the timing minigame. He doesn't have any buffing skills or anything, so... yeah, just keep standing there and taking it, dude.
Alex has learned another damage-dealing skill that places him in a vertical shooter 2D mini-game. Like every other offensive skill we have, it uses up almost all our PP, does barely any more damage than a normal hit and has no elemental advantage or other special effect on the enemy.
The 'Time Energy' gauge in the corner lets me temporarily slow down the timing minigames if I want to ensure a perfect defense, as long as I can remember what key it is.
I thought I was being clever and adventurous tracking the Samurai Tortoises down one by one through the tedious, claustrophobic sewers and suffering through protracted battles with them and their many minions - It kind of killed my triumphant mood when it turned out that they weren't optional at all, since the exit door is locked and the Samurai Tortoises held the keys.
What could be so important that it needs to be securely locked several times over in a sewer?
Alex: "OH SHIT! IT'S AN ENTITY!"
We should be used to this by now - doors leading to mysterious voids inhabited by lanky creatures made of stars.
A lot of the lengthy dialogue scenes up to this point in the game have been done with the visual novel illustrations. It's really strange to see the 3D figures posed like this in a set of moving stills. Also I've noticed that all the YIIKsters are dressed in various shades of red - I wonder if that has some significance.
This time this entity is someone we want to meet. This is what we came here for. This is Rory's sister's soul! From time to time Rory senses that she's out and about and wanders off to hang with her. He feels a connection to her, you see. They've both got long blonde hair and everything.
Except Rory is completely wrong, Vella says, and the gang is in mortal, terrible danger. I'm leaning a little towards Vella's interpretation of these events because so far she's tended to seem like she has a clue. She presses Rory a little, seeing right through him and correctly sensing that the evasive creep is being creepily evasive.
Vella starts laying out the truth - the not-Starmen are remnants of people who have travelled from alternate worlds. This blonde-haired energy being isn't Rory's sister at all: it's an alternate Rory. The two Rorys met on the verges of Soul Space after they'd both descended into abject misery which let them leave their bodies through astral projection.
Alex... well, you can see how Alex reacts to all this.
Out of nowhere flies the Golden Alpaca I met outside of Alex's house two weeks ago, giant sword at the ready...
Alex Eggleston is dead.
I have to say I did not see that coming.
In another world, an alternate pack of Scoobies face off against the Alpaca in a lime green homage to Persona 4's TV world. Things have gotten pretty confusing pretty quick.
The Golden Alpaca judges us all in a deep, goofy voice, sneering at our contrived roles in this story, and continues to sentence each alternate version of Alex he finds to SOUL DEATH in turn in a perplexing montage, until one of them gets lucky and rolls out of the way of that ridiculous sword.
Boss battle!
The WARNING gauge looks appropriately concerning, but throughout the whole (LONG) battle, it didn't fill up at all for me. It might have something to do with the Soul Survivor (that'd be the not-Starman) that the Golden Alpaca will occasionally summon to his aid, but Vella can use her personal skill to blast those away now in one turn with a tedious top-down action slasher minigame.
Having four party members is really useful, but there's no indication of the turn order. It isn't 'us' then 'them' like in Final Fantasy I. Not that it matters. When Panda's used up, all we can do is Banish the Soul Survivor if there's one of them out, smack the Alpaca if we're healthy or eat a burger if we're dead. I'd sort of ruined the item economy at this point by finding a few secret chests that contained items that sold for thousands of dollars - more than enough to buy 99 of the best kinds of healing and magic items. Couple that with Rory soaking up and minimising any damage I take from fluffing a minigame, and the only danger here was if I got bored of the battle and threw it, thinking it was supposed to be unwinnable like Vella and the Soul Survivor were.
Now that we have a second to ourselves, we finally get some Answers™ out of Vella about how the multiverse works and what the Soul Survivors are all about. Everything she says seems consistent, but none of it helps us with the main objective of finding and rescuing Sammy. Rory's devastated, but I think it's better than letting him wander about unaware until he gets himself killed. Speaking of getting killed, we definitely killed the Alpaca according to Alex, so I'm sure Rory is thrilled to have been a party to that.
This part of the dialogue is being spoken, but I'm losing letters behind pink rectangles. I honestly can't tell if this is part of the game's quirkiness.
But first, let's go back a bit, because there's something else I had to see for myself.
IN MEMORY OF THE ORIGINAL GOLDEN ALPACA SCENE
At the end of the sewers, we had a big long JRPG cutscene with the 3D figures in a dark room meeting Rory's Soul Survivor and many Alexes getting poked to death a lot by the Golden Alpaca. One thing I went into YIIK knowing was that 'the Golden Alpaca scene' was going to be a ridiculous, trolling piss-take that completely ruined the mood of the game and made players wish they'd spent their money and time on anything but YIIK.
The dialogue I saw in that scene was a bit overwrought, but Alex was his normal hair-clutching self and Rory was his normal punchable evasive self, and I kinda liked what I saw, so what was the big deal?
I've been playing YIIK Version 1.25.21, which is the current YIIK available on the Windows 10 Store as of July 2021. I hope somebody has backed up the original version of YIIK from GOG or itch or something before this year's patch, because the original version of the Golden Alpaca encounter has to be seen to be believed.
Forget everything you saw in the last four screenshots before the Alpaca boss fight. The original version of the dramatic payoff at the end of the sewers took place in a brightly-lit nondescript room in the sewer. The dialogue was the same, with Rory reduced to tears as his deception is exposed, but it was done with just the visual novel illustrations with everybody just standing about neutral in the background. That's fine. Cheap, sure, but fine.
Then the Golden Alpaca teleports in. No, he's not a seven foot tall winged humanoid beast with a segmented sword and a pair of Converse and a tendency to dart through the air and stab Alex in the chest while bellowing about Soul Death. He's just... a big normal stuffed alpaca on four legs, sliding into the scene from the left like he's on wheels. Vella's (decent) yelled dialogue is unchanged - Guys, we need to run! - the Alpaca just stands there.
Then we hear the Alpaca's battle cry: "Lemonade.". Boss battle. All set to clown jazz music.
Here's a YouTube link, if you must watch it. Bear in mind that this is a scene so weird that even YIIK was ashamed of it. Nothing at all of interest happens in the seventeen minute long boss battle that follows, I must warn you. Except the part where the Alpaca turns into a flexing bodybuilder in tight underwear temporarily, I guess.
CONCLUSION
I like Y II K. Maybe I shouldn't, but I do.
Looking back at the post, I think the game comes out looking really interesting and fun. The visual novel illustrations and voice acting are pleasant and enjoyable. Like I said when I was trying to figure out if it was imitating another era's or game's style, YIIK looks and feels original. Nothing is like YIIK.
I'm genuinely interested in YIIK's story. I like the characters. Alex makes me laugh. Michael's a chill pal. Vella knows what's happening. Rory... well, Rory's Rory. The characters have emotions and feel like characters. They work together, but they're also complete strangers and they conflict. I want to know what's happening with them and I want to see their adventures.
There's no way of knowing where YIIK is going to go next. Every time I think it's going to be about reality, it's not. And then every time I think it's going to be about something entirely metaphysical, it's not. YIIK has proven that it's willing to go anywhere and do anything. It is entirely unconventional and original and I can't wait to figure out what bizarre and foolish thing it'll do next.
I was surprised to find that YIIK isn't a comedy game; it is a cartoon, but for the most part what I saw wasn't truly stupid (Michael's stupid camera-attack excepted. And the Samurai Tortoises.). I found hanging with Rory deeply unpleasant in a compelling way, since it's clear that despite the colourful battles that we're all a bunch of very vulnerable, very frightened dorks getting in way over our heads.
My main gripe with YIIK is that it isn't good to play. Not at all. It's a bad -game-.
The battles feel primitive, and ugly in every sense. It may look fine in screenshots, but in motion there's no visual flair or vitality. All the animations feel robotic, and the effects and backgrounds are chucked about with no sense of direction. Nobody reacts to being afflicted with status effects or being close to low health, so nothing feels real. Normal attacks fill the screen with blinding tunnels of flashing colour, special attacks usually don't. There's very few camera angles the game cycles through, all of them terrible. Most of the angles obscure the enemies' HP gauges somehow so you have no idea how much damage you're doing.
Battling in YIIK is like wading through mud. Every phase of every turn takes a few seconds longer than it should. Maybe it's all in homage to the first generation of 3D JRPGs, but then YIIK has chosen to imitate the worst parts of Wild Arms and Legend of Dragoon's battles... and that's it. Early 3D RPGs were slow paced to show off all the fancy effects they had - even Wild Arms had lighting effects like shadows during spells, and Pokémon Stadium might feel very regimented but it's Pokémon in 3D, man, look at 'em go!! YIIK doesn't really have a pleasant enough presentation or satisfying enough strategy to justify the amount of times it wants to show you the same 'rat biting towards the camera' animation. You'll also be reading the same very limited set of hilarious battle captions a lot.
YIIK's one concession to the slow pace is a fast-forward button that you will hold down at all times other than during a timing minigame, and there's no shortage of those. There's no auto-battle that lets you skip the minigames for an 'average' attack - the game balance wouldn't allow it, since attacks other than 'Perfect' hits might as well do zero damage. Even consistently getting 'Perfect's using Time Energy, the simplest battle takes an age due to how much HP the enemies have. Truth be told, I haven't fought that many battles in the six hours I've given YIIK, but each one felt like a trial.
It makes me wonder how an alternative battle system would look like where all the big RPG numbers are simplified down to single digits - say 3 or 4 HP 'hearts' - and a successful timing minigame attack knocks one or two off. I feel like I might be describing Paper Mario? (I haven't played it.)
Naturally, you've must babysit all these battles because otherwise you'll be under-levelled for later on (I assume). YIIK's enemy difficulty is unpredictable - other games might have tiers of reused enemies, like 'tiny rat', 'big rat', 'king rat' in different colours, but whenever I faced a Giant Rat in YIIK it looked and acted the same as every other Giant Rat I'd faced before, but was as strong as it felt like being that day. The experience rewards vary too - a single Giant Rat might give you +80 EXP (it's a fixed 100 EXP to level up), but then a real slog of a battle against three Giant Rats and two Skulls might give you +20 EXP.
The game has an easy mode that makes battles less of a challenge, but I don't want the battles to be less of a challenge, I want them to be more of a challenge. I want to feel like I'm pulling off clever combinations of moves, or manipulating the enemies or the turn order to create new opportunities for big damage. You've got a ragtag bunch of misfits™ with improvised weapons and psychic powers, and all the game offers you for the first six hours of gameplay is a standard attack for everyone.
The battles open up very slowly over time after that with a collection of useless skills that either do nothing, or do nothing very slowly. Sure, there's Rory's Pacifism, but that's not really a choice the player makes. It's both overwhelmingly practical as a skill, and he doesn't have any other options anyway. There's no reason to ever let Rory do anything else except get punched in the face (regardless of what you think of his story!).
Um... what is it that I like about YIIK's battles? I like the 'pshing!' sound effect for the defending minigame, and the way that there are multiple different variations of the battle announcer's 'Miss!', 'Dodge!' and 'Defend!' calls. It feels like the only part of the entire battle system that fits together neatly. Everything else seems thrown together at the last minute, with HP values, PP costs, skill effectiveness and equipment availability all landing roughly more or less in the right place for the game to be just about playable, but that's all. I know that can't be the case, though...
Because YIIK was in development for a long time. YIIK's battle system was one of the first parts of the game to be made back in 2014. And it was remade again, and again, and again as the games release date slipped back from end of 2015 to 2016, 2017 and then 2018. Looking through the pre-release images and videos online, (which there's a lot of!) I've found at least four different versions of the battle system - not including the one in the final game! Every time the battle system changes, the gist remains the same (skill names, etc.) but the stat balance and minigames all change every time: fruit machines, top-down shooters, top-down slashers - they tried everything. It's a sad fact: ultimately a lot of effort went into YIIK's battle system, but not a lot of insight.
I read through the patch notes for the 2021-edition of YIIK I played, highly intrigued by the mention of a 'New Battle System that focuses on quicker battles/more strategic gameplay' (external link), because if YIIK could use anything, it could use that. But, uh, in this post I was apparently playing the New Battle System all along.
In YIIK 2019, each character's standard minigame was more involved and slower, with multiple presses or holds required, rather than the functionally-identical (and in Michael and Vella's case, very strict and unfair) 'press X when the marker is in the box' set that everyone has in YIIK 2021. The original minigames were moved to each characters Skills menu now if you still want to use them, so before the patch everybody had even fewer commands to pick from.
I gave the original commands a whirl and they're not bad. I probably wouldn't want to use them throughout the whole game, but I think it's more of a case that they'd be the irritating cherry on top of an unrewarding cake. If the pace and balance of the rest of the battle system had earned the player's attention, slow minigames wouldn't have been a problem. As it is, the developer replaced one of YIIK's interesting features with a bland one trying to salvage its fifth battle system post-release.
An extra gift added in the 2021 patch is an elemental strength/weakness system that seems barely quarter-baked. Alex's record strikes have a 'metal horns gesture' element, but is that a 'metal' music element, a 'metal' substance element or 'physical' in general? Michael's camera is given as 'fire' elemental somehow even though he's just swinging an expensive brick on a string at his opponent. Okay, good start. Now, what are you supposed to do when an enemy resists that element? Nobody has any Skills attuned to other elements, and there's no fancy button combinations you can use in the minigames to execute other element attacks. The equipment shops don't offer any differently attuned weapons to swap to, either - that is when they have anything at all for sale. YIIK is not very strong in the character configuration department. I just ignored elements completely.
I'm also really frustrated about the lack of music direction in YIIK's battles. The game has a lot of music, undeniably well-produced, but it throws it out in a random sequence. Wandering back and forth fighting random battles on the world map, you could get the game's signature twee bombastic parade anthem 'HipsterBound Battle' in one battle, then the climactic rock track '68 Battle' in another, and then the escalating percussion of 'Battle, This Time With Rhythm' (YouTube links) all in a row. Hearing '68 Battle' for the first time coinciding with the YIIKsters risking their lives to rescue someone = good. Hearing it every fifth or sixth battle apropos of nothing = bad. It seems obvious to me that if there's going to be different battle themes they should follow the current mood in the story or have some gameplay significance (like how Grandia games have special battle themes for being attacked by surprise). And the music tracks not looping seamlessly is just poor workmanship. The game isn't deliberately aping retro games enough for me to accept that that was a deliberate design choice, rather than the developers jamming the nice MP3s they'd commissioned into the Unity editor and calling it a day.
After seven years of remaking the same battle system, the result still feels like hacked together garbage, and I have to conclude that despite their best intentions, Ackk Studios just don't have a clue.
If you're curious how YIIK feels to play, head on over to itch and get the 2016 demo YIIK: Episode Prime - "The MixTape Phantom and the Haunting of the Southern Cave" (external link). It looks and plays like YIIK but it's not super-representative of the YIIK battle experience you'd get if you bought the game today, as the balancing is completely different. (i.e. you might finish a battle before your tea gets cold.) (Also Alex inexplicably has negative numbers for certain things on his Status screen??)
Different scenes don't seem to connect together in a well-thought out way, like they were written on different days by different people and nobody proofread the game from start to finish. Players will have to have faith that everything will form into a coherent story eventually. Given the way the game likes to chuck stuff like the Samurai Tortoises in in the middle of a character's vulnerable moments, that's not a safe bet. YIIK loves to be weird. I can't imagine how quickly the average RPG player's interest would slide from interested, to intrigued, to merely curious, to morbidly curious, to disgusted, to drop kicking the game into the sun.
I find it funny how, even as the setting and art style change around him, Michael and his striped sweater remain the sole constant throughout the five years of YIIK's development. Perhaps the writer just really, really wanted to put that pose and that line of dialogue in the game.
As much as I'm frustrated by YIIK, I'm frustrated for YIIK. I feel like it could have been really special, if it was just any good. The strange thing is that the more time I spend apart from YIIK the more fondly I remember it. It's only when I sit down and think about sitting through those battles that I remember what it's really like.
People love RPGs with contemporary settings, and I don't think I'm projecting - try to find someone who won't shut up about Persona (no really, try - my personal favourite flavour of SMT is Devil Survivor, though). Or there's always, you know, Pokémon. Maybe it's because pure fantasy has been done over the last thirty-five years of home computer gaming, but there's an immediate appeal to me in games set in the real world, in familiar settings, but with unusual stuff going on. Remember Legendary, that FPS with gryphons and werewolves and magic powers set in present-day New York? I leapt at that. I dove through the game shop window and wrapped both arms around a copy of that game and whispered "This is mine." with a manic grin.
Making an interesting RPG with a modern, non-dysfunctional setting seems to be incredibly hard for some reason. There's a reason why Ray has a special an rpg that actually takes place in the present day tag for it here on Super Adventures for the occasions when they do show up.
I want a challenging game to play, with skyscrapers and cars and hamburgers, but also strange sights, flashy powers and bizarre beasts. I want to meet interesting people with secret, selfish motivations and make decisions on whether to follow or betray them based on how much I like their hat. No doubt those darned millennials want something loud and twee to latch onto now that Undertale's (finally) burned out and nothing Deltarune has happened in a while. There is a big, uncontested YIIK-shaped hole in the gaming world.
For the longest time, YIIK looked like it had something for everyone. It has the bright colours, the music, the unique setting and style, the endless, endless marketing comparisons to the Mother series - everything the game could possibly need to be a megahit. Both Sony and Nintendo thought so - putting the YIIK PS4 and Switch trailer front and centre on their main YouTube channels. And their publisher Ysbryd Games thought so, setting up huge, expensive looking stalls at the Penny Arcade Expo year after year (external link) even as the release slipped. I should be hearing 'HipsterBound Battle' and 'Krow Battle Theme' (YouTube link) played live by an orchestra, dammit.
I don't know where all this enthusiasm I have comes from. It's not as if the game itself pretended to be anything other than an off-the-wall, surreal indie RPG made by just a couple of guys about a self-important jerk trying to figure out why he tends to alienate everyone he meets. It's not trying to be the game everybody thought it could have been, but sadly it's not that great at being the game it wants to be, either.
But, you know, I'm not entirely through with YIIK. Maybe we'll see Chapter III, someday. That is, if you really, really want.
YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG (PC) - Guest PostPart 1 - Part 2
Thanks for reading by the way! Come back next week if you want to read about a mysterious spooky game for Halloween. Though maybe that clue on the left is not so mysterious to you? If you think you've figured it out, leave a comment below!
The next game is Splatterhouse 2. Someone should do a horror themed restaurant called "Splatterhouse". The waiters could all wear hockey masks.
ReplyDeletePlattershouse.
DeleteAlso yeah, that's the next game. I don't know if you identified it in record time, but either way it was bloody quick.
"Bloody"! Ha ha!
DeleteI look forward to trying the Splatterhouse Special Splatter Platter.
https://i.imgur.com/r02PgQJ.jpg
ReplyDeleteHere's another WIPYIIK for the collection.
Excellent article, and I think I agree with a lot of it, especially your thoughts on the writing. There's a case to be made about bad writing and how it could be entertaining. In fact, my friend (hilariously also named Alex) and I streamed this game intending to revel in that and discuss and trash it. I had seen all kinds of negative videos about the game and thought "it can't be that bad, can it?"
ReplyDeleteAs it turns out, it was much worse, but not because of the writing, but rather the thing those videos couldn't quite capture, the gameplay. It's a good thing you stopped after the Golden Alpaca because the game starts to drag considerably after that, with the dungeon designs getting worse and the interesting/cringy/etc dialogue thinning out. We went from having fun talking smack about the dialogue or at times even praising it to my friend trying hard to fill the stream with some kind of conversation while I was over there slogging through the game wishing I was somewhere else. I think this game would have been better as a visual novel or a walking simulator or something. Real shame because I heard the ending was quite a mess but we ended up not finishing it due to RL getting in the way and honestly we can't find the motivation to go back.
If you do decide to do a part 3 I'd definitely be interested in seeing how you feel about the coming chapter as it's the one that broke me, but if you didn't I don't blame you.
Thanks JIHAUS, that means a lot! It's very reassuring from someone who knows more about RPGs than I do. 16-bit RPGs were simply not part of my childhood. YIIK might have had just the right flow for someone with more nostalgia for them than me.
DeleteI did play some of Chapter 3 but didn't take screenshots so I know what happens after Alex & Co. leave the sewer (I laughed. Forgive me.), and what the initial objective of Chapter 3 is (the bug I mentioned occurs when Alex asks shopkeepers about jobs, sometimes both the job dialogue and shop interface appear together and lock up, forcing me to restart and load a save). I think the last part of YIIK I played was the cutscene with Michael and Rory talking about programming on the train.
There's no way to cut or cheese through the terrible battles other than fast-forwarding judiciously, yeah. And there's a lot of them. Given that nobody gets any useful commands and Alex's Mind Dungeon bonuses are so feeble, maybe just avoiding encounters would work? But then you wouldn't get Michael's superhuman bonuses either...
I originally wrote more comparing YIIK to specific other RPGs, but this mess I wrote had become long enough already. I played YIIK on a promotional Game Pass subscription using credit I randomly received as a gift code from MS through the Xbox messaging system. I thought it was suspicious but it turned out to be real. Someone I know requested YIIK simply because, well, it's YIIK. Chapter 3 will have to wait until I either own YIIK or get GP again.
What I really wanted to play (not for saig) on GP was Backbone, but the comp I was using was -exactly- the minimum requirements and my graphics card kept locking up when the final chapter began despite it being, y'know, a 2D adventure game.
I'd also be interested in seeing what chapter 3 is like, but I quite like mecha-neko and I don't know if I want to put them through that.
ReplyDeleteWow... uh, thank you! I don't know what's more surprising, that you like me, or that you still like me after two doses of YIIK.
DeleteYou're much better than that Ray Hardgrit geezer.
DeleteOh boy, do I hate this particular branch of American indie games. You know, the one that tries to act deep and symbolic and artsy, while they're actually dumb and boring - and very ugly to boot.
ReplyDeleteHow could you say YIIK is ugly? (It has a beautiful mustache and perfect eyes. I can't believe we're talking about the same game.)
DeleteYIIK might be a garish tangle of angles and shapes, but I'll definitely take it over any of the modern narrative indie puzzle games you can find, like The Gardens Between (to unfairly pick one at random) - the ones that have an indistinct ambient soundtrack that's an endless, unpleasant swelling of sounds.
Eh, I dunno, man. I guess that style just isn't my thing.
DeleteThank you for playing this so I didn’t have to. I thought the style of this game was super intriguing and I do have love in my heart for an old school RPG but my god it seems like an unlovable slog.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure it's supposed to be pronounced 'one-ism' to do with 'oneself' (not 'on-ism', how it's pronounced in this game), but it also looks like a different word which I suggest you don't try to look up.
ReplyDeleteI looked it up and I don't understand why you have a problem with Onimusha.
No-one ever will. It's a weight I must carry alone.
DeleteI'm getting conflicting information about YIIK I.V. - the apparent -new- new rebalancing of YIIK that's coming out this year (2022).
ReplyDeleteYIIK came out in 2019, but this SAIG post was written in 2021 using the New Battle System. This was before I.V. was announced. If I.V. changes the battle system again, I guess I'm going to have to replay YIIK...