… So YIIK is a game
Okay, so a lot of you, or hell, all of you are probably asking, “Nik, what the fuck are you doing this time?” All two of you that read these will know that I have talked about this game almost a taon nakaraan on the short lived In-Indie subseries I do, where I mildly praised the game despite how it is. This was around when the game was relatively new and didn’t have much attention aside from the mixed reviews that it had gotten. That is, until a few months later when so much came out about this game. It wasn’t long before YIIK: A Postmodern RPG became pretty much the biggest joke in the gaming industry at the time… Aside from maybe Anthem, Left Alive, and every single sports game that came out that year. But still, in the indie scene, no game was hated as much as YIIK, and I won’t deny it was for justified reasons. Pagsulat that was laughably bad all over the place, a bizarre gameplay gimmick that many didn’t enjoy, a horrible human being of a protagonist, and the real world stuff that was involved in this game from stuff ranging from plagiarism, an egotistical creator, and references to real life deaths. Yes, this is real. I am not kidding. But is YIIK truly a bad game? Well… it’s badly written, let’s not beat around the palumpong there. But this is a game I want to discuss. In big detail. This is it, boys and girls. This is the end all, be all. The most anyone will talk about YIIK (Even though there are tons of bidyo that can go on for hours explaining the issues of this game, including a two oras long analysis sa pamamagitan ng Running Shine. It’s a great video and you should check it out). Let us talk about YIIK in every last detail I can.
Part I: From Humble Beginnings
The game was created sa pamamagitan ng Andrew Allanson (Also helped sa pamamagitan ng his brother Brian, but this is mostly gonna be about Andrew). The two brothers had a vision, to create a game all about the 90s in the best way they could. But this wasn’t their first game, no sir. The brother’s first game under their studio, Ackk Studios (awful name) was Two Brothers. No, not Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Two Brothers, completely different. And that game… was pretty shite. It was interesting in its own ways, had some neat ideas, but it was an pangkalahatang unfun game to play, and was reviewed pretty poorly. Now why do I bring up this game that has absolutely no relation to the game this is all about? Well, in the words of the one, the only, the greasy Papa John, “Stay tuned”. Insert sinister chuckle. So anyway, YIIK had started development in 2013, with the help of the publishing studio, Ysbryd Games, who also helped ilathala 2064: Read Only Memories and one of my paborito games of all time, VA-11 HALL-A. With a publisher in the works, nothing could go wrong from here. It was all uphill…
Shortly after this, the brother’s mother was diagnosed with cancer. She would later lose her fight with cancer, and thus put the brothers in a state of reworking on the plot, removing the madami sad, depressing elements from the game as well as reworking the story to be madami humorous. It’s sinabi that about 25% of the whole game was completely redone, even changing the ending and the final boss. Despite the events, the team did not falter. They were determined to get this game released. A demo was put onto the PC stores in 2016, ipinapakita the game off as an Earthbound inspired RPG. We have seen many of those in the indie scene, with games like Yume Nikki, Undertale, and Lisa the Painful to name a few. On January 17th, 2019, the full game was released. Six years of development and hardships would finally pay off for Ackk. This was the moment. This would be the game that would truly bring the team into the limelight, ipakita that they could create something truly astounding.
And you all know the rest.
Bad reviews after bad reviews, tons of bidyo and comments talking about how the game was an absolute mess and was a pathetic attempt at trying to be “smart” or “creative”. Tons of people bashed the game for it’s stiff combat, it’s hard to follow and irritating story, it’s lack of character development, and it’s hated main character, along with all the other issues that would come up later. Tony Fox, the creator of the indie game Undertale, who had done a track for YIIK: A Postmodern RPG, posted about the game being out on Twitter, but after seeing how much problems there were, deleted his tweet and left the game to the wolves, also known as the Youtube comment section. The backlash was brutal, and Andrew was fed up with all the criticism, even going onto a podcast that he was a regular on and blew up about it in a fit of suppressed anger and stress. He even stated in an artikulo how video games can never be art because people don’t want to be challenged and can’t handle a horrible person as a protagonist, that they just want something simple. Even though there are plenty of games out there with asshole protagonists that are insanely successful, have cult followings and even get sequels and re-releases. Games like No madami Heroes, Catherine, Hotel Dusk, Silent burol 2, and pretty much every GTA and Saints Row game, hell even Lisa the Painful as I just mentioned previously. There’s a bunch of games where having a straight up dick can be rewarding. But of course, we can’t just go on and on about the development. We gotta get into the meat and potatoes. We’re gonna dive right into this game and see what this game has to really offer us.
Part II: Explain!
Oh boy, this is gonna be painful. So the game starts us off immediately with Earthbound influences. Name all your party members, but it has this sort of over explaining to it. Like, in a giant paragraph. Earthbound didn’t do much other than just go, “Name your friend, name your dog, name this girl”. That’s it. But YIIK goes on about the person’s entire personality like it’s an essay. But trust me, this isn’t even the worst of it yet. It gets to be an immense shit ipakita later down the line. Trust me. So after that, we start the game in the hometown of Frankton with many of our strange neighbors that don’t really have anything interesting to say aside from a few ironic and sarcastic jokes. And it’s here we are introduced to our protagonist. Alex, a college graduate with a gender’s study that returns tahanan afterward with no job, no goals in life, and a whole lot of ego. And he goes tahanan to start complaining about how his mom wants him to go to the store. Yeah, it’s pretty clear that this game wants you to dislike this guy as soon as possible, but we aren’t even at the worst moment yet. We’ll get there in due time. On the way, Alex runs into a cat, a cat with a moustache that looks like Salvador Dali, and trust me, they’ll hammer that into your skull sa pamamagitan ng the time you even get to the first enemy. And that’s not too soon after Alex finally stops and fights these strange smiling faces.
Honestly, the art direction of the areas and enemies are what peaked my interest for this game. Even if they have no real humor to them. It’s mostly just “Look! Stop sign with arms. A creature in a trash can with a cone on his arms and head. But I do like these smiling enemies. They had a charm to them. And I like how they emote when they are attacked or do the attack. You know what’s not so charming? Mini-games. So like South Park: The Stick of Truth, another humorous RPG, you have minigames with how you attack, mostly just quick-time events, button mashing, and doing a few button combos. Nothing special, but they work. For Alex, your basic attack is looking at a record spin VERY slowly until you hit the walang tiyak na layunin markers on it. There is no challenge to it. You just hit it as soon as best as you can and get the combo you reach. It’s pretty basic and I plan on discussing it for every party member, but man, there is no challenge or effort or… fun to watching a slow spinning record and hit some yellow spots on it. It just makes the fights feel longer. Along with pagkarga screens before and after fights. Man, even Final pantasiya VII on the PS1 didn’t need to load between fights. Whatever, we get to the first dungeon of the game, an abandoned factory where some strange happenings are going on. And this is where we run into not one, but two of the major criticisms for this game. But first, this is where we get introduced to the character Panda, a little toy plushie that always talks to Alex about his problems and knows him better than anyone else. Panda’s alright. I wish he did madami than just give wacky quips and talk to Alex about exposition of his life and stuff, but he’s alright. He’s also a puzzle solving item to help you navigate through areas, like standing on switches to open doors. Other than that, he doesn’t do much else gameplay wise. He has a sword and shield in the cover art for the game. I would’ve liked it if he was a party member. Every game needs a mascot character in some way. But with that said, I do like the factory level as a starting level. The puzzle with the door with the ever so subtly changing portrait in the background is a nice touch, and I pag-ibig how strange it gets in just one room. But here, we are greeted with the first criticism: Plagiarism.
Alex, you goober. You went to college. Don’t you know that cheating is the worst thing you can do in college? In the factory, Alex runs into a mysterious Proto Woman. She’s here for like this one scene and never again, but has been shown around for how she mga panipi a famous book sa pamamagitan ng Haruki Murakami. You may know him… Because I don’t read books. Point is, this was called out all over the internet that Andrew estola this quote from the book to make the game sound madami wise. He has stated that the quote was meant to be a homage to the book. And while it is a bit specific, I can see Andrew believing that. A lot of people quote famous books all the time in their work. Sure, most would just quote Shakespere or god forbid, Moby Dick, but still, I doubt this was meant to be plagiarism. So I will give this a pass. Now what I can’t give a pass to is what follows after. After this, Alex finds himself in a room having followed the cat around, going through an elevator that would “Begin to shake, vibrating with motion” as Alex puts it, and there he meets a girl, a Korean girl sa pamamagitan ng the name of Semi “Sammy” Pack. She was Nawawala in this place for a while and was looking for her cat, Dali, who is a girl, but the text calls Dali a he later on, but don’t look into that part too much. After a bit madami exploring with the two hoping to get out, Sammy is taken sa pamamagitan ng a strange race of aliens known as Soul Survivors. Alex looks a bit sad, and then has to flee the factory. We then get a, no joke, four minutos and thirty segundos of Alex explaining what we just saw. This is one other issue with the game. Alex never shuts the fuck up. The entire game, he will explain stuff that we have already witnessed segundos ago. I get it, an RPG has to keep people invested with it’s story, but there’s a thing called show, don’t tell. If you do less talking and just let people look at the scene for themselves, it wastes less time and let’s you get the full picture without being talked to like a baby. All I can say is I hope Alex’s voice actor was paid well for all these lines. In fact, Alex’s voice actor, Christopher Niosi, has voiced Byleth in apoy Emblem: Three Houses and Arataka in Mob Psycho 100, so he’s no freshi to this. So I can say that at least you have a good voice actor voicing all these lines. If you had voice pagganap on the levels of a PS1 game with all this dialogue, this would be painful. But I’ve stalled for long enough. Let’s get on with the creepshow. The segundo biggest reason this game gets a ton of shit and probably for justifiable reasons.
So after Alex boots up his America Online, he checks out the website Onisim, where he finds out that Sammy is a missing girl that vanished due to mysterious circumstances, and it shows footage that is… shot for shot similar to the footage found of the Elisa Lam incident. For those that aren’t familiar, the Elisa Lam incident involved a college student named Elisa Lam who was mysteriously found dead in a water tank on February 19th, 2013. There was footage found of her in an elevator looking around cautiously before she went missing. It’s not sure if what happened was an accident, a murder, or a suicide and is still a mystery to this day. Now of course, it’s not uncommon for people to take inspiration from tragic events. Events like the Holocaust has many films based on it, and even a few media based on 9/11, which barely isn’t even twenty years old. But for a game to do a shot for shot representation of the incident with a fictional character, as well as Alex’s obsession to find Sammy in an almost addicted level comes off as creepy and kinda messed up. I doubt it was meant to be done with any ill will, but it comes off as pretty uninformed and tonedeaf. And best of all? This is only the first oras of the game. Fucking help me
Part III: Parallel Universes
So after madami exposition dumps, we get introduced to Alex’s neighbor and childhood friend, Michael, voiced sa pamamagitan ng Clifford Chapin, voice of Bakugo in My Hero Academia. Michael is just kinda whatever. He does a lot of shit talking to pretty much everyone, and he does have a camera with a basic as hell mini-game. Gonna be honest, Michael is not someone I plan to keep in my party for very long. He’s just kinda there most of the time and I honestly forgot about him until near the end of the game. So you and Michael make your way back to the factory after all these bidyo start going viral on Onisim, and there you have a fight with the Soul Survivor, a fight that you can’t win and you just have to run. I like that. I like that they make these guys madami intimidating sa pamamagitan ng making them a presence you can’t even begin to face yet until much later in the game. So all you can do is head back to Alex’s house for even madami of Alex’s talking. (I’m just gonna skip over all these talking parts now. You get the point. There’s not a whole lot to go off on these other than “Shut up, Alex”). So after that, they get a picture of what is presumed to be a person that can travel through different dimensions who works at the arcade in Frankton. They go there to meet Vella, the supposed universe traveller, voiced sa pamamagitan ng Melanie Ehrlich, who then proceeds to beat the shit out of Alex and Michael in a battle. Don’t worry, once she joins your party, she is much weaker toward enemies. Don’t get too confident in her abilities. So after that, back to Alex’s house. YAY. So with madami party members with you, you can go out into the overworld and fight the strange creatures. You know, I just don’t get it. How can there be so much mystery to these Soul Survivors yet the outside cities are running wild with spring heads, trash demons, rats half as big as full grown adults, and sentient skulls. Forget the Soul Survivors, let’s focus on the pest problem right outside the city borders.
This is also where we get introduced to the Mind Dungeon… I fucking hate the mind dungeon. So the Mind Dungeon is a different reality inside your head where you can go and level up. Your party members level up naturally in fights, but for you, you gotta go into this area and climb down floor after floor after floor. On each floor, you have six doors with stats. Health, Strength, Speed, Power, Luck, and Defense. All your usual stuff. The problem is that you have to interact with each door that has the stat you want, put it on the door, and then go in there. And you can’t use two of the same stats on each floor. You can only use one on each floor, so you can’t overload yourself with health, or become a tank with high strength and defense, or just get a ton of items. No, you can only use one stat each. And every time you clear a floor, you have to go all the way down to that floor and continue from there. This process alone, the process of leveling up, is a tedious chore. What’s wrong with any other form of leveling up. Get a number of experiences, put them into stats you want, done. Games like Shin Megami Tensei or Fallout do this just fine. Why is leveling up made to be such a pain?
Alright, so with that little mini rant over, after getting strong enough, the party gets a message from someone saying that they’ve seen strange stuff in their town that they should check out, all in the far off city of Windtown, but not before Alex makes a really uncomfortable judgement about Vella’s race. She’s uncomfortable, he’s uncomfortable, I’m really fucking uncomfortable and now you are too. Anyway, in Windtown, we meet a variety of enemies here, like angry amputees, an aggressive drunk, and an aggressive store employee that’s not paid well. This level has a bit of messed up humor, but doesn’t go explaining it. It’s fucked up and cynical, but I’m cool with it. At least Alex doesn’t go on explaining how alcohol is bad for the liver or something. But of course, there’s madami issues with this level. Because there is not only one reference to a real life death, but two. In Windtown’s graveyard, you can find the grave of Sotoru Iwata, the late president of Nintendo who died some time before the games release. Okay… I get what the intention was… They wanted to pay respects to the passing of an important figure in the gaming industry. I understand that there was no spiteful intentions here… But this is not how you do it, man. One, it makes no sense in context because the game is set in 1999. And I can assure you, Iwata did not die in 1999. And it’s pretty fucked up to just slap someone’s name on a gravestone.
Anyway, after that, we run into Rory, our new party member, voiced sa pamamagitan ng Andrew Fayette, known as YuriofWind on Youtube, who kinda has a neat little story here, and also a very interesting part of the game that I will get to later on. I will say, with the addition of Vella and Rory, the characters start to stand out a bit more. That said, Rory, in battle, is putrid. All he does are status ailments that lower attacks on enemies, raise party attacks and mild healing (Even though you heal outside of battle and you have so many healing items in the game with just walang tiyak na layunin pagkain items. Never have I ever needed to heal in this game in enemy battles). And of course, this is not SMT stat boosts where they are a necessity to survive, they are the every other RPG stat boosts. As in, “If I’m not doing damage, then fuck it”. Rory, I like you, even with your stiled voice acting, but honestly, you gotta get outta the party as soon as possible. Anyway, with Rory on the team, we can travel to the sewer below where we get a new item, the hair whip to cut down trees (Even though we get an amp that blows open paths before, so they pretty much act as the same, or at least Cut and Strength Push from Pokemon). And let me tell you, I like the enemies in this level, one of them being a Samurai Tortoise, that’s a parody on Ninja Turtles. I have no words. That’s just funny to me. Other than that, I hate this level. It’s irritating as hell and just not fun to explore. I’ll be glad that the neon mga kulay make it not as ugly as it could’ve been, but still.I have no memory of this level other than I forgot about Vella’s pretty lacking mini-game attack of just…. Hold down and push a button. That’s it. You will only fail if you are falling asleep during the battles.
After that, we get a double whammy. Two bad moments at once. The two scenes that perfectly explain YIIK and why it is such a hated game. One of which I can agree with wholeheartedly. So after finishing the bad dungeon, you run into another Soul Survivor. Believing that it’s his sister, the reason Rory called you for help in the first place, Alex begins to ask what the hell is happening. Vella is able to tell them that the Soul Survivor is actually Rory, or another part of him. From a different reality, Rory escaped after losing his sister and the Rory of this world wanted to leave too, because in actuality, Rory’s sister killed herself and Rory, suffering through depression, also wants to die. And of course, Alex keeps asking for answers, even shouting about it like a madman. Yeah, this game has a lot of shouting for no reason. But I have the auts, so this is hilarious to me, if for the wrong reasons. So yeah, after all that depressing stuff, after all that heavy development about depression and suicidal thoughts… you now get to fight a Golden Alpaca from space… I’m not kidding. This, boys and girls, is what we like to call “Mood Whiplash”. Now that doesn’t mean bad, in fact you can use it creatively in a way to change the tone and ipakita how a situation can go from good to bad. But this is a bad example. A really, really bad example. Putting your walang tiyak na layunin joke boss in right after a character's revelation about depression completely ruins the mood. It even has a fucking trumpet for it’s theme song with the phrase “Lemonade” because LOL Random. It’s not good. In fact, it’s terrible writing. And even after the fight, Alex goes on and on about how he doesn’t understand this. Trust me, he’ll say this a lot. Lots of foreshadowing in this article, all about things that are not good.
But after that, we get to the other scene that made people hate this game, and one you probably know about. After the altercation with the Golden Mood Destruction, the gang get into an argument, with Rory talking about his sister again, to which Alex states that nobody cares about his dead sister. This of course turns the group against Alex and thus they get upset with him. And you know what?... I like this scene. Okay, maybe like is a bit of a stretch, but I do have good things to say about this scene. Of course, Alex is super in the wrong here to bring this up. Nobody should say that kind of shit. But at the same time, Rory lied to the group about his sister, just so he could get close to what he thought was a chance to see her again, forcing us to go through a terrible fucking level. Shit, I’m mad at Rory too for this. I can sympathize with his reasons for this, but his reasons that almost got the gang killed don’t justify it. Alex has a right to be mad. He took it way too far, but his anger is reasonable, like how it’s reasonable for the party to get upset about it. It’s why I don’t have too much of a problem with the party just forgiving him so easily, because I mean, I think everyone was heated at that moment. It’s not a bad scene. I can understand people seeing this as the scene where they found Alex to just be this completely unlikable prick, and yeah, he is an unlikable prick. But as long as I can see reasons for that prick behavior and as long as the prick gets called out for being a prick sa pamamagitan ng all the non-pricks, then I think there’s something here. Have we, sa pamamagitan ng chance, managed to get through the rough parts of the game? Is it all uphill from here?.... Fuck no!
Part IV: Alex’s Magical Mystery Tour
So after the fun times of dead siblings and common dickery going about, Alex is met with another entity floating around his house. Alex says that it’s harmless, as proven sa pamamagitan ng how he shouts at it like he does many things before the creature leads him to a radio station… that’s just outside Alex’s backyard. How Alex never knew about this is…. The least of this game’s problems, I assure you, but still fair to point out. And it’s filled with fucking bats. Huge ones. This town has madami disease ridden creatures running around, it’s a miracle there’s not a plague being spread. At the radio station, Alex ends up finding a record sleeve, the Mystical Ultimate LP Legend. A record sleeve that has Vella on the cover. So, naturally, instead of mentioning this to Vella, Alex decides to ask her to leave her job for a few hours and that he’d pay her $30, then when he gets a verbal lashing, gets pretty upset about how everyone gets mad at him, and he just leaves… Okay, I could defend the nakaraan moment, but not so much this part. This is just childish behavior and kind of irritating. Thankfully, Michael joins the party, so we have some party members. Unfortunately, we have Michael in the party, because who really cares. So we now begin travelling all around town, looking for the record that goes with the sleeve. Going all across different parts of the city and different record stores, and even going to Windtown to get Rory. And here, I have to admit, I did chuckle at this one scene where we meet Rory’s mom. It’s dumb humor, and kind of random, but it’s not over explained, and it’s over with before you know it. And I like it. It’s not brilliant humor, but it’s just enough to get a chuckle from me. This is also where we get introduced to an interesting mechanic in the game. The Rory Mechanic, as I will not be calling it again after this. You have a choice once you meet Rory again, to apologize for yesterday or not to. Now, what will this do?... Stay tuned.
So Alex and the boys continue to dick around this horrible area, still making me tanong the geography and where we are in the world. I know they say suspension of disbelief is mandatory, especially in Earthbound games, but when the characters are always asking tanong constantly about the world, I can’t help but ask myself. This game doesn’t really feel like an Earthbound game. No, it feels madami like a Persona game with all the weird otherworldly entities and the constant conversations between friends. And trust me, this won’t be the last time I mention Persona in this article. So anyway, as they travel and have conversations, they drop that all of this going around is just Y2K. Just… casually dropped like that. And there you have it, the pamagat drop for the game. I can now talk about why the fuck this game is called YIIK. You see, the two II’s in the pamagat is actually meant to be a Roman Numeral for 2, so the game is pronounced Y2K. Even though nobody does that and everyone, myself included, just calls it Yick or something along those lines. Anyway, madami travelling and we eventually get told that the record may be in the record store's flagship store. And we can find their flagship store in Flag Town. Ha ha, funny. At the record store here, we have our run in with our two new party members. Claudio, a black “swords” man with a pag-ibig for anime, voiced sa pamamagitan ng Anthony Sardinha, and his sister, the spunky Chondra, voiced sa pamamagitan ng Michaela Amanda Laws. Claudio tells you that they don’t have it, but a guy in the mountains does. So you know what that means? Time for another dungeon.
This dungeon is whatever. It’s a cave that you gotta crawl through. It has some poison on the floor, but most of it can be avoided. I say most because there’s a treasure chest hidden behind some fucking poison that is unavoidable. You have to take the damage to matter what. And it’s a key item, so you can’t ignore it. Fuck you, game. But to be fair, SMT does that all the time, but at least those games have items that can deflect sinabi poison. But YIIK? Nah, son. This does however let us talk about Claudio and Chondra’s abilities though. Claudio is the biggest hitter of the group and his is mostly a quicktime event. The closer you are to the thin red line, the madami damage he does. And Chondra has… a hula hoop… A lot of people take serious issues with this, but in the same world where a record, a camera and a keytar are weapons, I just go “whatever”. Her’s is simple. Just hit the buttons that appear at the right time. The madami you hit, the madami damage you do. She acts as a pretty good stat booster and healer, so it’s good to have her in the party. And way better than keeping Rory in the party, that’s for damn sure. This also starts a side quest where you find a ghost, because paranormal shit now, who made a cassette tape for the person she loved, and you can choose to either give it to this person or to her brother who asked for it. It’s neat, I guess. But fuck that, we got madami TALKING! YAY!
So we meet the man at the tuktok of the mountain, Mark. And he will, no joke, talk about his adventures in a foreign country looking for plants and tsaa and shit for seven minutos before answering about the record. This isn’t interesting. Nobody wanted to ask about this. This just goes on for longer than necessary. Regardless, we come out with info that the record hasn’t been released yet, and we learn where to find the record. But not before we discuss race issues… Yes, I’m serious. So Claudio and Chandra get involved in all this because of hearing about Sammy’s disappearance and Claudio offers to help because he and Chandra’s younger brother went missing. I won’t go on about how this plot point was ignored completely, because it may come back up in the final act of the game, but what I will touch on is the reasons about it, discussing how the police didn’t care enough because he was a black boy, about how white ignorance is why this sort of stuff happens, and just… hoo boy. Look, I’m not saying don’t discuss race topics in your material. It is a serious issue, even today, but when you come across it the way this game is… you can tell that this game was made sa pamamagitan ng white people. I will say at the very least that Claudio’s voice actor fucking kills it with his performance. Honestly, the three characters we have, Vella, Rory and Claudio, are all great characters with some depth. Not a ton of depth, god no, this is YIIK after all, but it’s definitely there. As for Chandra… Well, this is about most of the development. She gets angry about her missing brother and black culture. In fact, it feels like the game forgets about her a lot for some reason as she doesn’t get much attention. It’s kinda weird how her character gets thrown to the wayside a lot.
Anyway, after that uncomfortable scene, we go back to Vella for info on the record, and thus we are ibingiay access to her own Mind Dungeon. And this begins, no joke, my paborito part of the entire game. Vella’s Mind Dungeon is where the game actually becomes great. Throughout the game, despite having some great moments, I was immensely bored and irritated with the gameplay. But once we got here, it’s where I started to see the potential for this game. There is little to no talking in the Mind Dungeon. There is just you exploring the many different parts of Vella’s history from childhood to adulthood. You get to learn a lot about her without it being spoon fed to you. You learn about her childhood fears, her desires to be big in the music industry, her pag-ibig of men with a baby face (Whatever the fuck that means). You even get to learn about her father from a very creative and funny Pokemon reference. You find a large man sleeping in the way. You can’t ilipat him without finding a flute. Once you find it, you proceed to jab him in the chest with it. That’s great. I pag-ibig that. That’s genuinely a good joke. Her dad seems like a lazy guy, but he’s not a horrible person, like you would expect. He’s just a screw up that can never attend his daughter’s concerts no matter how hard he tries. That’s good development without Alex asking someone to explain it all in detail. There’s even some nice references to other (better) games, like 2064 and VA-11 HALL-A off to the side. They don’t distract from the main appeal of the dungeon. It’s all just creative puzzles and what not. If the entire game was like this, it would’ve been madami loved, I think. Less talking, madami creative elements like this, and let the scene ipakita itself without having to talk a lot. But don’t worry, because we’re about to start talking again, and thus we begin to fall into true despair.
So after that fun experience, we play the mysterious record that has eluded us for four fucking hours. And this allows Vella to open up to Alex, about how she was dating a man in her world and risked everything to be a musician. But when she saw that her boyfriend was with another woman at one of her shows, she was so devastated that she wanted to leave the world she was in, and so, as a result, she came to the world that Alex inhabits right now. And we’re gonna come back to this, because it opens up the stupidest fucking thing in this story. Yes, really, it gets topped.
Part V: i don’t get it
So after playing this record, a strange machine wakes up and has a battle with a Soul Survivor. I saved this for here, but throughout the game, Alex was having these creepy thoughts on an android sleeping, and was not sure who this was, but he knew that she was important in some way. So remember when I sinabi there were gonna be madami Persona references in this article? Well here’s your Aigis of the game. But not before we do, what else? madami running around aimlessly. Yaaaaaaay. So of course, you can’t just check one van, there’s a ton of vans where the android could be and they all have a chance of being a threat. Like how one of them has a flasher in an overcoat that does a status ailment… Alright, that I do find pretty funny as an enemy. But for the most part, it’s just aimless running around until you finally come to the mall parking lot, where the android assuredly is. After Claudio pulls the race card outta nowhere like it’s some Pot of Greed shit at the mention of picking the car lock, you find that some goth kids have it. So remember how Vella’s Mind Dungeon was the best part of the game? Well this is the worst part of the game, the mall. Instead of being a dungeon that could’ve been really creative, instead you have to chase these goth kids all around the mall for what feels like minutes, trying to gather them all to lure them to the back of the mall, while this maddening music plays that will drive you insane. And the mall layout is massive, so you can easily miss one while searching. Anyway, after that shit, you face the goth kids in the back as they transform into a three headed boss. And remember when I sinabi that the game was easy? Well, this is the sudden difficulty spike of the game. The boss has an insane amount of health and can easily wipe out your party in a second. This is where the game really starts to become a challenge and where you need to use everything you got. Chondra’s healing, Alex’s defense tools, and yes, even Rory’s status effects. For once, Rory becomes useful. However, there is one technique. I don’t know if I unlocked it before or after this fight, but it’s a special ilipat that Alex has. A ilipat that starts a puwang shooter minigame. You have to hit the records. It doesn’t matter how many you hit. But once you hit the target, it will do insane damage to the enemy. So insane, that it insta kills everything in the game. Fights go from taking way too long to being over in literal seconds. And yes, that includes boss fights. But, whether I had it before or after the fight, I had to fight it the natural way, and just barely won. Yeah, this fight sucked. And after that, we get the key, unlock the van, and are finally introduced to the final party member, The Essentia 2000, and the susunod dungeon, The Essentia’s Mind Dungeon.
Sadly, this one isn’t as cool or fun as Vella’s. It has some neat puzzles, some crazy imagery, the usual, but it’s mostly just another exposition dump of stuff, as well as introducing us to the dumbest thing ever. Here, you get introduced to how all these girls Alex has met and fawned over, Sammy, Vella, and Essentia, are all the same in their own way. Are you ready for it to get confusing, because it’s gonna get confusing. All of the people that have done wrong to these girls in their other worlds are other reality versions of Alex. Vella was cheated on sa pamamagitan ng another reality Alex, so she came to this world, where she met this realities Alex, and Essentia has been going to other universes to meet these other Alexes to help them in their own struggles because Alex is actually a destroyer of worlds because the universe actually revolves around Alex in a way that makes him the center of every universe as well as the destruction of every universe… I have so many regrets now. Why did I buy this game for $20 plus tax? Why did I spend literally six artikulo Pagsulat and editing this fucking article? Nobodies gonna read it, the fuck’s the point of all this.
This is the absolute most complex you can get while also seeming to be as pointless and absurd as possible. Not aided much sa pamamagitan ng the fact that Alex continues to ask the same old tanong of “Could you explain, please?”. I could go into madami detail about the other reality versions of Vella in this Mind Dungeon, including the boss who is a Japanese general that makes a Dragon Ball Z reference and turns into a giant robot, but I just want out of this dungeon, please. After waking up weeks later with the Essentia in tow, Alex gets the entire gang together to tell them that the world is going to end due to an otherworldly entity that looks like Alex on New Years. He gets everyone together through some fucking biazarre development about Chandra and the discussion of pantaloons. Don’t ask… please. Also, Michael just happens to ascend to a higher being outta fucking nowhere and is able to talk about the other realities with the group. So from here, we have our goal. For the rest of the month, the gang must train and get stronger, prepare for the fight. Essentia tells them that they have no chance of defeating what is coming to earth, but the gang decide to train and attempt anyway, no matter what. So now you have a Persona-esque schedule of training, hanging out with friends, or doing side quests. There isn’t much to say here, aside from one really awkward pasko event where Michael starts going on about how it’s not possible for these universes to exist and it just kinda kills the holy jolly mood. I know that I eventually ran out of enemies to fight on the overworld for some reason and was left with no choice but to do the sidequests. And because I’m YIIK’s #1 Fuckboy, I did all the sidequests. Was gonna go for platinum on the PS4, but that involved collecting all the pogs, because the 90s. And fuck doing that. I did all the sidequests, I finished all the monster nests, I did everything that wasn’t pog related. And sa pamamagitan ng the end of the month, I was a real beef cake, ready to fight what came my way… The fights from here till the end are all boss fights… Two of which are scripted events. This grind session was a fucking waste of time. I’m not even joking. And with the addition of the busted LP ilipat that kills everything in one hit, who cares about levelling up? But on the bright side, we get some interesting stuff afterward. Is it perfect? No. Is it remotely good? Not super really. But it’s definitely interesting. So during this event, it is possible for something to happen. Remember when you could apologize to Rory? Well, if you don’t, if you continue to just not apologize, to just keep up your attitude, you will get a call during the buwan of December. You get a call from Vella in what is probably her voice actors best performance in this game. She tells Alex that Rory had killed himself. And there’s nothing madami than that. You don’t get a bunch of dialogue about it, you don’t get any hints to it. It just… happens. Rory just commits suicide out of nowhere without warning, and you are now short one party member and Alex is left to think if what he sinabi was responsible. It’s one perfect scene that perfectly hits you without any constant talking about it or anything. You’re just left with that knowledge and you just have to continue the game from there. And continue we did. And that, everyone, is mood whiplash done right. Or at least, done better than Golden Alpaca.
The final day, New Years Eve, and it’s here where the world starts to go crazy and fall asunder. Even Alex starts having a sort of crisis. Panda (REMEMBER HIM!?) tells Alex about his childhood, how Michael and Alex had a huge fight last time they met and Michael moved away, how it was even possible for Michael to be here. And that’s not all, but Alex also goes down stairs to meet his father, or what he assumes is his father, speaking in a strange tone. This raises a lot of questions, without having to be a mess, madami so when Panda says that Alex never had a dad. Did Alex’s dad leave while Alex was young, before he had Panda? Was this another of that parallel universe stuff? I don’t know. The game doesn’t say. And I’m happier for it. And when you walk outside, the game takes this sort of crayon drawn style and starts to look like everything’s falling apart. Visually, I pag-ibig it, but the dialogue ruins it, yet again. It’s just Essentia and Alex talking about everything we’ve been going over the entire time already. It’s nothing new. At all. Like come on, this is getting ridiculous now. Also, they are riding the car to watch the ball drop at actual real New York Time Square. Weren’t we training for a buwan to fight some cosmic entity? At least the streets are visually pleasing with all these colored silhouettes. But once they reach the square, they then see it, the ball of flame with spaghetti noodle arms soaring toward them, ready to fight. And thus begins scripted fight one, with some rock ballad that I think I’d hear be sung sa pamamagitan ng Skillet. It’s weird, but I’m cool with it. I’m a sucker for vocal boss themes, what can I say. Regardless, it doesn’t matter what you do here, you and your team lose the fight and the world is destroyed. And I will say, this is what begins both my paborito part of the story and the absolute, most stupid part of the story
Part VI: Gamers, Rise Up
So here we are, the world is gone, all of Alex’s mga kaibigan are dead, and Alex is only left with himself and Panda, floating in the empty void of space. Without anyone else to turn to, Alex asks Panda for help, but of course, Panda is just a toy, and floats away in the empty vacuum of space, leaving Alex completely alone now. It’s a genuinely good moment that I pag-ibig and found such enjoyment in that I kinda got goosebumps. But don’t worry, this is YIIK after all, and good moments can’t last forever. We come to a single planet of other reality Alexes, one of them being a little black boy with an anime shirt, which may or may not be Claudio and Chandra’s brother. His face was on some missing posters in the stores, so it’s possible. It’s why I didn’t want the plot thread to go nowhere. Or maybe they just needed an asset for a walang tiyak na layunin background element. Andrew Allanson has a habit of just saying “Yes, this was intentional” when something happens sa pamamagitan ng total accident. Anyway, there’s also a cult of other Alexes who plan on destroying another planet with the same thing that destroyed other worlds, including Alex’s. So after some soul searching, Alex finds a planet that takes place on modern day. And this is… oh man, this is going to some insane levels. So this planet takes place in the modern age of 2019, where Alex calls out to you. That’s right, you, gamer. Alex needs your help, because you are an alternate version of Alex? Yeah, no fucking thanks. With that, he summons you and your mga kaibigan that you named. Remember that naming thing at the very start of the game? This is where it comes into play, where the names you used are that of your friends. And from here, we start the final boss-
Psyche. Boss rush time. Sitting on a pader of intestines that lead to a giant Alex head, you must face four bosses. Also, this is in fact the same as the final boss room from Earthbound. Many have compared the two and many will do so after me. Anyway, you have to fight four other Alexes. The fights are simple, because, you know, busted LP moves. I do like some of their designs, though. Talking about Alex being bored with his reality, too lazy to do anything himself, being just an absolute creep, and stealing things from others (That last one’s a bit meta). Sadly, most of their designs are pretty lacking and what they say is super on the nose. But I can appreciate what they were doing. After that, you make your way to the true final boss, Proto-Alex. And the Esentia is there too, or rather, Proto-Alexes Essentia, who is apparently evil and wanted Alex to kill Proto-Alex, but Proto-Alex doesn’t want to fight, but then you do fight and it’s another scripted loss. And for the pag-ibig of god, I know the busted LP ilipat is tempting, but don’t use it here. It will glitch out the fight and he won’t activate his attacks that kill your teammates. You have to die. You don’t get to lose. A Full buwan of grinding for fucking this?! So after you die, you load your game, but are in a different place, a white void.
So… remember that game I mentioned at the start? Two Brothers, Ackk Studios’ first game? Well this is what it’s all led up to, people. Here, you meet Roy, the protagonist of that game, who tells you that it sucks when people don’t depend on you, when your game upsets your family and the fans, and how Two Brothers will never get another chance, but Alex has a chance to do something. He just has to get out of this mess. So, yeah. This is the one time I have some actual issues with this game, and not a lot of people bring it up. This is literally shoving in the face how people didn’t get your first game and just left it in the dust, and how it’s all their fault that Two Brothers will never come back. That’s actually super petty and childish and I can’t defend any of this. And not even that, but from what I’ve read from reviews on Steam, the game had some praise for it’s story (Yeah, shocking), but because the game was buggy as hell and the team didn’t want to do anything madami with it, pretty much leaving it as is, of course people got upset sa pamamagitan ng that. madami should’ve been done. And I assure you, we shouldn’t have had a protagonist from a game that nobody bought talk about this at the final part of the game. Imagine if Link was on his way to fight Ganon, but he got a pep talk from fucking Captain Falcon? It’s just baffling. Also, to beat Proto-Alex, you just go behind his chair and flip the switch. No boss fight required. And after that, the entities of all Alexes go into the player character, as only one Alex can survive in this single world now. And with that, the game comes to an end… What a fucking stinker of an ending. That was an actual mess of just walang tiyak na layunin shit that had so much bad pacing. I try to be madami optimistic about some stuff now, but this is just too much. But we’re not out of the woods yet, gang. There is, believe it or not, another ending. If you go to your computer on the final araw and do a series of side quests, you can unlock the alternate ending that will take you to a mysterious building known as the KNN Building. It’s in a hot neon pink, all the characters are dressed in this 50s fashion without faces, and the best part, it’s quiet. No silly music, no crazy characters, Alex finally shuts his gab. It’s just you doing menial tasks to get through the area and take in the environment. It’s almost like… subtlety. It’s actually subtle and quiet, and I pag-ibig it… And then the plot comes back to piss on it again. I mean, this ending was better. I loved the atmosphere it created. And being rushed, I felt it added madami atmosphere to it. But guess what? It’s not over yet, Snake. We actually have one last ending, completely cut from the game.
It’s hard to say what these events leading up to are, but the result is that after the world is destroyed, Alex and his mga kaibigan find that Essentia was madami of an anti-hero than a full on villain. She was fighting Proto-Alex in a far madami creative disensyo than just a statue. Needing the help of other Alexes across different universes, Essentia believed that the only way to save the world was to bring every Alex here to fight and die against Proto-Alex. But Alex and his party decide to fight to save the other worlds. And in a fight that isn't a forced loss, Alex and the team win. Essentia thanks Alex for what he’s done despite the harm he’s done to her, and apologizes for the harm she’s done to him. Alex finally changes for the better, wanting to protect the universes as best as he could, and create a reality for his mga kaibigan to live in happily. So just a reminder, this ending was cut for being madami cynical. Like… it’s no contest, this is the better ending, and it was cut for being too depressing. Look, I understand that, ibingiay real world events, this was probably hard on the brothers and wanted a madami light hearted ending, but you didn’t have to sacrifice the story and ending because of it. Take a break, work on other things if you had to work, because the end result was an ending that everyone knows about and for the worst reasons. The game actually has a lot of cut content, like levels being changed, enemies missing, the entirety of Frankton looking completely different than the final version. But I think this was the biggest loss of them all, the better ending. It wouldn’t have done much to save the game from the criticism and harsh comments, but it would’ve been a bigger improvement if you ask me.
Epilogue: Final Thoughts
So after Pagsulat this big asno artikulo for six hours, what are my thoughts on this game? Well, I think that it is honestly a guilty pleasure of mine. Yes, even with all the issues, even with all the frustration and dull moments, even with all the behind the scenes madness, even with all the ego and petty behavior, I can’t bring myself to hate this game. It’s good moments are great and it’s bad moments make me laugh from how bad they are. This is a game that I can see being in the same league of stuff like any David Cage games. Bad games with bad stories but are so absurd that you can’t help but laugh at what you are witnessing. But this isn’t to disprove Ackk Studios for what they made. There is something here. This is a game that has tons of potential. Ackk Studios is no crappy steam company that makes one and done cash grabs, that’s for sure. They have talent. The visuals and the art are great, the voice pagganap is tuktok notch, and the music has this zany style to it that I listen to on occasions. YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is an interesting game that I find it hard to suggest to anyone. Would I recommend you play it? Well that all depends on you. I would suggest you look up some gameplay, you take to puso everything sinabi in this article, and if you are mildly interested, despite the knowledge of how mind numbing this game can be at times, then I’d say give it a try… but only if it’s on sale. Still, if only there was an indie game out there that was Earthbound inspired that also followed a horrible human being of a protagonist with zany music and party members that was beloved sa pamamagitan ng all, that everyone enjoyed….
To be continued?
Probably. I don’t fuckin’ know
Okay, so a lot of you, or hell, all of you are probably asking, “Nik, what the fuck are you doing this time?” All two of you that read these will know that I have talked about this game almost a taon nakaraan on the short lived In-Indie subseries I do, where I mildly praised the game despite how it is. This was around when the game was relatively new and didn’t have much attention aside from the mixed reviews that it had gotten. That is, until a few months later when so much came out about this game. It wasn’t long before YIIK: A Postmodern RPG became pretty much the biggest joke in the gaming industry at the time… Aside from maybe Anthem, Left Alive, and every single sports game that came out that year. But still, in the indie scene, no game was hated as much as YIIK, and I won’t deny it was for justified reasons. Pagsulat that was laughably bad all over the place, a bizarre gameplay gimmick that many didn’t enjoy, a horrible human being of a protagonist, and the real world stuff that was involved in this game from stuff ranging from plagiarism, an egotistical creator, and references to real life deaths. Yes, this is real. I am not kidding. But is YIIK truly a bad game? Well… it’s badly written, let’s not beat around the palumpong there. But this is a game I want to discuss. In big detail. This is it, boys and girls. This is the end all, be all. The most anyone will talk about YIIK (Even though there are tons of bidyo that can go on for hours explaining the issues of this game, including a two oras long analysis sa pamamagitan ng Running Shine. It’s a great video and you should check it out). Let us talk about YIIK in every last detail I can.
Part I: From Humble Beginnings
The game was created sa pamamagitan ng Andrew Allanson (Also helped sa pamamagitan ng his brother Brian, but this is mostly gonna be about Andrew). The two brothers had a vision, to create a game all about the 90s in the best way they could. But this wasn’t their first game, no sir. The brother’s first game under their studio, Ackk Studios (awful name) was Two Brothers. No, not Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Two Brothers, completely different. And that game… was pretty shite. It was interesting in its own ways, had some neat ideas, but it was an pangkalahatang unfun game to play, and was reviewed pretty poorly. Now why do I bring up this game that has absolutely no relation to the game this is all about? Well, in the words of the one, the only, the greasy Papa John, “Stay tuned”. Insert sinister chuckle. So anyway, YIIK had started development in 2013, with the help of the publishing studio, Ysbryd Games, who also helped ilathala 2064: Read Only Memories and one of my paborito games of all time, VA-11 HALL-A. With a publisher in the works, nothing could go wrong from here. It was all uphill…
Shortly after this, the brother’s mother was diagnosed with cancer. She would later lose her fight with cancer, and thus put the brothers in a state of reworking on the plot, removing the madami sad, depressing elements from the game as well as reworking the story to be madami humorous. It’s sinabi that about 25% of the whole game was completely redone, even changing the ending and the final boss. Despite the events, the team did not falter. They were determined to get this game released. A demo was put onto the PC stores in 2016, ipinapakita the game off as an Earthbound inspired RPG. We have seen many of those in the indie scene, with games like Yume Nikki, Undertale, and Lisa the Painful to name a few. On January 17th, 2019, the full game was released. Six years of development and hardships would finally pay off for Ackk. This was the moment. This would be the game that would truly bring the team into the limelight, ipakita that they could create something truly astounding.
And you all know the rest.
Bad reviews after bad reviews, tons of bidyo and comments talking about how the game was an absolute mess and was a pathetic attempt at trying to be “smart” or “creative”. Tons of people bashed the game for it’s stiff combat, it’s hard to follow and irritating story, it’s lack of character development, and it’s hated main character, along with all the other issues that would come up later. Tony Fox, the creator of the indie game Undertale, who had done a track for YIIK: A Postmodern RPG, posted about the game being out on Twitter, but after seeing how much problems there were, deleted his tweet and left the game to the wolves, also known as the Youtube comment section. The backlash was brutal, and Andrew was fed up with all the criticism, even going onto a podcast that he was a regular on and blew up about it in a fit of suppressed anger and stress. He even stated in an artikulo how video games can never be art because people don’t want to be challenged and can’t handle a horrible person as a protagonist, that they just want something simple. Even though there are plenty of games out there with asshole protagonists that are insanely successful, have cult followings and even get sequels and re-releases. Games like No madami Heroes, Catherine, Hotel Dusk, Silent burol 2, and pretty much every GTA and Saints Row game, hell even Lisa the Painful as I just mentioned previously. There’s a bunch of games where having a straight up dick can be rewarding. But of course, we can’t just go on and on about the development. We gotta get into the meat and potatoes. We’re gonna dive right into this game and see what this game has to really offer us.
Part II: Explain!
Oh boy, this is gonna be painful. So the game starts us off immediately with Earthbound influences. Name all your party members, but it has this sort of over explaining to it. Like, in a giant paragraph. Earthbound didn’t do much other than just go, “Name your friend, name your dog, name this girl”. That’s it. But YIIK goes on about the person’s entire personality like it’s an essay. But trust me, this isn’t even the worst of it yet. It gets to be an immense shit ipakita later down the line. Trust me. So after that, we start the game in the hometown of Frankton with many of our strange neighbors that don’t really have anything interesting to say aside from a few ironic and sarcastic jokes. And it’s here we are introduced to our protagonist. Alex, a college graduate with a gender’s study that returns tahanan afterward with no job, no goals in life, and a whole lot of ego. And he goes tahanan to start complaining about how his mom wants him to go to the store. Yeah, it’s pretty clear that this game wants you to dislike this guy as soon as possible, but we aren’t even at the worst moment yet. We’ll get there in due time. On the way, Alex runs into a cat, a cat with a moustache that looks like Salvador Dali, and trust me, they’ll hammer that into your skull sa pamamagitan ng the time you even get to the first enemy. And that’s not too soon after Alex finally stops and fights these strange smiling faces.
Honestly, the art direction of the areas and enemies are what peaked my interest for this game. Even if they have no real humor to them. It’s mostly just “Look! Stop sign with arms. A creature in a trash can with a cone on his arms and head. But I do like these smiling enemies. They had a charm to them. And I like how they emote when they are attacked or do the attack. You know what’s not so charming? Mini-games. So like South Park: The Stick of Truth, another humorous RPG, you have minigames with how you attack, mostly just quick-time events, button mashing, and doing a few button combos. Nothing special, but they work. For Alex, your basic attack is looking at a record spin VERY slowly until you hit the walang tiyak na layunin markers on it. There is no challenge to it. You just hit it as soon as best as you can and get the combo you reach. It’s pretty basic and I plan on discussing it for every party member, but man, there is no challenge or effort or… fun to watching a slow spinning record and hit some yellow spots on it. It just makes the fights feel longer. Along with pagkarga screens before and after fights. Man, even Final pantasiya VII on the PS1 didn’t need to load between fights. Whatever, we get to the first dungeon of the game, an abandoned factory where some strange happenings are going on. And this is where we run into not one, but two of the major criticisms for this game. But first, this is where we get introduced to the character Panda, a little toy plushie that always talks to Alex about his problems and knows him better than anyone else. Panda’s alright. I wish he did madami than just give wacky quips and talk to Alex about exposition of his life and stuff, but he’s alright. He’s also a puzzle solving item to help you navigate through areas, like standing on switches to open doors. Other than that, he doesn’t do much else gameplay wise. He has a sword and shield in the cover art for the game. I would’ve liked it if he was a party member. Every game needs a mascot character in some way. But with that said, I do like the factory level as a starting level. The puzzle with the door with the ever so subtly changing portrait in the background is a nice touch, and I pag-ibig how strange it gets in just one room. But here, we are greeted with the first criticism: Plagiarism.
Alex, you goober. You went to college. Don’t you know that cheating is the worst thing you can do in college? In the factory, Alex runs into a mysterious Proto Woman. She’s here for like this one scene and never again, but has been shown around for how she mga panipi a famous book sa pamamagitan ng Haruki Murakami. You may know him… Because I don’t read books. Point is, this was called out all over the internet that Andrew estola this quote from the book to make the game sound madami wise. He has stated that the quote was meant to be a homage to the book. And while it is a bit specific, I can see Andrew believing that. A lot of people quote famous books all the time in their work. Sure, most would just quote Shakespere or god forbid, Moby Dick, but still, I doubt this was meant to be plagiarism. So I will give this a pass. Now what I can’t give a pass to is what follows after. After this, Alex finds himself in a room having followed the cat around, going through an elevator that would “Begin to shake, vibrating with motion” as Alex puts it, and there he meets a girl, a Korean girl sa pamamagitan ng the name of Semi “Sammy” Pack. She was Nawawala in this place for a while and was looking for her cat, Dali, who is a girl, but the text calls Dali a he later on, but don’t look into that part too much. After a bit madami exploring with the two hoping to get out, Sammy is taken sa pamamagitan ng a strange race of aliens known as Soul Survivors. Alex looks a bit sad, and then has to flee the factory. We then get a, no joke, four minutos and thirty segundos of Alex explaining what we just saw. This is one other issue with the game. Alex never shuts the fuck up. The entire game, he will explain stuff that we have already witnessed segundos ago. I get it, an RPG has to keep people invested with it’s story, but there’s a thing called show, don’t tell. If you do less talking and just let people look at the scene for themselves, it wastes less time and let’s you get the full picture without being talked to like a baby. All I can say is I hope Alex’s voice actor was paid well for all these lines. In fact, Alex’s voice actor, Christopher Niosi, has voiced Byleth in apoy Emblem: Three Houses and Arataka in Mob Psycho 100, so he’s no freshi to this. So I can say that at least you have a good voice actor voicing all these lines. If you had voice pagganap on the levels of a PS1 game with all this dialogue, this would be painful. But I’ve stalled for long enough. Let’s get on with the creepshow. The segundo biggest reason this game gets a ton of shit and probably for justifiable reasons.
So after Alex boots up his America Online, he checks out the website Onisim, where he finds out that Sammy is a missing girl that vanished due to mysterious circumstances, and it shows footage that is… shot for shot similar to the footage found of the Elisa Lam incident. For those that aren’t familiar, the Elisa Lam incident involved a college student named Elisa Lam who was mysteriously found dead in a water tank on February 19th, 2013. There was footage found of her in an elevator looking around cautiously before she went missing. It’s not sure if what happened was an accident, a murder, or a suicide and is still a mystery to this day. Now of course, it’s not uncommon for people to take inspiration from tragic events. Events like the Holocaust has many films based on it, and even a few media based on 9/11, which barely isn’t even twenty years old. But for a game to do a shot for shot representation of the incident with a fictional character, as well as Alex’s obsession to find Sammy in an almost addicted level comes off as creepy and kinda messed up. I doubt it was meant to be done with any ill will, but it comes off as pretty uninformed and tonedeaf. And best of all? This is only the first oras of the game. Fucking help me
Part III: Parallel Universes
So after madami exposition dumps, we get introduced to Alex’s neighbor and childhood friend, Michael, voiced sa pamamagitan ng Clifford Chapin, voice of Bakugo in My Hero Academia. Michael is just kinda whatever. He does a lot of shit talking to pretty much everyone, and he does have a camera with a basic as hell mini-game. Gonna be honest, Michael is not someone I plan to keep in my party for very long. He’s just kinda there most of the time and I honestly forgot about him until near the end of the game. So you and Michael make your way back to the factory after all these bidyo start going viral on Onisim, and there you have a fight with the Soul Survivor, a fight that you can’t win and you just have to run. I like that. I like that they make these guys madami intimidating sa pamamagitan ng making them a presence you can’t even begin to face yet until much later in the game. So all you can do is head back to Alex’s house for even madami of Alex’s talking. (I’m just gonna skip over all these talking parts now. You get the point. There’s not a whole lot to go off on these other than “Shut up, Alex”). So after that, they get a picture of what is presumed to be a person that can travel through different dimensions who works at the arcade in Frankton. They go there to meet Vella, the supposed universe traveller, voiced sa pamamagitan ng Melanie Ehrlich, who then proceeds to beat the shit out of Alex and Michael in a battle. Don’t worry, once she joins your party, she is much weaker toward enemies. Don’t get too confident in her abilities. So after that, back to Alex’s house. YAY. So with madami party members with you, you can go out into the overworld and fight the strange creatures. You know, I just don’t get it. How can there be so much mystery to these Soul Survivors yet the outside cities are running wild with spring heads, trash demons, rats half as big as full grown adults, and sentient skulls. Forget the Soul Survivors, let’s focus on the pest problem right outside the city borders.
This is also where we get introduced to the Mind Dungeon… I fucking hate the mind dungeon. So the Mind Dungeon is a different reality inside your head where you can go and level up. Your party members level up naturally in fights, but for you, you gotta go into this area and climb down floor after floor after floor. On each floor, you have six doors with stats. Health, Strength, Speed, Power, Luck, and Defense. All your usual stuff. The problem is that you have to interact with each door that has the stat you want, put it on the door, and then go in there. And you can’t use two of the same stats on each floor. You can only use one on each floor, so you can’t overload yourself with health, or become a tank with high strength and defense, or just get a ton of items. No, you can only use one stat each. And every time you clear a floor, you have to go all the way down to that floor and continue from there. This process alone, the process of leveling up, is a tedious chore. What’s wrong with any other form of leveling up. Get a number of experiences, put them into stats you want, done. Games like Shin Megami Tensei or Fallout do this just fine. Why is leveling up made to be such a pain?
Alright, so with that little mini rant over, after getting strong enough, the party gets a message from someone saying that they’ve seen strange stuff in their town that they should check out, all in the far off city of Windtown, but not before Alex makes a really uncomfortable judgement about Vella’s race. She’s uncomfortable, he’s uncomfortable, I’m really fucking uncomfortable and now you are too. Anyway, in Windtown, we meet a variety of enemies here, like angry amputees, an aggressive drunk, and an aggressive store employee that’s not paid well. This level has a bit of messed up humor, but doesn’t go explaining it. It’s fucked up and cynical, but I’m cool with it. At least Alex doesn’t go on explaining how alcohol is bad for the liver or something. But of course, there’s madami issues with this level. Because there is not only one reference to a real life death, but two. In Windtown’s graveyard, you can find the grave of Sotoru Iwata, the late president of Nintendo who died some time before the games release. Okay… I get what the intention was… They wanted to pay respects to the passing of an important figure in the gaming industry. I understand that there was no spiteful intentions here… But this is not how you do it, man. One, it makes no sense in context because the game is set in 1999. And I can assure you, Iwata did not die in 1999. And it’s pretty fucked up to just slap someone’s name on a gravestone.
Anyway, after that, we run into Rory, our new party member, voiced sa pamamagitan ng Andrew Fayette, known as YuriofWind on Youtube, who kinda has a neat little story here, and also a very interesting part of the game that I will get to later on. I will say, with the addition of Vella and Rory, the characters start to stand out a bit more. That said, Rory, in battle, is putrid. All he does are status ailments that lower attacks on enemies, raise party attacks and mild healing (Even though you heal outside of battle and you have so many healing items in the game with just walang tiyak na layunin pagkain items. Never have I ever needed to heal in this game in enemy battles). And of course, this is not SMT stat boosts where they are a necessity to survive, they are the every other RPG stat boosts. As in, “If I’m not doing damage, then fuck it”. Rory, I like you, even with your stiled voice acting, but honestly, you gotta get outta the party as soon as possible. Anyway, with Rory on the team, we can travel to the sewer below where we get a new item, the hair whip to cut down trees (Even though we get an amp that blows open paths before, so they pretty much act as the same, or at least Cut and Strength Push from Pokemon). And let me tell you, I like the enemies in this level, one of them being a Samurai Tortoise, that’s a parody on Ninja Turtles. I have no words. That’s just funny to me. Other than that, I hate this level. It’s irritating as hell and just not fun to explore. I’ll be glad that the neon mga kulay make it not as ugly as it could’ve been, but still.I have no memory of this level other than I forgot about Vella’s pretty lacking mini-game attack of just…. Hold down and push a button. That’s it. You will only fail if you are falling asleep during the battles.
After that, we get a double whammy. Two bad moments at once. The two scenes that perfectly explain YIIK and why it is such a hated game. One of which I can agree with wholeheartedly. So after finishing the bad dungeon, you run into another Soul Survivor. Believing that it’s his sister, the reason Rory called you for help in the first place, Alex begins to ask what the hell is happening. Vella is able to tell them that the Soul Survivor is actually Rory, or another part of him. From a different reality, Rory escaped after losing his sister and the Rory of this world wanted to leave too, because in actuality, Rory’s sister killed herself and Rory, suffering through depression, also wants to die. And of course, Alex keeps asking for answers, even shouting about it like a madman. Yeah, this game has a lot of shouting for no reason. But I have the auts, so this is hilarious to me, if for the wrong reasons. So yeah, after all that depressing stuff, after all that heavy development about depression and suicidal thoughts… you now get to fight a Golden Alpaca from space… I’m not kidding. This, boys and girls, is what we like to call “Mood Whiplash”. Now that doesn’t mean bad, in fact you can use it creatively in a way to change the tone and ipakita how a situation can go from good to bad. But this is a bad example. A really, really bad example. Putting your walang tiyak na layunin joke boss in right after a character's revelation about depression completely ruins the mood. It even has a fucking trumpet for it’s theme song with the phrase “Lemonade” because LOL Random. It’s not good. In fact, it’s terrible writing. And even after the fight, Alex goes on and on about how he doesn’t understand this. Trust me, he’ll say this a lot. Lots of foreshadowing in this article, all about things that are not good.
But after that, we get to the other scene that made people hate this game, and one you probably know about. After the altercation with the Golden Mood Destruction, the gang get into an argument, with Rory talking about his sister again, to which Alex states that nobody cares about his dead sister. This of course turns the group against Alex and thus they get upset with him. And you know what?... I like this scene. Okay, maybe like is a bit of a stretch, but I do have good things to say about this scene. Of course, Alex is super in the wrong here to bring this up. Nobody should say that kind of shit. But at the same time, Rory lied to the group about his sister, just so he could get close to what he thought was a chance to see her again, forcing us to go through a terrible fucking level. Shit, I’m mad at Rory too for this. I can sympathize with his reasons for this, but his reasons that almost got the gang killed don’t justify it. Alex has a right to be mad. He took it way too far, but his anger is reasonable, like how it’s reasonable for the party to get upset about it. It’s why I don’t have too much of a problem with the party just forgiving him so easily, because I mean, I think everyone was heated at that moment. It’s not a bad scene. I can understand people seeing this as the scene where they found Alex to just be this completely unlikable prick, and yeah, he is an unlikable prick. But as long as I can see reasons for that prick behavior and as long as the prick gets called out for being a prick sa pamamagitan ng all the non-pricks, then I think there’s something here. Have we, sa pamamagitan ng chance, managed to get through the rough parts of the game? Is it all uphill from here?.... Fuck no!
Part IV: Alex’s Magical Mystery Tour
So after the fun times of dead siblings and common dickery going about, Alex is met with another entity floating around his house. Alex says that it’s harmless, as proven sa pamamagitan ng how he shouts at it like he does many things before the creature leads him to a radio station… that’s just outside Alex’s backyard. How Alex never knew about this is…. The least of this game’s problems, I assure you, but still fair to point out. And it’s filled with fucking bats. Huge ones. This town has madami disease ridden creatures running around, it’s a miracle there’s not a plague being spread. At the radio station, Alex ends up finding a record sleeve, the Mystical Ultimate LP Legend. A record sleeve that has Vella on the cover. So, naturally, instead of mentioning this to Vella, Alex decides to ask her to leave her job for a few hours and that he’d pay her $30, then when he gets a verbal lashing, gets pretty upset about how everyone gets mad at him, and he just leaves… Okay, I could defend the nakaraan moment, but not so much this part. This is just childish behavior and kind of irritating. Thankfully, Michael joins the party, so we have some party members. Unfortunately, we have Michael in the party, because who really cares. So we now begin travelling all around town, looking for the record that goes with the sleeve. Going all across different parts of the city and different record stores, and even going to Windtown to get Rory. And here, I have to admit, I did chuckle at this one scene where we meet Rory’s mom. It’s dumb humor, and kind of random, but it’s not over explained, and it’s over with before you know it. And I like it. It’s not brilliant humor, but it’s just enough to get a chuckle from me. This is also where we get introduced to an interesting mechanic in the game. The Rory Mechanic, as I will not be calling it again after this. You have a choice once you meet Rory again, to apologize for yesterday or not to. Now, what will this do?... Stay tuned.
So Alex and the boys continue to dick around this horrible area, still making me tanong the geography and where we are in the world. I know they say suspension of disbelief is mandatory, especially in Earthbound games, but when the characters are always asking tanong constantly about the world, I can’t help but ask myself. This game doesn’t really feel like an Earthbound game. No, it feels madami like a Persona game with all the weird otherworldly entities and the constant conversations between friends. And trust me, this won’t be the last time I mention Persona in this article. So anyway, as they travel and have conversations, they drop that all of this going around is just Y2K. Just… casually dropped like that. And there you have it, the pamagat drop for the game. I can now talk about why the fuck this game is called YIIK. You see, the two II’s in the pamagat is actually meant to be a Roman Numeral for 2, so the game is pronounced Y2K. Even though nobody does that and everyone, myself included, just calls it Yick or something along those lines. Anyway, madami travelling and we eventually get told that the record may be in the record store's flagship store. And we can find their flagship store in Flag Town. Ha ha, funny. At the record store here, we have our run in with our two new party members. Claudio, a black “swords” man with a pag-ibig for anime, voiced sa pamamagitan ng Anthony Sardinha, and his sister, the spunky Chondra, voiced sa pamamagitan ng Michaela Amanda Laws. Claudio tells you that they don’t have it, but a guy in the mountains does. So you know what that means? Time for another dungeon.
This dungeon is whatever. It’s a cave that you gotta crawl through. It has some poison on the floor, but most of it can be avoided. I say most because there’s a treasure chest hidden behind some fucking poison that is unavoidable. You have to take the damage to matter what. And it’s a key item, so you can’t ignore it. Fuck you, game. But to be fair, SMT does that all the time, but at least those games have items that can deflect sinabi poison. But YIIK? Nah, son. This does however let us talk about Claudio and Chondra’s abilities though. Claudio is the biggest hitter of the group and his is mostly a quicktime event. The closer you are to the thin red line, the madami damage he does. And Chondra has… a hula hoop… A lot of people take serious issues with this, but in the same world where a record, a camera and a keytar are weapons, I just go “whatever”. Her’s is simple. Just hit the buttons that appear at the right time. The madami you hit, the madami damage you do. She acts as a pretty good stat booster and healer, so it’s good to have her in the party. And way better than keeping Rory in the party, that’s for damn sure. This also starts a side quest where you find a ghost, because paranormal shit now, who made a cassette tape for the person she loved, and you can choose to either give it to this person or to her brother who asked for it. It’s neat, I guess. But fuck that, we got madami TALKING! YAY!
So we meet the man at the tuktok of the mountain, Mark. And he will, no joke, talk about his adventures in a foreign country looking for plants and tsaa and shit for seven minutos before answering about the record. This isn’t interesting. Nobody wanted to ask about this. This just goes on for longer than necessary. Regardless, we come out with info that the record hasn’t been released yet, and we learn where to find the record. But not before we discuss race issues… Yes, I’m serious. So Claudio and Chandra get involved in all this because of hearing about Sammy’s disappearance and Claudio offers to help because he and Chandra’s younger brother went missing. I won’t go on about how this plot point was ignored completely, because it may come back up in the final act of the game, but what I will touch on is the reasons about it, discussing how the police didn’t care enough because he was a black boy, about how white ignorance is why this sort of stuff happens, and just… hoo boy. Look, I’m not saying don’t discuss race topics in your material. It is a serious issue, even today, but when you come across it the way this game is… you can tell that this game was made sa pamamagitan ng white people. I will say at the very least that Claudio’s voice actor fucking kills it with his performance. Honestly, the three characters we have, Vella, Rory and Claudio, are all great characters with some depth. Not a ton of depth, god no, this is YIIK after all, but it’s definitely there. As for Chandra… Well, this is about most of the development. She gets angry about her missing brother and black culture. In fact, it feels like the game forgets about her a lot for some reason as she doesn’t get much attention. It’s kinda weird how her character gets thrown to the wayside a lot.
Anyway, after that uncomfortable scene, we go back to Vella for info on the record, and thus we are ibingiay access to her own Mind Dungeon. And this begins, no joke, my paborito part of the entire game. Vella’s Mind Dungeon is where the game actually becomes great. Throughout the game, despite having some great moments, I was immensely bored and irritated with the gameplay. But once we got here, it’s where I started to see the potential for this game. There is little to no talking in the Mind Dungeon. There is just you exploring the many different parts of Vella’s history from childhood to adulthood. You get to learn a lot about her without it being spoon fed to you. You learn about her childhood fears, her desires to be big in the music industry, her pag-ibig of men with a baby face (Whatever the fuck that means). You even get to learn about her father from a very creative and funny Pokemon reference. You find a large man sleeping in the way. You can’t ilipat him without finding a flute. Once you find it, you proceed to jab him in the chest with it. That’s great. I pag-ibig that. That’s genuinely a good joke. Her dad seems like a lazy guy, but he’s not a horrible person, like you would expect. He’s just a screw up that can never attend his daughter’s concerts no matter how hard he tries. That’s good development without Alex asking someone to explain it all in detail. There’s even some nice references to other (better) games, like 2064 and VA-11 HALL-A off to the side. They don’t distract from the main appeal of the dungeon. It’s all just creative puzzles and what not. If the entire game was like this, it would’ve been madami loved, I think. Less talking, madami creative elements like this, and let the scene ipakita itself without having to talk a lot. But don’t worry, because we’re about to start talking again, and thus we begin to fall into true despair.
So after that fun experience, we play the mysterious record that has eluded us for four fucking hours. And this allows Vella to open up to Alex, about how she was dating a man in her world and risked everything to be a musician. But when she saw that her boyfriend was with another woman at one of her shows, she was so devastated that she wanted to leave the world she was in, and so, as a result, she came to the world that Alex inhabits right now. And we’re gonna come back to this, because it opens up the stupidest fucking thing in this story. Yes, really, it gets topped.
Part V: i don’t get it
So after playing this record, a strange machine wakes up and has a battle with a Soul Survivor. I saved this for here, but throughout the game, Alex was having these creepy thoughts on an android sleeping, and was not sure who this was, but he knew that she was important in some way. So remember when I sinabi there were gonna be madami Persona references in this article? Well here’s your Aigis of the game. But not before we do, what else? madami running around aimlessly. Yaaaaaaay. So of course, you can’t just check one van, there’s a ton of vans where the android could be and they all have a chance of being a threat. Like how one of them has a flasher in an overcoat that does a status ailment… Alright, that I do find pretty funny as an enemy. But for the most part, it’s just aimless running around until you finally come to the mall parking lot, where the android assuredly is. After Claudio pulls the race card outta nowhere like it’s some Pot of Greed shit at the mention of picking the car lock, you find that some goth kids have it. So remember how Vella’s Mind Dungeon was the best part of the game? Well this is the worst part of the game, the mall. Instead of being a dungeon that could’ve been really creative, instead you have to chase these goth kids all around the mall for what feels like minutes, trying to gather them all to lure them to the back of the mall, while this maddening music plays that will drive you insane. And the mall layout is massive, so you can easily miss one while searching. Anyway, after that shit, you face the goth kids in the back as they transform into a three headed boss. And remember when I sinabi that the game was easy? Well, this is the sudden difficulty spike of the game. The boss has an insane amount of health and can easily wipe out your party in a second. This is where the game really starts to become a challenge and where you need to use everything you got. Chondra’s healing, Alex’s defense tools, and yes, even Rory’s status effects. For once, Rory becomes useful. However, there is one technique. I don’t know if I unlocked it before or after this fight, but it’s a special ilipat that Alex has. A ilipat that starts a puwang shooter minigame. You have to hit the records. It doesn’t matter how many you hit. But once you hit the target, it will do insane damage to the enemy. So insane, that it insta kills everything in the game. Fights go from taking way too long to being over in literal seconds. And yes, that includes boss fights. But, whether I had it before or after the fight, I had to fight it the natural way, and just barely won. Yeah, this fight sucked. And after that, we get the key, unlock the van, and are finally introduced to the final party member, The Essentia 2000, and the susunod dungeon, The Essentia’s Mind Dungeon.
Sadly, this one isn’t as cool or fun as Vella’s. It has some neat puzzles, some crazy imagery, the usual, but it’s mostly just another exposition dump of stuff, as well as introducing us to the dumbest thing ever. Here, you get introduced to how all these girls Alex has met and fawned over, Sammy, Vella, and Essentia, are all the same in their own way. Are you ready for it to get confusing, because it’s gonna get confusing. All of the people that have done wrong to these girls in their other worlds are other reality versions of Alex. Vella was cheated on sa pamamagitan ng another reality Alex, so she came to this world, where she met this realities Alex, and Essentia has been going to other universes to meet these other Alexes to help them in their own struggles because Alex is actually a destroyer of worlds because the universe actually revolves around Alex in a way that makes him the center of every universe as well as the destruction of every universe… I have so many regrets now. Why did I buy this game for $20 plus tax? Why did I spend literally six artikulo Pagsulat and editing this fucking article? Nobodies gonna read it, the fuck’s the point of all this.
This is the absolute most complex you can get while also seeming to be as pointless and absurd as possible. Not aided much sa pamamagitan ng the fact that Alex continues to ask the same old tanong of “Could you explain, please?”. I could go into madami detail about the other reality versions of Vella in this Mind Dungeon, including the boss who is a Japanese general that makes a Dragon Ball Z reference and turns into a giant robot, but I just want out of this dungeon, please. After waking up weeks later with the Essentia in tow, Alex gets the entire gang together to tell them that the world is going to end due to an otherworldly entity that looks like Alex on New Years. He gets everyone together through some fucking biazarre development about Chandra and the discussion of pantaloons. Don’t ask… please. Also, Michael just happens to ascend to a higher being outta fucking nowhere and is able to talk about the other realities with the group. So from here, we have our goal. For the rest of the month, the gang must train and get stronger, prepare for the fight. Essentia tells them that they have no chance of defeating what is coming to earth, but the gang decide to train and attempt anyway, no matter what. So now you have a Persona-esque schedule of training, hanging out with friends, or doing side quests. There isn’t much to say here, aside from one really awkward pasko event where Michael starts going on about how it’s not possible for these universes to exist and it just kinda kills the holy jolly mood. I know that I eventually ran out of enemies to fight on the overworld for some reason and was left with no choice but to do the sidequests. And because I’m YIIK’s #1 Fuckboy, I did all the sidequests. Was gonna go for platinum on the PS4, but that involved collecting all the pogs, because the 90s. And fuck doing that. I did all the sidequests, I finished all the monster nests, I did everything that wasn’t pog related. And sa pamamagitan ng the end of the month, I was a real beef cake, ready to fight what came my way… The fights from here till the end are all boss fights… Two of which are scripted events. This grind session was a fucking waste of time. I’m not even joking. And with the addition of the busted LP ilipat that kills everything in one hit, who cares about levelling up? But on the bright side, we get some interesting stuff afterward. Is it perfect? No. Is it remotely good? Not super really. But it’s definitely interesting. So during this event, it is possible for something to happen. Remember when you could apologize to Rory? Well, if you don’t, if you continue to just not apologize, to just keep up your attitude, you will get a call during the buwan of December. You get a call from Vella in what is probably her voice actors best performance in this game. She tells Alex that Rory had killed himself. And there’s nothing madami than that. You don’t get a bunch of dialogue about it, you don’t get any hints to it. It just… happens. Rory just commits suicide out of nowhere without warning, and you are now short one party member and Alex is left to think if what he sinabi was responsible. It’s one perfect scene that perfectly hits you without any constant talking about it or anything. You’re just left with that knowledge and you just have to continue the game from there. And continue we did. And that, everyone, is mood whiplash done right. Or at least, done better than Golden Alpaca.
The final day, New Years Eve, and it’s here where the world starts to go crazy and fall asunder. Even Alex starts having a sort of crisis. Panda (REMEMBER HIM!?) tells Alex about his childhood, how Michael and Alex had a huge fight last time they met and Michael moved away, how it was even possible for Michael to be here. And that’s not all, but Alex also goes down stairs to meet his father, or what he assumes is his father, speaking in a strange tone. This raises a lot of questions, without having to be a mess, madami so when Panda says that Alex never had a dad. Did Alex’s dad leave while Alex was young, before he had Panda? Was this another of that parallel universe stuff? I don’t know. The game doesn’t say. And I’m happier for it. And when you walk outside, the game takes this sort of crayon drawn style and starts to look like everything’s falling apart. Visually, I pag-ibig it, but the dialogue ruins it, yet again. It’s just Essentia and Alex talking about everything we’ve been going over the entire time already. It’s nothing new. At all. Like come on, this is getting ridiculous now. Also, they are riding the car to watch the ball drop at actual real New York Time Square. Weren’t we training for a buwan to fight some cosmic entity? At least the streets are visually pleasing with all these colored silhouettes. But once they reach the square, they then see it, the ball of flame with spaghetti noodle arms soaring toward them, ready to fight. And thus begins scripted fight one, with some rock ballad that I think I’d hear be sung sa pamamagitan ng Skillet. It’s weird, but I’m cool with it. I’m a sucker for vocal boss themes, what can I say. Regardless, it doesn’t matter what you do here, you and your team lose the fight and the world is destroyed. And I will say, this is what begins both my paborito part of the story and the absolute, most stupid part of the story
Part VI: Gamers, Rise Up
So here we are, the world is gone, all of Alex’s mga kaibigan are dead, and Alex is only left with himself and Panda, floating in the empty void of space. Without anyone else to turn to, Alex asks Panda for help, but of course, Panda is just a toy, and floats away in the empty vacuum of space, leaving Alex completely alone now. It’s a genuinely good moment that I pag-ibig and found such enjoyment in that I kinda got goosebumps. But don’t worry, this is YIIK after all, and good moments can’t last forever. We come to a single planet of other reality Alexes, one of them being a little black boy with an anime shirt, which may or may not be Claudio and Chandra’s brother. His face was on some missing posters in the stores, so it’s possible. It’s why I didn’t want the plot thread to go nowhere. Or maybe they just needed an asset for a walang tiyak na layunin background element. Andrew Allanson has a habit of just saying “Yes, this was intentional” when something happens sa pamamagitan ng total accident. Anyway, there’s also a cult of other Alexes who plan on destroying another planet with the same thing that destroyed other worlds, including Alex’s. So after some soul searching, Alex finds a planet that takes place on modern day. And this is… oh man, this is going to some insane levels. So this planet takes place in the modern age of 2019, where Alex calls out to you. That’s right, you, gamer. Alex needs your help, because you are an alternate version of Alex? Yeah, no fucking thanks. With that, he summons you and your mga kaibigan that you named. Remember that naming thing at the very start of the game? This is where it comes into play, where the names you used are that of your friends. And from here, we start the final boss-
Psyche. Boss rush time. Sitting on a pader of intestines that lead to a giant Alex head, you must face four bosses. Also, this is in fact the same as the final boss room from Earthbound. Many have compared the two and many will do so after me. Anyway, you have to fight four other Alexes. The fights are simple, because, you know, busted LP moves. I do like some of their designs, though. Talking about Alex being bored with his reality, too lazy to do anything himself, being just an absolute creep, and stealing things from others (That last one’s a bit meta). Sadly, most of their designs are pretty lacking and what they say is super on the nose. But I can appreciate what they were doing. After that, you make your way to the true final boss, Proto-Alex. And the Esentia is there too, or rather, Proto-Alexes Essentia, who is apparently evil and wanted Alex to kill Proto-Alex, but Proto-Alex doesn’t want to fight, but then you do fight and it’s another scripted loss. And for the pag-ibig of god, I know the busted LP ilipat is tempting, but don’t use it here. It will glitch out the fight and he won’t activate his attacks that kill your teammates. You have to die. You don’t get to lose. A Full buwan of grinding for fucking this?! So after you die, you load your game, but are in a different place, a white void.
So… remember that game I mentioned at the start? Two Brothers, Ackk Studios’ first game? Well this is what it’s all led up to, people. Here, you meet Roy, the protagonist of that game, who tells you that it sucks when people don’t depend on you, when your game upsets your family and the fans, and how Two Brothers will never get another chance, but Alex has a chance to do something. He just has to get out of this mess. So, yeah. This is the one time I have some actual issues with this game, and not a lot of people bring it up. This is literally shoving in the face how people didn’t get your first game and just left it in the dust, and how it’s all their fault that Two Brothers will never come back. That’s actually super petty and childish and I can’t defend any of this. And not even that, but from what I’ve read from reviews on Steam, the game had some praise for it’s story (Yeah, shocking), but because the game was buggy as hell and the team didn’t want to do anything madami with it, pretty much leaving it as is, of course people got upset sa pamamagitan ng that. madami should’ve been done. And I assure you, we shouldn’t have had a protagonist from a game that nobody bought talk about this at the final part of the game. Imagine if Link was on his way to fight Ganon, but he got a pep talk from fucking Captain Falcon? It’s just baffling. Also, to beat Proto-Alex, you just go behind his chair and flip the switch. No boss fight required. And after that, the entities of all Alexes go into the player character, as only one Alex can survive in this single world now. And with that, the game comes to an end… What a fucking stinker of an ending. That was an actual mess of just walang tiyak na layunin shit that had so much bad pacing. I try to be madami optimistic about some stuff now, but this is just too much. But we’re not out of the woods yet, gang. There is, believe it or not, another ending. If you go to your computer on the final araw and do a series of side quests, you can unlock the alternate ending that will take you to a mysterious building known as the KNN Building. It’s in a hot neon pink, all the characters are dressed in this 50s fashion without faces, and the best part, it’s quiet. No silly music, no crazy characters, Alex finally shuts his gab. It’s just you doing menial tasks to get through the area and take in the environment. It’s almost like… subtlety. It’s actually subtle and quiet, and I pag-ibig it… And then the plot comes back to piss on it again. I mean, this ending was better. I loved the atmosphere it created. And being rushed, I felt it added madami atmosphere to it. But guess what? It’s not over yet, Snake. We actually have one last ending, completely cut from the game.
It’s hard to say what these events leading up to are, but the result is that after the world is destroyed, Alex and his mga kaibigan find that Essentia was madami of an anti-hero than a full on villain. She was fighting Proto-Alex in a far madami creative disensyo than just a statue. Needing the help of other Alexes across different universes, Essentia believed that the only way to save the world was to bring every Alex here to fight and die against Proto-Alex. But Alex and his party decide to fight to save the other worlds. And in a fight that isn't a forced loss, Alex and the team win. Essentia thanks Alex for what he’s done despite the harm he’s done to her, and apologizes for the harm she’s done to him. Alex finally changes for the better, wanting to protect the universes as best as he could, and create a reality for his mga kaibigan to live in happily. So just a reminder, this ending was cut for being madami cynical. Like… it’s no contest, this is the better ending, and it was cut for being too depressing. Look, I understand that, ibingiay real world events, this was probably hard on the brothers and wanted a madami light hearted ending, but you didn’t have to sacrifice the story and ending because of it. Take a break, work on other things if you had to work, because the end result was an ending that everyone knows about and for the worst reasons. The game actually has a lot of cut content, like levels being changed, enemies missing, the entirety of Frankton looking completely different than the final version. But I think this was the biggest loss of them all, the better ending. It wouldn’t have done much to save the game from the criticism and harsh comments, but it would’ve been a bigger improvement if you ask me.
Epilogue: Final Thoughts
So after Pagsulat this big asno artikulo for six hours, what are my thoughts on this game? Well, I think that it is honestly a guilty pleasure of mine. Yes, even with all the issues, even with all the frustration and dull moments, even with all the behind the scenes madness, even with all the ego and petty behavior, I can’t bring myself to hate this game. It’s good moments are great and it’s bad moments make me laugh from how bad they are. This is a game that I can see being in the same league of stuff like any David Cage games. Bad games with bad stories but are so absurd that you can’t help but laugh at what you are witnessing. But this isn’t to disprove Ackk Studios for what they made. There is something here. This is a game that has tons of potential. Ackk Studios is no crappy steam company that makes one and done cash grabs, that’s for sure. They have talent. The visuals and the art are great, the voice pagganap is tuktok notch, and the music has this zany style to it that I listen to on occasions. YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is an interesting game that I find it hard to suggest to anyone. Would I recommend you play it? Well that all depends on you. I would suggest you look up some gameplay, you take to puso everything sinabi in this article, and if you are mildly interested, despite the knowledge of how mind numbing this game can be at times, then I’d say give it a try… but only if it’s on sale. Still, if only there was an indie game out there that was Earthbound inspired that also followed a horrible human being of a protagonist with zany music and party members that was beloved sa pamamagitan ng all, that everyone enjoyed….
To be continued?
Probably. I don’t fuckin’ know