For almost two months, I did a playthrough of YIIK: A Postmodern RPG on my personal blog, blogging about it and making videos the whole way through. At the end of it, I decided not to do a review for my blog because I felt that the playthrough was already self-explanatory. However, I decided to do a review for Phenixx Gaming. See, I need to spread the word on what I believe, and I believe that YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is currently the worst RPG that I’ve ever played.

The year is 1999 and a man named Alex has returned to his hometown of Frankton after an extended stay at college. After whining about having to do errands and chasing a cat, he meets a woman named Sammy in a mysterious space that exists in a hotel. He watches as Sammy is taken away by otherworldly beings and, having been exposed to this new realm, he resolves himself to rescue her while trying to change himself for the better.

Or, that’s what the game claims is happening. Alex is easily one of the worst protagonists in a video game I’ve ever seen. He is not a pleasant person to be around, he’s whiny, he’s kinda creepy toward women and he isn’t exactly good about race. One of the developers, after the massive backlash toward the game, claimed that YIIK is the story of a guy changing over the course of the story.

However, Alex does not change in a believable way. By the late game, he’s treated as the center of his circle of friends even though he’s barely done anything to earn their friendship. He is easily forgiven in many instances, like his weak apology toward a guy he acted horrible towards and the horrible revelation that half of chapter 3 could have been prevented if he read the thing he was carrying. It genuinely feels less like he’s changed as a person and more like everyone lowered their standards toward him.

While some of his negative traits are criticized in-game, his treatment of women and race really isn’t, and it’s not hard to see why. There’s an uncomfortable treatment toward women in the game in general, like the people on the ONISM message board calling girls (even dead ones) cuties and seeing them as prizes; as well as Vella’s success in her backstory being entirely dependent on a man. When Asian identity isn’t stereotypical; like the Japanese boss that fights with a katana and then a mech, it’s portrayed through weird mysticism (like the Korean News Network building) that brings orientalist tropes to mind. These issues aren’t a problem with Alex, but the entire game as a whole.

The rest of the playable cast aren’t really there. The second party member, Michael, pretty much does nothing for most of the story and his one big change is essentially just a platform for YIIK to dump more of its philosophical nonsense on people. Claudio and Chondra pretty much do nothing important story-wise, but they deliver sudden talks on missing white women syndrome and stereotypes that feel like the developers are trying to say they’re not racist. Then again, an endgame revelation essentially turns whatever arcs they had into propping up Alex’s mysterious nature, so the developers aren’t doing a good enough job.

Rory is a weird case in that he gets a lot of focus and is pretty much the only character with a complete story arc. The problem is that he’s used as a vehicle to deliver messages on depression and the developers are just so bad at it. In fact, picking the wrong choices regarding him leads to a rather tasteless ending regarding him. Vella and the Essentia 2000 are also more fleshed out characters and a bit better than the rest, but they’re kinda treated like “waifus.” In the case of the latter though, she’s subject to a plot twist that’s such complete nonsense, it actually pokes plot holes in the story. So much so, that I considered her one of the worst characters in YIIK by the end.

What about that story? Well, its very premise is already pretty bad. To those who aren’t aware, Sammy’s disappearance heavily draws on the real-life case of Elisa Lam, a woman that had a mental breakdown and drowned herself in a hotel’s water supply. YIIK even copies it straight down to elevator camera footage being shot in the same angle as the actual incident. So yeah, already starting out with insensitivity.

The story’s problem is that Alex is repeatedly sidetracked on his quest to save Sammy. In fact, by Chapter 5, Sammy is forgotten altogether, with the gang focusing on a completely different problem. For all of YIIK‘s focus on philosophical ramblings about life and souls, its plot has very little focus and by the end, I had nothing to get invested in besides just being done with this.

The lack of focus in the story reaches its peak in the last chapter, where all the plot threads are suddenly closed off; albeit for a justified reason. The story takes a nosedive at the end, with plot revelations involving Essentia taking a wrecking ball to the story. The truly bizarre thing though, is that it didn’t have to be like this. There was a cut ending for the game that not only maintains the plot, but is just genuinely better than the ending we got. There is one other, secret ending, though it feels like a bit of a joke ending toward people that wanted an end to the original plot involving Sammy.

Overall, YIIK‘s story fails to impress with either its narrative or characters; but what about the gameplay? Whoo boy.

The battle system may remind you of Paper Mario, but it fails to understand what made Paper Mario‘s battle system work. When enemies attack in Paper Mario, it’s accompanied by an animation with a tell that indicates when you can dodge. YIIK completely lacks that game feel, in that you simply have to press the attack button when the cursor’s at the right part of the gauge. Doesn’t seem bad, right? Well, what if I told you that literally all attacks in the game just use the same three variants of attack bars? With no variants at all, dodging becomes easy and ends up feeling like a chore. This is especially if you’re attacked with a group attack, where all targeted members of the party have to do the exact same minigame individually.

This leads into the second main complaint of the battle system. Combat is horribly slow. The quickly repetitive dodging minigames are only accentuated by a brief cutscene of an enemy’s attack animation (that doesn’t factor into the actual attack) and the animation of the character taking damage or dodging. Doing your own attacks also takes forever, as almost everything has a long animation and/or its own minigame. Alex’s default attack in particular is godawful, in that you have to time presses on a spinning record. Doing optimal damage with it means to have the record spinning as long as you can possibly go, which is just painful.

The third big complaint I have with the battle system is that the enemies scale up drastically. I initially thought that stats felt meaningless in the game because it felt like putting everything into attack barely did anything to make battles go faster. At least until I heard about my friend fighting a level 2 enemy when he was still level 1 and doing only 1 damage with an 8-hit combo. The game’s balance is horribly skewed in the enemies’ favor. This ends up pointless because if you’re good at the dodging minigames, you’ll rarely take damage from them.

All this amounts to battles taking far longer than they should. See, you’d think you’d want to avoid fights, but because of the scaling up problem, you have to put up with it. It’s just so horrible. It is a gameplay system that misunderstood what made Paper Mario fun. Whenever I got into a battle with four or five enemies, I could actually feel my soul leave my body.

The game does have an interesting “Time Energy” mechanic where you can slow down combat and time action commands. However, it was legitimately unclear how energy replenishes, so for my first few hours, I usually saved it for dodging. However, you can activate an Assist Mode that gives unlimited time energy. Honestly? I don’t understand why you wouldn’t use Assist Mode, because it’s the only real way to consistently do optimal damage with Alex’s attack.

How about the stats? Oh, you don’t get level ups like a normal RPG. YIIK has a unique mechanic called the Mind Dungeon, and it’s easily one of the worst things I’ve ever seen in a video game. Instead of going to a screen to level up, you have to go to a separate location. From there, you have to go into doors individually, choose what stat you want, then go in again to actually lock your choice in. Alternatively, you could save time by talking to an NPC, but they’ll choose all your stats for you. Because it’s YIIK, the simple act of leveling up that could take up to half a minute instead takes several and is just garbage.

Is there anything that’s actually good about YIIK? Well, aesthetically, I think the game looks nice when the camera angles are being reasonable. It pulls off the low-poly look well and I really love the look of the more surreal, abstract locations. Some of the animations are jittery, but I think it works in the context its presented. However, for big serious cutscenes, the stilted movements and character expressions works against the game’s favor.

I also think that the game’s soundtrack is generally pretty nice. There are definitely some stinkers in there, like pretty much any of the songs with lyrics, but overall it’s a nice package. I love the song that Toby Fox contributed to the album and I actually really like the ska remix of the main theme that occasionally plays in battles. However, on the subject of battle themes, even if you like some of them, they may wear thin on you with how long battles take.

YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is not a good game. It is not fun to play and unlike NieR, it does not have a story worth putting up with all of its flaws. It’s not even worth picking it up for sale. Play literally any other RPG.

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YIIK: A Postmodern RPG

$19.99

2

Score

2.0/10

Pros

• Neat low-poly visual style
• Some of the music tracks are pretty good!

Cons

• A completely unlikable main character.
• Bad writing all around.
• Battle system is complete slog.
• Leveling up is a slog.
• The story is not worth it.