YIIK: A Postmodern RPG

 PC
User Score
4.4

Generally unfavorable reviews- based on 47 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 17 out of 47
  2. Mixed: 5 out of 47
  3. Negative: 25 out of 47

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  1. kuehnau
    Jan 19, 2019
    4
    What starts off appearing to be a delightful, Earthbound inspired meta RPG quickly devolves into unpolished schlock almost as soon as you are given control over the main protagonist.

    The main character's constant inner monologues get tiresome even befor the half hour mark simply because they feel a overwhelming desire to constantly repeat what was either already said or shown just    What starts off appearing to be a delightful, Earthbound inspired meta RPG quickly devolves into unpolished schlock almost as soon as you are given control over the main protagonist.

    The main character's constant inner monologues get tiresome even befor the half hour mark simply because they feel a overwhelming desire to constantly repeat what was either already said or shown just seconds before hand. It isn't endearing in any sort of aspect.

    The graphical assets of the game are wonderful, but is almost always constantly marred by ugly artwork in contrast. Good examples are paintings hung on walls that look like they were ripped stright from Google Images, basketballs that are photorealistic that don't even roll when kicked, ect.

    Character animation is another one that looks janky and ugly. The models themselves look great, but their movement is stilted and jarring as if they are missing a number of frames from them, but then other animations, such as water moving or trees swaying move just fine on their own.

    I think the worst aspect of the game and one that happens to effect the game the most is combat. Every single action, from attacking, to dodging and even running away are made into these stupid little mini games. The first time you fight, it's okay, but now try playing a RPG that has hours worth of content having to play the same mini games over and over and over again. It's simply terrible and out of all of the issues I have with the game, this one is the worst, this is the one that caused me to HATE this game.

    There's a lot to like about YIIK, but unfortunately there's so much to dislike about the game it's impossible to actually enjoy, which is a massive shame.    … Expand
  2. TheGrandEditor
    Apr 21, 2019
    0
    Painful boring and unfunny. Don't bother wasting your money or your time. Story is awful the writing is terrible and the gameplay non existent.
  3. NEPGYA
    May 29, 2019
    1
    When a game describes itself as "post modern" and has a name that requires a graphic on its store page telling you how to pronounce it, you know you're in for something special. The game is pretentious, poorly written, and has a lot of dialogue but ultimately says nothing. If the developers sought to write a realistically obnoxious hipster for the main protagonist, then theyWhen a game describes itself as "post modern" and has a name that requires a graphic on its store page telling you how to pronounce it, you know you're in for something special. The game is pretentious, poorly written, and has a lot of dialogue but ultimately says nothing. If the developers sought to write a realistically obnoxious hipster for the main protagonist, then they ironically/unironically succeeded. It's like they wanted to make a Persona/Earthbound-esque game without understanding what makes either franchise great, and the combat is a tried-and-failed ripoff of the combat system from Shadow Hearts. The 20 dollar asking price is a near criminal rip off for what you get, and I could only recommend it to anyone who wants to spend roughly 20 hours hating it and hating themselves for wasting the money to purchase it.
    The art style has a kind of charm to it though, I'll give it a point for that.    … Expand
  4. benpaco6
    Jun 15, 2019
    3
    In some regards, I feel bad giving this such a low score. At its most surface level, YIIK is an RPG that overstays its welcome and suffers from poor writing, with a unique but subpar combat system and great music and aesthetics. This is the sorta thing I'd usually just sort of move on from, but the game feels so poorly conceived and constructed that it's worth talking about.

    Much has    In some regards, I feel bad giving this such a low score. At its most surface level, YIIK is an RPG that overstays its welcome and suffers from poor writing, with a unique but subpar combat system and great music and aesthetics. This is the sorta thing I'd usually just sort of move on from, but the game feels so poorly conceived and constructed that it's worth talking about.

    Much has been made of how the game doesn't respect a player's time, with every combat minigame taking longer than needed and dialogue looping and looping. While this is true, I think it is a factor that could be overlooked if there was something behind these issues to prop up. The Paper Mario series minigames aren't terribly dissimilar, but the mechanics, world, and characters are so much better explained that it doesn't feel like such a chore. Dragon Age Inquisition suffers from lengthy dialogue during cutscenes, but these cutscenes develop new issues rather than just repeating the same information, and are skippable until decisions need to be made. YIIK just feels like a crew of people trying to make something that would work by ignoring mechanics and ignoring writing and ignoring a sensible story and instead trying to assemble a good aesthetic (successfully so) and make something different (unsuccessfully).

    The whole "post modern" element is also really lost. Many of the moments of commentary are either so incredibly on the nose that nothing of any interest is being said, while others leave so much to be desired. The NPCs in Wind Town are a great example of both of these. We meet a group of goth kids complaining about capitalism before asking the player if they have any change. This is commentary, sure, but nothing's really gained by it. If instead, they complained about capitalism, and you had a dialogue option to bribe them, the game would incorporate a mechanic that would allow for commentary - at this point, satirize away. We also see a character, "Future Robber", make a statement that his mom's new boyfriend doesn't hit him as hard as his dad did, but he also has less love in the punches. Sure, this is sort of commentary in that a sad thing happened to a kid, but what's being learned? What's being remarked upon? A sad thing is happening, you don't fix it, encounter it again, anything. It's not part of his dialogue in or before battle, just a weird anecdote at the end.

    The Future Cop and Future Robber are an example of the other end, where something interesting might have happened, but since this is YIIK, it didn't. I think the pun is intentional, that these kids could both be playing a game of "Cops and Robbers" and also literally become cops and robbers some day, but nothing happens with that. They aren't even close to each other, they aren't showing playing with each other or in relation to each other. If they were brothers, maybe you could make a comment on how the world is simply unfair in opportunities, and one would become a cop while the other would have to resort to crime. If the roles were reversed in their game from reality, maybe you could make a comment on the problematic state of policing in America. Instead of fighting both, you could have the cop temporarily join your roster to fight a future robber, played totally straight for commentary or as absurd as possible for laughs. But instead, you just get two totally disjointed fights with a vague connection at best, and random tidbits that the authors found clever are the closest you get to anything meaningful or interesting.

    That's what YIIK is. Vague, disjointed, tryhard, and "random" in its characters, mechanics, plot, etc. Being vague and disjointed doesn't make you clever or postmodern. DeLillo never had sudden "golden alpacas" interrupt the discussions about the fear of death in White Noise, Vonnegut never gave any random tidbits of past domestic abuse for shock value unless it would become a repeated theme, DFW was never outwardly spiteful to the working class unless it was to show that a character was bigoted. Even the authors who this piece DIRECTLY lift from, word for word, like Murakami, have the knowledge to know that their dialogue works as written, but not aloud, something this game repeatedly ignores.

    I wanted to like this game. A genuinely clever, intellectual post modern RPG is achievable and could be wonderful. The artistic design and music, lifted into another game, could have complimented a wonderful piece of art. But as is, YIIK let me down at every turn, failing to live up to any of the potential it seemed to have.    … Expand
  5. Ndi
    Jan 20, 2019
    1
    Bad controls, zero innovation, bull story, bad voice acting and a combat system from 1947.

    It brings nothing to the world and it's SO pleased with itself, harping on about meta this and souls that, but the characters are not defined, have silly cookie cutter motivation, people have breakdowns missing people they met for 10 minutes, etc. Whoever wrote this can't write. Voice acting is    Bad controls, zero innovation, bull story, bad voice acting and a combat system from 1947.

    It brings nothing to the world and it's SO pleased with itself, harping on about meta this and souls that, but the characters are not defined, have silly cookie cutter motivation, people have breakdowns missing people they met for 10 minutes, etc. Whoever wrote this can't write.

    Voice acting is awful, from audio quality to people having breakdowns because the death of a family member but can't even change the tone, like someone is reading a paper on their characters.

    It is "inspired" from many games, straight up taking mechanics and ideas and adding nothing, like the babble the story is should carry it.

    As for the animation and art, 3-frame animations, only a few poses, making the character grab and pull his hair 230 times in all kinds of situations. Less work than a visual novel shoveled from Steam.

    I don't know what was supposed to carry this game, none of the components are good.    … Expand
  6. ExLight
    Jan 20, 2019
    3
    YIIK? More like YIIKES.

    Dissonant art style with what it is aiming for, tries to have a concept but ends up shallow, characters are just cringy and boring, too pretentious, combat is an uninteresting rhythm game, story is random hot ****, etc.
  7. The3AcademySins
    Mar 31, 2020
    1
    This is painfully bad. It's got a quirky art style that is completely undercut by an offensively bad story, time wasting game play that drags on, and poorly designed puzzles. The writing is easily the worst thing about this game. It's trying way to hard to be David Foster Wallace, Haruki Murakami, and Chuck Palahnuik but fails incredibly hard. It's needlessly vindictive and serious, butThis is painfully bad. It's got a quirky art style that is completely undercut by an offensively bad story, time wasting game play that drags on, and poorly designed puzzles. The writing is easily the worst thing about this game. It's trying way to hard to be David Foster Wallace, Haruki Murakami, and Chuck Palahnuik but fails incredibly hard. It's needlessly vindictive and serious, but somehow handles the themes of death and suicide really poorly. This is post-modernism done badly.… Expand
  8. BulgarianCritic
    Feb 12, 2020
    0
    This game is one of the best examples on how to not make a video game.Everything from the start to the finish is just garbage.The gameplay is boring, repetitive and unbalanced. The main protagonist is one of the worse characters ever created and the plot of the story is one of the most boring things i have ever heard and read in my entire life.I would suggest staying away from this gameThis game is one of the best examples on how to not make a video game.Everything from the start to the finish is just garbage.The gameplay is boring, repetitive and unbalanced. The main protagonist is one of the worse characters ever created and the plot of the story is one of the most boring things i have ever heard and read in my entire life.I would suggest staying away from this game unless you want to be bored and lectured from a pretentious developer with a huge ego that has no idea on how to make a good game or story for that matter and literally stole lines from Murakami's book to put on his crappy game . AVOID THIS GAME LIKE THE PLAGUE… Expand
  9. GregLobstery
    Jul 22, 2022
    1
    IM YIIKING OUT!!! But seriously the games dialogue entirely broke for me about 5 minutes in before I even left the first area, also the writing is so bad it made me want to tear out my brain stem, carry it into the middle of the nearest 4 way intersection and skip rope with it
  10. coolmanguy2121
    Apr 8, 2021
    2
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. please tread carefully as this is a very big spoiler

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv9x7E5tnoA    … Expand
  11. JustChilln13
    Apr 11, 2021
    1
    An awful experience that would have been terrible all around if it weren't for the soundtrack which is the only redeeming quality. From the combat, dialogue, to the developer himself it all falls down into the pit of mediocrity that Ackk Studios continuously pulls its games from. With only a handful of games under this young studio's belt, the developers have a chance to learn from theirAn awful experience that would have been terrible all around if it weren't for the soundtrack which is the only redeeming quality. From the combat, dialogue, to the developer himself it all falls down into the pit of mediocrity that Ackk Studios continuously pulls its games from. With only a handful of games under this young studio's belt, the developers have a chance to learn from their past of strictly publishing terribly rated games and produce something that might not insult anyone who bears witness to it. Please, do not waste your money on this awful product to only also show this new studio that it should continue publishing utter nonsense. Unfortunately, their catalog is only awful titles so wait until AFTER their next game is released and support it if it actually turns out to be anything past dreadful.… Expand
  12. CronaRagna
    Jul 15, 2021
    4
    Yiik is a game full of pretentious dialogue, wasted potential, good but repetitive music, and nice art direction. To start things off I'll be talking about the characters, none of them are really likeable and they all sort of talk the same, verbose and overly complicated for no rhyme or reason. Instead of describing something in one sentence they will go on and on for what seems like anYiik is a game full of pretentious dialogue, wasted potential, good but repetitive music, and nice art direction. To start things off I'll be talking about the characters, none of them are really likeable and they all sort of talk the same, verbose and overly complicated for no rhyme or reason. Instead of describing something in one sentence they will go on and on for what seems like an hour about a cat or something.  The characters themselves are not very likeable and all of them are jerks, the worst of them is Alex of course. I get that they were trying to develope him to have a positive arc but it fell flat, he only really changes at the end of the game. The story is convoluted and nonsensical, with no satisfying conclusion. The cut ending was satisfying but they got rid of it for whatever reason. The two secret endings are condescending and anger inducing, one has notes that prattle on about how the developer is mad that he has to have a happy ending and the second one is not even in the game, it's on YouTube and it's like it's telling you that "this is the ending you will never get." Ok on to the battles, the combat is very interesting because to do anything you have to do a little warioware mini game which wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't so repitive. After your 10th fight you are already sick of them, half way through the game you get an ability called lp toss which can just instakill all enemy's and it costs very little sp, it's really broken. The boss fights are nothing special there's nothing really different about them, it's just an enemy with a higher attack and health. The worst one is the golden alpaca because it's a goofy bossfight that appears after a serious scene. The final boss isn't really a boss because you're meant to lose which makes all of the grinding that the game told you to do beforehand worthless. It's one thing for a game to simply be bad but when a game wastes my time, that makes me angry. Onto the music, the music ranges from decent to great, some songs can actually be pretty good while some are just a bongo drum loop. Some songs can also be very repetitive which are the worst kind of songs. The graphics are actually really enjoyable and the artstyle is pleasing on the eyes, it really shines in areas that aren't in the overworld. Leveling up is a pain in the ass, the mind dungeon shouldn't even be in the game to be honest, why couldn't you level up like a normal rpg, if it ain't broke don't fix it. Finally wasted potential and the creators response. Yiik clearly had a lot of thought put into it, playing through parts of the game I thought "if you reworked this and this it would be amazing" the music had time and effort into it and the graphics were nice, it was the story, gameplay, and writing that fell short. The creator said that games aren't art, they are children's playthings. I can get his anger and frustration, first two brothers failed and now yiik has but that doesn't give you the right to attack the player base. Let's talk about two brothers, a game so glitchy that it got taken down because it was unplayable, there are several references to it in yiik but the saddest one is where the main character of 2 brothers appears and prattles on about how people held him back from being great when in reality the game studio is what held two brothers back, this dialogue reeks of butthurt and it's pretty sad. That's my review of yiik, I tried to cover every base and I'm not sure if I missed anything… Expand

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
64

Mixed or average reviews - based on 9 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 9
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 9
  3. Negative: 2 out of 9
  1. CD-Action
    Dec 11, 2019
    45
    The problems of this game are rooted deep within and were caused by the developers’ self-admiration, their overambitiousness and poor sense of the whole medium. [03/2019, p.53]
  2. LEVEL (Czech Republic)
    Apr 4, 2019
    40
    A lot of good ideas and interesting concepts are run down by a poor execution that crushes the dooms the game to a grey average, where it will be probably forgotten for eternity. [Issue#293]
  3. PLAY! Zine
    Mar 4, 2019
    70
    YIIK is an interesting experiment in western RPG waters. It tries to emulate the world and wonder that the Earthbound game had, but only partly successful. Its combat system can be unfair at first, then repetitive and boring later. Level up system is needlessly convoluted and time consuming. But the world is bizarre and wacky, puzzles are great, and the characters are funny enough to have you invested just enough to see the game through at least once.
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