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. Niteonites
    Jul 20, 2023
    9
    Yiik is unlike any other game I've played. There are some familiar structures, tropes, and themes, but the game uses them in a way that I did not expect when I first started playing. For me, this game is one of the few that I actively think about even years later -- with most games, I tend to move on entirely and only vaguely remember them from time-to-time.

    The updates for the game    Yiik is unlike any other game I've played. There are some familiar structures, tropes, and themes, but the game uses them in a way that I did not expect when I first started playing. For me, this game is one of the few that I actively think about even years later -- with most games, I tend to move on entirely and only vaguely remember them from time-to-time.

    The updates for the game have all been for the best with an eye for giving players a better experience. While some may point to speculative drama regarding the game and its influences, I think looking at the actions of the developers and the work they created is far more productive.

    As much as I wish there were more games like yiik, I'm glad it's one of a kind.    … Expand
  2. PixelOrange
    Jun 13, 2023
    9
    I killed my wife for life insurance to finally play this game. That was probably my single most impactful decision in my life. I am now in prison, but I got to experience YIIK. Was it worth it? Probably.
  3. PanchaMiguela
    Mar 3, 2023
    5
    I have so many strong feelings about this game that I cannot summarize in just a couple of lines, I think basically, it was mid, had potential to be a masterpiece, lots of genuine touching moments that marked me, I really hope IV changes it.
  4. raytci
    Feb 13, 2023
    8
    I really like this game! I found it to be just a generally fun experience. This game gets a lot of hate for several aspects, including the story, the dialogue, the characters and the combat system. But in my experience, none of those things got in the way of me enjoying this game. If anything, I think they add to its character and personality. This game also has some seriously great stuffI really like this game! I found it to be just a generally fun experience. This game gets a lot of hate for several aspects, including the story, the dialogue, the characters and the combat system. But in my experience, none of those things got in the way of me enjoying this game. If anything, I think they add to its character and personality. This game also has some seriously great stuff that's often overlooked, like for example the music, the graphics and the way it uses camera angles to create atmosphere. I seriously do not understand why so many people hate the game this much. It's a genuinely fun and interesting game! I'd strongly recommend this game for anyone who wants something different and isn't afraid of playing a non perfect game. 8/10… Expand
  5. lostsocks
    Feb 13, 2023
    9
    I enjoyed it a lot. The environments are great. It really excels at creating a creepy surreal atmosphere, kind of like if those parts of Earthbound were an entire game. And I've never seen a game make such good use of camera angles to add to the effect the way YIIK does. The soundtrack is quirky and has a lot of singing, which I appreciate. It's cool to hear songs that sound more likeI enjoyed it a lot. The environments are great. It really excels at creating a creepy surreal atmosphere, kind of like if those parts of Earthbound were an entire game. And I've never seen a game make such good use of camera angles to add to the effect the way YIIK does. The soundtrack is quirky and has a lot of singing, which I appreciate. It's cool to hear songs that sound more like something you'd hear from a band than a video game. My favorite song on the soundtrack is Michael's Theme. So odd yet pretty. The way it starts out with camera shutters and an eerie beat that slowly turns into something very pretty and wistful. I've grown to really enjoy the combat the more I play it. There are a lot of interesting things about it, like how Rory can use Pacifism to greatly up his defense and take hits for the party. And when he does, the enemies take damage from running into him. So I would intentionally not dodge with other characters so the enemies would take damage when Rory protected them. Try this strategy against the soul survivors that are hard to damage with regular attacks. It won't kill an enemy, but it'll get them down to 1 HP.

    The plot is pretty interesting, always keeping you theorizing about what everything means. I'm someone who loves ghost stories and mysteries so it really got me hooked when I found out about the additional endings and got involved with the community looking for the ones that haven't been found yet. Initial feeling was an 8/10 but I'm feeling like a 9/10 after getting into secret hunting in my new game+.    … Expand
  6. Bek_
    Feb 1, 2023
    10
    YiiK: A Postmodern RPG is one of the most essential games you'd ever need in this lifetime, If you've ever played an RPG before you'd know they ALL lack ONE simple thing. That thing every RPG is lacking is Alex from YiiK, which is what would make every RPG ever absolutely perfect. If OMORI had Alex YiiK we would like it, If Final Fantasy had Alex YiiK it would be better and if CoD had AlexYiiK: A Postmodern RPG is one of the most essential games you'd ever need in this lifetime, If you've ever played an RPG before you'd know they ALL lack ONE simple thing. That thing every RPG is lacking is Alex from YiiK, which is what would make every RPG ever absolutely perfect. If OMORI had Alex YiiK we would like it, If Final Fantasy had Alex YiiK it would be better and if CoD had Alex YiiK I would actually play it! This is why I love YiiK and Alex from YiiK… Expand
  7. Philemon1999
    Sep 16, 2022
    10
    While the game is not for everyone, it is absolutely perfect for anyone interested in supernatural mystery and postmodernism. The story is engaging and the characters are fun. It looks fantastic as well. Beautiful, surreal, worth playing and replaying.
  8. 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
  9. Florole
    Apr 21, 2022
    10
    I love YIIK a postmodern RPG. It is truly one of the greatest pieces of media of our times. Its very existence sets a new bar for videogames and movies alike. The subtle nods and references to other games, alongside the questioning of what it means to be an RPG in this FPS and life simulator world is truly shocking, and a wake-up call to the videogame industry.
  10. BlueROSEz
    Jan 26, 2022
    8
    YIIK v.1.25 is a hit-or-miss kind of game.

    The combat is engaging and enjoyable as long certain factors don't impact negatively your experience or if you have no problem reducing the difficulty (option available at any point of the game) in the eventuality you end up finding it more tedious than expected. First of all, the combat system lacks variety from a tactical perspective. The    YIIK v.1.25 is a hit-or-miss kind of game.

    The combat is engaging and enjoyable as long certain factors don't impact negatively your experience or if you have no problem reducing the difficulty (option available at any point of the game) in the eventuality you end up finding it more tedious than expected.
    First of all, the combat system lacks variety from a tactical perspective. The limited patterns of attacks from the enemy side and the limited amount of effective skills from the allied side, tend to impact that.
    Because of this reason, even if the game still manages to give a moderate challenge while playing on normal mode, it doesn't usually offer the satisfaction to face hard battles, except in a few cases depending on your playstyle.
    It's also highly recommended to rely on the Fast-Forward feature (be sure to read the tutorial signs for this one, otherwise you won't even become aware of its existence) and on the Beat Downs. If you don't use the Fast-Forward, you will end up facing slow-paced battles for the rest of the game. This pace will be ok at the beginning when the battles are easier and shorter, but it will eventually become worse going through the game unless you use that feature. Relying on normal basic attacks is not a good idea either, after the first part of the early game. The Beat Downs, which are special basic attacks, are way more efficient in terms of damage even if they cost some MP, and this applies to any difficulty mode. The normal basic attacks help create a better progression of the pace in the early game, and they will be way more useful on STORY MODE (Easy mode), but at a certain point you'll end up dropping them when you'll realize that there are better options. In summary, not relying on the Fast-Forward and the Beat Downs will make last the battles longer automatically, even if you are playing optimally. This is the biggest flaw of the combat. If you avoid this flaw by following my advice, you're going to have a fun experience with it at best or a tolerable one at worst.

    The story is weird for the best and the worst, but mostly because of its multi-layered narrative structure. This structure tends to change the meaning of certain events and of the story itself, after some revelations in the end game, and most importantly, after reaching a specific level which is possible to reach only NG+. It means that to have a compelling understanding of what the story is about, it would be required to play the game at least one more time.
    This would be required not only to unlock an important cutscene after reaching LV 70, but also to look back to the story you experienced the first time, and completely revalue it from the ground up through the pieces of information got from that cutscene. It's exactly ridiculous as it sounds and trying to decipher some things from it without external help would be pretty difficult, especially if you want to understand everything.
    This doesn't mean that what you would experience during your first playthrough, wouldn't be enjoyable without meeting all these requirements, but the story and its characters might end up being underwhelming or less interesting outside of their actual context.
    Especially considering that the first layer of this narrative structure, the one you would experience the first time playing, is unreliable because of the presence of a narrator that deceives the events by making look the protagonist less despicable than he is.
    That story is a metaphorical hoax. The wonderful world of YIIK is just a reality used as a safe place by a pathetic individual that doesn't want to accept his actual reality where he banished the people close to him by being a piece of ****
    If you end up even believing that this story is about growing up or about redemption, you fell into the trap. The game is not called “YIIK” just because of the presence of the computer virus, but also for the parallelism between how this one works and the protagonist, which leads to a neverending cycle of delusions, where growth and redemption are out of the question.
    This is cool, but unfortunately, it's something that it's not told but rather that it has to be deciphered to figure it out.
    The writing tends to scatter also some clues about this aspect, but superficially and indirectly. You might even miss them without knowing the actual context behind them.
    If you are into analyzing stories and putting together pieces of a bigger picture that is behind the curtains, you might probably enjoy the game more from a story perspective.
    It's also highly recommended to check the posts on ONISM 1999 to have a little help in understanding the story.

    The review continues here, thanks to the character limitation: https://pastebin.com/fE7fJmjT    … Expand
  11. Hosep
    Jan 22, 2022
    10
    YIIK A Postmodern rpg is a breathtaking experience that's delightfully different from anything else that could currently be found in the games market, the visuals and music are pure art that perfectly compliment the gameplay, I would recommend this one to anybody.
  12. Losers_inc
    Dec 9, 2021
    5
    YIIK is the best example of how pretentiousness can ruin a piece of art, in literally any media imaginable. People who start very early to create their books or movies, they go in with the thought that "I'll make a lot of things, so then everyone will like it", but that is a very bad way of seeing things. If you try to appease every corner of your mind, you'll get nothing done, and if youYIIK is the best example of how pretentiousness can ruin a piece of art, in literally any media imaginable. People who start very early to create their books or movies, they go in with the thought that "I'll make a lot of things, so then everyone will like it", but that is a very bad way of seeing things. If you try to appease every corner of your mind, you'll get nothing done, and if you somehow manage to do so, you'll get this. Something that tried too hard to be everything that it considered "good", and now it's good at nothing because neither were the writers or the programmers.

    If you have a good eye, you can see what YIIK could've been, if only this layer of pretentiousness was deleted. No overcomplicated story, no voice-overs, no long monologues, no drawn-out mechanics and no useless systems; this would've been the Post modern work that it was supposed to be.    … Expand
  13. 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
  14. 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
  15. 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
  16. StarlightLune
    Aug 30, 2020
    10
    YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is important to me. It's a game that I learned a lot more from than I was willing to give it credit for at first, and it makes me really, really sad to see the reception that it has. There is a lot to be said about YIIK, so much so that I want to do a long, long video essay about it someday, but I will conclude for now by saying that if you've only heard about thisYIIK: A Postmodern RPG is important to me. It's a game that I learned a lot more from than I was willing to give it credit for at first, and it makes me really, really sad to see the reception that it has. There is a lot to be said about YIIK, so much so that I want to do a long, long video essay about it someday, but I will conclude for now by saying that if you've only heard about this game from the rumors about the dev or the out of context screenshots, please, PLEASE give the game the honest chance it deserves. You might not get another chance to experience something quite like this in your life.… Expand
  17. 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
  18. 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
  19. 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
  20. 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
  21. 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.
  22. MrButtButt
    Jan 23, 2019
    9
    This game is awesome! YIIK, in it's current state, is a little buggy at times, and there are a few things that could be fixed. However, this game absolutely does not deserve the sheer amount of hate it's receiving. The main character, Alex, is a self-centered egotist, and you aren't supposed to agree with that. His friends call him out on it, and even he calls himself out on it later inThis game is awesome! YIIK, in it's current state, is a little buggy at times, and there are a few things that could be fixed. However, this game absolutely does not deserve the sheer amount of hate it's receiving. The main character, Alex, is a self-centered egotist, and you aren't supposed to agree with that. His friends call him out on it, and even he calls himself out on it later in the story. YIIK is a story about growing as a person and while not erasing past wrong doings altogether, but ultimately doing your best to make up for them. Do not turn into a sheep and blindly jump onto the bandwagon that this game should be passed on, because you're only doing a disservice to yourself. The soundtrack is really good, and while at some points feels a little out of place, in others it perfectly captures the mood I was looking for in the scene.

    There are a couple things that I would've liked to see though. A little bit faster battles, which I believe IS being implemented in an update. A small amount of the set pieces seem out of place, such as some of the pictures you find around the world looking like stock photos. Also more enemy variety would've been nice too, after seeing some of the same enemies throughout the game.

    I wholeheartedly do not regret my time spent with YIIK, and I plan to play through it many more times. it doesn't deserve the reputation it's currently going down as having, and I really hope more players come out to show how much they enjoyed it.    … Expand
  23. Calibur-X
    Jan 22, 2019
    10
    This game is amazing, not perfect but so far from the bad critics based on political views
  24. 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.
  25. 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
  26. 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

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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