YIIK: A Postmodern RPG

This is one of those games that's just a perfect storm of bad. It's not the fun kind of bad. It's not the MJ kind of Bad. It's the kind of bad that drags on for far too long and tries to make a point at how "different" and "deep" it is. In reality, it's about as shallow as a kid's pool. Combat lasts way too long. You'll start getting to basic fights that take over 20 minutes for just a random mook fight. The story is pretentious. Alex is one of the most unlikable protagonists I've seen in a game. He's supposed to get better, a la Scott Pilgrim, but he doesn't. This is the kind of person who's reaction to finding out someone's sister is dead is "no one cares." Avoid this game. If you want a game about a post grad coming home and having to deal with everything falling apart, go play Night In the Woods instead.

Very simply, you shouldn't play Yiik. Not only because of the absolutely awful purple prose, awful battle system and numberwang, but because the author has outright plagiarized the writing of Haruki Murakami's book, After Dark. Go play Gris instead. It is a wordless game about grief and has a breadth of depth, amazing art, and a beautiful sountrack.

A terrible RPG with terrible graphics, tedious combat and writing that makes you want to strangle the writer. There's really not much else to say about it, it's just bad.

There are a lot of bad reviews for this game and it makes me wonder if I'm the only one that actually likes this game. That might also mean I have bad taste, but we can all agree that Earthbound and Chrono Trigger are great games, right? Don't get your hopes up. This game is neither. I'll start off with the bad. The battle system uses mini games to execute attacks or defend against attacks and it can be very frustrating or annoying, because of how low the damage output is. It's like it doesn't even matter how much you've leveled up, because you continue to hit low double digits and the enemy/enemies have massive HP bars. Some enemies will take more damage than others, but the fact that your party just doesn't seem to see leaps in damage from level 1 to level 15 is baffling. This is even after placing points for each attribute in the mind dungeon, which is supposedly how you're supposed to get stronger... I guess? Maybe I haven't played the game enough to experience massive improvement in damage or there are some hidden weapons that actually boost damage. Oh, and Alex, the main character, is a hipster jerk. The other main characters are cool though. Now, onto the good. The soundtrack is marvelous. It's quirky just like Earthbound and when you have both Toby Fox and Garoad on the same soundtrack, you just can't go wrong. It's dreamy, catchy and surreal. The gameplay other than the aforementioned battle system is pretty good. I enjoy interacting with characters and logging onto the computer to access the forums. That netscape navigator interface is nostalgic. Speaking of nostalgia, since this game takes place in the late 90's, there's an arcade and VHS store =). I also enjoy exploring the different towns and doing side quests. The story isn't the best, but I found it interesting enough with its eerie creepypasta vibe and supernatural mystery. In the end, there are worse games out there. If you're the picky or reluctant type, get this when it's $10.