In 1999 I was 21 years old. I was in to video games, action films, horror novels, and mainstream rock music. I wore stupid tee-shirts with dumb sayings on them. I drank a lot of Pepsi and stayed up far too late. And I didn’t really dig pretentious stuck-up people.
Now 20 years later, I’m 40 years old (to be 41 later this year but let’s not push it too fast), in to video games, action films, horror novels, and mainstream rock and pop. I don’t (usually) wear stupid tee-shirts with dumb saying on them. I don’t like Pepsi anymore but I still stay up far too late. I still don’t really dig pretentious and stuck-up people. Oh, and I’m married and have four kids.
So, not much has changed really. Noting this, I took on the review assignment for a 1999 based RPG, YIIK: A Postmodern RPG. YIIK is, I assume, pronounced Y2K and not yiik. But do with it what you will.
I’m not going to lie, I had to look up what Postmodernism is. This led me to understand that I don’t know what Modernism is either. And to be more honest, after the in depth five minutes I gave to wikipedia reading about them, I still don’t understand either in the slightest. It’s philosophical bullshit and my head is too full of dumb Star Wars facts to take on its meaning. Apologies to the philosophers in the room.
But, I have a game to play and a review to write. So onwards, without understanding, we go.
YIIK has you play as Alex. Alex is a bit of a douche nozzle. Recently graduated from college with a liberal arts degree, he returns home. As the player, Alex can explore the town and talk to people, open chests randomly strewn throughout, and search in objects (like couches or trash cans) for items. Eventually though Alex will have to return to his house where his mother has left him a note to go to the grocery store.
And here is where the game begins. Well, not precisely for me as I traveled the wrong direction and ended up in a new area where I learned to battle, prior to the game teaching me so.
Battling in YIIK is interesting. On the surface it is reminiscent of old-school turn-based RPGs but the actual combat is a bit more varied and nuanced, at least at first. Alex, and additional party members as they join up, can do a few things in the battle menu.
Alex can attack enemies by bringing up a record player that the player can build a combo with by hitting the colored areas on the record with the indicator. Other characters have their own quirky attack systems that play into that characters personalities and interests. Alex and company also have special skills that can be used to provide buffs and debuffs to the characters. Alex for instance, has a giant, snarky, stuffed panda that plops himself in front of the party as a barrier. Similarly, Alex and company can also defend, use an item, or run away. The few times I ran from combat was quite cool as the actual act of running is incorporated in to the game as very simple a side-scrolling platformer.
Once I prematurely figured out the battle system and realized that I must have gone the wrong direction because I couldn’t find the a grocery store, I retraced my steps and pushed the story forward as a cat stole my grocery list.
Following the cat, since it seems like the right thing to do, took me to an abandoned factory/hotel with a weird primordial ooze all over the grounds. Not wanting to get poisoned by whatever toxic waste Alex’s little town has been hiding out here, I head inside and learn some of the basics of the game. Finally I meet up with another person, who just happens to be the owner of the cat I’m looking for and we set out together to track the cat down while getting some insufferable inner monologuing by Alex. There are some trippy puzzles to be solved and some simple battles to partake but nothing too difficult.
We find the cat and it presents us with new solutions to new puzzles as we make our way towards an elevator so we can leave. Except maybe we should have taken the stairs as our new friend and party member gets sucked out of it by some creepy alien things. Alex, seriously shaken up by all this, grants us more insufferable monologuing before heading home where he sees a dark web video of the girl getting sucked out of the elevator. This causes him to do what anyone totally freaking out about paranormal entities sucking people out of elevators in to alternate dimensions would do. He goes to sleep.
Finding out what happened to our brief acquaintance sets up the rest of the game and helps get the ball rolling with the rest of the cast and I must say the mystery behind it was a hook. But then the cracks really started to show for me. The game travels off on tangents that would seem like side stories in any regular game but are the core here. Alex, who kind of starts off like a douche nozzle doesn’t ever really improve and sadly the entire game is from his perspective. And worse, he loves to trap you inside his head as he complains and whines about anything and everything.
It sucks too because everything else on the outside is mostly enjoyable. The game has an interesting art style, a weirdly effective soundtrack, and solid RPG mechanics but its unlikeable protagonist and jumbled story delivery ends up making it a bit of a slog to actually play. That said, YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is something different from your everyday RPGs. I can at least appreciate the fact that it tried to do something and hell, who knows, maybe Alex won’t come off as such a douche nozzle to you if you give it a try.
This article was written with material provided from the developer for the Nintendo Switch. For more on our review process, please read here.
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