It was the Spring of 1999 when protagonist Alex returned home after graduating from college. Although set on leading a normal life, Alex is thrust into a psychedelic world of alien creatures, plastic androids, and a cat with a Salvador Dali mustache. Inspired by classic JRPGS like Earthbound and Wild Arms, YIIK: A Post Modern RPG looks to bring us back to the days of turn-based RPGs, awesome music, and insane storylines. Check out the trailer below and hit the jump to read on!
Developed by ACKK Studios, YIIK is a throwback 3D RPG that pays homage to many pop culture icons and video games from the 1990s. The story follows Alex, a 20-something recent college graduate, who believes he knows everything he needs to about the world. However, as soon as Alex returns to his home town of Frankton he discovers the world is not at all how he thought it was. Before he can understand what’s going on around him, Alex witnesses a girl being abducted out of an elevator by alien creatures. This event alone shatters Alex’s perception of reality and he does not take it very well. Things only get weirder from there as Alex reunites with a childhood friend, meets a girl who came from a different dimension and even becomes acquainted with an android. Despite all of that, things still become increasingly strange to the point where it seems the very fabric of reality is crumbling around you.
As in any other turn-based RPG, combat is a very important factor in YIIK. However, instead of the traditional pattern of choosing your action and then waiting your turn, YIIK adopts a more active format. Every character in your party has a unique mini-game attached to their attacks. For instance, Alex’s basic attack has you putting a needle down on colored sections of a vinyl record as it spins on a turntable. Another party member’s basic attack has you timing random button presses, while yet another has you holding down a button and letting go at a certain spot. All of the mini-games during battles are timing based. When an enemy attacks a party member you can time a button press to either take full damage, defend against the attack and take partial damage, or outright dodge the attack and take no damage. If you choose to run away from the battle, you’ll have to play a short 2D side-scrolling platformer as an 8-bit version of the character that’s currently running away. Here you’ll have to avoid the enemy that is chasing you while jumping over obstacles.
Traversing in the world of YIIK will put you in contact with various eccentric and generic characters scattered all around the world map. There are two levels to traversal, there’s traversing the world map and traversing cities and dungeons, the latter being the majority of gameplay. Nothing very interesting happens while you traverse the world map other than getting into random battles. However, when you explore a city or a dungeon you gain the ability to use tools. These tools are used to solve puzzles and interact with certain objects in the world. Very early in the game, you’re given a giant stuffed panda that can block enemies from engaging you or hold down buttons during puzzles. Another tool you get is a cat that can reach far away switches and chests that are out of reach (think Hanpan from Wild Arms). Tools are necessary for retrieving a lot of the hidden chests that are scattered around the world, so sometimes when you can’t access a chest it usually means you haven’t received the necessary tool. I found out very late into my playthrough that holding down the X button (square if you’re playing on PlayStation, Y if you’re playing on Switch) will make Alex run much faster than his default run speed. This would have saved me a lot of time had I found out about it sooner.
The one thing that made Alex’s slow default run tolerable was the amazing soundtrack. There are a lot of tracks in the game that had me bobbing along to the music, and even sometimes I would just put the controller down and jam out to the jazzy tunes of Frankton’s theme or the Alex’s Mind Dungeon theme. Throughout the game, you’re treated to a variety of truly earworm levels of great music. My only gripe about it was that sometimes it felt like the music didn’t always match the tone the scene playing. Early on there’s a scene where Alex and his childhood friend Micheal decide to go meet a girl at an arcade. And although the beginning of the scene had appropriately dark and brooding music, the scene ends on a sort of positive note. But the brooding song kept playing until I entered an area that would load up either the default town theme or the unique theme of whatever new area I just entered. All-in-all though, the music in YIIK is great.
There are a lot of things going on in YIIK: A Post Modern RPG there are some truly heart-wrenching scenes, like a character coming to terms with what happened to his sister. However, some of these scenes are starkly juxtaposed by seemingly random events that are never mentioned again, like the appearance of an evil golden alpaca. It’s presented like the appearance of the alpaca signifies something important, but it’s quickly dropped as soon as the alpaca is defeated. And I think this is where YIIK drastically comes short. It’s a game where everything and nothing is explained. The game will go at great lengths to explain the weird alien creatures that abduct the girl from the elevator, while never once explaining why there’s a ghost girl standing outside of an abandoned factory. It’s elements like this that make playing YIIK frustrating.
In the beginning of the game, there are a few signposts that give you some tips on playing, but those generally only teach you the absolute basics. Earlier, I mentioned how every character in your party has different mini-games attached to their basic attacks. Although this is indeed a cool mechanic, it’s thrown at you with no explanation prior to using that character in battle. I was halfway through the game before I realized you could tap the button multiple times during Alex’s attach to rack up a higher combo count. Which is another thing, there was no consistency to the combo counter. With Alex, you could rack up a high combo count, miss time a button press and still get another chance to add to your combo count without breaking the combo. Whereas with another character you could get up to combo count of twelve, miss a prompt and immediately have your combo reset and have your character whiff the attack entirely.
The thing about YIIK is that it’s a good game that’s chock full of inconsistencies. One moment you could fighting monsters and gaining a decent amount of experience, and then the next minute you’ll fight a seemingly more difficult battle and get one experience point. If you have particularly bad luck at timing button presses, you could literally be stuck in a battle against normal enemies for upwards of thirty minutes. Speaking of which, this might have just been a glitch but I was stuck on the final boss for just under two hours. I was dodging every attack it threw at me while landing every single button press. After the first thirty minutes, I figured the boss should at least be close to dying. It was only after the first hour finished when I came to terms with the fact that the fight was bugged. I tried restarting the fight, it happened again. This time I quit at the twenty-minute mark. Tried again, quit at the 30-minute mark. I had to walk away from the game for a day before, for whatever reason, the boss did what it was supposed to and I was finally able to defeat it.
YIIK: A Post Modern RPG is a game that has a lot of good ideas baked into it. The combat system is engaging and keeps you on your toes. The music is fantastic, and I would love to buy the soundtrack if it’s ever offered. The world is interesting and nothing like I’ve ever seen before. However, it’s a game that feels like it just doesn’t quite come together in the end. Alex is a protagonist that is not fun to be around. Although he does mature more by the end of the game. However, by then I was left wondering why anyone would still want to hang out with him. There are mechanics in the game that are never explained to you, and there are puzzles that had me banging my head against a wall until I figured them out. But the solutions were almost always something I tried out dozens of minutes ago that for whatever reason only started working right when I was about to quit. This is a game that I enjoyed for the most part, but unfortunately, there are just too many flaws that keep the game from being great.
YIIK: A Post Modern RPG is out now for PC, PS4, and Nintendo Switch.
