YIIK: A Postmodern RPG

YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is a role-playing game developed by ACKK Studios and published by Ysbyrd Games. It was released on January 17, 2019, as ACKK Studios' second title.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Convoluted story and plot due to following reasons;
 * 2) * The story is inspired by the death of Elisa Lam, with a character that has a similar description: an adult Asian woman with long, black hair and glasses. Lam drowned in the rooftop water tank of the notoriously-haunted Cecil Hotel (now rebranded as Stay on Main) after - as seen in its elevator's surveillance video - presumably hallucinating someone who decided to take her away. The character Sammy Pak was inspired by Lam, but the character is meant to represent the unhealthy relationship between internet creeps obsessing over a dead person they never actually met.
 * 3) * The story itself can be incredibly hard to follow and understand on a first playthrough. The game tries to tell a story told by an unreliable and nostalgia blinded narrator named Alex, and the player has to actually think about what happens during the plot of the game to understand the real meaning behind most of it. Though to someone who is just expecting a "quirky RPG", the game tends to falls flat in the story department.
 * 4) * The main character, Alex, is an egotistical creep who acts like he's a misunderstood genius. The lead dev intended to make a game about a guy who is a "piece of shit" and attempts to become a better person. By the end he tries to convince the player he's changed for the better, but actually doesn't. This makes a lot of players feel like they wasted their time following the story of someone so unlikable for seemingly no payoff.
 * 5) * The other characters are also pretty boring and feel like they were shoehorned in the game to "develop" Alex.
 * 6) * The ending is confusing and anti-climactic.
 * 7) * Loads of unnecessary filler quest.
 * 8) Awful balancing: Most attacks are super useless, with little to no correlation between how well the mini-game was performed and the damage dealt. At some points, it is possible that bosses can be killed in a couple of hits or even one hit thanks to a broken mini-game. The mini-game consists on shooting a moving target in a Space Invaders style as many times as you can. However, the target's stun after getting hit is so long you can shoot it right when it ends, leaving the target stunlocked and dealing a ton of damage in the process.
 * 9) Completely non-existent lip-synching for the characters whenever they talk, with their mouths moving really fast. This can come off as distractingly off putting with these preset animations.
 * 10) The art style, at its worst, is unappealing to look at. Plus, the overly simple 3D architecture in-game compared to the dialogue portraits look jarring due to the vastly different way they're done.
 * 11) The final bosses are annoyingly forced you to lose the battles, robbing any sense of satisfaction after defeating them.
 * 12) Lots of pacing issues and jarring tonal shifts, other than the "Golden Alpaca" scene.

Good Qualities

 * 1) The music is at least good to hear. Even people like Calum Bowen and Toby Fox (the sole creator and developer of mh:awesomegames:Undertale and mh:awesomegames:Deltarune) contributed to its soundtrack! The latter endorsed the game, but deleted the tweet to disassociate from potential controversy.
 * 2) For a low-poly art style made just to fit in with that nostalgic feel, it is, at least, decent.
 * 3) The portraits are also at least well-done. Even with the muted colors and all, they also convey a sort of nostalgic feel with a modern twist.
 * 4) The story is actually extremely thought out and goes deeper than most would realize. The game is prime to be analyzed and picked apart to understand all of its characters and layers and how they fit into narrative. Though many youtube video essays don't give the game the benefit of the doubt and choose to take the "the game is a fascinating dumpster fire" route.

Reception
YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG received mixed reviews from critics but mostly negative reviews from players. On Metacritic, the game has a critic rating of 64/100 ("mixed or average reviews"), and a user score of 3.7/10 ("generally unfavourable reviews"). mh:rottenwebsites:GameSpot gave the game a 5/10, praising the game's graphics and soundtrack while criticizing its slow and clunky combat, boring characters and tedious puzzles.

Holds a 66% "All Reviews" and 83% "Recent Reviews" on Steam.

Videos
fDbrcsCIbIM ywnb8OFz7g8 CdJVghWtDlY PEsMwM_G8c8 vzd8GTlnHsg 5Ac4kVfdeJw ww9PFrsvYqU nVXK5Xae_1M Y4R_UFJgtR4 g65vDJzO5t4 QTp9C3V89VQ