YIIK: A Postmodern RPG Review
YIIK: A Postmodern RPG (which we will call for convenience YIIK in the continuation of this test) is the second game from Ackk studios, after the rather disappointing Two Brothers, a game-like game Boy that had struggled to convince. For YIIK (pronunciation: ouaille-tou-kay), we are promised a surreal adventure based on 90’s, dungeons filled with puzzles, an unprecedented combat system, music by superstars and a 4-star cast. So what about it really?“Tonight I’m gonna party like it’s 1999” (Prince)
1999. Alex returns home to the small town of Frankton after successfully graduating from college (although it took a little longer than expected ...). Alex is the hipster guy: beard provided, thick rimmed glasses, check shirt open on his t-shirt. A slightly annoying character, not at all destined to become a hero. It’s the story, embodied by the player.
A series of seemingly harmless events (well, you could say: a cat steals his shopping list! That doesn't sound too chivalrous either!) Will take Alex to an abandoned factory on the outskirts of Frankton. There he will meet Samy, an enigmatic young girl who claims to live there, in the ruins of the factory. Unfortunately, Alex will not have time to know much more: the girl will be kidnapped by creatures that seem straight out of another world ...
This is where Alex’s quest to find Samy begins, a quest made of encounters, alternative realities and introspections.
Somewhere between winks and lack of inspiration
Despite a slightly humorous title, YIIK is an RPG, a J-RPG itself, rather classic in its gameplay (which is not fundamentally a defect). We control Alex, who can from the start of the game wander as he pleases on the map. Of course, certain areas will only be made accessible depending on the progress of the scenario.As in any good J-RPG (and even in the bad ones, in fact), and this for 30 years, the main character may during the adventure find travel companions. Companions who will appear on the screen for cutscenes and fights, but who will be confused with Alex and controlled as one man by the player while on the move.
The menu offers sufficiently varied environments. We visit several towns and villages where we will conduct the investigation, and, since it is an RPG, dungeons. If the areas to explore are rather safe, to travel between two cities, the game goes into “map” mode - again, nothing very original - and random encounters can occur, giving rise to clashes.
The fights are played turn by turn. Regardless of the number of characters accompanying Alex, the player will only be able to select a maximum of four companions who will participate in the fight.
For each of the fighters, each turn, the player will have the choice between four actions: attack, use a special skill, defend, or flee. The chosen action will trigger a mini-game (often revolving around the principle of QTE), the outcome of which will determine whether or not the action is successful.
This idea is both fun and original, but has its limits in repeatability. If each character has their own actions, and therefore different mini-games, for the sake of efficiency, the player will tend to focus on what works for him. And therefore more or less confine themselves to the four actions that succeed. That means going through dozens and dozens of times through the corresponding mini-games, and it ends up getting boring.
The player is rather assisted in his progression in the investigation and in the adventure, and by following the dialogues well, we always know where to go next. By the way, the game is entirely in English, text and voice. If a Master 2 in English literature is not necessarily necessary to follow the adventure, it is still necessary to note a certain importance of the texts and the narration.
Apart from the main adventure, if the player is free to move, there is not much to do. We regret for example that the arcade room of Frankston, with its Time Crisis and its Dance Dance Revolution, does not give rise to mini-games ... The series of Yakuza may have given us bad habits!
The dungeons are the good surprise of YIIK. They don't just line up corridors and creatures to fight, but offer little puzzle-platformer puzzles that break the RPG routine of the title a bit. Thus, as and when he meets, Alex obtains new capacities which will give him access to new areas: an electric guitar whose power breaks rocks, a cat which he can swing far away to actuate levers from a distance , the secret movement of the headbanger allowing him to cut the trees that block his passage with his hair (??!) ... These abilities, which we too quickly tend to forget, are put to good use in the puzzles of the dungeons, which nevertheless contain their share of enemies to be killed.
We see the wires
If you have ever attended one of the parades of the Royal Deluxe company from Nantes, with their gigantic puppets, you have most likely been impressed by the skill of the artists. In this kind of spectacle, it is not a question of deceiving the observer by hiding from him the operation of the puppets. On the contrary. Manipulators are an integral part of performance.In YIIK, a bit like in a puppet show, we see the strings. Ackk Studios has offered us a J-RPG like we have been doing for decades. So we know how it works, we know the song. Thus, the character will speak directly to the player to say "no need to call her back before reaching level 5". We do not hide the constraint with a transparency "I am not yet sufficiently trained". In doing so, we leave the narrative to arrive at the pure mechanics of the game.
Likewise, as we know, a good way to defeat a somewhat too powerful enemy is to farm. That is to say, chaining fights against a little less powerful monsters to accumulate experience points, and increase its characteristics until you are able to get out with the enemy who annoyed us. Here too, the game is not overcrowded, and offers squarely farm areas. Or clearly identified places on the map where it will be possible to eliminate series of enemies to progress more quickly.
The experience points, precisely, are spent in a completely classic way between characteristics like strength, defense, magic points, luck ... However, YIIK gives a little different color to the exercise by doing it do it graphically: this is the Mind Dungeon. A mental dungeon, represented as being in the head, literally, of the hero. The more experience you gain, the deeper you descend into the dungeon. We can see what lies behind this idea: by advancing in the adventure, Alex gets to know himself. YIIK would therefore also be a learning novel. Yep ...
Meta not mega
By placing ourselves in recent history, on the eve of the year 2000 bug, one of the very first big computer myths (perhaps the first), by giving a special place to the internet and video games in his script, and revealing his own seams, we feel that the game has meta ambitions. However, it never goes to the end. So the game will be riddled with moments when we break the fourth wall, Alex will never stop delivering his thoughts directly to the player, and references to pop culture are legion (Scott Pilgrim and the point'n'click LucasArts , in general, but also details like the discs that serve as a weapon for the main character), as if the YIIK wanted to talk about its time. Which he will never really do. Everything remains like little winks, a little vain.Be careful, the game is not without humor, and receiving these references throughout the adventure is quite fun. But you still have the impression that you are missing something.
The title claims to be postmodern. Again, you can see the intention. Postmodern philosophers want (roughly) to move away from the reasonable (in the sense of reason), where science and the rational would always be superior to any other discourse. The parallel worlds and entities of YIIK may represent this irrational postmodern ... But it's a bit light. Likewise, among the essential concepts of postmodern philosophy is that of differance (with an “a”) by Jacques Derrida. For a title so consistent with its genre, we can say that YIIK misses the mark.
The game is available on PC, PlayStation 4, and Switch. The official website also lists it on PS Vita. To see in the hours (days) which follow if this last exit is confirmed…
YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is pretty good in many ways. We talked about the very successful dungeons, the original ideas in terms of gameplay slipped here and there. We did not mention the aesthetic choices of the game, quite clever, while flat colors, which succeed with the few means available to the developers (we are clearly not in an AAA, and the sets sometimes suffer) to give a cool and colorful visual identity to the universe. One of the nice surprises is the life of the game. Allow 25 to 30 hours minimum to overcome it. You can push up to a good forty hours if certain moments gave you a little trouble. However, the real big flaw of YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is its classicism. It feels like you've made dozens of games that sound like him. The title makes us almost no proposition, and is satisfied with the achievements of its kind. At least we are on familiar ground, and we know what we are buying. The downside is that we are a little bored.
THE STRONG POINTS
Fun little ideas
Successful dungeons
A more than honest lifespan
THE WEAK SPOTS
Really lack originality
A fun but repetitive combat system
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