YIIKES! Let's Dunk on YIIK: A Plagiarism RPG

[Combat_Lobster]

Well now that you’ve reach the end, now is a good a time as any to tell you that this ending, and by ending I mean a huge chunk of the final sections of the game, were rewritten after the Allanson brothers’ mom passed away. So the original ending, or at least a part of it, is still in the game’s data. (Along with other bits of cut content that is surprisingly way better than what’s in the final game.) One nice person on the YiiK discord, yes really, compiled a series of saves that you can load to view said content, and I took the time to record it.

So I’m just gonna leave this here for your curiosity:

[Chowder]

I’m having a hard time coming up with words for what I’m feeling about all this and why. Certainly one thing that bugs me a lot is how little actually mattered in the game. The fact that “learning from your mistakes and becoming a better person” was the central theme of the game kind of came out of nowhere at me (see: previous remarks about clarity of plot). They had all these scenes where Alex realizes he’s a giant piece of shit only to change nothing. They wasted so much time on lore which was not internally consistent, did not enrich the narrative world, and did not help the narrative make more sense. It literally just doesn’t matter at all if a central character lives or dies.

What is this game. This game is nothing.

[Timrod]

Happy 100th Post!

Ohhh BOY have I found out things about Two Brothers. It’s a Game Boy-inspired game but the graphics are way too detailed for a Game Boy game, making it rather clashing, plus there’s actual color in the heaven sequence, though not as much as actually shown. When Roy talks about people preventing him from his journey, that is literally the Allansons crying about any critique for that game, including the fucking Shadow of the Colossus music plagiarism (hey same theme!)

I want to just stress this point especially: a game that’s about the main character coming to terms with his flaws, is coming from a team where the two leads didn’t learn a single fucking thing when it came to actually improving a game and instead whined about it. It’s so fitting, but goddamn they wanted to charge, what $20+ to show they didn’t learn a single thing?

I don’t know what’s behind ending number 2, I did see into 3 and ugh, it’s lazy but at least not worth the effort of looking at.

I honestly kinda forgot that Two Brothers existed, but it doesn’t at all surprise me that they had trouble making it even look like an actual Gameboy game. I backed a reproduction GB game on Kickstarter a few months ago. With that game in particular, the developers were going from having a game that worked on original GB hardware to making it work with the Super Gameboy and GBC and there are all kinds of quirks associated with that (namely the SGB’s 4-color limit and the differences between the GBC and GBA/GBA SP/Early-model GBA SP’s screens).

I think what angered me the most about this game though is pretty much exactly what you said - that if the Allansons had listened to the people critiquing their game at any point, YIIK might’ve been a halfway decent game after a couple of patches. I don’t think anyone went in wanting them to fail. I even remember seeing threads on 4chan’s /v/ board about it, and apart from the usual “hipster lumberjack protagonist” comments it didn’t seem like there was any real animosity.

The thing is, it’s clear that the Allansons knew people who could’ve helped them make this game not suck. I don’t think you get Toby Fox to make a track for your game without knowing him enough that you could ask him to take a look at what you’ve got. I think that’s what really gets me: they had every opportunity to succeed, and they didn’t take it.

Whew. Just reading that felt like such a goddamn mess. My eyes may have glazed over trying to read all that dialogue.

Also, something about the way the people in New York look jumped out at me. I don’t know that it was the first game to do it, but Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE did the whole “colored silhouettes for random people” thing too:

Yeah, imagine how that is for me. I had to work in it for short periods at a time, because any more than that and I’d just start falling asleep.

That was, rather a lot, and I shouldn’t really be surprised that the ending is basically “every Alex explodes and then credits roll” but I’m still like “that’s it? This is not worth the setup, ugh”

Also it only hit me this update that the Mind Dungeon’s phone number is 333, and I’m annoyed. I’m betting that’s a reference to Choronzon, from English mysticism and Crowley, and they didn’t even get it right.

And then there’s the final dungeon being a blatant visual riff on the Cave of the Past from Earthbound. This game just feels like a pile of, well… quotes and works from others thrown together haphazardly. Pretty much what we expected, but still disappointing.

I didn’t upload it, but I did actually stream my first re-recording of Ending A. When I hit that part, I remember just laughing really hard and being like “Of course it’s just fucking Giygas. Of course it fucking is.” That was the run where I softlocked the game by LP Tossing the Joy mutant, which is why I didn’t bother uploading it.

Well now that you’ve reach the end, now is a good a time as any to tell you that this ending, and by ending I mean a huge chunk of the final sections of the game, were rewritten after the Allanson brothers’ mom passed away. So the original ending, or at least a part of it, is still in the game’s data. (Along with other bits of cut content that is surprisingly way better than what’s in the final game.) One nice person on the YiiK discord, yes really, compiled a series of saves that you can load to view said content, and I took the time to record it.

So I’m just gonna leave this here for your curiosity:

I wish I hadn’t used that goddamn DBZ video, because I’d have used it right here. That original ending isn’t great, but at least it’s a goddamn ending! I like that they cut it because they felt it was too depressing, but then they left in like half the fucking game being people committing suicide in some form, because that’s perfectly okay.

I also now realize that most of the stuff from that third ending video that wasn’t in the main game actually was, but it was all cut. A lot of the stuff they cut is also just… why did they cut it? They had an interior to the gas station they removed because… I mean, it would’ve just been another shop but who cares?

I think what really gets me though is the cut version of Frankton. I get that having huge maps is a problem, but they could’ve easily solved that by just having a fast travel thing. It feels like someone told the Allansons that it was too big and they responded by throwing a fucking fit and reducing it to what it is in the final game. All they would’ve had to do is put in a fast travel thing and maybe a map. That’s it.

I’m having a hard time coming up with words for what I’m feeling about all this and why. Certainly one thing that bugs me a lot is how little actually mattered in the game. The fact that “learning from your mistakes and becoming a better person” was the central theme of the game kind of came out of nowhere at me (see: previous remarks about clarity of plot). They had all these scenes where Alex realizes he’s a giant piece of shit only to change nothing. They wasted so much time on lore which was not internally consistent, did not enrich the narrative world, and did not help the narrative make more sense. It literally just doesn’t matter at all if a central character lives or dies.

What is this game. This game is nothing.

Honestly, it feels like a lot of what they wanted to do was hampered by both the fact that Brian Allanson is not great at coding as evidenced by his dev log where it seems like this was the first time he had ever worked in Unity and by the fact that neither he nor his brother were terribly good at writing.

It seems to me like they probably would have had Rory’s death mean something, but couldn’t figure out how to make that work code-wise. It probably would’ve driven up the cost of the game as well, because they most likely would have needed more voiceacting done. I still don’t really understand why they even bothered to voiceact the game in the first place. They’re trying to mimic a PS1 game, but most PS1 games didn’t have voiceacting.

If anything, I’d almost like to see a post-mortem on this game that is just a giant list of what not to do.

[Nidoking]

I believe the audio desync is because Rory’s lines in some scenes don’t play if he’s not there, but either the subtitles or the audio still plays as if his lines were still there. I think I saw a video of that some time ago.

I wish I could say something intelligent about the ending, but having seen it at least twice, I still don’t really understand what’s going on or what motivates anyone here. It’s not the first ending I’ve ever seen where I feel like the author was trying to be really clever and the mortal minds of their audience are failing to make some leap of logic that would reveal the cleverness, but with this one, I don’t even care enough to go back and try to puzzle it out.

[LaZodiac]

beautiful women who come in and out of my life

Projecting much, writer?

“Vella lost the man who hurt her

MOther fucking excuse me. She “lost” a pedophile version OF YOU, who SEVERELY hurt her. Fuck offff.

In the console versions of the game, this scene changes slightly based on what console you’re using.

Who knows how many hours into this trash fest and we finally get something resembling a cool idea. Good job. I suppose.

I can’t say this is the worst thing I’ve ever experienced, because I didn’t really experience it you did, and because I’m an avid manga and anime fan and have had the displeasure of seeing some awful shit. That being said though… this is probably one of the worst things I’ve ever seen. I can’t really think of anything else to say other than that. There are aspects of the ending that make quasi sense, and there’s clearly… SOMETHING in this that wants to be refined into something good, but it’s not even worth considering at this point, clearly. And truthfully, some of the misunderstanding of what their writing actually means just means that it’s poisoned from the beginning.

So yeah. I’m excited to see the failure ending, if this is the good one.

[Timrod]

: It’s time for Ending B, and the final update to this LP. I’d like to thank everyone who read through all this garbage and posted in the thread for making this the most active and successful LP I’ve done.

: Ending B is basically a hunt for stuff we have no reason to suspect is there. There is ONE clue to this, and that’s if you check ONISM 1999 before you head out.

: BPA is Brian Allanson, by the way. Also, this sounds a lot like a post on one of those Men’s Rights forums.

: I think this is about as far up your own ass as you can go. He’s right about one thing though - no one should have allowed him to ship this ending because it is a buggy pile of SHIT. It makes Ending A look good by comparison.

: By “look for the flesh”, he means “check behind the tree in Alex’s yard.”

: What is she, a fucking korok?

: “You wasted so much time looking for me, but I’ve been here all along… in your front yard, hiding behind this tree!”

: I find that unlikely, given that in YIIK’s universe you’re apparently a fabrication of an evil robot that exists solely to be this game’s equivalent to Maria in Silent Hill 2. Also, they kind of found your dead body.

: I swear to god, if this ending has Alex kiss her at any point, I am replacing it with Mike Dawson missing the ring toss.

: Finding Sammy allows us to leave out the back door of Alex’s house, which is blocked off if you haven’t found her.

: If you’ve seen the video for the third ending, this will look familiar. The world map gets replaced by inverted colors and is just generally godawful to look at.

: Our destination is the one place we never had a reason to visit - the KNN building.

: The actual building is off to the right of where you enter the area. I’m not entirely sure why that is. Before we go in, there’s an item outside we need to pick up.

: I got stuck in this room and assumed I had softlocked the game. The “Exit” door has an interact prompt, but doesn’t do anything if you try to use it. The computer doesn’t do anything, and the only other thing we can even interact with in the room…

: I get what they were going for, but there’s no way the Allansons are so dense that they don’t know about the whole “redpilled” thing being used extensively by white supremacy groups and the alt-right.

: No, what you have to do is use Dali and launch him through the other door.

: This marks the start of the first point at which the game can softlock.

: “I’m going to need you to do me a favor, okay? First order of business is make me a cup of coffee. Think you can do that? If you can’t make coffee, you’ll never make it in the competitive world of local news.”

: Talking to the boss causes some new NPCs to spawn.

: This almost sounds like the premise for a KC Green comic. It’s a good thing we have a dead friend… well, “friend”, I guess. We won’t go in the supply closet just yet though, because we need to set another plot flag to continue.

: Okay, NOW let’s go into the supply closet. Surely it’ll be fine and…

: Well, fuck. That’s awkward.

: I should mention that if Rory isn’t dead, he won’t be in this room but that’s the only thing that’s different. The NPCs will still say only people with dead friends are allowed to go in.

: “I know it’s weird seeing me here, and I get that. But, I’m in a better place.”

: “Life was hard, and it finally caught up to me. Do me a favor, okay? Don’t blame yourself for what happened to me.”

: “But nothing you did really pushed me over the edge. It was going to happen one way or the other I think. So, just know that I forgive you. Forgive yourself. Just… just maybe be a little more careful next time a friend is in need.”

: I actually did this take before I had talked to the lady downstairs about the sugar, so the sugar hasn’t spawned in this room yet.

: This is where the game can and will softlock. What happens is that the trigger to take a cup doesn’t expire after you take one. If you take more than one (for instance, by failing the quest as I’m about to) the game won’t let you finish it properly. Thankfully, this is only maybe a 3 or 4 minute time loss as opposed to the 10+ minutes it took me to re-record Ending A.

: The sugar spawns right here once you’ve talked to the lady downstairs.

: Finally, there’s this exchange, which is more than a little creepy.

: This feels like the start of a fetish porno… or Hellmoo. Hellmoo had a command to milk people. I would actually LP that game if it wasn’t as creepy as it is - and also if I was good enough at exploiting it to get to the ending.

: “Uhhgnn! You little shit!!! Do it again. GET IT RIGHT!!!”

: At this point, I thought I had to go back and get all the ingredients again. I got a second cup, and then the game softlocked because I did.

: What you’re supposed to do is go to this coffee maker once you have the ingredients. The boss will tell you he likes his coffee weak. If you have more than one cup, the game will just not let you interact with the coffee maker at all.

: I had to re-record, and on the re-recording I forgot to pick up the red disk outside, hence why this scene is a bit different.

: “Wow! This is not bad. I’m pleased. Okay, now I need you to find me a Red Disk. Go to a computer, copy the MASTER FILE onto it, put it on the other computer, and bring me the disk.”

: “Also, uh… the disk is somewhere outside. I buried it last night.”

: These directions don’t make a lot of sense, but what we need to do is simple: go get the red disk (like we did earlier) and bring it back.

: Talking to the boss again causes two computers to light up. Unfortunately…

: The password is on this specific bulletin board, which you can’t even interact with before this particular plot flag has been set.

: “I need you to go to to the toy store and get my son a gift for his birthday. Buy the most expensive and fancy toy they have. Something that really shows my love.”

: I have no idea if it actually takes $1000 out of your inventory, but if you don’t have it you’re probably screwed. You can’t go back to any of the towns as far as I know.

: “I know it was expensive, so I’ll be sure to get money out from my desk to pay you back by the time you arrive. Mr. Jacobs wants to see you. He’s down on the second floor.”

: By the time we arrive from what?

: “Ha! Got you, you’re not fired. Boss Journalist is. Go upstairs and give it to him, let him know to pack up his desk and don’t make any big purchases, as he won’t be able to afford them any time soon.”

: “HOW CAN THEY DO THIS TO ME!? AND ON MY SON’S BIRTHDAY OF ALL DAYS!!! … snif …”

: I bet Andrew Allanson said this at some point during this game’s development.

: “I’m sorry you had to see me show my emotions. Listen, I won’t be able to pay you back after all. I don’t have a job anymore. Thank you for your service.”

: It may not be obvious at all why we just did that, or what any of this shit has to do with anything. The answer is to turn off a security camera, and also it has nothing to do with anything, this entire ending is somehow even more pointless than Ending A was.

: The plot trigger here is real weird. What we have to do is go through all of those doors up top - there’s five of them - and then the door to the actual ending appears.

: This part actually kinda infuriates me because it’s Brian Allanson being all “Oh woe is me I WANTED to write a good ending but forces beyond my control just STOPPED me”

: I have no idea who Mr. Kwek is - if he’s someone that words for Ysbyrd or whatever or just something they made up.

: Once we’ve talked to all of those things, another door opens.

: You might recognize this place, but if you don’t, it’s from the factory at the start of the game.

: The door won’t open, so we have to go through the window.

: Nothing here. Not even a phone call from a dead wife.

: I should mention that none of this is voiceacted, meaning that this was probably done after the game was “finished”.

: “It’s me, Sammy. I hope you can hear me clearly, it’s always so hard to get a good signal from here.”

: “To top it all off, I can’t help but feel that it was me that got you into this mess.”

: Again, not a lot to talk about here. I rushed through the rest of After Dark tonight, and honestly it’s a pretty garbage book. This game basically got all of its ideas from a handful of pages where one character’s sister (who has been in a coma for two months but it’s not a coma because she gets up to eat?) winds up teleporting into an alternate reality for a chapter. Nothing ever really comes of it, and I think it’s supposed to be a metaphor for depression or something.

: “Had I never met you, the world wouldn’t be ending right now.”

: The entire reason I think this game is pretty much nothing in terms of plot is because that’s just kind of how After Dark is - it’s a novel where absolutely nothing happens.

: “I’m not saying reality wouldn’t have broken, that had nothing to do with either of us… that happened a long time ago.”

: “But, you kept looking for me, and just because you wanted to make sure I was alright, you were dragged into this mess.”

: Is she… is she apologizing for committing suicide? What the fuck is this shit?

: That you’re dead and have been the entire time?

: I know that Chip and Ironicus are doing an LP of Metal Gear Solid V, so I’ll spoiler the rest of this, but: Sammy here seems a hell of a lot like Paz in MGS V. This also kind of leads to a weird question: is this like Police Quest where things aren’t consistent depending on your actions? Where like, getting Ending A means Sammy was a hallucination or projection or something of Essentia 995, but getting Ending B means that she wasn’t?

: “She’s a liar. She wants something that only you can give her, and she’ll destroy the entire world just to get it. But, I have a solution. It’s so good that you found this phone and I was able to reach you.”

: When I recorded this part, I was hoping it would be like Spec Ops, where Alex is so fucking crazy that he’s hallucinating everything - reality isn’t actually falling apart and he’s on an unplugged phone somewhere thinking he’s talking to a woman who has been dead for over half a year at this point.

: “Before you come in, I feel like I need to be honest with you. I want to see you, and I want to explore the great beyond with you…”

: Okay, this is just… what.

: “But it’s the best choice. If you stay, the world will end. If you stay, she wins. If you stay, you’ll never see me again.”

: “So, if you want to end this without destroying everything, go into the elevator… but, if you want to see it through to the end, now is your chance to leave.”

: I didn’t actually try to leave, because I figured that I didn’t want to re-record this. Even assuming hitting “no” here doesn’t softlock the game, we’ve already seen Ending A.

: “There is no right or wrong choice here. Just, be sure you’re willing to accept that you won’t be able to come back to this reality. It’ll be all over for you here, but… but everyone will go on.”

: So, okay. Does this mean that if Alex soul suicides, the world doesn’t end? Because I’m pretty sure you just said not all that long ago that it’s going to end regardless.

: “I’m happy you made that choice. Did you bring Dali? I’m so glad you kept him safe. Take my hand, and let me show you where I’ve been.”

: This is absolutely the canon image for what happens in this ending. Anyone claiming they hug at the end is a fucking liar.

: “We’ll be together in your waking reality one day, I’m sure of it. For all I know, we may already be.”

And that’s it. That’s YIIK, everybody. Ending B was mercifully short while also retaining the complete lack of substance Ending A had. Fuck this game.

By the way, I’d like to debunk the statement that one of the Allansons made that this game is around 25 hours long. I finished this game with both endings in 14 hours of in-game time. My total time on Steam shows 25 hours, but that’s due to re-records and leaving the game open while I worked on the LP.

Again, I’d like to thank everyone for reading and posting in the thread. It amazes me how this LP got more views in… not even two months… than I did on pretty much any of my other LPs, and way more posts as well. I can’t say for sure what I’ll be going for next.

I hope that if any of you reading this LP ever get the chance to make a game yourself, you learn something from my pain.

[Timrod]

@moderators This can be put in completed.

One other thing I realized that I don’t feel like editing into the last post - they never actually did anything with the “what’s your favorite tech” thing.

[Nidoking]

I think there are different models for the Essentia stand-in for specific answers to the tech question.

[LaZodiac]

I could try and figure out what this game was trying to, but it’s so lifeless and without merit that I have no real desire to.

Thank you for playing this. I’m sorry you have to purchase this with money.

[Timrod]

This hub post is for YIIK 1.25 and any new content added in the patch. For the original 2019 LP, please click here.

I thought the nightmare was over.

I was wrong.

In January 2020, a few months after this LP concluded, the Allansons announced that they were working on a plot patch for YIIK that was meant to fix everything - overhaul the combat, fix the plot, and generally turn the game from a nigh-unplayable pile of crap (as seen in this very LP) into something playable.

I wasn’t even aware they were planning on patching the game until October, when I woke up one morning to half a dozen messages on Steam letting me know I’d been featured in tehsnakerer’s YIIK video and that the LP had exploded in popularity virtually overnight.

Since then, I did a complete playthrough of the Allanson brothers’ other game, Two Brothers, which provided a lot of context to YIIK that I hadn’t understood the first time I played through it.

Without actually posting the patch notes, which are available on Steam, let me talk a little bit about what’s going to be in this update and why I’m going to be “re-opening” the LP specifically for this.

The biggest changes are that they supposedly removed all the bugs (read: they patched the LP Toss bug), rebalanced the entire combat system and got rid of the minigames, and added in a “reduced monologues” mode, which the Allansons claim removes the “non-story-critical” Allanson Monologues that plagued the original game.

Oh, and they changed the entire Wind Town plot arc to add a thing about the Golden Alpaca, which is now voiced by DC Douglas. I have no idea where exactly they got the money to hire him, especially given that this is a free update, but whatever.

They also got an entire team of random indie music artists to put out a second OST for the game, and now I’m wondering if any of them know or were told about the plagiarism issues with Two Brothers. With that, let’s get right into it.

This post will serve as a second hub specifically for LP updates related to the 1.25 patch and any new content therein. Any subsequent content updates will be given their own hub post.

Why re-use the old thread?

---

I have two reasons for this.

The first is that I don’t believe the patch will have enough content in it to warrant an entirely new LP. The Allansons have also teased a “1.50” patch that would add more story content.

The second is that I want readers to be able to seamlessly go from the original 2019 LP to this one without having to change threads.

How much of the game are you planning on re-playing?

---

My plan is to play through only up to wherever this new Golden Alpaca segment is. I will be playing it in a new file on the new “easy” difficulty, as there is no indication that there is any kind of bonus content for doing a New Game Plus run.

If it is discovered that there are major changes to the game outside the patch notes (ie; bonus content for NG+ or changes to the story beyond the Wind Town segment such as the inclusion of an additional ending) then I will absolutely be covering those.

Where should discussion about the new updates go?

---

You can keep talking about the game in this thread. I don’t think it’s locked, and posts will show up in the main LP forum… which I kind of wasn’t expecting to happen.

Are you going to be using Reduced Monologues mode?

---

Yes. I will be doing this both in order to make comparisons to the original LP and to see if the Allansons finally learned something after eight years and two games. The Allansons have also teased a “Silent Protagonist” mode (separate from Reduced Monologues) that will be added in 1.50.

Originally, I had intended to do my own “Silent Protagonist” mode where I enclosed all of Alex’s dialogue in a box, and I may still do that, but I don’t know if they’re planning to re-write parts of the script in order for that to make sense. I may hold off on that until 1.50 and activate it for any new content in that patch.

Will you be making any changes to the original LP?

---

No. I have no plans to touch any of that - the original 2019 LP represented my thoughts on a blind playthrough of YIIK in its pre-patch state and can never be replicated. The only change being made to the original LP will be a link to this hub post (and any subsequent ones for later patches).

What’s the spoiler policy?

---

Since these updates take place after the end of the main LP, spoilers are open.

[TheGreatCatJames]

Just when you thought you were out they dragged you back.

[Nidoking]

I was pleasantly surprised to read the Steam listing. It’s… pretty much what you’d expect to see from someone who had done the introspection, realized that they had no clue what they were doing when they made a game, recognized their mistakes for what they were, and determined to take the good ideas and turn them into something playable. We’ll always have the memories of what was, but there could also be something good.

Then I read the spoiler text.

While I’m part of the extensive crowd that’s pointed to the mystery of the Golden Alpaca as one of the many things wrong with the game, I don’t think this sounds anything like addressing the problems. But I guess we’ll see how it goes in practice.

Also, since the Steam page doesn’t say it, my guess from context is that silent protagonist mode would mute all of Alex’s voice lines, possibly in line with the content warnings, for people who don’t like the VA who provided them.

[Timrod]

@Nidoking

Also, since the Steam page doesn’t say it, my guess from context is that silent protagonist mode would mute all of Alex’s voice lines, possibly in line with the content warnings, for people who don’t like the VA who provided them.

Yeah, I only heard about the silent protagonist thing as a rumor, so I’m not entirely sure whether it’s accurate (or even if it’s the same thing as reduced monologue mode). I’ll update the hub post when the update hits and I know for sure.

[drcakey]

My friend is going to play YIIK eventually, so when I saw this news I was like “Oh no he won’t be able to play it as ORIGINALLY INTENDED!!!”

Fortunately, YIIK is one of those games that don’t require Steam to run, so if you go into Steam and set YIIK to “Only update on launch”, you can maintain that crisp, YIIK 1.0 flavor. Or whatever the version number is.

Now, let’s talk about the title: “YIIK | Deviation Perspective I | Wrong Soul Requiem”. If your eyes work like mine, you merged the “I” and “|”, and it took you a long time to realize that was supposed to be “Deviation Perspective 1 (of a number > 1)”.

‘Deviation Perspective’ isn’t a bad emulation of the subheader for a Japanese game like…like…um…okay for some reason I can’t think of any examples but you probably know what I mean. I assume ‘Deviation Perspective’ just means “told from another point of view”, though if I had made a game called YIIK: A Postmodern RPG, I probably would’ve called my sidestory YIIK Gaiden. ‘Wrong Soul Requiem’ gets a thumbs down from me though. Also what’s with putting pipes in the title? God invented colons and dashes for a reason. Were they not q u i r k y enough?

This was also a GIGANTIC missed opportunity to call the update YIIK HD 1.25 ReMix. Maybe they were afraid of getting sued by Square. Oh, or maybe even better… YIIK: Special Edition.

[Timrod]

@drcakey

My friend is going to play YIIK eventually, so when I saw this news I was like “Oh no he won’t be able to play it as ORIGINALLY INTENDED!!!”

Yeah. I looked it up this morning, because the game had come out on Xbox Game Pass but had not come out on Steam (or at least, if it did, I don’t have it).

One of the Allansons has responded to a thread on the Steam discussion board and basically said that they left a thing in to keep the original godawful minigame combat, but that enabling that won’t bring back the LP Toss bug or revert any of the balance changes.

On a side note, I’ve also updated the OP now that I know exactly what’s in the patch.

[Timrod]

: Well, it’s finally here. I was kind of hoping it wouldn’t be. The main menu screen now has the incredibly bitter bibliography on it, leading me to believe they didn’t get rid of all the Haruki Murakami crap.

: Naturally, the first thing I did was check the bibliography to see if they updated it at all. I compared it to the version from Update 2 of the original LP. They didn’t update it at all, meaning that if they haven’t changed that one verbatim copy-paste from Wikipedia I found that I am going to call them on that.

: I will also be closely monitoring the new content for anything that looks even vaguely out of place. If you find anything that you suspect might be plagiarism, please let me know. You would THINK they’d have learned not to plagiarize after two games, but I doubt it.

: I’m also wondering now if some of the things in this list are actually applicable to Two Brothers - I know Two Brothers plagiarizes from Merriam-Webster, but I don’t remember seeing this game do that. Maybe it was in one of the ONISM comments that I never read.

: The start of the game is still the same, only now they ask you if you “want to view a content warning”.

: The only thing this does is allow you to choose whether Rory can die or not. Of course we want him dead, he’s a useless dipshit.

: We then get the choice to turn Reduced Monologues on. So, what does this do exactly? Not a whole lot - I played up to Wind Town and only noticed three monologues that were changed. Two were removed outright, and one was shortened slightly.

: We also get the choice between Normal Mode and Story Mode. If, for some reason, you decide to play this game post-1.25 patch, DO NOT PLAY ON NORMAL MODE.

: They also re-did the chapter title screens, which I suppose is nice. Now let’s see if the Allansons learned anything. Keep in mind this is a patch that they supposedly beta tested with people who weren’t related to or employed by them.

: One of the only three changes I could detect with Reduced Monologues is that it shortens the monologue when you first meet Dali to three text boxes. This is a marked improvement.

: I mean, the writing’s kind of mediocre and all they really did was cut a bunch of text here without really changing it at all, but it’s fewer text boxes I have to read.

: The second thing Reduced Monologues changes is that it straight-up removes the infamous “vibrating with motion” monologue in the elevator in the factory, so it goes from Dali entering the elevator to the loading cutscene without a single line of text.

: We get into combat, and now we can see how the Allansons decided to re-balance it.

: Each character now has an “affinity”. Alex is uh… being a hipster I guess. Michael is Fire, Vella is Water, and I’m not sure what the rest are. The idea is that each element is strong against two others, weak against two others, and neutral to the rest.

: In practice, this system sucks because it means Alex (who always has to be in the party) is inherently useless against certain enemy types. But here’s where we find out that the Allansons learned ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING.

: Instead of just, I dunno, eliminating the QTEs on normal attacks… they now have different QTEs that are also much, much harder to hit.

: What happens is that the colored area on the circle rotates once, and you need to hit the button when it’s under the square. Hitting the light blue area gives you a “poor” which does far less damage than I could rack up even doing the bare minimum on Alex’s old attack QTE.

: Seriously, that’s what you’re going to be hitting for most of the time unless you are either abusing the hell out of the slowdown mechanic or on easy mode. All the bars you’re seeing here are on Normal, and they’re not much more forgiving on Easy.

: Hitting the yellow area gives you a “good”, which does roughly the same amount of damage you could get out of a max combo in the old system. If you manage to get a hit exactly on red, you get a “perfect” which does a significantly higher amount of damage, but these are RIDICULOUSLY hard to land.

: I had to resort to taking some shots off a stream VOD to capture this properly, but waiting too long gives you a “Time Out” which is an automatic miss.

: Oh, and the old defense minigame is still in. So let’s look at what the new combat system is, because it fucking sucks.

: Basically, instead of having a slower but easier QTE that allowed you to rack up damage, you now have… a slightly faster QTE at the expense of it being really hard to deal even the same amount of damage you were before.

: This means that combat is actually slower, because on average you’re dealing less damage than you were before. I tried looking for where the thing to switch back to the old combat system is, only as far as I can tell it doesn’t exist.

: Oh, and they slowed down the battle text so it’s actually readable. I’m pretty sure this also slows down the attack animations that happen after the QTE, so basically battle is even more of a slog than it was before.

: And here’s our new “vibrating with motion” line.

: The old combat system was bad, this one is worse in every possible aspect to the point where I basically have no idea how you’re supposed to play it without using a New Game Plus file and just auto-killing everything.

: Oh, and I got a softlock here trying to open the menu.

SOFTLOCK COUNTER: 7

: Plagiarism Woman is still here. Her dialog is absolutely unchanged, including the “Eye of Providence” thing, which I forgot to capture. This means that yes, there is still plagiarism in YIIK.

: Everything up to the end of the hotel is the same. The Biggest Bullshit Puzzle is still broken.

: Here’s Sammy’s QTE, which is actually different from Vella’s this time.

: Here’s where the affinity system rears its ugly head. Neither Alex nor Sammy are strong against these skulls, so they take less damage than they did in the base game per hit. This fight is now bullshit hard, because the skulls hit for like 6 damage if you don’t dodge or defend it.

: By the way, the old attack QTEs are now in as special moves. They do more damage than they did as regular attacks, but not much. This means that you basically need to spend your MP to do any kind of meaningful damage.

: Now, Persona 1 and Innocent Sin both did that, and I love those games even if they haven’t aged the best. Here, though? It costs 2 MP to use a single attack, and you start with FIVE.

: On the way to the elevator where Sammy dies, there’s some new content.

: Oh god, the Wilhelm fight. The Wilhelm fight is the gravy of bird shit atop the mountain of garbage that is the 1.25 update.

: Wilhelm has exactly one attack, which automatically hits. That’s right, the defense QTEs that you had to do once per person? Those are gone, or replaced with new QTEs.

: In this case, Sammy will die in four attacks unless she is healed.

: Regular attacks do a total of jack shit unless you get “perfects” on the QTE. Otherwise, this happens and you die in four turns.

: The trick is that he’s weak to Sammy’s attacks, so you need to have her use her old QTE special attack to do enough damage to it before it kills you.

: Seriously though, I want to know what these beta testers were thinking. There were apparently actual testers from what I’ve heard. This new combat system honestly makes me think this was an attempt by the Allansons to make people want the old combat system back.

: Anyway, the game remains the same as before up until this point, where Alex talks about how his mom works for Pacific Bell (not historically accurate as Pacific Bell was bought out by Southwestern Bell in 1997).

: The entire monologue here though, where he talks about getting sent elephant porn and wondering how many of the people he knew in high school are now sex workers, is gone.

: This whole Haruki Murakami ripoff scene with Essentia is still in, still has unskippable text, and is still dumb as fuck.

: We grab Michael, do the whole thing at the camera shop, check ONISM, and then do the unwinnable fight against Vella in the arcade.

: Michael’s QTE goes from “push keys in order” to a yellow box that shrinks. The idea I think is to hit it so that it touches the white parts without being too big or too small, but I managed I think all of once to get a “good” on it.

: Basically, Michael’s QTE is so fucking hard that he’s now even more useless than he was in the base game.

: Vella also has an unwinnable QTE that I don’t think existed in the base game.

: We unlock the Mind Dungeon, and it’s exactly the same with one minor change. There’s a new NPC here who allows us to turn on Full Monologues mode if we want to. We don’t want to.

: No more changes occur until we hit Wind Town and fight the Hook-Handed Jock. In the original game, this guy was a pushover.

: Now, without looking at the next screenshot, I’d like you to tell me what it is you think you’re supposed to do with this QTE. If you start mashing the buttons, you automatically fail it.

: Instead, you have to wait for this stupid lemon thing to descend and try to punch you with its two penises. If you hit the button at just the right time, you dodge it. Otherwise you take full damage. There’s no more “defend for damage reduction”, it’s all or nothing now.

: He wipes Alex in one attack, and only doesn’t kill Vella because I managed to hit the QTE exactly once. At this point, I gave up and decided to just go with my clear file, because this entire patch is insanely bad.

: Next time, we’ll probably run into the Golden Alpaca replacement and do the side story thing, and that’ll be it for this godawful bullshit patch.

[TheGreatCatJames]

How, how the fuck did they make it worse. It’s like they were so close to what made paper mario style combat work and took a right turn into a pile of bad ideas!

I did see some of the golden alpaca stuff and man I had to process what happened.

[Riley]

@Timrod

: Instead, you have to wait for this stupid lemon thing to descend and try to punch you with its two penises. If you hit the button at just the right time, you dodge it. Otherwise you take full damage. There’s no more “defend for damage reduction”, it’s all or nothing now.

I got some massive Godzilla Creepypasta vibes from that face

[LaZodiac]

How could it get worse…

Knowing beta testers, they either are lying about getting unaffiliated people to do it, or they just ignored them completely. Because this is clearly, self evidently, worse.

[TheGreatCatJames]

Also something I don’t think was mentioned when this LP was going but there was a bug in the game where You could do the right things to keep Rory alive and he would die anyway but the game would act like he was alive (Like his lines would still be said even though he wasn’t in the scene and would be said over other characters lines)