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)
Honestly, I wish I knew. It’s not like they were trying something revolutionary and it didn’t work out - there have been RPGs with QTE combat since at least 1996.
Now, I don’t want to make too many assumptions, but it feels like the Allansons tried to fix this game and then realized how much of an ordeal fixing this game would actually be. It also feels like they didn’t quite understand the problems their game had.
From what I’ve read, the idea is apparently that if you get a “perfect” on the QTE, it gives you MP back that you can use to do actual damage. This is kind of the most ass-backwards way I’ve ever seen to design a combat system, especially given how hard it is to hit the “perfect” on most of the QTEs. Skies of Arcadia had a similar mechanic, only it worked there because there were no QTEs and you got MP back regardless of how much damage your attack did.
The thing is, I went into this update basically blind, and I had no idea this was supposed to be the case because fucked if the game is going to explain it to you at any point. Even if it had, the entire thing feels like just another roadblock to actually doing meaningful damage.
Oh, and as it turns out, there is a way to get the old combat system back. Like the rest of this game, it is done in about the least intuitive way imaginable. You have to set it on a per-character basis… on the stat screen. Not on the options screen, on the stat screen. I’ll be doing that for the next update.
Me and some buddies just ran through the game up until the Wind town stuff and man…we cam away much less enthused than the first play through
The new combat made the game more palatable but its still Yiik at its core. Which is rough.
Do you plan on looking for the NPC that apparently leads to the new third ending?
Just out of curiosity, what did you like about the new combat system compared to the old one? I’m not going to make fun of you or anything, I’m just legitimately curious.
The answer to that question is no, as I have no reason to believe a third ending exists. If anyone else finds it and can show a reproducible method of getting it, I’ll do it.
We streamed it twice one full play through over the course of a few weeks and then one one up to wind town day of 1.25.
In both instances the combat being a slog or nothing because of LP toss was a big point of contention. I should also say despite all odds I do like this game but I can live with a lot of the crap and see it for what it is.
But the increase of more choice and like actual tactical use of stuff like panda and other party members decisions being made on top of just faster turns was nice. I got to level 70ish in the first run and I am going to go as high as the game will let me with NG+ but like the feeling that more than just Alex matters during the bulk of the gamepaly is such a huge boon to me.
Also the Mini games being like 1.5 seconds long for basic attacks is great and you can still do the beat downs for amped damage.
I will say its so incredibly wild the game explains nothing about the new mechanics and a THIRD PARTY made a guide for how it works that the DEVS linked to on twitter which is a whole level of “wow…”
EDIT: So after digging in a bit more I love what they have done with Rory in combat
: First thing this update, I’d like to mention that I was wrong about the new battle system. It’s actually worse than I thought, but at the same time not quite as bad. You can turn it on or off using this menu: turning on “Deep Strike” gives you the old QTEs back and turning on “Imbue Affinity” turns on the elemental weakness chart mode.
: For this testing, I used two sets of options - one that’s purely the new battle system (Deep Strike off, Imbue Affinity on) and one that’s purely the old one (Deep Strike on, Imbue Affinity off).
: This is with the old battle system, on Normal difficulty. The enemies outside the factory go down in one hit as opposed to three or more.
: I counted, and for Alex’s basic attack, a “good” in the new QTE system is equivalent to a 4-hit combo in the old one. A “perfect” is equal to about 6 or 7 hits.
: For reference, most of the time under the old system I could land somewhere between 8 and 12 hits. This means that the new system is a straight-up damage decrease.
: The only place the new combat system is better is with characters who had a very low max combo count, like Vella. Vella’s new QTE gives her the same amount of hits on a “good” she’d get from a perfect QTE in the old system. Getting a “perfect” gives her 4 hits, meaning she does more damage than the old system until she gets her combo upgrade.
: This is a hit from a level 68 Vella against the Hook-Handed Jock, with a “good”, under the new system.
: Even with a “good”, Vella gets the same combo count she would have under the old system - she hits three times in both. This isn’t true later on, when Vella’s combo upgrades to a 4-hit maximum in the old system.
: Now here’s the same fight, same Vella, just with the old system on. You can see that there’s a pretty major difference because the Jock is weak to her element.
: I also tried it with Michael, who seems to hit harder under the new system provided the enemy isn’t strong against his element.
: Because his max combo under the old system was only 3 or 4 hits anyway, it doesn’t make much of a difference. I’m not sure if the new system adjusts its damage when you get the weapons that add a max combo thing. His new QTE does 3 hits on a “good” (out-damaging the old system by 1 hit) and 4 hits on a “perfect”.
: So basically, the answer to “Should I use the new combat system” is “For most of the non-Alex party members, yes.” The other exception would be Essentia, who had a relatively high max combo count in the old version.
: You might ask what I did to get their levels that high, and the answer is that I started a New Game + file. What does that get you, you ask?
: The only thing that carries over is your total EXP from when you finished the first run. You don’t get to keep any equipment, money, or anything else - just EXP. It took me 45 minutes in the Mind Dungeon to level Alex up.
: This time, recalling GrandmaParty’s wisdom, I levelled Alex’s luck up first to get 100% critical rate. This takes around 34 levels to accomplish.
: By level 68, Michael also gets a fairly high strength score (which is a waste given how bad his basic attack is in both versions) and good defense with a mere 29% critical rate. He does, however, have a fuckload of HP.
: Vella really doesn’t level up all that well. You basically want to ditch her for Claudio and Chondra ASAP.
: Actually, after fighting this guy, you might just want to turn elemental affinities off entirely, as both Vella and Michael are weak to his attacks now.
: By the way, the game softlocked again after that fight.
SOFTLOCK COUNTER: 8
: On my second run through Wind Town, I figured out that it’s actually better to turn affinities off. You’re basically trading less maximum damage for better damage on average.
: I also discovered that during certain fights (like this one with the Wannabe Cop) they forgot to get rid of the old full-party defend QTEs where each person has to defend individually.
: I gave LP Toss a try in this fight, and discovered that it has been nerfed to the ground. It does less than half of one of Alex’s basic attacks in damage. This means that the optimal way to level up Alex (unless you are using the new system for some reason) is Luck until 100, Strength, HP, and Defense in that order. At 100 luck, none of Alex’s skills will out-damage his basic attack.
: So anyway, we meet Rory, go to the sewer, and do the whole sewer dungeon. It’s all the same, including the time-wasting bullshit rooms like this one.
: Now, if you read the patch notes, you might ask “How did they improve Rory?” to which the answer is uh… they kinda didn’t.
: The idea is that Rory now guards everyone as opposed to just one person, but in the entire time I used him I never once saw him guard anyone. I think it’s straight-up broken now.
: After doing everything but the Golden Alpaca, we get enough EXP to reach Level 70. At that level, you get the final mind dungeon cutscene, which I don’t believe you can reach on your first playthrough - I’m pretty sure I got all the possible EXP on the first run and was only level 64 or so.
: I hope you’re ready for one last Allanson Monologue. At least, I hope this is the last Allanson Monologue I ever have to read.
: This character has a different voice, and I don’t know if it’s Chris Niosi just doing a different voice or one of the Allansons. I streamed it and the video will be up just after this update.
: “I’ve come to realize something… something pretty screwed up. You and I…? We’re the same. Like, literally the same. Like, a concept. Like, a stuffed panda.”
: No, you see, I’m different in that I didn’t fuck up my first game after getting Kickstarter money, fuck up a second game after getting a publisher deal that I didn’t deserve, never learn a goddamn thing, and then fuck up a patch to my second game that makes it… you’ll see.
Typo Counter: 1
: “A stuffed panda can be a friend, it can be a playful monster, it can be a protector… whatever it needs to be, that’s what it is.”
: “The concept of a stuffed panda is greater than any actual panda. Same thing with a crow. A crow is ugly. It’s not welcome. No one would EVER want one in their home, unless they were weird.”
: Hi, question from the audience? Can the concept of the stuffed panda make Brian Allanson learn anything?
: “So, somehow… we’re both the stuffed panda, and the crow. We’re not perfect. In fact… we kinda suck. We’re absolutely mediocre young men.”
: “But, have you stopped to look at who tells us how much we suck? A teenage goth girl who slept with someone twice her age. A bratty photographer responsible for one of the skeeziest websites on the net. A robot, who would lead infinite amounts of boys to a life of solitude on a distant star, just because one might hurt someone one day.”
: Wow, that’s… yiikes.
: “No one ever said we’d hurt anyone. That wasn’t written in stone. Just like how dad said you’d never be able to learn to ride a bike. You fell off! SO MANY TIMES! You were sooooo bad at it! That’s the same thing.”
: “People say you’ll destroy the world enough times, and damn… you’ll grow to believe it!”
: That’s Andrew Allanson for you, taking what’s basically Ryuji’s awakening cutscene in Persona 5 and turning it into a monologue that is at least three times longer. This monologue is well over 50 FUCKING TEXT BOXES.
Typo Counter: 2 (It’s bad RAP, you incompetent fuck! Bad RAP!)
: “That’s just because we had a lot growing up. Good mom, lots of money… we lived in a nice town. Things were easy for us. But, you know what? That’s just on a basic needs level.”
: “Life sucked. Dad left us… mom was NEVER HOME… television raised us. No one was there to check out homework… Dad never called… never…”
: Can’t have a fucking 50-textbox monologue without a pointless Earthbound reference that 98% of people aren’t going to bother to see.
: “That would’ve been nice… but yeah, we had everything else. No one ever judged us for the way we looked. No one was scared of us walking down the street. Maybe our life was on easy mode…”
: “I don’t know. I’ve never lived another life. But… I guess, we’re weak. Easy mode was too hard for us. I don’t even know what I’m talking about any more, man.”
: “So, look. Here is the deal. The world is over, it’s done… but there is another world… far away… I’m going to suggest something radical. SUPER RADICAL. Go, right now… and kill proto you!”
: “You’re strong. Stronger than you’ll ever be. Go and fight him alone… and from there… maybe then you’ll find happiness. Just avoid that robot. She’s not a bad girl, she’s just not good for you.”
: “We bring out the worst in each other… don’t we? Yeah, so… if you want to be happy, you’ll need to kill proto you, yourself. Then you’ll be good to go! Just you, Panda, and Krow. The holy trinity of suburban mediocrity.”
: “Good luck, man. Oh, did you figure out the question? Yeah, I thought you did.”
: Even though he says this, I don’t think there’s any actual way to fight the final boss alone. Besides, we saw what happens if you kill the final boss - the game softlocks.
: Oh, we’re here. I hope everyone’s ready for the AMAZING new Golden Alpaca cutscene.
: All of the dialog here is the same as before, because naturally the Allansons couldn’t just throw away all those voice clips they had. I’ll let you know when it starts changing.
: Vella looks like she’s either high on something, just shit herself, or both.
: This crotch shot on Rory is clearly very important for the storyline.
: I had my mic off when I was recording this, but I burst out fucking laughing at this. This entire cutscene looks like a kid’s first attempt at using Source Filmmaker.
: So this is it, right? They got rid of the Golden Alpaca as a fight, and instead we’re fighting a Rory-themed Soul Survivor? I mean, at least that’s more appropriate.
: This absolutely looks like Vella shit herself, and Rory is just starting to smell it.
: I swear it’s like it’s not possible for that Vella model to not look like it’s in the middle of taking a shit.
: Boy am I glad I killed his useless ass off in the main LP.
: Vella has been exposed to the YIIK script and now the last brain cells are leaving her cranium.
: Meanwhile, Alex is basically T-posing and… god I don’t even know what the fuck you’d call that facial expression. It looks like someone just told him Haruki Murakami sucks.
: Michael has committed soul suicide in the back and has left for another plane of existence. Seriously this just looks fucking goofy and I’m pretty sure that wasn’t what they intended.
: This is some fucking cutscene direction right here.
: God these fucking faces.
: And here’s a carbon copy of an earlier shot, because this is how cutscene direction works.
: Rory nutted so hard he went to space.
: Gotta love that Ghost Rory basically has the America Online logo on his chest.
: Also gotta love that Alex has turned around now because someone else is monologging and he’s just not interested anymore.
: I hope you are ready for some quality* content, because we’re getting close.
*quality not guaranteed
: Meet the new Golden Alpaca. I’m not sure if this is better or worse than the old one, but I think I’m gonna go with worse. The Golden Alpaca is voiced by DC Douglas.
: By the way, the Allansons claim that they had some kind of side story involving the Golden Alpaca, but I have not seen it. I’ll post what that is after we’re done here.
: What’s funny is that they promised a “dramatically reworked” sewer dungeon, but this is the only change.
: And now I guess we’re in End of Evangelion?
: Remake of YIIKvangelion: Cutscene Direction (Is) My Passion
: The Alpaca has nutted.
: Finally, someone else who feels the same way I do about this game.
: You might ask “Is he repeating himself?” and the answer is yes, yes he is. They only got DC Douglas to record around 20 voice lines, if that.
: The game goes through this entire crotch shot of Michael and I have no fucking idea why. Cutscene direction!
: This is starting to feel like a much, much dumber version of Killer 7.
: Mechanically, the Golden Alpaca fight is almost the same. He still summons Soul Survivors, and then eats them.
: As he absorbs the Soul Survivors, the “WARNING” bar increases. You can basically loop him just by having Vella use Banish on every turn, which will cause him to keep summoning new ones. I didn’t test to see if you can cast Banish on the Alpaca itself to lower the warning bar.
: When the Warning bar hits full, the Alpaca uses an attack that immediately brings everyone down to 1 HP. I had to have the entire party spend five or six turns doing nothing to get this to happen.
: So yeah, as far as I can tell, that’s about it. The scene goes on as it did before, with the whole “VELLA, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?” and all. Let me just post what the Allansons put in the patch notes about this. It’s in spoilers in the patch notes and is annoying to take a screenshot of, so I’ll just post them in text form.
“For this Deviation Perspective, we chose to focus on the Golden Alpaca. The scene is now told from the tonal perspective of a fictional IP in the YIIK Universe, from which the Golden Alpaca originates.”
38XX PPC Electric City Golgotha: Crucifusion
A Film Synopsis"The 30 pieces of bloodless silver have been stolen. With these tempest metals, any evil deed, no matter how transcendental, can be brokered.
Arcangelo Alpaca, Interdimensional Demi-god, Savior of Shattered Space, must travel through dangerous dimensions and diabolical hellscapes of terror and awe to stop the thieves before it’s too late.
In the far reaches of reality lies his destination: Electric City Golgatha (sic). A seedy underbelly of Angel Stocks, and Digital Soul Vessels. At the center of this debauchery is the COUNCIL OF DIMENSION BIZARRE ESQUIRE.
The motive and identify of the silver thieves are known only to this Shadow Firm. By Holy Judgement’s Blade, he will track down the King and Queen seeking to make the dastardly purchase, no matter the risk.
Armed with the All-Seeing Eyes of God and Gleaming Fur, the Golden Warrior will travel to the ends of time and space to prevent a corporate merger from hell."
: I have absolutely no idea how you’re supposed to get any of that out of what we just saw, but okay.
: Anyway, that’s been YIIK 1.25. If they ever release 1.50, rest assured that I will drop everything to dunk on it. I was honestly kind of hoping there’d be more content rather than one extra monologue. Maybe I won’t need a separate hub post for 1.50 after all.
: The Allansons never learn anything.
I wanted to note if Rory is working properly when you use his pacifism and actively choose to defend instead of dodge her does reflect damage back to the enemy.
Not much but it let him be a healer/tank for real now.
The Alpaca is still dumb
But if you buy the new OST on band camp it comes with a short story about the Alpaca that is supposed to be the like in universe IP that the dude comes from.
Well, I guess It wasn’t as much a tone destroyer in the original.
I do wish more interdimensional beings would kill Alex that aren’t just Alex, also Gotta love how they ripped off kingdom hearts in the new cutscene.
This, despite how weird it is, is actually a big improvement over the original. “LEMONADE” really just doesn’t do anything. The original was a big nothing, and is never explained at all. Granted, this isn’t particularly explained either but at least there’s something to it.
I think there’s some (probably unintentional) sleight of hand with the new Golden Apaca Scene™. Some…experiential? sleight of hand.
Imagine you never saw YIIK 1.0. What happens in this scene is that there’s an emotional moment (insofar as YIIK is capable of that), followed by a yellow alpaca with angel wings with Evangelion eyes on them bursting in and being all “Thou hast transgressed realities avast ye soul traveler” and then you kill it. Personally, that doesn’t seem functionally different from a yellow alpaca without angel wings bursting in and not saying anything, and then you kill it.
The trick being pulled here (again, probably out of incompetence, not malice) is that because the alpaca says words, it appears to be communicating information. But I already knew the Golden Alpaca was some kind of super-dangerous dimensional traveler, because I could conclude that from context.
That said, as I typed all that I thought about it some more and I guess the foreshadowing aspects of the scene are decent. At least, I think they are? I can’t really remember and/or I never really knew the game’s plot.
I just remembered that Alex was supposed to have a sister, Or at least he talked about one early on, when the patch notes said they were adding a new character I assumed it was the sister. Nope.
The effect of the Golden Alpaca in the story basically comes down to this, for me: We’ve all read at least one complete LP of this game and/or played through the game. Some of us have been through the experience multiple times, from different perspectives. After all of that… can anyone actually explain any of it? Does the game ever actually make clear what a Golden Alpaca is? Does it ever explain why Vella is familiar with them or why she feels that they should run, when they end up not running and defeat it anyway? Does its existence impact the overall story in any tangible way? As far as I know, the answer to all of those questions is no.
Consider, if you will, an alternate version of the original scene, where Vella doesn’t appear to know what’s going on any more than anyone else. Instead of announcing that a Golden Alpaca is coming and they need to run, perhaps she can only identify that “something weird” is coming, and her experience leads her to believe that anything she doesn’t recognize is likely to be a threat. At the end of the fight, she doesn’t offer to explain, but instead, offers that she can’t explain. “It was a Golden Alpaca” is not the lead-in to an explanation, but the statement of the obvious that is her best response to any question about something she doesn’t know. I don’t think she needs to explain that weird things exist in the Soul Space at that point, because we’ve just been shown that. Surprisingly, I think the implication that an explanation exists, but that we haven’t been provided it, drags down what could otherwise have been an interesting, intentionally confusing scene that really needs no explanation. Sure, it still adds exactly nothing to the plot, but we’re told-not-shown that the world has been breaking down even though there’s no noticeable degradation over time until the final chapter. This would at least be one clear indication of that, which even the characters react to, to reinforce the idea that something is wrong here.
Granted, in a good story, they would eventually have learned what the deal was, and there would have been, say, roving Golden Alpacas or perhaps an organization of them in the Soul Space near the end of the game, playing some role in the story. But I’d like to aim for something realistic under the circumstances. I assume that the Deviation Perspective must come up later in the game, likely buried in a place nobody will think to look for it, or it may be released as another Youtube video that purports to be in the game but really isn’t. I don’t know what to believe anymore.
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It definitely feels like cursed knowledge reading this thread after reading Two Brothers and getting all the references. They really thought that was going to be clever or meaningful, huh.
From what I’ve been told by someone who beta-tested the patch, the Alpaca shows up as a cameo in a couple of scenes later in the game, but I don’t think I’m going to bother playing through the entire game again just for that, not when I know there’s a second patch coming that’s going to make more changes. I also don’t think those cameos are going to radically change my perception of the plot.
Of course, they also claimed there was new content in the sewer dungeon and I don’t think there is. I went through the entire thing, compared it to the original LP, and there’s zero differences. You still get warped out at the end, so unless you have to go through the entire thing to get to some room past the Golden Alpaca’s room (which I doubt there is) I don’t think there’s anything new there.
If anything, I think the whole “Patch 1.25” versus “Patch 1.50” thing is another lesson in the Allansons never learning anything, because they could’ve just waited a few months and put it all out as one patch rather than releasing it piecemeal and expecting people are going to play through the entire game twice (or three times if they played the 1.0 release) without there really being any new content at all.
Ultimately, doing a partial re-write of that scene would’ve been the best option. I totally agree there. They obviously couldn’t do that because it would require more voiceovers, which would require money, and which would also require them to bring back Chris Niosi (a problem in and of itself). This is why I said in the Two Brothers LP that Two Brothers would have been a much easier game to fix, simply because they weren’t backed in a corner the way they were with YIIK.
What I don’t get though is why they didn’t go for a much easier route. Remove the Golden Alpaca altogether, or put it in a side room somewhere as an optional boss if people really want to see it again. Admit that the entire scene with it was pointless, and go with Rory’s Soul Survivor as a boss instead.
They could’ve basically used the same dialog, just cutting out the parts with the Golden Alpaca, and then had the soul survivor be there because it’s one of the other Rory analogues that died or committed soul suicide in a different universe that Alex destroyed. It’s there to try and kill Alex, thinking that if it kills Alex it can save Rory (and by extension, Michael and Vella) from either dying by his own hand or by the meteor. I could even see a thing where the soul survivor is doing it even though it knows it can’t kill Alex because it’s suicidal enough not to give a shit anymore.
You’d still have the unexplained weirdness that way without it going overboard, and I think it would fit in with the story better (especially the parts where the soul survivors are pretty clearly trying to stop Alex from meeting Essentia).
There is one counter-theory to mine that a friend of mine (Hi, Warren!) came up with which is that the Golden Alpaca was the one thing people kind of knew about YIIK and the Allansons felt it was so iconic that they had to keep it in. In a way, that makes sense - if all you know about this game is that stupid scene I suppose there’d probably be just as many questions about why they didn’t try to fix it instead of getting rid of it.
Yeah, it’s why I recommend people read the Two Brothers LP first. I might actually put a thing in the original hub post about that.
I don’t know about that… pretty much all of his lines in that scene were just “VELLA WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON” which really doesn’t need to change no matter how you rework the scene. Heck, at that point, you could even fill in an actual full explanation of everything that’s thoroughly satisfying to the audience, and still have Alex say “VELLA WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON” and it would be completely in character.
It should be noted that they used new VO or a sound alike for some of Alex’s lines they probably didn’t want to rerecord everything but it most apparent in the first bus ride.
Too much money spent on Alpaca Voice.
I got bad news for this Let’s Play. Apparently patch 1.5 is coming out eventually and is going to have the ‘final third of the game’.
The fact that reality hasn’t otherwise broken down in a way that you could tell makes it inexplicable instead of a tell that reality is breaking down. At least with it getting real weird and stuff it makes it seem like there’s SOME idea for it instead of being a glorified version of one of the stop sign enemies.
: I wasn’t going to even bother LPing this piece of shit, but now I am. Let me explain what happened.
: The Allansons have been teasing this 1.5 patch for the past three years - in fact, they’ve been doing it since I put up that update with the 1.25 patch.
: They since put up a demo under the title “Nameless Psychosis”, which I was planning on dunking on before I realized that it’s literally a 20-minute video and a small playable segment they tacked on to what is almost exactly the same game. They also re-did the battle system from scratch, and to no one’s surprise, it’s even worse now.
: Anyway, I announced I was in fact planning on dunking on it, and someone (presumably one of them on an alt) immediately jumped on that.
: I find it hilarious that they have a PR person - they do have a PR person, at least theoretically, they’re listed on the dev twitter - only to try and dogpile a rando with 47 followers.
: What’s funny is that originally, I didn’t think I’d have enough to say or enough content to do an LP of, but now that I know that I live rent-free inside their heads, I’m doing this.
: They added a launcher, which, to be fair, isn’t a bad addition - except for the fact that the resolution thing shouldn’t be a slider and also makes no sense. You’d assume there’d be higher resolutions to the right and lower to the left, but…
: They’re actually just kinda arranged at random. Anyway, there’s a new title screen with new music on it - I don’t know if they paid someone to do that or if it was grift.
: Oh, right. The game doesn’t support 2560x1080. I think I did the first LP through OBS and that’s why I didn’t remember.
: The game now does this thing where… you know how Shadow Hearts 3 would go into a pseudo-widescreen for cutscenes? It does that, except it goes into a pseudo-4:3 aspect ratio.
: Let’s hit “New Game” and then get ready for 15 minutes of bullshit. The game isn’t compatible (as far as I am aware) with saves from 1.25.
: They managed to make someone more punchable than Alex. Amazing. His voice is annoying as shit, too.
: I don’t remember if this is one of those models that existed in the original release but that went unused or not.
: You know what, let’s not.
: Is the fact that the room is on fire meant to be a reference to KC Green’s “This Is Fine” comic? I’m guessing probably.
: Let’s not meet Alex. It’s better for everyone that way.
: Alex packs his uh, Haruki Murakami novel… and a copy of what is clearly the PS1 release of Final Fantasy 7, as well as a copy of what is very clearly Earthbound.
: Here’s the main difference between those games and YIIK: both of them were made by a devteam that actually gave a shit and wasn’t desperately trying to erase their image as serial plagiarists and Kickstarter grifters.
: Anyway, I sat here for a few minutes in silence thinking about what the fuck they’re trying to say here before realizing I was throwing my mental capital away.
: Generally, when you’re doing an opening like this, you’re using it to establish something about your characters. If you want to see this done competently, all you have to do is look at literally any of the Lupin III OPs: here’s the one from Part IV.
: I (and hopefully all of you) already know that Alex is a terminally online dipshit, but that’s not (at least, I think it’s not) what the Allansons think of him, yet that’s about the only thing you can think about a guy who packs two retro JRPGs and a Haruki Murakami novel into a suitcase before crawling out a window.
: Now, there are things you COULD say with something like that: imagine an RPG where the main character’s weapon is invoking childhood nostalgia, and the turning point for the character is realizing that the same nostalgia is holding them back from continuing to grow as a person.
: You could have a scene where said character has their briefcase full of SNES cartridges they spent thousands collecting that they’ve been using to mow through enemies become as useless as the plastic and silicon inside.
: As much as I hate this whole pseudo-2.35:1 format, it is technically period-appropriate for 1999.
: Allison is a character we’ll run into shortly who comes across as being severely intellectually disabled.
: This shot in particular feels like they ripped it from The Silver Case without understand what made The Silver Case good, or understanding the artistic decisions Suda51 made when making that game.
: The main difference is that Suda never just has a shot that’s two-thirds black space. Even in Lifecut, where he used a black background, it’s not totally black.
: The difference is that he’s using it for shots like this one, which were how the Film Window style was meant to be used.
: Oh look, it’s the… was it Proto-Essentia? I forget what her fucking name was, along with that guy again. I don’t know why the pan-out shot was necessary, considering you’d see the same thing without it.
: This is another shot that Suda figured out. Let me show you how he does it.
: This whole cutscene seriously feels like the Allansons were aping movies they saw without understanding the decisions that went into them.
: Do… do they not know how to animate Vella without it looking like she’s shitting herself? I don’t think they do.
: I mean, they’re correct - no one gives a shit about Rory because he was a one-note character who existed solely because they felt like having a character commit suicide made their game feel deep and meaningful.
: Uh, sorry, who the fuck is that? She looks like Pan from Dragon Ball grown up wrong.
: Gotta love that “I’m absolutely not being held at gunpoint” smile.
: By the way, this ENTIRE CUTSCENE has the… I think it’s the mind dungeon theme… playing and right around here is the point where it loops and god that song just fucking sucks.
: You know what this looks like? It looks like one of those point and click adventure games from like 1994 where the developers tried to use 3D but had to make shit in 144p because of disk space limitations.
: I hate how much Claudio’s design is a ripoff of Travis Touchdown.
: I will give them credit for not using Elisa Lam’s actual date of death - which was at some point in February of 2013 - but uh… they do realize that if this game takes place in 1999, Sammy would be four years old.
: Is that… an emergency katana? Do we know for sure the Allansons haven’t been reading my LPs?
: Of course they did a close-up of the shirt, and of course it looks like shit. Way to steal from Suda, fuckheads.
: This shot feels like it was ripped from Killer7, even though I don’t think it actually was.
: I also am now realizing that they ripped these from Borderlands, which is kind of funny because Borderlands was also a ripoff.
: God everything about this sucks. Have you noticed that we’re still in a fucking cutscene? We’re still in a fucking cutscene.
: Oh look, another shot ripped from Borderlands, which again was ripped from a short animated film called “Codehunters” from 2006.
: They’re plagiarising plagiarism and that’s funny to me.
: “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked” unless you’re Alex, apparently.
: So now we’re out of the cutscene zone. Right? …Right?
: No we’re not, because this is an Allanson Monologue in game form. That intro from Borderlands that they ripped so much shit from? That’s 6 minutes long.
: Seriously, I want to know how the Allansons have played at least two of the three Shadow Hearts games and still don’t know how to do character design.
: Seriously, these are games you loved enough to steal their entire fucking combat system, but you couldn’t be bothered to learn what made Shadow Hearts a game people like. I’ll give you a hint: it wasn’t the combat.
: Is that… is that Alex YIIKESman Jesus? I mean, the Allansons seem to have always been about the weird Christian overtones, which is weird because of the whole “Thou shalt not steal” bit.
: And finally, we reach gameplay.
: My first instinct was “Oh, this must be one of those scenes where she’s going to come over and talk to you” except nope, you actually have full control over Allison.
: So what do we do? I ran around for a couple of seconds trying to figure out that exact question.
: I tried the phone - it’s just a generic save point - and then tried going to the bars, but nothing happens. What you’re supposed to do is talk to that dumbass looking baby thing in the background.
: Yeah, fuck you too, asshole.
: You would think that would, I dunno, visibly do something, but it doesn’t. What you have to do is walk over to the bars that you couldn’t interact with in any way before.
: I’ve seen a lot of people say that things people say are bad game design aren’t actually bad game design, but this is bad game design.
: You’re probably also wondering what that thing is in the top-right corner. It’s the new combat system. I’m not even kidding.
: There’s four directions we can go, three if we don’t count the area we just came from. One of them leads to pointless bullshit.
: Pointless bullshit over. Let’s get moving.
: This is the path we want to go down.
: So what you’re saying is… fear not, jump in the fire? Got to burn a trail, let my soul aspire, to a higher place (presumably one where I’m not LPing YIIK), no time to waste, gotta close this case?
: I could be playing Persona 3 Reload, which notably does not include that version of Burn My Dread, but instead I’m here LPing YIIK again.
: We do that and then the icon in the top-right changes.
: For whatever reason, this lets us use a series of jump pads to get to the next area.
: I don’t recall if this game has background music or not in most places, probably because it’s incredibly generic, so let’s just put on some appropriate music for this section.
: …
: …
: God dammit. Allison really is just an isekai version of Rory’s dead sister and probably also an Alex, isn’t she. I hate that I already know this, and I also hate that it’s just an objectively dumber version of the Kamui/Ayame maspros from The Silver Case.
: Now that we’ve gone from being Booker Allison to Comstock Carrie, we can go the only way we haven’t gone yet.
: I hate absolutely everything about this.
: We get another “run towards the camera” segment, because this is Crash Bandicoot now.
: Oh look, it’s Suicide Boy! I sure hope he kills himself again.
: Now, I hope you’re ready for this game to shit itself.
: From the moment this cutscene happens until we reach the beginning of the actual game, every step Carrison? Callison? Aerie? takes makes this annoying fucking sound effect I probably should record a video of.
: I don’t know what they were aiming for here, but whatever it was, I don’t think they managed it.
: Now, you’d think “Clearly, I should go down this path indicated by the big animated hand”, but you’d be wrong. This is an Allanson game, we can’t have signposting that makes sense.
: If you go up there, you hit a wall, so what you’re meant to do is go off to the right, where the Icon of Pantsshitting awaits us. Yes, they got DC Douglas to record more voice lines.
: Edit: As it turns out, you have to hit the wall for the game to progress, but we’ll see it on the way back.
: Hey, wait a second, isn’t that house ripped from Pokemon?
: We now need to go down here, because of course we do.
: Lemonade Man told us not to do this, and that’s exactly how we know it’s what we want to do.
: “The party? Why the hell do you want to go there? How did you even get down here?”
: Okay so I can see what they’re trying to go for - they’re going for an FF7 Remake Aeris type, but are shitting their pants horribly trying to do so.
: Has… has an actual human ever moved like this? What the fuck is this shit?
: I can feel my soul dying with every one of these godawful dialog lines.
: “Cool. Yeah. I can work with that. Well, I’ll need something in exchange.”
: Now we can go all the way back to where the giant pointing hand was.
: And now, twenty minutes later, we’re finally at the end of this godawful intro.
: So, uh… remember the start of the original game? That’s exactly what this is. It’s identical to 1.25, except you’re not in a menu the entire time and they pared down some of the text.
: The intro is the same, except they added a couple of extra things.
: And now, we get to see the fourth worst thing they added, after more cutscenes, more writing, and a third thing we’ll see in a minute.
: Any time Alex goes on a monologue, he now goes to the eye-searing cutscene realm. Everything dialog-wise is exactly the same, except that weirdly, they got rid of “reduced monologues” mode.
: As far as I can tell, there are lines that definitely weren’t there in “reduced monologues” mode that are now back in.
: The biggest difference is that now, every time Alex monologues, there’s a few seconds of load time - just what this game needed.
: We can see how dumb this gets when we get to the letter on the table. The game loads into the cutscene realm for one line of monologue, and then has to load back.
: Yep, totally worth that couple seconds of load time. You know what other game did that? Sonic 2006, and we all know how beloved that game is.
: There’s a first aid kit next to the refrigerator that we can open for new healing items, because this game has status effects now. I am not kidding when I say the new combat system is worse than 1.25’s.
: We go outside and find the cat, which leads to a slightly different angle in the eye-searing cutscene realm where we can see Alex’s open briefcase. This is the worst Comedy Central stand up special I’ve ever seen.
: Now, I will give the Allansons credit for exactly one thing: even as bad as this still is, it’s still an improvement over the original:
: There’s a new screen while chasing the cat, but it’s here because we’re about to run into… the new combat system. It’s bad. Real bad.
: Also, prepare for a cutscene on the level of some of the worst cutscenes from the original game.
: This line of dialogue, which sounds like it’s right out of Silent Hill, made me think of something. Where have I seen almost this exact character, in almost this exact outfit, before?
: Oh, right, this lady’s just a Silent Hill 2 nurse.
: This is the new combat system. Instead of being turn-based, the game now works on kind of a psuedo-ATB system. You know, I bet that’s why he has the copy of FF7 and not a copy of Shadow Hearts.
: Basically, once your little icon reaches the red zone, that’s when you pick your action. You don’t actually use that action until you’re at the end of the yellow area.
: This means that in theory, you and an enemy could reach the red zone at the same time but then reach the end at different times.
: Now here’s why the game can become unwinnable here. You have three slots for “karta”, which do two things: they have an effect on equip, and also provide a “shield” when equipped.
: You can see that the enemy has three shields. As far as I can tell, most enemies will. This means you need to attack them three times before you can do actual damage.
: You might be asking “Timrod, wouldn’t that be even slower and even shittier than the really long Judgement Ring ripoff the original game had?” and the answer is YES, IT ABSOLUTELY FUCKING IS.
: They spent THREE FUCKING YEARS on this shit, and this is what they came up with! This shit right here!
: As you can see, Alex only has one shield because we only have one karta equipped - the items we picked up in the kitchen are karta, but I don’t know how you’d know to equip them.
: This is part of why this fight renders the game unwinnable by default. The second part is where they REALLY shit the bed by stealing another mechanic from Shadow Hearts.
: You see, when you run out of shields, you go into SANITY POINTS MODE, only Sanity Points are also your HP bar. You take damage every time you do anything… including using a healing item.
: This means that healing items are, as far as I can tell, absolutely fucking pointless because you can’t take damage if you have a shield up (for the most part), and if you don’t you’re on a death timer.
: Now, the thing is, you see that vampire thing that came out? That cutscene happens EVERY TIME ANYONE’S SHIELD BREAKS, INCLUDING THE ENEMY’S.
: We die because the fight is unwinnable.
: It gives you the option to go to the title screen even though that fight is not winnable by design. This is the kind of thing that would cause a console publisher to deny cert.
: Anyway, because I know how the Allansons work, I assume that the tutorial is probably fucked beyond recognition and title screen it. On my second run, I find out that cutscenes are skippable but nowhere does it tell you the button combo to do so.
: On a keyboard, it’s F2 by default.
: If we hit “retry” instead, we get sent to a second tutorial where we get three shields worth of karta.
: I don’t know what any of these stats do. The stats were changed up in 1.5.
: Anyway, attacking with karta seems pointless. Yeah, I can spend a turn (and a shield) slowing the enemy down, but why? Maybe it gets better later, but… I just don’t see the point.
: This is how you know she’s not real, because no real woman would ever touch Alex.
: Yeah so this goes on for another four or five completely un-necessary lines because this is Allanson Writing and I’m not gonna put the effort in to transcribe it.
: There’s another forest segment before we reach the factory, which is pretty much empty.
: There’s a new area when we enter the factory, which is just pointless busy work. It leads directly into the same exact shit we did in the original LP.
: I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, since the tried and true Allanson method of game design is “if it sucks, just add more!”
: By the way, the infamous “vibrating with motion” line they took out in “reduced monologues” mode? It’s baaaaack!
: Anyway, this is about as far as I got before I closed the game and said “Fuck it, I’ve seen enough”. I just don’t see the value in going any further in a demo.
: What’s pretty clear to me is that the full patch may not be worth LPing if it’s just random extra shit tacked on to what already existed.
Hello, thanks for including my Tweet, it gave me a good laugh and makes it feel appropriate for me to respond to it’s inclusion, as well as the assumptions you made with regards to it. I made this account just to reply to this since I’m not really into Text LP.
I’d like to clarify in earnest some details about my involvement with the developers since “living rent free in their heads” motivated you enough to cover the demo.
I am not a PR person for Ackk studios, nor am I one of the developers. Though I have a background in marketing, I don’t do that kind of work for them. I am exactly as I describe in my tweet, just a friend. I became acquainted with them because I was a fan of their work. Your Tweet appeared on my timeline as a consequence of me engaging with content related to the game (keywords, algorithms, etc,) as has been happening a lot lately with the positive reception of the demo. I personally remembered this thread, as another friend showed it to me maybe a year or so back? The demo reel gag where you voice Alex has always stuck out to me as pretty funny, and the threads overall vitriol is very memorable.
That aside, the developers have never seen your thread, and personally do not watch essays about the game. Critical videos and content related to the game were summarized to them. You’re welcome to think otherwise if it means their work might receive more free ad-space here.
And, no, I’m not lying in my Tweet. The game is, was, and remains profitable. Especially for an indie game. Evidently, most people bought it on Switch, but steam sales are no slouch either. The game has remained in the minds and mouths of people pretty widely across the internet for half a decade. You don’t get that kind of reputation and NOT make money. The demo/update you played is funded entirely out of the pocket from YIIK related sales, not publisher funded. Do you think that would have been the case if not for it’s reputation? Many critically acclaimed indie titles fail to break even 10k through a lack of reach, not getting word of mouth, etc. It’s rough out there.
And finally, while I’m aware anything considered bad enough becomes a designated whipping boy, and thus you can do no wrong by insulting anything and everything about it, the short time I spent writing this post was accompanied by a big yellow notification box for new users with a bullet point stating:
"Constructive criticism is welcome, but criticize ideas , not people."
I don’t have any issue with this thread on a personal level, since no amount of sour grapes can make them cease making games at this point, but the discussion of the game’s developers reeks of so much bitterness that it makes me curious what well such immense feelings could be sourced from. It’d make sense to me if it were performative, but y’know, the internet and social context clues are hard and all that.
Feel free to cover their games in the future in any way you please, I have no intent to make you stop, nor do I have that power obviously, hahaha. But I hope this cleared up some details about why I said exactly what I said on Twitter. It’s true that we live in an attention economy.