: 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.