I had to see this one with my own two eyes for some twisted and self hurting reason, and boy was everyone right about how baffling and grueling of a self absorbed mess this one is. To me, YIIK represents the apex of the indie scene's obssession with the egocentric tortured artist narrative that has been the go-to window dressing for many of the critical darlings of the last decade, mostly due to how badly it fails on the execution of said concept.

Andrew Allanson makes his case for Alex's incredible lack of charisma and likeability by implying that those were intented attributes deliberately written to present an unlikely protagonist that defies the expectations of videogame conventions and serves to tell a "meaningful and thought provoking" narrative, but I do have to question if Andrew understands that you can write unredeemable pieces of shit and still have them be compelling people to follow, not unlike the characters from the inumerous prestigious novels and movies he so eagerly name drops as influences. The voice behind Alex's obnoxious and verbose inner thoughts and social interactions permeates most of YIIK's world and people, bloating the whole experience with an onslaught of solipsistic musings that would make your teen self cringe and inner world exposition dumps that would make Kojima blush, and a group of characters lacking in so much chemistry and entertaining banter that fill the game's dead air with loud meaningless conversations that made me appreciate how much of an art what Persona does is.

Tying it all up, you have one of the most unpleasant combat systems I have ever had the displeasure of experiencing in an rpg. A third of the way through I had to turn on Story Mode and Assist Mode while fast forwarding as much as I could, and I shudder to think of the people who subjected themselves to the rest of the game without resorting to any of those settings. There are design choices made here where I struggle to believe that someone made them without deliberately trying to make this combat system a living hell to wrestle with for 20 hours. Andrew infamously stated that if people aren't able to appreciate his game, then "games aren't art, but toys for children", an idea that I find very insincere when he himself has brushed aside the strengths of the medium as mere tools in service of his literary interests and fails to recognize the gameplay value of the many games he apes from and that already disprove his perception of the audience.

I have seen comparisons made between YIIK and The Room, and while YIIK's team has immensely more talent than whatever Tommy Wiseau has, I do see where that's coming from. You aren't so much in it to experience the art presented to you, as much as you are to see the psychosis of the artist behind it, and YIIK does have its poignant and head turning moments that reach Pathologic levels of antagonism towards the player that reveal some kind of accidental genius behind its aggresively mediocre facade. Not only does the world of YIIK unironically revolve around Alex by the end of the game, he implicates you in his self importance and passes onto you his responsibilities and obligations to be a better person, and I find the audacity and nerve to do that...kinda brilliant??, more so deserving of the pretentious "Postmodern RPG" moniker than the Earthbound/Mother 3 gimped 4th wall breaks or the doubt seered into me each time the loading screen tip "videogames are not a waste of time" popped up.

And dont get me wrong, thinking that YIIK is some misunderstood masterpiece of game design or secretely a arthouse cult classic in the making. Judging by Andrew's defensive posture when talking about the game's reception and the passive aggressiveness he slides into the game's updates, much of the artistic merit that can be inferred from YIIK is most likely just a pure casualty of someone trying to aspire to his influences and falling way short of the mark, and suggesting that most of it was intentional would be implying that someone could have the talent to consciously write and design as badly as YIIK was. But Andrew made art here, not the kind of art he wanted to make, but art nonetheless, and I do find more value in this relentlessly life draining game than most indie artsy fartsy games out there. I play YIIK and I see a sincere attempt at creating something unique and different, scrambling ideas from every piece of fiction the creator cherishes and throwing it at the wall to see what sticks, not having the self awareness to realize its own mediocrity or how misplaced and misguised many of those ideas might be, and I can definitely sympathize and relate to that.

PS: The Iwata "tribute" is the most unintentionally hilarious bit in the whole game. You have the power of videogames to make anything you want, and you put the man in a fucking tombstone.

don't care that the frame rate is awful; don't care that the combat is asinine; don't care that the game is unpolished, janky, ugly, and poorly considered in every respect; don't care that it was subject to predatory dlc; don't care that accord's requests are emblematic of some of the worst there is in side quest design; don't care don't care don't care

what i do care about is that this is the ultimate manifestation of YT's disinclination to work in games juxtaposed with his earnest belief in the medium as a vessel for greater things. in his grimmest failure, he finds light at the end of the tunnel. an astonishing exercise in empathy generation, one of the best finales in a game, and the only one of yoko taro's works that makes great use of backwards scripting + sequential playthroughs

just an fyi that if this is your first exposure to FFX and you want to hop on the bandwagon of being a smug little brat about the supposedly "awful" voice acting (it's not, it's remarkably accomplished and effective considering the insane tech constraints the team was working under--the depth of performance these actors were able to achieve still blows more current games and their aggressively codified anime archetype voices out of the water! good luck finding protagonists with as specific and non-cliche intonations as Tidus/Yuna. Watching Hedy Buress' thoughtful interview featurette about playing Yuna literally makes me cry) you should know that you probably are feeling a weird friction between the voice/characters moreso because the hd remaster completely butchered so much of the animation and visual storytelling present in the faces of the original character models, which the english voice actors were directly responding to and taking influence from in their performances! OG Yuna had so much intimate detail written into her ps2-era features--her gentle, tired eyes, full of fatigue but never resignation. This new baby eyed smoothface Dissidia treatment has turned both our protags into puffy blowfish with hyper-saturated irises and deer in the headlights stares, and the pioneering facial animation from the og has all but been completely erased! literally you are seeing a vastly inferior treatment than 20 years ago. Devastating 2 observe this homunculus pantomime, truly can not bear it

also deriding the laughing scene for being cringe is so tedious, it IS cringe but in a beautiful and very real, well contextualized way and the reason the game contains this "cringe" scene is also the reason its literally the only convincing romance in like any videogame ever made !!!! sad how you've all forgotten how to love, i will be praying 4 u

FFX is an all timer for me and my connection to the mastery present in like every specific element of its original iteration have made playing this remaster completely impossible lol

maybe you will experience much less revulsion to the facial animation than me and i truly hope you do because this is one of the most holistically well considered and thematically cogent Final Fantasies and jrpgs in general. Just play the OG upscaled i literally just did and it looked infinitely more appealing than this

It was about time I got around to revisiting this. Props to Microsoft and their Xbox backwards compatibility. Not sure when I would've gotten around to it again otherwise.

Just wanted to begin by praising the otherworld design in this game. It felt truly inspired in places and is probably my favorite in the series after the first two games.

Really enjoyed the open world lite version of Silent Hill this works with. Exploration had been sorely missing for a few games in the series by this point and the side quests were something completely new to top it off. Not all of them are great but when they hit, they really hit. (The general gameplay loop here feels like something of a spiritual precursor to The Evil Within 2 but I'll pop off about that another day...)

Sure the performance problems are a massive bummer (not a lot to be done with these since its confined to PS3/360) and the monster design leaves a lot to be desired but I can deal. Homecoming had stellar monster design but everything else was in shambles so I know how it could've been. The rest of what this has going for it just hits the right notes for me.

The only game in the series post-The Room worth a shit on any substantial level.

Hey Elon Musk, I know your fucking nerd fans love that you used JC Denton on twitter as a profile pic, but the one most likely to be a part of an evil organization of rich assholes running the world is you, you fucking fascist billionaire. Fuck Elon Musk.


Also good game, fun times with soy food and cybernetics.

EDIT: this review is funnier after the whole twitter thing. I’m glad that pompous dickhead is finally getting publicly humiliated so thoroughly.

looking back to the miserable state of the games industry in the seventh generation, i have to say that the feverish cries to find the citizen kane of gaming - basically paltry, philistine shorthand for the holy grail of the medium, a work that legitimizes the practice and is enshrined in the canon - were super funny, not only because of the obvious nod to that works strengths with relation to filmmaking (which cant be replicated in games wholesale), but also way more specifically because that movie is the direct result of several contextual, social, and political factors that basically 100% mean games will literally never, ever get their own citizen kane. the last of us, for a time, was that 'citizen kane', in the eyes of many. which is insane because this title introduces literally nothing new in the AAA environ through either storytelling, mechanics, or structure (even when it was released it was patchwork pastiche of everything that came before it) and on top of that it was heavily corporate funded focus-tested prestige slush which in effect fully betrays the idea of this game being a ‘citizen kane’ type. a citizen kane of the medium would have to do more than be soulless and perfunctory interactivity Big Video Games decide for you has artistic merit - i'd even go one step further to say that if anything, Big Video Games would probably frown on the citizen kane of video games, similarly to how orson welles legacy was attacked and dismantled by hollywoods vanguard again and again, and again and again and again. it amuses me this is happening yet again with god of war but what can i say i guess it's tough being a sore winner

WHAT IF

ETRIAN ODYSSEY

BUT BAD