I don’t really have any desire to talk about most of Vallhalla, it’s well known and well liked, and I don’t have much to say that hasn’t already been said. I really just want to talk about Dorothy.

Dorothy is, at least in my perception, the most controversial aspect of Vallhalla. She’s a playful, flirty, talkative sex worker who looks 13 years old, and the game explicitly says this. She is not vaguely “young”, the game tells you she looks like a child and that she gets clients who want to have sex with her because she looks like a child. She details the jobs she has had to do and talks about the kinds of fantasies her body allows people to fulfill. This very understandably makes people uncomfortable and can definitely shift how you feel about the rest of the games blatant and overt sexuality.

When I first played this game sometime around its launch in 2016, Dorothy didn’t sit right with me. Her inclusion in the game felt like a poor decision at best and a thinly veiled “fetish” at worst, and I really couldn’t settle on which of those two options I had created in my head it was. Dorothy does talk bad about her clients, she calls them gross and creepy and predatory and like, sure. If the game didn’t do this, she would just be another character people would post softcore porn of in r/animememes with captions that say shit like “I look 12 but am actually 100! Kyah!”. But like, what was being said here? What about her calling her clients predatory justified her describing their fantasies and wishes so often? If the game wanted to call lolicons freaks, then why do it this way?

At the time I didn’t really have an answer, I couldn’t justify her inclusion in the game. If she had been cut from the game entirely and replaced with a scene where someone else says that pedophiles suck it would have been preferable to me, would’ve meant I didn’t have to read about her roleplaying as people’s daughters during sex. I can’t say Dorothy was the only factor in me dropping the game as a teen, but it was part of it; I dropped it about 3/4ths of the way through.

The game stayed with me though, and I knew at some point I’d replay it and finally see it through to the end. Finally, now, as an adult in 2023 I picked it back up and finished it, and I completely see Dorothy in a new light now.

Since I had last experienced the game, two things changed that led to this shift in opinion: I transgendered and I became a sex worker. Every single day, regardless of what I do, say, post, or want, my sex work revolves around me being a girl with a penis. Every client I get, every job I do, every single piece of content I make is tied to how people feel about trans women both consciously and unconsciously. When I read Dorothys dialogue, all of this new life experience made it all click for me. I’ve dealt with weird requests, had to do jobs for clients that made me feel gross. Her dialogue about wanting to cyberpunk body upgrade to a more adult appearance but choosing not to went from feeling like a lame excuse to a lived reality. Any thoughts about bottom surgery I have, regardless of if I want it or not, are filtered through knowing that if I do choose to get the procedure, I’ll be destroying any audience I’ve managed to build for myself. Her talking about the weird jobs she’s done doesn’t read like the writer’s kinks leaking through, it reads like how I talk about the weird jobs I’ve done. I have had the thought that I overshare to friends, that I talk too much about gross shit and should just not talk about it, but when I try it fucking sucks. I need an outlet to talk about that stuff, and for me I have close friends, but Vallhalla is a game about bartending so for Dorothy it's a bartender.

Last thing I want to mention is how often Dorothys safety is talked about in game. It’s something that I basically completely overlooked when I first played as a teen, but it’s brought up a lot. She’s modified herself to have a gun built into her hands, broadcast signal jammers disguised as wearable cat ears, has had to upgrade her skin to better recover from bruises. It’s all a bit silly, all explained with sci-fi technobabble, but it made it clear to me the writers understood that a character in Dorothys position is not safe, is forced to put herself in vulnerable positions for her job.

I just wanted to write this all out because it’s something I’ve never seen discussed when people talk about Dorothy. I don’t expect it to sit right with everybody, but if you had a sense of unease preventing you from enjoying the game, I hope maybe I’ve convinced you to give it another shot. Time to mix drinks and change lives.

In terms of design, this feels like the next big thing every other game in the genre will try to recreate or to build from, not just in the deliberate absence of direct violence as the default way to interact with the world, but in the way that world is presented, and how your RPG abilities are handled. It's pretty ingenious and contributes tremendously to the overall experience. In terms of writing, it's hard to deny its merits, as it is a very ambitious game in both scope, variety, extravagance and complexity, and in a way, it achieves a lot by being profound in its conversations and chilling in its crucial moments, BUT, and here's my biggest gripe with the game; Disco Elysium feels like it desperately wants to be the coolest kid in school, with this pessimisstic vibe and this unbearable edginess that really messes with what is otherwise a masterpiece. Is like that scene in Good Will Hunting when Matt Damon faces another man in a bar and asks him which authors has he read. Very pathetic, really. And the sad part is that unlike that awful movie, Disco Elysium HAS very cool shit to tell and show, and that tenderness, that genius character writing (your main companion in particular may be the best videogame character ever), that attention to detail, and those big poignant moments get kind of ruined by the sheer degree of cynicism present throughout the game. From the "capital subsumes all its critiques into itself" bullshit, to the world ending nightmarish-political vibes of a devastated city that can't and won't improve its conditions because it tried once and didn't succeed so what's the point of doing it again and why even bother, to the atrocious western marxism-trotskyism ode of an ending, at some point, this is a misery parade, despite all of the ways it may seem it isn't. At its core, this game has a messiah complex, and an overwhelming negative view of everything, and that spoils everything else. Take that out, and this is the best game of all time.

I have a disgusting number of hours in this game and I could go on for about an equivalent amount of time talking about it. I will probably write about it for too long as a result, but if you have a little bit of time, then hopefully by the end of this you'll understand why this is one of my favorite games.

Valve is infamous by this point for being one of the most influential players in the PC gaming market, for better or for worse. The things they do tend to break new ground in one form or another, and the fact that you're statistically likely to be playing the bulk of your PC games through their own digital storefront is a testament to how that can definitely be a mixed bag. When it comes to the games they release, though, I'd say they tend to hit the mark more often than not. Counter-Strike, Left 4 Dead, Half-Life, Portal, Dota 2. No matter who you are, you are probably familiar with at least one of those names. And sitting on its own little cloud up in Olympus: Source, shrieking and flailing its arms around while its brethren quietly try to enjoy their dinner of ambrosia and gold, there is Team Fortress 2.

The game has a very interesting development history that led to the creation of a TF2 that is radically different than how it was initially envisioned. I won't get into it all here, but at the end of that long nine years was a production that ended up taking off in ways that I don't think anybody at Valve possibly could have predicted.

TF2's secret sauce actually has a very simple recipe behind it: It's a masterfully designed class-based FPS hiding beneath a veneer of cartoonish violence and absurdity. With an aesthetic inspired by Norman Rockwell prints and 60's spy films, it immediately stands out when lined up with its contemporaries, and it's accentuated by a zany sense of humor which permeates the whole experience up to and including its gameplay. Valve promoted the game heavily with fun animated "interviews" with the game's nine playable classes, lending each of the nameless mercenaries a fistful of hammy charm. It had a definite allure, and that allure is exactly what roped me in when I first played it back in 2009, and was single-handedly responsible for introducing me to PC gaming proper, making me realize what I had been missing out on living exclusively in Nintendo's world for most of my childhood.

At the heart of TF2's gameplay is the nine classes and their distinctive toolkits that, while sometimes contentious with regards to their efficacy, have well-defined strengths and weaknesses. Each of the classes are simple to understand but relatively difficult to master, and while the game might trick you into thinking that running and shooting and ending the sentence there is the whole of the core TF2 experience, you will quickly realize how much that would undersell what's on offer here. Team Fortress 2 relies heavily on an intersection of the uniqueness of its classes and the underlying mechanics of the Source engine to create an experience that is far more nuanced than it appears. Scouts can quickly accomplish objectives but are also deceptively deadly, capable of removing key players from the field and making a quick escape if they're skilled enough. Soldiers and Demomen can utilize explosive jumping to clear unreal amounts of distance in a short period of time, a technique that is absolutely essential at the highest levels of play. Engineers can blindside enemies with creative or unconventional building placement, Pyros can shut down pushes with clever use of their airblasts, Spies can cause panic amongst enemy teams by carefully choosing when to engage their targets - even the more "straightforward" classes like Sniper and Heavy, whose jobs are ostensibly to simply point and shoot, can use their kit in ways that will reward them and their team for thoughtful play. It takes hours of practice to master the mechanics and develop a strong game-sense. Toss in a variety of maps and objectives, alongside a long list of unique weapons with properties that often go far beyond "fires faster but deals less damage", and the situation on the battlefield is constantly changing. It's chaos, though it is ultimately controlled chaos, and no matter how hectic things get, it's still skill and quick thinking that win the game in the end (usually - but I'll touch on that). But no matter how intense the experience becomes, it's still a blast to play, and even the most inexperienced of players will find a lot to love on their way up the ladder.

So yes, the game itself is great - but that isn't the reason why many of us stay. Hardcore players will always keep a game alive and relevant far past its prime, as demonstrated by the tight-knit communities behind shooters like DOOM and Quake. However, what keeps TF2 in the public eye and keeps new and old players alike from ever truly forgetting it is its charm. There is so much about the Team Fortress experience that you simply don't get in most games these days. The endless quotability of the delightfully deranged mercs. The timeless appeal of a ragdoll cartwheeling sixty feet into the air from a well-placed rocket. The wild screams of an angry Scottish man barreling towards you at Mach 3 being the last thing you hear before he separates your head from your shoulders with a massive claymore. The sight of a large tutu-clad man clubbing your foes to death with a sign adorned with a picture of the anime community's Waifu of the Month. A Scout laughs at a corpse only to be shot down by another Scout, who then laughs, and initiates a conga line of small men laughing at corpses before subsequently being murdered. And that's before the actual conga line starts. Informal ceasefires are commonplace so everybody can take a break from the shooting and just goof off for a few minutes. Players keep a key bound to "kill" for no other reason than because spontaneously falling lifeless to the floor for the most contrived of reasons is never not funny. TF2 is chaotic and hilarious and it never tries to betray that quirkiness by taking itself too seriously. The appeal never fades away no matter how many years pass, and I think that even if TF2 was a mechanically perfect game, it wouldn't be as beloved as it is today if not for that.

But it obviously isn't all peaches and cream. Even for as tight as TF2's gameplay is, it has some definite failings with regards to enforcing team balance, which is as essential here as it is in any competitive multiplayer game. The learning curve and astronomically high skill ceiling can easily alienate newcomers, who will find themselves dramatically outclassed by experienced players who know how to weaponize all of the game's quirks. And naturally, this being an online game, there are plenty of sour grapes who will occasionally make the player-to-player experience a hostile one, though they are blessedly still in the minority. There are some truly baffling design decisions that have plagued the game since day one, with things such as random crits (which, contrary to the name, actually operate on a rich-get-richer principle where you're more likely to crit the more damage you've been dealing) and random bullet spread sometimes making winning an interaction infuriatingly RNG-based. Free-to-players will have some trouble experiencing every aspect of the game without actively engaging in trading, and the greater limitations placed upon them in the last few years due to the recent botting crisis means they will definitely feel pressured to spend some money. And on that note - and definitely TF2's greatest claim to infamy - this is perhaps the progenitor of the "loot box" craze, and while far less predatory than many of the games that took inspiration from it, it's still a system that entices you to spend real-world money for a slim chance at getting a virtual item that will make you look and feel cool. If there's any one sin that TF2 and, by extension, Valve will never be able to totally wash its hands of, it's that one.

Indeed, Valve's treatment of TF2 over its lifetime is probably its biggest failing as a whole, and yet is simultaneously the best demonstration of this game's strength on its own merits. Their initial decision to make the game free-to-play after a short time as a standard retail release was initially met with some criticism, but it ultimately worked in the game's favor by ensuring anybody with even a passing interest in the game could try it free of commitment. Needless to say, a whole lot of people were hooked. For a while, things were great, with big and exciting updates adding new weapons, maps and gamemodes that ensured there was always a reason to crack the game open. However, as time has gone by, Valve has shown less and less interest in supporting the game as anything other than a simple revenue generator, failing to provide meaningful new content for its playerbase while still being more than happy to pump out new cosmetics for them to empty their wallets onto. This, along with the aforementioned bot invasion that made the casual experience nigh-on unplayable for many, lead to fans practically having to beg Valve to show some meaningful support for their beloved game. There was a response, if not much of one, and we're all still waiting for something truly substantial to come as a result - but we are all still here. After sixteen years and many ups and downs, TF2, a game that is fundamentally the same one we were all playing back in 2007, is still going strong, enjoying a healthy player count and celebrated by the community through gargantuan heaps of artwork and animations that still manage to sneak their way into the Internet's cultural zeitgeist. Private servers, mods and a strong competitive scene ensure that the faithful have a place to enjoy themselves no matter how much the "true" TF2 experience stagnates. It's a game that simply won't die, and that's because it's a game that, when all is said and done, is just plain fun. It's goofy, it's addicting, and at its best, it's exhilarating. Team Fortress 2 is and will always be one of my favorite games of all time, and even if I have a harder time recommending it today than I did ten or even five years ago, that isn't the fault of the game itself, but rather of its creators who fail to appreciate what an absolute gem they've made. There never needs to be a Team Fortress 3. What we need is a Team Fortress 2.1 - a promise from Valve that, for as long as people love the game, they will keep giving them reasons to come back to it. But I do feel content knowing that even if Valve has no intention of keeping the game alive, its fans will.

Having played this game about 300 times I was excited to revisit it again to see what I could gleam from the experience. I played and completed most of the quests up to repairing the tanker in San Francisco.

Fallout is known for its writing and this one leaves me with some mixed feelings as an adult. At its best the writing is crude, but mostly I found it juvenile. Most youngsters will probably find the number of 90s pop culture references cringe inducing, but having once been a teen when this game came out I found it charming in a strictly nostalgic way. What has aged most poorly is all the offensive content in the game. There's a lot of casual racism and rape jokes - including instances where the female player character can be raped by other characters. I always give the inclusion of controversial material in any thing the benefit of the doubt, but playing this removed from the zenith of my rabid young adult fandom for Black Isle the only reason it's in there is for yucks. And outside of that being tasteless, it's also just poor writing.

While the writing itself I didn't find memorable, the broad strokes of the narrative are quite good. This is especially true in the first half of the game. I loved the section of the game that takes place in Vault City - New Reno - NCR. The way the quests interweave between these locations is still really good, and each of these cities have a nice variety of quests to get into, a cool political struggle to get ensconced in, and lots of fun, random trouble to find yourself in. This is the section of the game where you can instantly recognize where New Vegas came from. This area of the game is so great that it really casts a wide shadow over the other locations in the game that offer very little aside from a few simple quests to score some loot and experience from. Especially disappointing was San Francisco, which is mostly used for some dated Scientology humor and casual Asian American racism.

I still found the combat really good. It would be a dream for Fallout to return to tactical, turn based combat. The nuts and bolts of the game are still really excellent, and you'll have a lot of fun tweaking your characters or thinking up fun or challenging builds to run with. This game is infamous for its challenge, and the early game may feel especially frustrating, but the gradual power curve is still very satisfying. It's also really enjoyable when the game's RNG throws you a bone, like dropping you into the middle of a shootout between slavers and rangers and being able to walk out with a combat shotgun way sooner than you should. It feels good to break the game.

If you're a CRPG student Fallout 2 is required reading. If you're a new Fallout fan you may enjoy the more centered and consistent Fallout 1 better than this one.

YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is an experience unlike any other. It's hard to begin to put the game into words. I think a lot of critics are quick to dismiss YIIK because of it's pretentious title, ridiculously unlikable protagonist and the ongoing controversy surrounding the game over time - some of which is justified, some of which is blown out of proportion. These things are true, unfortunately. The subtitle of YIIK is ridiculously pretentious, and regardless of intent the protagonist, Alex, is deeply, deeply unlikable. But what more is there to YIIK? I think what is here conveys more than a failed pretentious JRPG-wannabe meme game. This game IS saying things, and I think considering just how much of a process this game was for the developers - who saw their own mother die during production of the game - it would be disrespectful for me to disregard their intentions and attempts at making meaning through the gameplay and the story. So, forgive me if this is a long review beforehand.

YIIK focuses on a year in the life of Alex Eggleston, the most average young adult white dude to have probably ever been conceived. We all know someone like Alex YIIK (which is what I will be calling him in this review.) Vapid, yet confrontational. Smug, yet substanceless. Every human flaw you can imagine, Alex YIIK has it in droves, and he doesn't really have much in the way of positive attributes to like him. Why do people... LIKE Alex YIIK? What are his positive traits? He's never succeeded at anything worthwhile, he's not kind or big-hearted, he's not particularly smart or attractive. As a result, Alex YIIK, our protagonist, is the walking flaw. He's an amalgamation of everything that could possibly be wrong with a human being. The creators know it, and they make it very clear after a while. He's a pretentious little brat, who thinks the world revolves around him.

You might think it's a bit weird that I've gone on to talk about this first before talking about the gameplay, or the overall plot - but it's important to understand that if Alex YIIK does not work, this game does not work. If this game cannot make Alex YIIK into a deep and substantial character with a strong role in the story then it's game over. The whole game revolves around him. A lengthy amount of what I'm saying is going to be about him.
So, how does Alex YIIK play out? How does he fit into the story? ... Good question.

The idea of the story presented by YIIK is that Alex YIIK is explicitly a bad person. All of these negative traits are not a byproduct of poor writing, they are intentional. So, the story necessitates that he grow and become a kind person who cares for his friends and appreciates the world around them. It's a simple moral. Alex YIIK starts off the story by being a bad friend, bullying Rory, and berating his mother for not doing good enough. At the end of the story, YIIK is clear - Alex YIIK is a terrible guy, and he has hurt all of his friends and family. He knows it, and he makes a vow to change. So, we have an arc. How does the story actually engage with this, and importantly, can a story like this work in the first place?

You'll quickly notice that every question you can ask of YIIK leads to another one. This is because YIIK is very poorly written. It's an undeniable feature of the game that no amount of reduced monologue options (yes, that is a real feature) can fix. YIIK is convoluted, often needlessly, requiring you to interrogate every aspect of the text with a fervor to understand basic things about it. Despite what detractors would have you believe, this has nothing to do with postmodernism. It has everything to do with incompetence. Characters recite wikipedia articles to Alex YIIK about the mechanisms of metaphysics, Alex YIIK goes on borderline nonsensical tirades to the audience about whatever the hell he feels like and the two endings presented are incredibly abstract in an uninteresting and somewhat lazy way. So, decoding Alex YIIK and the story itself is needlessly hard, because YIIK tells its story very poorly. Again, the memes are right, and funny. "Vibrating With Motion" is more than just a meme, it's an indicator as to how the game's writing fails.

However, despite this, I think Alex YIIK does KIND OF work as a protagonist. His unlikability is undeniable, but the story does have a few very compelling ideas working with him.
A) Alex YIIK's unlikability is very, very well established. The story constructs his role well, and a lot of his internal monologues provide this increasingly frustrating sense that Alex YIIK knows what he is doing is wrong, but that his arrogance won't let him stop. It is genuinely harsh and sometimes almost personal to see him be a fuck-up. They wrote the most unlikable man in the world, to great effect.
B) The idea that Alex YIIK REALLY IS THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE is deeply, deeply fascinating. The world does revolve around Alex YIIK, and it's something that Alex YIIK explicitly rejects. But really, all he is rejecting is the responsibility and the acknowledgement that comes with. He was fine with acting like he was the only one who mattered until responsibility came with it. So, when he faces the facts? When he realises that his presence in the universe is what will tear everything apart, and then he sees it happen? That's incredibly emotionally damaging for Alex YIIK, and does GENUINELY humble him. I like that. It's a good subversion.
C) The game essentially ends on the twist that you, the player, are the Alex YIIK of your own dimension. That sounds... ridiculous. That's because it is. It does really add to him, though. Alex YIIK goes from an unlikable bastard, to an uncomfortable mirror. Somewhere, in another universe, you could have been Alex YIIK. Exactly like him. Earlier, I mentioned that we all know someone like Alex YIIK. That someone is us. Alex YIIK has flaws so numerous, inevitably, we will see that flaw in ourselves. This is really cool. I think it explains why Alex YIIK is so viscerally hateable. It's like looking into one of those mirrors that makes you look fatter than you really are. Everybody laughs at a hall of mirrors, but if you're afraid of being fat, seeing that in the mirror can be quite impactful and scary. Alex YIIK is that for every flaw a person can have. That's scary, and quite powerful. I like that a lot.
D) The ending of the game does hold Alex YIIK accountable for being such an asshole. I have my issues with the ending but Alex YIIK doesn't get off scot-free. Just the opposite, he gets punished extensively.

That's what I like about Alex YIIK. I think he's a very interesting character when viewed through these specific ideas. However, uh, while I think these ideas really work, there is a story going on around him that he does not work in.

Alex YIIK has friends who seem to forgive him for everything and treat him like some kind of saint. Why would he even have friends who care about him? He's done nothing to earn their respect and friendship. He has no redeeming qualities at all. Yet, even when he shows basically no reform and offers weak-willed half hearted apologies, everybody falls to their feet to pray for him. This is really stupid. The rest of the cast will consistently break character just to puff Alex up. It just runs in contrast to the game's themes. Alex YIIK has to care for his friends, be a nice guy and do for them what they do for him - he can't be totally unlikable all the time and have people fall at his feet. This happens for the whole story, to the point where it gets all of his friends killed. This is what really instigates his change, but this is only for the final few hours of the game. They sell it, but it's already too late. Alex YIIK does go through development before that point, becoming marginally nicer - but it's not enough of a constant change to lead to this kind of Persona 4 style friendship group that support each other all the time. Especially not when Alex YIIK can make one of the characters kill themselves. Which, disregarding the obvious tastelessness on display, is absolutely terrible - and is tolerated by the main cast. It just doesn't work out. Alex YIIK develops in a way that feels totally disconnected from the rest of the cast, and it seriously kills the theme of the game.

In summary on Alex YIIK himself before I talk briefly about the rest of the cast, Alex YIIK simultaneously works, and yet, he doesn't. He's a great character concept carrying poignant ideas throughout the story, even if he's written poorly - but he is in total disconnect with the world around him. This kills him as a character, and makes him feel more like he is being celebrated for being a bad person, rather than growing - which he needs to do for the story to function.

The rest of the cast are rather hit or miss. I was a really big fan of Rory and Claudio. Rory is a sweet but really depressed guy who's struggling with his mental health after the death of his sister. He doesn't know how to cope, and this has led him to the point of delusion - when he meets the cast, he almost seriously hurts them because of this delusion. This plunges him into depression when Alex YIIK screams at him, telling him nobody cares about his dead sister. A lot of the game is helping him cope, and becoming a better and more confident person who can help others. He's sweet, and I like him. Claudio, on the other hand, is a mature black man who runs a record shop and is super into weird anime. He's really chill and respectful, and he doesn't like to lose his mind over anything. He's got a business of his own, a comfortable adult life, and he's happy that way. I like that. He's a good contrast to Alex YIIK - when he isn’t breaking his character to lick his boots. The rest of the cast suck and are boring. Most of them are just exposition dumps. Michael especially is probably the most boring fictional character ever, despite being a clear expy of Yosuke from Persona 4. I found most of them grating, with Rory and Claudio being the only major exceptions.

I still haven't talked about the gameplay yet, and it's for good reason. It REALLY sucks. Everything is based on little QTE minigames, and all of them are very unfun and repetitive. These minigames are clearly inspired by Mario and Luigi, but they lack the diversity to keep them interesting. Instead, you are doing the same QTE on loop with little to no strategy. It's just painfully boring, and that is all there is to it. Add on the uninteresting dungeons that do little of note with their puzzles as well as mind-numbing grinding requirements throughout the game, and actually playing this game is terrible. The gameplay just isn't up to par.

The music, on the other hand, is somewhat solid. It's all hit or miss with this game, but I think this soundtrack does land some good ones. Alex's theme is actually pretty good, and it makes for a good leitmotif that reappears throughout the game in various new contexts. A lot of the battle music is really awesome, and diverse, due to the huge amount of composers who worked on the game. Some of the tracks are still really bad, though. The soundtrack lacks consistency and cohesion outside of Alex's motif, which is definitely a result of numerous composers who were working on different pages. The visuals are particularly striking and memorable, too. I really liked them, they really do encapsulate post-modern visual design, conveying many emotions and scenarios through minimalism and surrealism. It's a cool visual fulfillment of post-modernism inspired by post-modern paintings and artists.

So what's left to say about YIIK? Honestly? A lot. Maybe one day I will make a full-on video essay on this behemoth. It's a complex beast, and I'm glad I sat down and really gave it a chance. However, it also really, really sucks. It sucks to see a game that I personally find myself morally agreeing with in many ways just... suck so much shit. But still, I think there is something to be learnt from this. I think just like how Alex YIIK represents our worst insecurity - YIIK itself is no different. Anybody could have made a game like YIIK - ambitious, with a lot to say, that falls short for one reason or another. I feel for the developers, because I think they had a lot of ideas and everything just kind of came crashing down on them. Their heart was in this, and so was their passion. It just hasn't born out. It can happen to anybody, it really can. I don't fault them for this game. I don’t fault Alex YIIK entirely, either. Because in both cases, it really can happen to anybody. We’ve all got a bit of Alex YIIK in us - and we all have the potential in us to make something like YIIK, for better or for worse. This isn't just a "quirky Earthbound-inspired RPG,” like many people insist that it is. This is a uniquely bad game - something that could only come from passion, and love.

So, YIIK: A Postmodern RPG is bad. Really bad, actually. But it is genuine. ACKK Studios was making what they wanted to make. This is an earnest trainwreck, rather than a cynical attempt at a generic, indie RPG. Maybe that brings you comfort. Maybe that makes the game even funnier. Personally, I think that makes this whole thing hurt just a bit more.

This game is fucking old, dude, and it plays like shit. I know that saying something like "nyehhh this nearly 25-year-old CRPG feels antiquated" isn't exactly a Hot Take (TM), but-- dude, no. Plenty of games from around this era were playable not in spite of their core gameplay loop, but because of their core gameplay loop. Fallout 1 isn't bad just because it's a geriatric hunk of junk, it's bad because it never stops feeling janky, unintuitive, and overly complicated.

Combat is complete drivel - hit probabilities always feel rigged against you, and the game is borderline unplayable unless you dump all of your points into Agility due to how SPECIAL and AP works in this game. It feels like enemies can just decide to fuck you sideways on a whim. The UI is not only aesthetically rancid and unintuitive, but it also constantly gets in the way of you comprehending how the game works for the first few hours, and even when you get used to it, it still feels terrible because everything's too small. Map design in this game sucks - the isometric viewpoint and the same-y look of every NPC from a distance makes it hard to telegraph who you're talking to and where you're supposed to go. A lot of your Fallout experience will be wandering around trying to figure out where exactly you're supposed to go or wondering where that fucking Initiate is. You're also on an in-game timer which-- what?? Why??? The game's 'short' enough that it doesn't really matter, but it's still a garbage idea for something that's supposed to be as open-ended and go-at-your-own-pace as Fallout. Couple all that in with the garbage presentation and the need for a manual / YouTube videos / Reddit to help guide you through basic shit, and you'd think this game is destined to be a rock-solid 1/5...

...And yet, somehow, the game's writing, lore, and worldbuilding reel it back in and keep you going. It's atmospheric, has a great sense of vision and purpose, and the way the plot & world around you gradually unravels from "find the water chip" to "save the Wasteland from turning into Mutant goop" is pretty flawless. It happens so subtly and so seamlessly you don't even recognize the stakes are ramping up in the background - it just feels... naturalistic. The characters are well-written, the different factions present in the game all have something different to say for themselves, and the ending is spectacular, a wonderful blend of nail-biting difficulty and genuinely tangible despair. You only meet The Master once, but he's such a cool motherfucker and he defines the game and its' overall themes and tone so brilliantly that it feels like you've always been fighting him (basically, Senator Armstrong before Armstrong was even a thing).

The setting is equal parts haunting and charming, both a world that's barely clinging to life as a result of human folly and a world that keeps going because of this human folly. To say that it's a wonderful critique and deconstruction of nationalism, patriotism, and war as a whole is an understatement. And I don't give a fuck if that sounds pretentious to you, because Fallout's themes, writing, and sense of vision rocks my cock, and the way it all brilliantly culminates in an explosive finale followed by a sad, quiet ending scene that leaves you feeling utterly empty is pristine.

Also The Glow is fucking awesome. Best location in the game, bar none. It's cool and creepy and irradiated to hell and back and full of some of the coolest lore in the entire series thanks to ZAX. So Fallout does have that. Basically, the backend of this game comes dangerously close to being 'kinda good'.

So a game with dogshit gameplay and poor design choices that wind up hampering but also enhancing a genuinely wonderful post-apocalyptic narrative where your choices matter... winds up being pretty mediocre. I would say it deserves a remake, but Fallout has never exactly been a stable series to make games out of.

Objectively an improvement in every way over the previous entry. There are so many QoL changes that make it feel like an actual video game.
Combat is balanced enough to make me actually want to put effort into team building, but I quickly reached the point where I could just brute force most of the bosses without using actual strategy. Dunno if I was just overleveled or what. Most standard enemy encounters can still be cheesed by using specific guns and ammunition too. This is simultaneously a disappointment and a relief for me, because most enemies give very little experience and I didn't want to waste much time on them, but I was also looking for more of a challenge.
The demon fusion system seems somewhat less tedious now, especially with greater access to gemstones/elementals. I don't know if this was in the last one and I just didn't notice, but demons can inherit skills which is really interesting, but I couldn't find a clear way to understand which specific ones would be inherited. Towards the end of my playthrough I figured out how to fuse a demon with Tarukaja, Rakukaja, and Dekaja which removed even more of what difficulty was left.
The decreased encounter rate is nice, but it actually became a problem for me pretty quickly because I could only keep one or two demons in my party at a time without exhausting my magnetite supply, even going short distances. Whether this is to encourage strategy or is just an oversight I cannot say, but it's something of a drag when the game revolves around building a team of demons with various utilities. This also led to me bruteforcing a lot of the combat because I often did not have enough magnetite to have a full party anyways.
The story and worldbuilding is much more fleshed out in this one. It expands interestingly on the law/chaos conflict in a way I like. The locations all feel much more populated which just generally makes the game more enjoyable. There were a couple of moments which really had me invested, honestly I just wish there was more of it. You get most of the character interactions drip fed to you between like 5 hour periods of running around lost/backtracking.
Just generally, it's still grindy. There's also a lot of weird and unnecessary backtracking, seemingly more egregiously than the previous entry. The game itself isn't that long if you factor out all of what feels like padding and tedium.
So far I can see why people like this series, there are definitely parts that I like about it too, but I'm not sure if I'm entirely sold on it. I think I might just not like the core JRPG gameplay style (heavily punctuated by grinding) that much, which is more of my personal preference than fault of the game. I do plan to play future entries, but not in the immediate future.

Jojo est un trentenaire fringuant et sûr de lui, qui monte tous les week-end dans son chalet en montagne pour s'adonner à son activité favorite: la chasse à l'ours. Son chalet est d'ailleurs rempli d'ours empaillés: grizzly, ours bruns, ours polaires... il en a tué de chaque sorte existante, sauf une: le légendaire ours bleu.

Un jour, il décide de compléter sa collection en traquant ce somptueux animal. Il prend son fusil et se rend à sa tanière. Il avance sur la pointe des pieds, l'œil aux aguets, en se plaçant face au vent. Mais sans qu'il comprenne ce qui lui arrive, l'ours bleu l'attrape soudain par derrière et l'encule !!

Un mois et 18 points de suture plus tard, Jojo est vraiment décidé à se venger. Il achète une mitraillette, et compte bien ne pas faire dans la dentelle ! Il entre dans la tanière en courant et tire dans tous les sens jusqu'à être à court de munitions. L'ours bleu profite du moment où il recharge pour se jeter sur notre malheureux chasseur et l'enculer à sec.

Le mois suivant, Jojo, fou de rage, sors de l'hôpital avec une idée fixe: tuer l'ours bleu à tout prix, même si sa fourrure devient inutilisable. Il vend sa voiture, hypothèque sa maison et contracte un emprunt à 25% de TEG pour s'acheter le tout nouveau prototype de lance-missile sol-air. Il s'installe à 1km de la tanière de l'ours bleu, et lance un missile. Une explosion terrible résonne dans la forêt. Satisfait, Jojo entre dans la tanière pour constater les dégâts. Il est tout d'abord aveuglé par la fumée, mais après quelques instants, elle se dissipe, et il aperçoit la silhouette de l'ours bleu.
L'ours bleu s'avance calmement, s'arrête devant Jojo et lui demande en se grattant la tête:

"Explique-moi... tu serais pas un peu pédé dès fois ?"

Great aesthetically. Theming is lovely, the town interactions are lovely, the bike is fun to drive.

Some of the levels are difficult to navigate, and play more as set pieces than game pieces. The weapons are also kinda bland, and only a few of them really get to shine on their own.

But it's a good game! Maybe not the best monster shooter ever, but whizzing bullets and clever secrets will definitely get you your post-apocalyptic treasure-hunting fix.