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YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG

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YIIK

  • Alas, Poor Scrappy: While Rory isn't exactly likable, he is a pitiable character. Indeed, Alex actively acts like an asshole to him with little actual consequences. This can culminate in Rory committing suicide, with his ghost reassuring Alex that he would have done it anyway. However, the only way to reach this point is for the player to choose to be a dick to him at every available opportunity.
  • Anvilicious: YIIK's themes aren't subtle in the least. The game's long-winded, verbose dialogue will outright spell out to the player things like Alex needing to better himself, the evils of racism in conversations between Claudio and Chondra, or Vella explaining to Rory that suicide isn't the answer and not to give up. These are all valuable messages, sure, but they're dropped on the player with all the subtlety of a jackhammer.
  • Arc Fatigue: Chapter 5 gives the player the in-game months of November and December to hang out with Alex's companions or go training in the Mind Dungeon before engaging the Climax Boss. This introduced a calendar system that was never utilized prior. However, that's also more time than the player needs. Prior to the I.V update there was no way to skip the filler days and any player who did a good job of keeping up with their levels would run out of meaningful hangout events and experience for the Mind Dungeon well before the time limit ends.
  • Ass Pull:
    • Throughout most of the game in the I.V update, the girl lost in soul space is on a grueling journey to find out whether she's Alex's sister (Allison), or Rory's missing sister (Carrie). Once she confronts God about her identity it's revealed that she is neither. She is actually just the player in video game form (something that was already hinted at in the beginning), thereby squandering any potential pay-off to who these two enigmatic siblings really were.
    • The endgame reveal of the Essentia being a part of Alex is this, as it contradicts all the blatant evidence of her being the soul survivor of Vella/Sammy.
  • Awesome Music: While containing some duds, it's generally agreed that YIIK's soundtrack is incredibly good. To the point that some consider it the best part of the series overall.
    • "Into the Mind" is one of the tracks that stand out. Being composed by Toby Fox helps.
    • The title screen theme is actually a really nice, dreamy piece of music.
    • The Mind Dungeon theme is a soft, chill and soothing remix of the main theme that goes a long way towards making the repetition involved in exploring the Mind Dungeon and leveling up more tolerable.
    • Vella Wilde Groove, the theme of Vella's mind dungeon. Another soft, chill and smooth song but also incredibly bittersweet sounding.
    • Krow Battle Theme plays in Essentia's mind dungeon. It's a great, energetic track, mixing in chiptunes and rocking guitars that also works in the Leitmotif of the Machine and the Crow really well.
    • Machine and the Crow, the overarching theme song for the game. A moody and and off-beat track that conveys the introspective weirdness that YIIK offers very effectively while being quite catchy.
    • A Distant Voice(Chance Traveler), the headline track from Vella's "Mystical Ultima LP Legend" album. A slow, soothing and mystical J-Pop ballad that wouldn't sound out of place over the credits of an anime. In-universe, the entire gang is stunned by how good it sounds.
    • Windtown Drunkard Battle Theme. Setting aside it's infamously inappropriate usage for the original version of the Golden Alpaca fight, it's a very goofy and swinging jazz track that fits quite well for fighting drunkards in Windtown.
  • Base-Breaking Character: Players are divided on whether Rory is sympathetic and pitiable or whiny and caustic; his lack of utility in the game's initial slow battle system certainly doesn't do him any favors. However, balancing this out is that his more caustic elements are usually at the expense of the more universally hated Alex, as well as the fact that his treatment by Alex which may even result in his suicide leads to even people that dislike him to feel sorry for him.
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: There are quite a few of these throughout the game.
    • The Golden Alpaca boss is...well, a gold-colored alpaca that can talk and has a penchant for saying "Lemonade!" Vella also acts like it's a horrible monster. It's never explained what exactly it is, where it came from, or why it attacks you. It's never even brought up again once the battle is over. Even more egregious as this is a Mood Whiplash right after Rory talks about how his sister committed suicide and his resulting trauma. The 1.5 update attempts to mitigate this by making the alpaca foreshadow the nature behind Alex, but it's still incredibly jarring within the context this happens.
    • During a scene where Alex and Michael visit Rory, Alex comments on how Rory's mom is all leg. She is literally just a leg, and no other comment is made about her.
    • When going to the sewers with Rory, there is a giant Soul Survivor in the sky. Our heroes never even notice it.
    • When they visit Mark to learn more about the Mystical Ultima LP Legend, he goes on a lengthy tangent about a rare tea and how it came into his possession. He eventually gets to identifying the one behind the LP, but this whole tea story contributed nothing to this and is never revisited.
    • A couple of NPCs closely resembling Sammy, the one that Alex has been searching for, are found in Vella's Mind Dungeon. No comment was made on their presence.
    • Claudio suddenly accusing Alex of being racist for asking the team if anyone knows how to pick a lock, even though the question wasn't directed at him. He also goes on to describe that he can pick half a dozen exotic types of locks anyway because of a "Sherlock Holmes phase" - just not car locks specifically.
    • Alex being given the option to kiss Rory. While their heart-to-heart mirrors the one Alex had with Vella, they lack the same kind of chemistry - in fact, given how Alex could potentially treat Rory beforehand, it comes off as a bizarre character shift.
    • The entirety of Proto-Michael, which happens in the days leading up to Y2K out of left field with a Hand Wave of becoming one with all his alternate selves. The odd thing is that this actually sticks for a bit as an actual party member and goes on to make a later scene incredibly awkward with a mad, desperate rant. But then he gets erased like everyone else anyway, making this a rather drawn-out BLAM. Not even the different alternate version you recruit for the endgame ties into this at all, just being another random Michael like the "Proto-" thing never happened.
  • Broken Aesop:
    • After losing the unwinnable Final Boss battle against Proto-Alex, Alex gets a fourth wall-bending pep talk from the main character of the failed Two Brothers, who essentially laments the failure of his game, remarks that "some people have worked really hard to prevent me from finishing my quest", but concludes that "I'm happy with what I accomplished." All this paints the picture of the developers being satisfied with Two Brothers despite the haters. The problem is, the biggest issue most people who played Two Brothers had was that the game was unplayably buggy, something the developers could've fixed to salvage the game, but instead abandoned the game entirely, making this scene come across as the developers living in denial about why people didn't like Two Brothers and refusing to truly accept their failure.
    • The endgame also cribs from Persona 4's Shadows, where the message behind them was "Accept your flaws, instead of denying you have them." The problem is, YIIK stopped at that, while the full message behind the Shadows was "Accept and overcome your flaws." The fact that, after being confronted with an aspect of himself that represented his laziness and fear of taking things into his own hands, Alex ends the game by simply allowing the player avatar to deal with Proto-Alex for him while Alex follows their lead, implies that Alex never truly overcomes his flaws, and by deferring multiverse-saving duties to someone else, doesn't actually grow as a person.
    • The moral of the story is supposed to be to not treat the universe like it revolves around you. This moral is pretty undercut by the fact that Alex really does end up being the center of the universe, though. The original Alex is plugged into a computer mainframe that resets all universes when turned off, implying universes live or die by their Alexes. It also takes two different versions of Alex to take the main Alex down, and the player themselves ends up being another Alex!
  • Continuity Lock-Out: Roy's presence in the game won't make any sense to people who don't know about Two Brothers and its real-life history.
  • Creator's Pet: The developers have said Alex is supposed to be unlikable and has to learn and grow throughout the game. The problem is that it doesn't really work. Alex is an insufferable dick to everyone... and they're constantly apologizing to him for it. If Rory kills himself, the character involved assures Alex that it wasn't his fault - even though this only happens if you choose to have Alex deliberately hurt Rory at every opening. The ending then reveals that Alex is literally the most important person in existence, and everyone else in the world—and even in real life—only exists because of and for him. If it were at all self-aware it would be a parody.
  • Critical Backlash: Due to the sheer amount of vitriol the game has attracted even months after its launch, it's ended up developing a countermovement of players who discovered the game through the negative coverage of it, understanding the general criticism but being drawn into its unapologetically indulgent and unique presentation.
  • Ending Fatigue: After the party's loss against the Comet, the game devolves into Alex wallowing in his own self-loathing for a long while. It’s also followed by numerous confusing plot twists, which many felt dragged the game down. The fact that, from the Comet onward, both pivotal Final Boss battles are Hopeless Boss Fights doesn't help matters, either.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: Based on LPs and reviews, Vella, Claudio, and Chondra appear to be the only characters that are well-liked, or at least tolerated compared to the rest of the cast. This is mainly for their more down-to-earth demeanor while also being the ones to consistently call out Alex on his thoughtlessness or rudeness or, in Claudio's case, for being a Large Ham with a love for shojo anime.
  • Fan-Preferred Cut Content: Among the myriad of cut content in the game is the mostly complete remains of the original ending, changed during the game's Troubled Production despite being fully voiced. Some players greatly prefer this ending to the two from the final game for a variety of reasons:
    • The Essentia's motivations are confusing and unreliable in the original story, but the cut ending directly explains that she's been tricking Alexes from other dimensions into going on suicide missions to defeat Proto-Alex or abandoning them if they chicken out. Alex's decision to fight Proto-Alex of his own free will after learning this expresses Character Development that many felt the final game rushed out.
    • This version's incarnation of Proto-Alex is much more imposing, looking like a gigantic armored demon instead of the shirtless creep from the final game. It was also planned to be a proper final boss rather than a Hopeless Boss Fight, complete with exclusive dodging minigames that were underutilized in the release version.
    • The ending is more optimistic, with Essentia and Alex parting ways, the latter leaving to find a new reality where he can become a better person, along with a final moment of Addressing the Player to cap things off.
  • Friendly Fandoms:
    • Many of the people on the game’s official Discord server are also fans of Homestuck.
    • The OneyPlays playthrough has brought a ton of new eyes to the game, and as a result of their humorous but also thoughtful commentary many players have come to see the game in a different perspective, in spite of its flaws.
  • Funny Moments:
    • Rory's Weapons are all various protest signs, some of them have rather funny descriptions. For the Make Love, Not War sign the description reads "But use protection."
    • Once New Years Eve hits Alex starts getting some rather strange phone calls, some more humorous than others. One of them has Sammy asking if Alex remembered to pick up her cat from the dry cleaners, while another example features a distorted voice continuously asking Alex if he's remembered the question. One of the responses Alex gives is "What is 'go screw yourself'?"
  • Game-Breaker:
    • Two noteworthy ones from older versions of the game.
      • Chondra's "Spread Item" skill gives the full benefits of an item to the whole party for a mere 2 MP; keeping her in your party basically guarantees that everybody stays at full health. Received a slight nerf in the I.V update, upping the cost to 5.
      • Due to a bug, Alex's LP Toss in the old battle style had broken power scaling and got exponentially more powerful the more you used it. There was no limit to its power either, becoming strong enough to one shot even late game enemies and bosses.
    • In YIIK I.V, Claudio and Nameless Child's Cement Shoes can reduce an enemy's speed, which is the One Stat to Rule Them All since it determines how long you have to wait until you get your next turn, so it can be used to reduce even the ONISM MAN to a Zero-Effort Boss by using it on him until he can't act anymore.
    • Claudio's Karta Breaker breaks all an enemy's karta instantly, which would often otherwise take rounds of special attacks to destroy, effectively rendering the Piercing attribute obsolete. It's especially useful in the Twisted Beings fight due to its unique mechanics of replenishing its karta from an exhaustible pool and pretty much makes every party member except Claudio irrelevant in the fight.
  • Goddamned Bats:
    • In the I.V Update, the Shitty OC enemy has so much agility that they're able to attack several times in a row before your party can even act. Thankfully they hit like wet tissue paper, but a player will very quickly grow sick of their presence due to their Expy-style quips after every attack they make.
    • Bellas have very high speed and evasion, so you will need an evasion-ignoring attack like Alex' LP Toss to defeat them, so you effectively only have one party member that can harm them while they will likely get multiple turns for his turn due to their high speed.
  • Heartwarming Moments: The sub-route in which the player chooses to be nice to Rory, which culminates in Alex and Rory having a one on one chat at the burger joint, to which Alex expresses being genuinely thankful for how they were able to meet and get to know Rory, can be very warming to see.
  • Hollywood Pudgy: Much fun is made of Alex's weight, with several people calling him fat to his face, despite him looking just as slim as anyone else with maybe the beginnings of a beer belly.
  • Just Here for Godzilla: Some Yuriofwind fans are just here because he's the voice of Rory.
  • Low-Tier Letdown: A contributing reason to Rory's negative fan perception. On paper, Rory being a tank character is interesting. But in practice, with how long the battles drag on and the fact that you can avoid taking damage altogether, you'd want somebody that'd actually pitch in with attacks over a tank — the fact that Chondra's "Spread Item" ability is just too good of a healing move also mitigates the need for a tank, anyway. This is addressed in the 1.25 update which makes his blocking attacks deal damage to the attacker as well as himself. but it's not really enough to make him worth having in the party.
  • Memetic Loser: Alex, due to being perceived as a whiny jerk, and is often compared negatively to protagonists from contemporary indie RPG games — when he isn't ironically presented as better than them.
  • Memetic Molester: Alex again. While he's often regarded as being one of the worst protagonists in video games, most of the dislike towards him comes from his excessive usage of Purple Prose, generally being annoying and overdramatic, and his many instances of being disrespectful and scummy, as well as also just being seen as boring by many. Memes will often exaggerate his worst qualities to make him an omnicidal, manipulative pervert who will stop at nothing to get into the pants of Vella, Sammy/Semi, and/or the Essentia 3000.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • The game's title. Officially it's supposed to be pronounced "Y2K", which almost everyone has universally ignored in favor of the more obvious "yeek" or "yick". Additionally, Alex's last name, Eggleston, is often omitted in favor of the game's title, with people referring to him on a Full-Name Basis as "Alex YIIK" in the vein of the "Sans Undertale" meme.
    • YIIKes, coined by a lot of the game's detractors, in reference to not only the game's lukewarm reception and some of the aspects surrounding the game, e.g. the heavy references to the death of Elisa Lam.
    • YIIKing OutExplanation
    • Dave P33, who looks suspiciously similar to the main character, has been confused with the developer of the game. This led people into thinking that Alex is a shameless Self-Insert. He takes it with humor, though.
    • Lemonade. Explanation
    • Satoru Iwata December 6, 1959 - July 11, 2015. Explanation
    • "WHAT'S GOING ON!?"Explanation
    • Vibrating with motion.Explanation
    • "No one cares about your dead sister!" Explanation
    • "YIIK and Morbius are the same thing in different mediums." Explanation
  • Narm:
    • Every reviewer and YouTuber can generally agree that Alex randomly breaking out into Purple Prose to repetitively describe everything around himself in a nasty aversion of Show, Don't Tell was already incredibly cheesy. The fact that it happens all game long firmly cements it as detrimental to taking anything Alex says seriously at all.
    • The moment where one section early on in the game literally DEMANDS Alex to sit down and monologue to himself.
    • After an emotional scene in which Rory finally reveals that his sister killed herself and he's become traumatized by it, the player fights a Golden Alpaca that constantly says "lemonade". Not only does this immediately deflate the tension, but it also arguably ends up making fun of Rory's breakdown, ultimately coming across as a failed attempt at a non-sequitur to defuse tension that ends up just being stupid or shameless.
    • For whatever reason, when Michael becomes Proto-Michael, Alex outright calls him by that name from then on, as if he were reading the name from a script.
    • Near the beginning of Chapter VI, Alex loses Panda in the Soul Space as the latter turns into a plush and floats away. It's meant to be an emotional scene with Alex losing the last companion he had left (and imply/confirm that Panda only ever existed in Alex's head). However, it's really hard to take a grown adult screaming out for a toy panda seriously, regardless of context. The sound is also poorly edited, with the first syllable sounding cut off, making it sound like Alex is yelling "P'NDAAAAAA".
    • Michael excitedly yelling "Developed?! This thing is digital, baby!" after he and Alex encounter the Soul Survivor falls a little flat when his portrait's expression looks completely neutral.
    • As limited as the talking portraits are, the 3D models are even less emotive, with the worst offenders being Vella looking perpetually constipated and Wilfrid having a permanent dopey smile that remains even as he's panicking and dying.
  • Narm Charm:
    • Although all the monologues are kept for the I.V update, it's instead staged within some kind of comedy club setting whenever they occur, and the idea of Alex having these long-winded ramblings in front of an imaginary crowd is vastly more entertaining.
    • The voice for the police officer who shows up after Alex disappeared sounds like an adolescent trying to imitate a grown man. It's so nonsensical and yet there's a lot of humor in their delivery, especially the deadpan way in which they say "I am the greatest police officer on the force."
  • Never Live It Down: Alex screaming at Rory that no one cares about his sister, who committed suicide. The moment is called out in canon as harsh and lacking empathy even with the context that the party nearly died due to Rory being unable to open up about his sister's past, but the community turned the line into a meme and treated the moment as emblematic of Alex's Lack of Empathy and selfishness as a whole.
  • Overshadowed by Controversy: A sizable fraction of the internet primarily remember YIIK for how the lead developer confirmed on Twitter that the game's premise is based on the real-life death of Elisa Lam in an attempt to bring awareness to it, which many saw as disrespectful, as well as the parts of the script that were word-for-word copied from Haruki Murakami's novels (intended to be an homage but instead coming off as plagiarism).
  • Padding: Prior to the I.V update, one of the main criticisms of the game was its sluggish pacing in its story and gameplay.
    • The game is very, very heavy on text and dialogue. But, much of it is restating information that's already been established, spending an inordinate amount of time on describing something, or derailing plot-relevant details for something much less important.
    • Gameplay tends to drag on due to the nature of the minigames used to attack in combat not doing nearly enough damage for the effort expended to do them, the Mind Dungeon being tedious to use, and the amount of time it takes to get from Point A to Point B on the overworld.
    • There's one section near the mid-end of the game where you're given a month or two's time explicitly to level grind and build up relationships with your friends, and typically you only need half of that time to see all there is to see and grind up to comfortably handle the rest of the game.
  • The Scrappy:
  • Scrappy Mechanic:
    • The Skateboard item. Its intended purpose is to allow for speedy travel in the overworld, but it only goes in one direction and there's no way to stop yourself unless you hit a wall, making it needlessly finicky to use at best and an active detriment at worst.
    • Many battle and leveling mechanics in older versions of the game are considered this. It wouldn't be until the I.V update where these issues were streamlined tremendously.
      • The Mind Dungeon, much like Fable III did with the Sanctuary and its menu system in general, carries over everything players hated about the Sanctuary, needlessly padding out basic menu functions, as well as forcing the player to level up one level at a time, even if they can level up multiple times.
      • Every attack in older versions game were carried out via a lengthy minigame which, combined with the fact that most attacks don't do very much damage, drag out fights for way too long. Similarly, when an enemy unleashes a Herd-Hitting Attack, you have to perform the Defend/Dodge minigame for every single party member, which adds to the length of battles. Later versions of the game overhauled the battle system to cut down on the tedium during battles.
  • Squick:
    • The main, all-target attack of the one of the Proto-Alex minibosses, Shady Alex is throwing what are implied to be socks used for masturbation note . Nothing in detail, thank God, but still.
    • Claudio showing enthusiasm for an incest version of his favorite anime in a chapter 5 scene. Also mind you, his own sister is in the room.
  • Stock Footage Failure:
    • Due to how limited Michael's talk-sprites are, his sprites mainly consist of neutral poses that don't fit the scenes where he sounds angry or scared. This gets even worse with Proto-Michael, who has a grand total of one talking sprite.
    • The female version of Player-Alex still has male Alex's voice.
  • Take That, Scrappy!: People tend to loathe Alex for being unpleasant, selfish, and regularly yapping in Purple Prose. Fortunately (or at least for them), Chondra and Vella sometimes call him out for being impolite or thoughtless. Later versions of the game add more scenes criticizing Alex's awful behavior, and he even dies in one ending.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The golden alpaca boss fight got a lot of flak for looking like a random and forced attempt at Mood Whiplash, but some players found it a hilarious and genius tone shift. The boss design was later changed to some kind of humanoid alpaca with a giant sword, voice acting and a dramatic cutscene filled with foreshadowing. The change was met with a mixed reception, with alpaca fans being disappointed the devs ruined the funniest moment in the game and were trying too hard to please critics, and critics feeling as though the devs had ignored their point entirely.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Pretty much everyone except Alex, Vella and Essentia are left feeling underdeveloped.
    • The main reason why Michael is not well-liked is that he's a Flat Character for much of the game who rarely speaks after the second chapter. Then he suddenly becomes important in the last chapter by becoming Proto Michael... which is then squandered by the fact that he just exists to give another Infodump and still dies unceremoniously with the rest of the party. It wouldn't be until the I.V update where he is given much more well-needed screen time and explains his motives more clearly.
    • While Rory’s arc takes up a good part of Chapter 2, he’s mainly left by the wayside except for a few scenes afterward. It’s especially jarring considering that he’s the only one in the party that isn’t explicitly connected to a different version of Alex. Weirdly though, he’s the only character to get a resolution in one of the Chapter 5 conversations, but it feels hollow without actual character development.
    • While Chondra and Claudio are appreciated characters, their personal character arcs of worrying about their little brother don’t actually pan out. Especially since the little brother is only met by Alex, who has nothing to say and gets nothing from the revelation himself. Even in the I.V update, the additional cutscenes don't seem to provide much more context to the disappearance of their brother.
    • Alex mentions his sister during an early monologue and later says she studied at a certain girl's school, but Chondra says that shouldn't be possible and he reacts confused. This is somewhat mitigated in the I.V update, where the supposed sister is lost in the soul space trying to reclaim her identity, however the reveal that she's neither Alex nor Rory's sibling, but actually the player, who is revealed to be a thief jumping between timelines, only further serves to make her role ambiguous and unsatisfying.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
    • The game has an X-Files atmosphere for a large part of it. Until the ending abandons it for a fourth-wall breaking meta story that involves the developers putting in a character from Two Brothers, their previous game.
    • The original "save Sammy" plot is dropped halfway through the game and is only picked back up on a hasty alternate ending. It's particularly egregious considering that Sammy's situation appropriates off of a real-life tragedy.
    • Similarly, every party member has a personal story and problems, like how Claudio and Chondra have a missing little brother, or Vella's still trying to get over a real bad break-up. These things pepper the entire game's progression, sometimes even putting the plot on hold to emphasize them. Then everyone but Alex dies to Proto-Alex and the world ends, abandoning every single plot line but Alex's own while implying each of his friend's problems were tied to yet another alternate Alex besides Rory's sister. Even when alternate versions of the same characters are brought in, they have absolutely no dialogue or interactions whatsoever.
    • Multiple times throughout the game, Alex receives a scathing reaction for some of his terrible comments or particular Kick the Dog moments, like with his treatment to Rory. Just as fast as the party is quick to condemn him, however, they almost always apologize or brush it off, instead of Alex actually learning anything from it or changing for the better. It culminates in the endgame where if the player was a jerk to Rory all throughout, he kills himself and everyone gets over it disturbingly fast, to the point of Rory himself as a ghost not even blaming Alex for it. Critics have construed it as Alex being free from actual long-lasting consequences for anything he does, and completely spitting on the theme of self-improvement the game tries to push.
  • Took the Bad Film Seriously: Despite how reviled the game's story is, one reason that people say they're willing to tolerate it is that the voice actors gave it their all in trying to make a convincing delivery.
    • Alex is largely considered an insufferable protagonist by most players, particularly due to his pretentious Motor Mouth tendencies. However, Chris Niosi's delivery was praised as a positive point of the character, being able to showcase his personally in a very believable light.
    • Vella's voice actress Melanie Ehrlich is arguably the best voice talent in the entire game, in spite of the script. No matter what scene she's in her emotions are portrayed very believably, especially in the more emotional moments, such as the discovery of the record jacket, or the infamous Rory suicide scene, to which her feelings of grief come off as very genuine and sorrowful.
    • Yuriofwind, despite having some technical issues with the compression of his audio, fits perfectly as the role of a Rory, a meek shut-in who doesn't seem much for socializing.
  • Underused Game Mechanic: A single boss fight in the Essentia 2000's mind dungeon uses an attack that is dodged through controlling Alex in a platforming minigame. This is the only time this dodge method is used, with everything else sticking with one of the three dodge/block meters, though the cut original Proto-Alex fight also had some (using a top-down perspective instead).
  • Unintentionally Sympathetic: Thanks to the memetic mutation of Alex yelling at Rory, more people got the context and decided to actually side with Alex in this case. Vella and Michael will scold Alex for crossing the line there but really, Alex had the right to be frustrated at someone who lied to him. If anything, some argue Alex was right for being brutally honest and Rory had to grow up and realize he can't expect random strangers to deal with his mental baggage. Normally, on the other hand...
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
    • Alex is a pretentious, self-centered, and flat-out grating hipster who constantly engages in poorly written Purple Prose and treats the whole world and his friends as though they revolve around him and his needs. Eventually, alternate versions of him destroy the world due to their negative personality traits consuming them, and in one ending he can choose to join them. While the character was not initially meant to be sympathetic, even while trying to atone for what his other selves did he comes off as just as self-absorbed and pretentious. This led to people cheering when he dies rather than taking the moment as the tear-jerking Heroic Sacrifice it was meant to be.
    • For some, Rory is this also. His grief over his sister's death is mentioned as being an aspect of his poor decision-making, and Alex is typically regarded as callous for telling him that no one cares, but some view Alex as completely right to yell at him for essentially forcing the party to run around town and complete tasks for the purpose of finding Sammy/Semi, as Rory's own goals run antithetical to that. Not to mention that he unknowingly put other people who were complete strangers in danger for something he barely understood.
  • Viewer Pronunciation Confusion: The title is meant to be read out as "Y2K" ("Why-Two-Kay"), not "Yike" or "Yeek". This doesn't stop a lot of people who dislike the game from calling it "Yeek" on purpose as a joke.
  • Wangst: Whenever Alex wallows in his own self-pity like after his loss against the Comet, which still makes him come off as self-centered.
  • What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: The quirky colors and presentation inspired by the likes of EarthBound are offset by the fact that the game is rated M for a reason. There's a surprising amount of explicit cursing, nightmarish visages particularly in the Mind Dungeons, a lot of suicide and death context including a couple areas with a heavy amount of violence and Rory committing suicide off-screen if you're a dick to him, racial issues brought up, and a generally massive amount of Mood Whiplash between surreal humor and dark subject matter.

YIIK II: Benevolent Psychosis

  • Unfortunate Character Design: The final boss of this game ONISM MAN has a rather phallic looking head, though it was likely intended to be a helmet of some sort.

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