love yiik! weirdly enough it's somehow more homestucky than undertale/deltarune even though toby literally lived in hussie's basement? i got kinda fixated on it back when it came out from how absurdly negative the reception was, but didn't get around to playing it until like 2022. i liked the old version a lot then, and i love the new version now! the older version is very flawed, but i like it a lot as a focused exploration of one awful guy's headspace and love the way it slowly gets more and more weird and surreal as his own sense of reality (metaphorically, maybe) seems to break down. the writing is funny (on purpose a lot of the time) and alex sucks but i personally never thought it ruined the game or anything, especially since him sucking is kind of the entire point. i.v is less focused, but more than makes up for it in everything new being some of the coolest stuff i've ever seen from a video game, and for just straight-up being a lot more playable! love the new gameplay, love the new characters & heavy expansion of old characters, love how hard it emphasizes that surreal dreamlike conspiracy atmosphere, and love how much more obvious it makes the plot (i.e. actually shows things that were only ever Implied in like a single line of the original game).

as for the elephant in the room: the online fixation around elisa lam and missing people/true crime in general? is pretty distasteful and if the game were just a straightforward Missing Person Spooky narrative it would also be distasteful, but that fixation itself is a Real Thing and i honestly think it's fair game to comment on it with a purpose, which yiik does do. i do think it's fair to say it might do that too straightforwardly though.