Weekly Game Update: May 29th - June 4th, 2022
I’m not sure where the heck this week went, but it certainly flew by! I’m getting two adorable kittens next week and I’ve been spending a lot of time prepping for their arrival, so perhaps that’s why it moved so quick lol.
Games wise it pretty much was Ys, Ys, and more Ys. When I know I’m getting close to the end of a game, I tend to get super motivated to see it to the end. Sometimes I push a bit too hard and end up burning out before I get to the end, but I think I’ve gotten much better about pacing myself better. Timing my game sessions has helped I think!
Anyway, to the updates!
What Happened This Week?
Added:
None (other than me mass adding subscription games lol)
Started:
Yes, Your Grace (PC, Game Pass)
Retired:
Yes, Your Grace (PC, Game Pass) - (0:25)
Finished:
None…
Current Games:
Ys IX: Monstrum Nox (PS4) - 34:51 (+16:44)
Progress Updates
Yes, Your Grace
Of the games that were leaving Xbox Game Pass at the end of May, Yes, Your Grace was really the only one of the bunch that I cared about trying before it left the service. Unfortunately, it really didn’t work out for me and I only ended up playing less than half an hour of it.
It’s kind of a kingdom management sort of game with a bit of a narrative of preparing to fight against a bandit(?) group. You have to decide what choices you make for various problems (stuff like helping a villager find his missing son or figuring out where bandit camps are), and your choices will affect your gold/food stocks and how happy your kingdom is in general. The choices you make also supposedly affect how the story goes, but I was pretty quickly unimpressed about how some of the “choices” played out.
Even though I didn’t get very far, there seemed to be quite a few choices that boiled down to “yes” or “not really all that different yes”. One that was particularly bothersome was when I had the choice to tell the eldest daughter how I wanted to handle her marriage (i.e. let her pick someone she’s happy with or decide for her whether she likes it or not). I promised that she wouldn’t marry a stranger (that seemed to be the closest choice to having her marry who she wants), but then the VERY next week (aka the next set of decisions to make) I was FORCED to promise her hand to some random royal guy. The choice I had in that instance was basically just how much I wanted in this “exchange”. That really left me in a poor mood afterwards, especially since the whole game is supposedly centered around how your choices matter and how big of an impact they have.
Since the core of the game is basically pick choices and sorta try to manage your resources, there really wasn’t much else for me to enjoy gameplay-wise. I guess it looks really nice, but it certainly wasn’t worth sticking around just for that.
Ys IX: Monstrum Nox
Oh boy, this took a weird turn. I finished Chapters 6 - 8, and I’m on the final chapter!
Chapters 6 & 7, plus most of Chapter 8 really had very little story progression and was a bit of a downer. I still had fun exploring around new areas (although a lot of them were a bit less interesting for me since they weren’t as fun to move around in), but most of the new story bits were basically other characters going “hey, I know stuff but I won’t tell you because I don’t wanna”. Near the end of Chapter 8, stuff finally gets answered, but I don’t think I liked the reveal all that much. I didn’t guess some things that were revealed but, it wasn’t in a good way. I won’t go into specifics (especially since I have no idea how I could talk about spoilers here lol), but it was disappointing.
That being said, I am on the final boss of the game (or at least I’m pretty sure I am), so I should be able to finish the game next week!
Backlog Update
Backlog: 1537 games (+424)
Time to beat: 1433 days, 16 hrs (+270 days, 11 hrs)
Again, the numbers went up by a lot this week, but the good news is that I am now all caught up with adding all of the games I had through subscriptions and itch.io! That means that in the future, I shouldn’t be adding insane numbers of games to the backlog, unless I subscribe to another service (unlikely) or some random person decides to donate their large gaming collection to me (even more unlikely lol).
In future updates I think I’ll mention what games I added or removed that are from those services. I thought about doing that when I was doing my mass game adding spree, but I added 424 games last week (and it’s probably more than that since I removed a few that were leaving Game Pass)! I don’t think anybody wants to read through a list of all that, and I certainly didn’t want to type all that either! It will be much easier to mention those additions/removals now that I’m all caught up lol. Well, basically caught up anyway, since I just realized that I missed a few Switch Online games that were recently added.
Anyway, that’s all the updates for this week! Really looking forward to finishing Ys IX, although it might be a little tricky to review it… but we’ll see I guess? I also will need to plan out what to play next, so I’m excited for that as well :)