January 19-25, 2025
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| Truer words have never been spoken |
Another productive week of exploring new cities and uncovering conspiracies. Let’s get into it.
Game Acquisitions
Before you ask, the game you’re thinking of was free I swear 😭 It’s not the kind of game I would pay for normally but I hear it’s actually not bad. I did get a few free games this week which is nice. I bought Fanatical’s Build your own Elite VR (New Year Edition) since VR bundles are usually really expensive but this one was as cheap as flatscreen game bundles. I hear Tea for God is really good, can’t wait to buy a VR headset to try it out 😝
# of Games: 11
Total Money Spent: $8.03
Price/Game: $0.73
Game Recaps
Anything would’ve been an improvement over last week. I’m still not happy with my content creation to gaming ratio. If it doesn’t improve when I start new games, I’ll have to figure something out. For now, let’s recap my Final Profit progress.
I entered my hometown of Faeona for the first time since getting exiled at the beginning of the game. It seems like a peaceful place, definitely a far cry from the hustle and bustle of the city. It’s far from perfect though. There is a slum district, rich folk who see themselves as better than everyone else, and some people who aren’t too happy to see us. I stumbled into the library and came across some music tiles that played notes when I ran across them. I was able to brute force the solution and was greeted with this:
I don’t know if the Minstrel’s Harp is an important quest item or just a trophy but the puzzle was fun to solve regardless. After exploring Faeona for a bit, I received some quests and headed back to the city. After entering my store, Biz mentioned how she needed someone to run the Enterpriston store just like the small store from the first town for some passive income. After exiting the store, I got this cutscene from the Bureau council members.
Sounds like they’re willing to work with me when I do meet them. I imagine we’ll be stabbing each other in the back soon enough. I ended up spending a lot of time back in the city running the shop and completing quests and got quite a few upgrades. I’ll see if I can rapid fire some of them.
A bit of a weird scripting sequence break there with the guy suggesting where to find a fire extinguisher before I knew I needed one. The upgrade to put down more fire at a time when crafting battlepasses is pointless but the 18% price increase is nice.
Holy crap, a 4,433% price increase! By far the largest jump in price for a commodity upgrade.
A modest 17% increase on the price of upmarket coffee. Still picking the generous dialogue choices!
I received this mana crystal from my totally not evil friend Odina. I poured a metric ton of my mana into it and was awarded with passive mana regen+1. That should come in handy later. And I have a cute crystal dog to boot!
A very impressive 265% markup on fermented tea.
Unlocked the ability to sell fruit seeds which I see as another useless upgrade since I’m always out of them. I’ll take the 25% price increase for the fruit though. I wasted enough time in the city, time to confront my daughter the queen in Faeona.
There was a lot to unpack there. Biz misses her daughter very much and hopes to reconnect with her. She seems to be thinking the same. The fae council has now tipped into Biz’s favor, but a unanimous vote is required to get her back on the council herself. The next story quest is to secure the votes of all the council members to achieve this. Also, Divina’s child is a Lord of Business!? I wonder if that was “Mx. Two” from the Bureau council cutscene given the supposed use of gender neutral pronouns and fae background. Biz and Divina also apparently dated a very long time ago, I wonder what happened between them. Let’s head back to the city to secure the votes, starting with Pixa.
He decided he wanted me to play hide and seek with him to get his vote. A little annoying but after three times finding him, he agreed. I actually ran into Boat (the fairy selling seeds) while I was trying to find Pixa and she revealed that there are young creatures who look like her that are attracted to cities with plant life and she feels the need to protect them. She asked me to gather the three that are somewhere around the city to get her vote. Basically, more hide and seek.
The next vote on the list is Jot who runs the interdimensional upgrade shop. His quest is very simple.
Just a quick 25,000
coins to bribe secure his vote. I actually meant to go back to Faeona at
this point and talk to more of the locals but accidentally started the quest to
head to the capital so I guess I’m doing that next.
Immediately upon setting off for the capital, I’m greeted by a cutscene showing that the Legislator and the Representative from the Bureau are going to try and stop me from becoming a Lord of Business by sabotaging the train I’m using to get there.
Cutting back to Biz, we walk through the cemetery we were at earlier where we discovered the prince had been killed. Among the tombstones was a maze that led to an apple chest and another ending!
After reloading the save, we walk to the train and are greeted by the train captain, the ticket master, and a rich passenger known as Lady Plenty. On board the train we discover that the Representative is also hitching a ride, as well as King Bean, an orphan boy he’s looking after, and various train staff. What transpires is a plot to replace Biz with an imposter to make sure she doesn’t rise to power.
We do eventually catch the imposter and save Biz. We also learn Odina’s backstory. She was evil after all, she worked for the Bureau! Was is the operative word here though, she seems to have turned over a new leaf so I’m still trusting her for now.
The rich passenger we met before we boarded the train turned out to be a mechanic specializing in gems which could be very useful for us moving forward. Biz added her to her team. With all that craziness out of the way, we’ve finally arrived at the capital.
So neon! Seriously, I like the blue color here, it’s a nice contrast from previous environments. I spared the Biz imposter, she didn’t seem terribly malicious and was only in it for the money. Gotta stick with those generous decisions. Hopefully that doesn’t come back to bite me later. I head a little farther into town and run into none other than Mr. Four, one of the Lords of Business.
Oh boy, information overload here. This is exactly what I was afraid of. This is gonna be a whole new game now it looks like. As if the game wasn’t confusing enough as it is, now we’re adding real estate to our portfolio. Who knows what other profit-making schemes we can get up to here. I’m just about to sign off for the day when I run into a familiar face outside my new place.
I’m continuing to choose generous decisions over ruthless ones, but I definitely don’t feel good about this decision. I don’t trust the Representative at all. I guess we’ll have to see how it all plays out. Anyway, let’s move on to my other game.
We arrived at the funeral and Giuliano informed us that another hospital employee stopped by, but then ran out back. He asked us to check on him so we did and it turned out to be the janitor Gregor.
He feels guilty about Irma’s death and feels that the water leak was at least partially responsible for her demise. We assure him that wasn’t the case and that he should join everyone inside for the service. Unfortunately, the instigator that Karl picked a fight with earlier overheard the conversation and decided to start something.
The song that Giuliano played was the same song that played when his mother would tell us one of her stories. I thought that was a nice touch. Unfortunately, we aren’t able to enjoy it for long before we’re asked to leave to avoid further disruptions. That really sucks, Finley already feels guilty as it is. Mia invites us to watch her play rehearsal to get our mind off things and of course we end up getting roped into it. It was interesting but kind of long and didn’t further the plot so I won’t post a clip here. We head home for the night and wake up to find out an angry mob is descending on the hospital. On our way there, we pass by Giuliano’s and decide to stop by real quick to ask how the rest of the service went.
We missed placing the statue in the woods 😔 Huge bummer. We get to the hospital and sure enough there’s an angry mob calling for the place to be torn down. I’ll give you three guesses on who is running it.
Even one of the nurses is in the crowd! After a quick chat with Ingrid, she informs us that our boss’ boss the chief physician wants to speak with us. Let’s see what that’s about.
We’re not in trouble or anything. He just wanted to tell us that these things happen and to just keep doing our job to the best of our ability. He assures us he’ll take care of the mob outside which is a relief. After some patient checkups, we start heading out the hospital and run into some actual trouble.
Alright, angry mob is still doing their thing at the front entrance and the chief physician is nowhere to be found. Let’s try to find him.
An alternate universe where pizza cures cancer huh? I can get behind that. With Dr. Theobald nowhere to be found, we head back up to our ward to find Mia having a talk with the patient we were chasing at the beginning of the game when we hit our head.
A conspiracy regarding the hospital seems to be unfolding. The patient confirms that he saw the same files we saw in the unused ward. What were they doing there? Who was looking at them? Finley and Mia head out the back entrance to talk to Karl about our findings.
Our plan is to steal the keys to the hospital archive room and see what we can find. The plan is long, unnecessarily complicated, and just downright silly.
Goofy. I don’t think Finley is having as much fun executing the plan as Karl is concocting it.
We finally have the keys, meet outside the archive to plan our next move, and then…
Welp, the door was unlocked the whole time. The plan was for nothing! It was funny seeing the perspective shift from overexaggerated planning mode to reality where everyone was just in their normal clothes. We go inside to see what we can find.
There’s definitely missing files alright. But more importantly, the hospital is filling up and they’re short-staffed. I guess we’re picking up some overtime. After pulling an extra shift, we try to leave when we discover that the mob has infiltrated the hospital!
We’re definitely in illegal territory at this point. I wonder if the cops will finally do something about them. One of the protestors has collapsed so we help them to a room to begin treatment. Our boss Dr. Krokowski says she’ll do what she can but to treat the other patients in the meantime. Triple shift time baby! After yet another set of rounds we’re alerted that the collapsed protestor isn’t doing well and Dr. Krokowski needs our help right away.
Oh no. This definitely isn’t going to help our image about the hospital killing patients. Things are quickly spiraling out of control, but our boss insists that we need to go home to rest and I agree. What a crazy day. I feel like we may be nearing the end of the game. Is my first completion of the year right around the corner?
TV/Movie Recaps
Here is everything I watched this week:
· 127 Hours
· Barefoot Gen
· Scott Pilgrim Takes Off Episodes 1-2 (currently watching, show ended)
· American Dad Season 21 Episode 13 (all caught up, show ongoing)
· Firefly Episodes 7-14 (all done!)
I was able to squeeze in a movie Sunday night since I didn’t work on Monday. 127 Hours is a movie about a thrill seeker (played by James Franco) who falls down a ravine and gets his hand pinned to the wall by a rock and has to figure out how to free himself. It was difficult to watch at times since it gets quite bloody. It mostly took place at one location and used some found footage style filming which I thought was interesting. Barefoot Gen is an anime film that came out in the 80s about the atomic bomb dropped on Japan during World War 2. This is probably one of the most depressing films I’ve ever seen. It's very good but do not watch this if you aren’t in the right headspace for it.
On the TV side, I finished up Firefly and started watching Scott Pilgrim Takes Off with a friend. I enjoyed the space western vibes of Firefly, I just wish it was longer. It felt like it wasn’t long enough to have satisfying character arcs or an overarching plotline. I still need to watch the Serenity movie which I’ll do today so maybe that will have a more satisfying conclusion. I’m a huge fan of the Scott Pilgrim movie so I’m super excited to get into the anime. I’m really digging it so far, although I’ve only watched the beginning. It’s another one season show so my friend and I should get through it pretty quick.
Conclusion/Upcoming
Overall a pretty good week I think. I unlocked what I assume are the last areas of Final Profit and I believe I’m about to reach the climax of Fall of Porcupine. I probably won’t be able to play more of the latter. My friend and I are planning to watch some live music for our next hangout. The big Nvidia RTX 50 launch is happening on Thursday and he said he might join me for that too to keep me company. I’m hoping to get there around 6-6:30 to increase my chances of snagging a 5090. I know some people will be camping out the night before but I can’t do that. Hopefully the demand isn’t as high as I’m expecting it to be. I’m excited to retire this PC and move on to the new one.
On the game front, it’ll likely just be Final Profit this week. I don’t feel like I’m close to the end since I just unlocked the capital so that will likely take some time. Once I finish Fall of Porcupine, I can post my first game review! I plan to incorporate game reviews into whatever post comes after I complete the game. I haven’t actually reviewed games in the past since I feel like my opinion is constantly changing as I compare it to other games I play later but I’ll give it a shot. For movies and TV, I plan on watching Barefoot Gen 2 (more depression I’m sure), Serenity, and starting Gun Gale Online Season 2. I’m not sure what the plan is when the new PC build is put together. I want to finish Final Profit before I fully switch over but I also want to make sure everything is working as it should on the new build. There’s also going to be a lot of setup involved with moving my stuff over, incorporating my emulators into Playnite, and getting my recording stuff automated. It may be a slow week next week but we’ll see. My first monthly post should also be coming this week. I’m not sure how those will be formatted yet, maybe just some graphs for playtime and purchases or something. I look forward to figuring it out. Until next time!
Backlog total: 3,059 (+8)
A quick note on how the backlog total change is calculated. You may have noticed that my backlog only increased by eight games this week despite acquiring 11 new ones. The reason for that is because I add games to my backlog as soon as I know I’m planning on playing them, whether I’ve acquired it or not. In this case, Amazon Prime revealed their free games for January a couple weeks ago which are released in batches every week. There are three games that were released for free this week that I claimed, but I added them to my backlog a couple weeks ago when they were revealed. That’s the reason for the supposed discrepancy. My hope is that there will come a time when the total change is negative because that means I finally had some backlog progress. We’ll see if that ever comes to pass.
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