I missed my annual “This Blog in 2022” post and just wanted to make an end of January post detailing why and then also rambling a bit about a game I’ve been playing in January and future plans.
Life Update
My excuse for not writing anything is that this last month has been crazy busy because I’m actually moving across the US to the West Coast. In a couple days, I’m gonna be doing a like…2400 mile road trip (about 34 hours non-stop). So yeah, it’s a pretty major move. It’s pretty exciting though, but it means that I’ve been much more occupied than normal and will probably continue to be quite busy as I attempt to settle into the new place.
This Blog in 2021
Looking back at my 2021 post, it seems like my goal was to write 23 posts to match the number of posts I made in 2020. I was short of that goal at 17 posts, but I’m still pretty satisfied with that, especially so since I feel like I played waaaay less games in 2021 than in 2020. I was quite inconsistent with how often I’d update – for example, I made three posts in February and zero in April. Personally, I’m okay with this schedule of just updating when I feel like it because I think it’s more enjoyable that way and prevents it from ever feeling like a chore.
I also noticed that at some point in 2021 I just completely stopped looking at follower count and view count, which in my opinion also helped preventing blogging from feeling like a chore.
This Blog in 2022
The only goal I have in blogging is just in the number of posts, since that’s the only factor I have full control of. I think I’ll attempt again to match the prior year, so a goal of 17 posts. I think that’s achievable enough.
Not really sure if I have anything else particularly interesting to put here. I think after a couple years of blogging, I’ve more or less figured out my pace and style – and obviously I’m still always looking to try to improve – but unfortunately I don’t have any new especially profound discoveries in the land of blogging right now.
Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
Okay so this is the only non-Genshin game I’ve played in January and boy do I have a lot of ~mixed feelings~ towards this game.
Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, or 999 as I call it, is a game by Spike Chunsoft that was released in 2009 on the Nintendo DS. I’m playing the Steam remaster that was released in 2017
For starters, I do legitimately enjoy the gameplay. There are two parts to it – the escape parts and the story parts. The escape part is basically a point-and-click escape room game. The goal does involve literally escaping the room you are in by finding keys/items and solving little riddles. It does remind me of real world escape room games, which I do enjoy on occasion even though I’m bad at them. 999 has a surprisingly large variety of puzzles/rooms too.
The second part is the visual novel part and the plot which….is a bit questionable. The overall plot is decently interesting and the over-arching mystery is alright. I like how the branching paths work out and how there’s a flowchart for all the endings.
Thematically though, I thought that the game was maybe trying a bit too hard to be “edgy”, which is the exact same problem I had with Danganronpa, which is also a Spike Chunsoft game.
The characters had potential but the dialogue is just so cringey. Literally every time the main character tries to make a joke, I wince. During the escape sequences, sometimes a character will just stop you and discuss conspiracy theories or something, basically as plot exposition, but it just happened so often with so many characters and made no sense sometimes. Honestly, I thought the writing was so bad that I almost just quit early on, but I guess I’m glad I didn’t?
Anyway, rant over.
Future
I really want to get this new Pokemon game. To be honest, I feel like despite the good things I’ve heard about it, it feels like its held to such a low standard just because its Pokemon. It looks and seems pretty bad in comparison to Breath of the Wild or Monster Hunter (which seem to be the two largest inspirations). And yet, for some reason I really want to try it. Still haven’t pulled the trigger yet, but I might after the move.
Games (and Other Bits) 
Good luck with the move!
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