Backloggin’ the Year – Paws’ Pilgrimage, October 2021

Welcome to Backloggin’ the Year, a feature that discusses the challenges and excitement that comes with working through your backlog. Site owner Anna Marie Privitere looks at where she’s at in terms of her backlogging goals.

I finally settled into a much healthier and stable work routine this month, which meant more time for video games.  November is when the backlog busting gets really hard — I feel like I’ve blown through a lot of my existing backlog, and I have a well-documented, extra-strength weakness to deep discounts.  Between gift card promotions and deep digital sales, I know I’m going to be adding a whole slew of games to my plate.  With that in mind, I’m definitely looking back at everything I’ve started this year and making final decisions on whether they’ll go onto the 5-hour rule pile, or roll into my “to be finished in 2022” list.

The Streams: The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 3rd 

Opening chests in Trails in the Sky the 3rd is my favourite thing to do now. pic.twitter.com/Z2BaRhfg3k

— Anna Marie Privitere (@amprivitere) October 16, 2021

A single game on the streaming docket this month; Trails in the Sky the 3rd taking up all my streaming hours.  I have had a bit of a rocky relationship with the Trails series, getting about eight hours into TitS FC before kicking it to the curb, as well as a 5-hour ruling of the first Cold Steel game.  It wasn’t until our former EIC Michael Cunningham, alongside longtime site Operations Manager Sam Wachter, coaxed me into giving Cold Steel a second try that the series really grabbed me.  With the Crossbell games finally being localized, along with a new Calvard arc in the future, it was time to dip back into the TitS series for the game that would fill in a lot of plot holes for me, especially in my knowledge around the Septian Church.  I’m really glad I decided to give it a try.  Though the start is dismally slow, it was worth sticking it out.

The 5-Hour Rule: Spaceland

I reviewed the Braveland Trilogy for the site a couple years back, and a recent discussion around what the developers would be doing next reminded me they’d released another game on Switch, and it conveniently happened to be on sale.  Unlike Braveland, which is an homage to Heroes of Might and Magic, Spaceland is an homage to the X-COM series.  I persevered to stage 15 and got pretty stuck; I went googling for some strategies and, much to my surprise, it turns out a lot of people get stuck somewhere around stages 13, 15, or 18 in the game.  Unfortunately, the advice available online loosely fell into two categories: “git gud” or “drop down to easy, ya baby,” and since I was already playing on easy, into the bin it went.  Unpopular opinion time: a game’s easy mode should, in fact, be easy.

What?  That’s it?

Yep.  Just two games this month, three if you count Raging Loop took part of October to finish up, except for some ongoing mobile titles I’ve been spending a lot of time on, particularly Dragon Quest Tact.  Now that there’s a regular stream of pop-up events, there’s always something new to be doing in the game, and there’s something addictive about watching numbers go up and favourite Dragon Quest monsters clobbering their equally infamous foes.

THE FINAL TALLY

Started: 2 (64 total)
Completed: 1 (41 total)
5-Hour Ruled: 1 (15 total)

New games played: 0 (20 total)
Backlogged games played: 0 (31 total)