Hi everyone, and welcome back to My Week Unwrapped, where I discuss all the games I’ve been playing over the last seven days. I’m running out of Fontaine map to explore in Genshin Impact, so I should now have more time for other games. But I still spent much of my week with the game. There’s also a new Adventure Escape game, though it’s currently only available for paying players. I also started playing Titan Quest again, thanks to the new release of the Ultimate Edition. There’s a lot to discuss, so let’s begin.

Adventure Escape Mysteries: Vanishing Act

There’s a new Adventure Escape Mysteries game out this week, and it’s another Detective Kate mystery called Vanishing Act. The catch is, you can’t only play it right now if you buy the VIP package for $8.99. It allows you to play the game a few weeks early, since it won’t be free until December 20th. It also includes an extra exclusive standalone game that won’t be available for free. I think this is an interesting way to monetize the series while still allowing the vast majority to play for free. Locking the extra chapter behind a paywall is not super great and I don’t know if that means that people who come to the game/series later won’t have the option to buy it at all. Maybe they’ll offer just that chapter at a lower price? I’m not sure. But they did remove the Clue game after a few months, so I guess they’re not against doing things like that. The new game itself is on the easy side so far, but the story shows us some of Kate’s childhood and it’s well-written from what I’ve played. I’m still making my way through it and working on my walkthrough, but I’ll be sure to give more impressions once I finish it and let you know if I think it’s worth the $9.

Titan Quest: Ultimate Edition

I really don’t know what made me stop playing Titan Quest after about 50 videos. I was certainly enjoying it. Perhaps I knew that I was close to the hardest boss in the original game and panicked. In any case, the new Ultimate Edition released this week and includes the new Eternal Embers DLC. The regular app and Legendary app also have it but you have to buy it as an IAP. So anyway, I was able to pull my save from the Legendary app to the new one flawlessly. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that the fog of war now gets included in iCloud saves. Before the update, if you swapped to another device, it wouldn’t show the parts of the map that you’ve already revealed. Now that’s fixed so I can play on my iPhone if the mood strikes. I do wish I hadn’t taken such a long break from the game, though. I was out of practice and got my first death while trying to run from a group of enemies around an environment that had a lot of dead ends. After that, I made it to the final boss of the original game, Typhon, and discovered that my pets get killed instantly. So now I’m going to have to take some time to regroup, maybe respec my skills and see if I can develop a plan for taking him down. I really hope I can, because I don’t want to have to restart with a new character and build after 50 hours with this one. I also wish the game allowed you to respec attributes, but hopefully I didn’t mess that up, too. If you haven’t bought any of the Titan Quest apps before, this is your best option to get everything all at once. If you prefer to try it piecemeal so you can see how you like it first, you can still buy the original or Legendary versions and buy the DLCs as you go along. But it is a game worth playing in some form if you’re a fan of hack-n-slash RPGs.

Soul Knight

Soul Knight is quite an old game by now but, believe it or not, I never tried it before. I think it was the monetization that turned me off, but I was still curious all these years and kept meaning to try it. Recently, Chillyroom released Soul Knight Prequel, which looked even better to me, and I was eager to try it. Unfortunately, they’ve been having issues with their servers and I haven’t been able to play yet. So I figured I’d try the original while I wait. And to be honest, I’m kind of lukewarm on it. Playing around with different weapons is fun, but I didn’t love having the drop the one I was carrying to try the one I looted. I also couldn’t figure out how to see their stats — assuming there is a way. I would have much preferred an inventory to store any weapons I found, and I think the new game does have that, so I’m looking forward to it. I also found the lobby confusing, where you can see all the different classes available either for free or for purchase. I tried the tutorial and had to quit because it was telling me to do something I couldn’t do yet and it was hard to even read the text the way it was showing up on the screen. The game itself also felt very repetitive and I didn’t get sucked into it like so many others. It’s still worth trying since it’s free, but I’m just going to patiently wait for Soul Knight Prequel to work because it looks more my speed.

Pizza Hero

I’ve been playing Pizza Hero on and off since it first released, mostly picking it up each time there’s a content update. This week we got the first update since the Halloween area was added. There’s no new area, but it now each area can be played in endless mode and you can try for high scores. Unfortunately, there’s no way to save mid-run and I quit my run after 43 waves. I’m not sure why a mode that’s meant to be played endlessly (it’s in the name!) wouldn’t let you save your progress. So I’m not sure how much I’ll end up playing it. This update also added stats that tell you how many pets you have left to find in each area, which I do appreciate. I was hoping to get the ones I’m missing on Endless mode, but you can’t keep your pets if there’s no portal to jump through. So it’s a matter of replaying the same areas until you get all the pets. Hopefully there were be new areas added in the future and I’ll have more reason to play.

Genshin Impact

And last, I spent a lot of time with Genshin Impact, trying to catch up on all the Fontaine content. I played through Furina’s story quest and like her even more now. I also got a free Freminet and penguin friend after finishing the event that focused around him. And I took a chance and pulled 10 wishes on the new banner to try to get Kirara — and I did! So now I have all the 4-stars available in the game at the moment. Aside from that, I got all the Fontaine areas completed either to 100% or close to it. Those last few percentage points will be tricky, though. I may go back to Sumeru since I have more left to explore there. I don’t think 4.3 adds new land, so maybe I shouldn’t have rushed through the current content. Oh well — it gives me time to enjoy other games.

And that’s everything I’ve been up to this week! I also finished the second season of Invasion, which was absolutely terrible. I think I was hate watching it after a certain point. I finished the first season of Lessons in Chemistry, which was great and I hope it gets another season. I’m now watching A Murder at the End of the World and I’m not sure yet how I feel about it. But it’s holding my attention, so I’ll stick with it. Anyway, let me know in the comments section which games you’re playing and I’ll see you back here next time with more of My Week Unwrapped!