Yes, Your Grace (2020)

Pelissä ohjataan pienen kuningaskunnan kuningasta. Peli pyörii pääosin valtaistuinsalissa, jossa pitää tehdä päätöksiä neuvonantajien ja kansalaisten esittämiin kysymyksiin. Samalla pitää varmistaa, että omat resurssit hyötykäytetään oikein, eikä mikään resurssi saisi koskaan mennä nollille. Lisäksi pelissä pitää solmia liittoja ja toisaalta, jotkut tilanteet yllyttävät kuningaskunnat sotaan. Omat valinnat vaikuttaa aika paljon pelin kulkuun (tai ainakin sellainen illuusio jätettiin) ja sen vuoksi peli jätti kutkuttavan fiiliksen pelata peli joskus vielä uudelleen, josko tuon saisi pelattua paremmin läpi. Pelin yhtenä kantavana teemana on myös oman perheen kuviot. Lähdetkö esimerkiksi naittamaan tyttäriäsi kenelle tahansa muutaman miekan toivossa vai pidätkö perheesi lähelläsi vaikka vihollinen koputtaisi jo oveasi.

Graafisesti peli on hyvin simppelin näköinen, mutta peli omaa kuitenkin kivan tyylin, jota on mukava katsella pelin ajan. Mekaanisesti pelissä ei ole mitään ihmeellistä, peli on tietynlainen hybridi point &clickkiä, tarinallista kokemusta ja manageripeliä.

Peli oli hämmentävän koukuttava kokemus, joka tempasi tarinallaan mukaansa ja piti otteessaan yllättävän hyvin loppuun asti. Pelasin pelin viidessä päivässä läpi ja pelitunteja kertyi noin 20, joka mielestäni kertoo hyvin paljon pelin vetovoimasta. Tämä on ehdottomasti yksi tämän vuoden yllättäjistä!

4/5 Kiitettävä

This game has everything I can ask from a game which lasts 5 to 7 hours: good story, enjoyable gameplay, interesting design, nice soundtrack and loveable characters. It has the right duration not to get boring or tiring. It's a game that I would recommend both to newbies and to experienced gamers.

I must point, however, one noticeable flaw: for a kingdom management game, where you are free to take different choices, "good" or "ethical" choices are disproportionally favored.

With great power, or in the case of Yes, Your Grace, a modest amount of power, comes great responsibility. In Yes, Your Grace you play as the King of a poor and struggling kingdom. With the threat of war looming as a result of past mistakes that occurred before the events of the game, you are tasked with using everything within your power to protect your kingdom. The decisions will not be easy, the consequences may not always be what you expect, and the path to survival may require sacrifices from you that are more than you can bare.

So let’s start with the gameplay. As King of Davern you are responsible every day for meeting with citizen, other kings and queens, hearing out criminal complaints and even occasionally dealing with family drama from the oh so uncomfortable throne each day. Each encounter will require you to make choices. Should you send one of your agents to investigate? Should you offer gold or supplies? Should you ignore them entirely leaving them angry and lowering the overall morale of your kingdom? Each resource is limited, and you must be judicious with how you allocate said resources. Let just one, including morale, which is tracked at the bottom right of the screen, drop to zero and it’s game over. I didn’t find the resources to be so sparse that I struggled with keeping them above zero, but you will inevitably have to refuse help to people at times, and picking and choosing who gets help may occasionally be necessary rather than an intentional decision. But not everyone that requests help from the throne has good intentions. Some will try to scam you, some will provide nothing in return, and helping some may put stress on your relationship with allied kingdoms.

Which brings us to one of the game’s other systems. In order to build an army to prepare for war you will need to request help from other kingdoms. There are about a dozen other kings and queens that you can reach out to, and all of them will require something of you in exchange for your help. Some will not help you if others do, some will require more of you than you are willing to give, and some offer their armies and their resources for very little in exchange. You will need the help of some if you are going to survive the battle to come.

Then there is the game’s battle sequence. Not to spoilt too much, but you will have some agency over how the battle unfolds. Preparation is key, and that’s about all I’ll say about that.

I’m between all of your royal duties and battle preparations lies of the heart of the story. After you have spoken with everyone in the throne room you are free to move about the kingdom for the rest of the day. Here you can speak with your family, visit the dungeons, investigate a crime, send your agents to explore neighboring villages, and even find a few secrets. The family dynamic in this game is beautifully written. It’s funny, charming, sad, frustrating, and by the end of the game I found myself deeply attached to each character. Being a king is hard, being a father is sometimes harder.

All in all Yes, Your Grace has a gameplay loop that kept me captivated. Each day would last anywhere from two to ten minutes, and it was hard for me to stop pushing through to the next day over and over again when I had real world responsibilities they would pull me away from the game. The story is constantly developing, I was always curious to see how my decisions would effect me the following day. I became immersed in the world and in the lives of these characters. There were twists and turns along the way, some that I saw coming, some that I didn’t. Even a few times where I found myself getting emotional. It’s not a long game, maybe around 8-10 hours and when I completed it I immediately started a second campaign, determined to make better choices.

I played the entirety of my first play through of this game through gamepass Xcloud mobile gaming on my phone. The touch controls were great for a game with simple mechanics like this, although there is no right stick with the touch controls, so when the text required scrolling down I couldn’t do it, which meant there were 4 or 5 times that I received letters in the game that I could only read part of. Other than that my experience was great. It was nice being able to play it on my phone while my daughter watched arc, or laying in bed at night.

I loved Yes, Your Grace and I feel confident recommending it to anyone that’s interested in a game with a good story or that enjoys kingdom management sims. It is currently on Xbox Gamepass if you are a subscriber and want to check it out, and if you’re not a gamepass subscriber you should be able to pick it up pretty cheap, less than $20. It’s well worth the money, in my Opinion.

It was extremely hard to pull myself away and not finish my first playthrough in one sitting. Beat it in 6 hours. Looking forward to beating it a second time with different choices now that I'm more familiar with the characters' intent and setting. Also the music had no reason to be as good as it was.

If you liked Long Live the Queen, you'll love this one.