Yes, Your Grace 2: Snowfall Review

Yes, Your Grace, Brave At Night's first game, made a name for itself in the kingdom management genre back in 2020. The game took you on a surprisingly emotional journey through a fantasy world where being a good king often meant being a miserable one. It had a pixelated look, an emotional story, and a throne-room simulator twist. 

They're back with Yes, Your Grace 2: Snowfall in 2024, a direct sequel that picks up a year after the first game's war-torn ending. For people who played it, going back to the throne room is like putting on a heavy cloak again: it's familiar, comforting, and a little scary.

You can still play if you haven't played the first one. The second game starts by going over the main events of the first one. You can even answer a few questions, like in Mass Effect, to bring over your choices from the first game. In case you were wondering, those choices do affect how you play now, and sometimes in beautiful ways. This is a nice touch that makes you feel like the bad decisions you made were never forgotten.

You play as King Eryk of Davern in Snowfall, and your job is to rebuild your kingdom after a terrible war. A crumbling castle, a broken economy, and a royal family that has been through a lot are all that's left. At the beginning of the story, there is a sense of hopelessness. Your people need help, your resources are running out, and your family is barely holding on. 

Your son is hiding an illness from you, and your wife is covering it up. At the same time, your newborn twins cry all night, and your kingdom is on the verge of falling apart. A new baron is coming along, too, and he wants to finish what the last war began.

Even though it's sad, Yes, Your Grace 2: Snowfall has some funny parts. The game adds to the tension with dry wit and silly petitioners, like a guy whose raven is making everyone's day or lions on the loose. There's humor in the chaos, and that balance keeps things from getting too overwhelming to handle.

Most of the core gameplay hasn't changed, but it has been improved in all the right ways. Most of your time is spent on your throne, listening to a long line of people every week who want to ask for things. They bring a variety of problems, some of which are urgent, like sick children, and some of which are just plain strange.

You have to figure out who to help and how to do it while managing your limited gold, supplies, and people. As the leader, you are in charge of a group of royal agents. Sten is the general and deals with physical threats. Elellanena is the witch and handles supernatural or medical issues. 

Every agent is given a certain number of action points every week, and they can only be refreshed by paying their salary. You can now make a petitioner wait, which is a small but useful addition to the game. You no longer have to decide quickly. You can now leave, look for supplies, and come back with a better plan.

You can send your agents all over the kingdom to look at maps, find new places, and start side quests when the courtroom is closed. You have to pay for supplies for these trips, but they often lead to side stories or hidden resources that help you win, if you can afford them.

Yes, Your Grace 2: Snowfall doesn't have traditional combat, but every week, you have to figure out how to get things done. Where do you send whom? This week, do you have enough gold to pay your general and your witch? How should you spend your last bit of medicine? Should you give it to a farmer in need or save it for the plague you think is coming?

This puzzle has a lot of moral and resource-based parts that really hit you hard. What makes them great is that most of the time, making the "right" choice doesn't feel good. Always, someone is in pain. That emotional weight, along with a budget that keeps getting smaller, makes every choice important.

Because of the new layered resource categories, it's harder to keep everything in stock, but you have more options for meeting requests. This trade-off makes managing resources more difficult and in-depth. You don't need to save gold anymore; you just need to know which items and agents to buy every week.

Instead of XP, Prosperity, Influence, and Kingdom Level show how far you've come in Snowfall. When you help other people, your Prosperity goes up, which lets you tax more gold. Having power lets you make laws that give people benefits or create new systems. It's important to keep this triangle of Prosperity, Happiness, and Influence in balance because if you lose one, it can ruin the others.

You're not "grinding" in the sense of an RPG, but you are planning how to use each week to make your kingdom stronger. You play for the short term when you buy a day of peace, and you play for the long term when you strengthen the castle walls for an ambush in the future. Although it's not a grindy game, it does reward careful planning.

The game keeps its hand-drawn pixel look, but the lighting and cinematics have been greatly improved. There is snow on the ground. The candles flicker. Things in the world are soft, which makes them sadder. The characters move smoothly, and the throne room feels more alive than ever, even when it's filled with sadness. Every word you say is important. 

Every tear your daughter sheds and every twitch from a nervous petitioner makes you feel very sad. As you might expect, the music in Snowfall is both haunting and beautiful. Every scene is made better by the sad strings, soft piano, and dramatic choirs. The music makes the feeling ten times stronger, whether you're sending your son on a dangerous trip or turning away a beggar. 

The sound design is very good, with castle doors creaking, winds howling, and the satisfying thud of a choice being made. The voice acting is still pretty weak, but the writing is what makes the game great. Every word sounds like it was said by a real person, and the way your family talks to each other is full of nuance and care.

In every way, Yes, Your Grace 2: Snowfall is a real follow-up. It doesn't make the wheel from scratch; it just makes it better. The emotional pressure-cooker gameplay is still there, but it's deeper and more strategic now that resource systems are smarter, decisions can be made more freely, and exploration is better. It's a longer, harder, and sadder game, but it's also warm, funny, and full of hope.

There were some technical problems in the first few weeks, with bugs stopping some players from moving forward. Even though Brave At Night is quick to listen to feedback and fix bugs, this could change your idea about how you feel about the game if you play early. But this team cares, and the game will only get better from here on out.

Undoubtedly, Yes, Your Grace 2: Snowfall is an excellently designed kingdom simulator that expands upon all the qualities shown by the first. For players who have already played, this is a beautifully painful continuation of a story that needed to be told.

This is a story for people who have never read it before. It's about kings, chaos, family, failure, and the impossible choices that connect these things. If you can stand the drama and despair, you may as well stick around for the bumps on the road.