Piling Up The Role Playing Games

My RPG game time has been on pause for a while. I’ve been casually playing Minecraft and taking a break from gaming in general. But thanks to a recent birthday gift — Xenoblade Chronicles 3 — landing in my controller-hands, I’m motivated; unpause the role-playing! It’s going to take a focus on other fun for a while before I can get to enjoy XC3 though.

I've had a few “paused” games I should finish first: Octopath Traveler and Bravely Default II. I’m about 3/4 through each of them. So finishing shouldn’t take too long. In fact, I finally finished the main story for Pokémon Legends Arceus on my birthday. After those, I plan to play Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition before XC3. Hopefully by that point I won’t be getting burned out. It’s a lot of rich RPG goodness!

Let’s say I somehow pull all that off over the next few months. Great. Then I plan to sink my teeth into…Octopath Traveler II, releasing next February. Ideally, I’d finish it by May when Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom takes over my free-time.

Here’s my proposed gaming calendar:

• Oct '22 — Arceus
• Nov '22 — Octopath
• Dec '22 — BD II
• Jan-Feb '23 — XC:DE
• Feb-Mar '23 — XC3
• Apr-May '23 — Octopath II
• May-Jun '23 — Tears of the Kingdom

Is that feasible for me? Well, probably not. That’s a lot of big RPGs back to back with no palate cleansing in between. But hey, gotta have gaming goals. In my household where 7 people share 2 Switches, it’s not so easy to find game time. Also, working full-time...takes time. #adulting

The real ideal, I think, should be to enjoy these games like I did when I was a kid: as if I had only one to play. Instead of feeling like I need to hurry up and get through them all, I should slow down and savor each one to the fullest. Rather than be concerned that I might lose time to play one or more RPGs, I should pretend I have just the one in front of me, sink into it, and play it for all its worth without haste.

In any case, I’ll need to pause book reading to some degree; it’s game time. But there’s no pause button for blogging.

Have you played XC3? How do you manage time for all your hobbies?