With Pokemon Go dominating every conversation, the entire world, and basically the whole human race the past couple of days, it’s required actual focused effort to remember what we all did before That Thursday.

In any  case, the past month has flown by and I’ve made some serious headway in the few games that I’m playing. It’s definitely been RPG-land for me, but they’re all so different that it’s worked out great!

Xenoblade Chronicles

I recently passed what is considered the halfway point of this game. I’ve been trying to switch up my team to build relationships between Melia and everyone else. Anyone else find playing as Melia a little.. boring? I’m not a big fan of her, and I fail to see the value of her moves. True that she has some decent buffs (Strength and Ether Up), but I’d rather have the damage-over-time benefits of Riki (whom I love and is quite possibly my favorite character, by the way) while Melia is busy juggling her auras.

Time after time I find myself sticking to the tried-and-true Reyn, Sharla, Shulk, particularly when it comes to heavy-hitters and any bosses. Although for general grinding, Dunban, Shulk, and Riki is a great combination. The issue I’ve found with Sharla and Melia is that are a little boring to control during normal play. I LOVE playing the healer with Sharla, although there isn’t much to do while facing normal mobs.

I’ve been trying to rebuild Colony 6, but the issue I’ve had is that I cannot for the life of me procure a Sirius Anemone, which is required for the only remaining quest I have for Colony 6 rebuilding. It has a low spawn rate and only spawns at night, which is giving me all sorts of trouble.

Approaching 40 hours on this game and about 60% through.

Earthbound

The funny thing about this game is you can spend an hour making solid progress, or an hour screwing up and doing absolutely everything wrong. I recently had a new member added to my team (Poo) and I’m in between a rock and a hard place. In particular, the Loch Ness Monster (called the Kraken), and a Dinosaur Museum. I’m a little confused as to where to go next – a great feeling for 10 minutes and then a frustrating one after that, one that forces me to hit up GameFaqs. Pretty sure I’m headed into the FourSide sewers but we’ll see.

I try not to use guides for too many games, but in this case I’ve made many exceptions. I’ve also noticed a random spike in difficulty and this has made me panic Save State every 15 minutes, which is just enough time for Earthbound to ruin your shit. I’ve been considering a few power leveling sessions to take out the Kraken but I’m not sure if it’s needed. That being said, I wandered into the Kraken accidentally, not realizing it wasn’t the next place I was supposed to go, and I got absolutely demolished.

Pokemon Yellow

So a little game called Pokemon Go was released this week – in case you just woke up from a stasis – and I realized how much I missed old school Pokemon. I never actually finished Yellow on the 3DS, and hadn’t played it for about two months, but I jumped back into it last night and decided I would wrap it up. With Sun and Moon coming later this year, I decided to finish Yellow in an effort to tie up loose ends, and also to knock a game off my backlog.

I just beat up Team Rocket in Silph Co. and am about to fight Sabrina for the sixth badge. To be honest I’m a little nervous – in Pokemon Yellow, she is far tougher and as my average level is ~38 and I don’t really have a great team, there is a chance this will go terribly. Psychic is horribly overpowered in Generation I so we shall see how this goes! Because a level 50 Alakazam does not sound like something I want to tango with.

One of the issues with the older Pokemon games is that grinding is a huge chore. I do not yet have 50 different types of Pokemon caught, so I cannot obtain the EXP-All from the Professor’s Aide. I’m not sure if obtaining that item should be a priority or if I should single out team members specifically.

I’ve got it on good authority that there is a slight chance I may be getting a new handheld in a few months. That being said, I’m planning on completing these 3 games by September, which is a bit of a stretch if I dawdle about in Xenoblade as I tend to do.

It’s been a very RPG-heavy month and it’s gearing up to stay a trend for the foreseeable rest of the year!