With all of the posts about various mobile games of late, you would be forgiven for assuming that I had gone completely astray and succumbed to Live Service Game Madness.  Mostly because it’s kinda true?

However – and this is a pretty huge however – I’m finally caught up with every game I’ve been playing lately.  Well, mostly.  NIKKE is its own special case.

That is to say, I’ve finished all of the Archon quests and all of the main World Quest chains in Genshin, caught up with the post-Final Chapter antics of RABBIT Squad in Blue Archive, and slapped around Nihilister for a second time in NIKKE.

You might say, if you were for some reason intimately familiar with the game, that just means I’ve finished chapter 22 of NIKKE and currently there are 28 chapters.  And this is also true!  However, because of the way the power requirements are structured in that game there’s no point in even starting chapter 23 until I have ground out a bunch more levels, and grinding those levels just means launching the client every 24 hours or so and tapping a button to collect materials, and there’s really no point to start 23 unless my party is strong enough to go through both chapters 23 and 24 in a single stretch.

Also power requirements are assumed to be lowered for the 1.5 anniversary in a few weeks.  So I’m putting aside story progression and just treating it as an idle grinder.

Anyway, with all of that said, am I still having fun with all of these games?

Well, yes.

Genshin remains the ultimate pretty world to log in to and run around hunting for chests and puzzles and little sparkly things on the ground to pick up and shove in your inventory.  Blue Archive continues to deliver Peak Weirdness in every story chapter, and NIKKE – despite a thoroughly uninspired Re:ZERO crossover event – lets me fill bars and make numbers go up in a way that my dumb ape brain finds deeply compelling.

It also had the BEST April Fool’s event.

And uninspired or not I did blow all of my pity coupons to pull Rem.

I really do think that the Big World Quest chains can be Genshin’s weakest point at times.  The Inazuma ones were great but had way too many time gates, the Fontaine quests were depressing as all get out at times, and the Sumeru quests made my eyes glaze over trying to keep track of all of the Deep Lore and weird names.

But, once the NPCs – and Paimon – stopped talking there were usually things to beat up, puzzles to solve, and chests to open so eh.  Good with the bad.

Oh, and while it’s technically not a mobile game, I did luck into the Legendary axe from the current season of World of Warcraft.

Because of the way WoW does a complete gear reset every few months, getting this axe late in the season wasn’t quite as impactful as if it had come into my virtual life earlier, but at least we’re apparently getting to upgrade it in the upcoming season, and that will keep it viable until the next expansion.

Anyway, WoW aside I think I’ve managed to turn three major time sinks into “waiting for the next content drop” games and that’s a good feeling.