A couple of days ago I was quite proud of my self-restraint… a whole 3 day weekend had gone by and, even though I have plenty of credit on my Xbox account, I didn’t pay up to play Avowed as part of the Premium Edition upgrade.

Now, admittedly, a lot of that was that it was Valentine’s weekend, which coincides with my anniversary with the better half, but never the less, I could have paid £17.99 and enjoyed playing several days before the general release.

There was also a spanner in the works… for out anniversary, my infinitely better half bought me Fantasian: Neo Dimension on the PlayStation 5 as it had appeared in a sale.

Now I had wanted this on the Xbox… it’s where I played the previous Mistwalker titles in the 360 era, and while Blue Dragon may have been a game I could happily never touch again (even if it has one of the best battle music tracks ever heard) Lost Odyssey was easily in the top 3 JRPGs of that whole generation… for me, Mistwalker games were Xbox games.

And it wasn’t available physically on the Series X, so the credit that sat on my Xbox account was for when it eventually went on sale digitally.

Yet… I consider myself console agnostic… and a sale is a sale, and physical always trumps digital for me.

So, I have a game I own installed in Fantasian, and a game installed via Gamepass that I can play for free in a couple of days time… both RPGs that will, obviously, become time sinks.

Over the next couple of days, as I finished off Hero of Fate, I listened to a few Xbox themed podcasts, all of which covered the release of Avowed… and the more I heard, the less I felt inclined to play.

Whether it be the lack of variety in enemies, that a particular early find weapon was practically enough to see you through the whole game, or an Achievement list that seems to be very specific/pedantic in what you need to do to unlock… I just wasn’t getting the impression that this would be a game for me.

The first-person viewpoint isn’t an issue, in Fallout or Elder Scrolls games as soon as I enter a cave or building, I instantly switch to first person to give me a wider view, Cyberpunk was entirely first person… maybe it was that you can’t go back once you’ve completed the game and finish any remaining side quests.

It just stopped sounding like something I’d enjoy playing… or would end up needing multiple runs to unlock everything… or the lack of post end content… but I decided to give it a pass right now.

Which naturally opens up time to play Fantasian… but I can’t help but feel that, more and more, that my Xbox is just there to keep topping up my pointless Gamerscore total, whereas all the Quality experiences are appearing on my PlayStation… not helped when, of the 22,500+ points I’ve added to my Gamerscore this year, only 1,000 are for games that were really worth playing and the rest were shovelware or updates to previously played shovelware.