Chaos Rings III is a game I played a little of, posted about and prepared to drop, and then suddenly the story took a turn for the dramatic so I decided to stick around a little longer. The initial mood of the game was the usual happy-go-lucky shounen fare, small time country boy traveling around on adventures with an eclectic bunch of friends.

Then it all went dark with bad guys trying to consume the corpses of dead fathers, mentors sacrificing themselves to save others, friends going missing, protagonists losing an arm and almost dying and then said protagonist falling into a terrible but not surprising depression.

So I thought I would keep playing at least until things got a little more cheerful. It’s not like Chaos Rings III was a great game or anything, but I didn’t feel right leaving it on such a negative note. Not only that, but while it’s common for people around the hero to fall like flies, it’s less common to see them personally suffering lasting disability. So it would have been interesting to see how they dealt with it if they had taken things in that direction.

But first, Square-Enix chickened out and gave him a new arm somehow, don’t remember how. I’m happy and all, but they could have explored that avenue a little further first. More importantly, despite the story development, the truth still remained: this game really isn’t any fun to play.

The gameplay is just way too tedious with its slow, repetitive battles and boring card options. Every time I picked up the controller and thought about playing it, something in my mind just went “Urghhh…” Worse than that, it turned me off from PSTV/PSVITA as a whole, because every time I thought about playing something, I would think “Oh yeah, I still need to continue Chaos Rings III…”

Well I hereby declare that I don’t have to do anything in 2020. This year I won’t play anything I don’t 100% want to play, no matter how long I’ve had it, how good the reviews are, how far I’ve already gotten. It doesn’t matter, if I don’t wanna, I’m not gonna. This most likely means I won’t be playing many games and dropping a large percentage of those I do try, but that’s what happens when you prioritize quality over quantity. See you guys again next time I feel like playing something!