What do you think of sidequests?

Do you gain much fulfilment from sidequests and finding rare items? At what stage would you give up on a quest for a special item or other reward?

Some rare items are nice to get with a little extra effort, but it's rare that I go out of my way for anything that isn't a legendary weapon.

edited 31st Dec '10 1:43:17 PM by Shichibukai

I'm probably more accepting of sidequests than I should be. I assume that I need to complete them all to be powerful enough to beat the final boss, so I do all of them that are available (or all of them that I haven't locked out, in the case of multiple story paths.) I think the only things that have stopped me from completing them are when they revolve around minigames I can't beat, and when they revolve around beating Bonus Bosses.

edited 31st Dec '10 1:41:01 PM by feotakahari

I like them. So long as they aren't ball-shatteringly difficult (LOOKING AT YOU, FINAL FANTASY X), I'm all for them. They usually add a lot of longevity to a game.

As 8-bit Theater puts it, Side-quests are where the majority of experience points can be found.

In a game like Baldur's Gate, Fallout or Morrowind, sidequests are the name of the game. But in most JRP Gs like Final Fantasy, I've never found them very interesting.

I like them if they're rather fun and easy to find. See the Job Boards in MMBN, trouble center thing in Paper Mario, and the Olympus Coliseums in Kingdom Hearts.

But then you get ones like talk to some random guy in an Icy town to learn about some legendary weapons, then search the entire world, including a few dungeons you have completed and have no reason to go back to find them, then fight a crazy hard bonus boss.

And don't forget about playing a memory game 100 times, talk to every woman in the game, name every dog in the game, collect every item in the game (which requires beating the game 3 times and knowing about the hidden relationship values to obtain 3 insignificant items)...

Yeah, JRPG sidequests tend to annoy me with their shallowness. Tales of Symphonia, I'm looking at you. Also: Danguerro from FF 12. Never. Again.

But, give me a couple of characters, a unique line of dialouge, whatever, and I love a sidequest. Bioware and Obsidian have got them down. I even liked the ones from Fall Out 3.

JRP Gs in general (and Final Fantasy in particular) have a serious Guide Dang It! problem when it comes to sidequests. Though the recent Final Fantasy games seem to be getting better about it at least.

Did Final Fantasy XIII even have any —- oh! I get it.

In general, I'll do them if I'm aware of them, and feel like I'm not getting as much out of the game as I could be if I leave them incomplete, but I like it better when they're fit into the story in a sensible way rather than shoehorned in at a point where you really shouldn't have the time or attention to spare. Also I don't like it when they require randomized elements; I'm not going to grind for a specific random encounter or drop for a sidequest.

The third-to-last chapter has sidequests.

They appear nowhere else in the game.

I like them, and I'll do them whenever I can. Especially if they give shiny, shiny loot. Honestly I don't really mind if they're Guide Dang Its as I tend to use guides to do them as efficiently as possible anyway.

I tend to do sidequests in the games I play and I tend to be rather fond of them. I often want to hold them off until the end because I want to complete them all in one nice go without having to hold them off for a bit. I typically do them anyway though... That happens a lot in Zelda games for me.

"God I want to hunt bugs and heart pieces, but I can't get them all so I won't...."

-five minute later-

"OH MY GOD I LOVE FINDING THESE THINGS :D"

Dragon Quest IX's quest system is going to be eating up a lot of my time...I can tell...

I should also mention that my main incentive to do these is not the rewards I get like more health and fancy items to make my experience easier on me. My main incentive is simply doing the things and getting one step closer to 100%ing the game. The simple joy of getting new crap also means more to me than what said crap actually does for me.

edited 31st Dec '10 4:55:44 PM by Aondeug

I like doing sidequests, especially if they flesh out the story/characters or get me cool costumes, but when it comes to JRP Gs usually I don't bother trying to do them until my second playthrough.

Sidequests are fine, if they're fun. If it's all collecting 10 Random Item Drop then nevermind.

edited 31st Dec '10 4:59:42 PM by Ralphrius

The Trouble Center! Man, I loved that. I don't know why, but I love that particular sidequest-factory.

Pokémon Ranger 2 and 3 did them fine, by the way. They were easy to locate (especially in 2 where they were just listed, whether you had spoken with the person or not), and they were usually pretty fun/not frustrating.

Depends on how much work is put into them. Just bringing people items, or looking in some vague area for a specific character/item is boring and usually results in me ignoring it. I want at least a unique fight out of it

The big game-spanning quests tend to be pretty irritating, too. Too easy to forget about, resulting in large amounts of backtracking when you remember it

Accessibility is kind of important for these things as well. Generally need both an easy way to find the quests (even if it's just having few NPCs) and a good way to remember the ones you're on

I can't play a decent WRPG without decent sidequests. On the other hand, I find JRPG's sidequests usually very very boring and skip them altogether.

I'm basically with Deathonabun on this - I like them if they're fun. Except I'm merely indifferent to the Guide Dang It! variety; I tend not to put much effort into those, but if it happens to be right on my route, I'll do it. Then the "repeat <easy task> <some large integer> times" are the ones I actively dislike and will usually ignore completely. (Tales Of Symphonia's "Midlife Crisis" title, I'm looking at you.) If this type is crucial to progress or accounts for an annoyingly large fraction of the good sidequest rewards, I tend to quit the game completely.

edited 2nd Jan '11 5:38:54 AM by Poochy.EXE

If a side quest is actually engaging and has it's own self contained story I really enjoy them. If they're kill X number of whatever or collect-a-thons I pass em by.

A handful of sidequests that gets you either something fun to do or mad loot? Fine.

Three quarters of the damn game being nothing but sidequests? No thank you. (And yes, I dislike the fact that XIII's post-game is nothing but killing giant monsters too, before I get quoted on it.)

edited 2nd Jan '11 6:30:13 AM by don

I generally don't have strong opinions about the amount or possibly even difficulty (as long as it doesn't reach Guide Dang It! levels) of sidequests in a game, but my gut reaction will be to do them as fast as possible for fear the game ends with the main quest.

edited 2nd Jan '11 9:06:07 AM by VutherA

Sidequests are purely Western invention and when done by right people, they're interesting. If they come down to 20 Bear Asses or Fetch Quests with little to no challenge and lots of tedium, then HELL NO.

Guide Dang It!: Noooooo. Way too many Final Fantasy games have the sidequests hidden away for the obsessive fans and people with strategy guides. I got FFVIII for my birthday with a strategy guide way back when, and if i didn't have that thing i would've missed a conversation with an old mayor on how one of the cities was named, i would've missed irving wandering off in the middle of music practice and into a funny cutscene, i would've missed several optional bosses with rewards that are borderline necessary...

And some games have reeeeaaallllyyy obscure rewards too. For example, in Final Fantasy IX there's a Bonus Boss that happens to be a planet, who is immune to physical attacks. You can fix that by beating a certain sidequest. A Luck-Based Mission Fetch Quest that spans the whole damn game mind you. Which when you beat it gives you a ridiculously vague hint about the advantage you just got. This is not how you do a side quest! It doesn't even make any sense! I gave a squirrel some ore so now i can hit a planet!? What the hell!?

Oh, and i need to do all sidequests myself. Maybe not on one playthrough, but i need to do them all. A tiny snippet of conversation that may or may not help flesh out the world or a character or a weapon with a unique skin is enough of an incentive for me to run across the world killing gods and collecting ridiculously rare artifacts. That's the just the way i roll.