*Update* Hey all. Had this vid started a while ago but a little late getting it finished here. As many of you know my wife and I had been expecting. Though the baby was only due a couple days ago she decided to surprise us 3 weeks early. Baby is in good health and though there have been complications with my wife she is recovering cleanly so far as well. With the state of things at home even more work has come down to me to complete than I was initially expecting with a newborn, but it is slowly evening out some. I have quite a few other videos in production, some basically finished as it is, but I will be holding some back so I can release a few as if I actually had a regular upload schedule later. This one I just decided to release now as ff16 is quickly becoming "old news" and the type of video isn't my usual thing.
I guess first off, congratulations on the baby. Best regards for the future. Secondly, I'm sorry to hear about the complications. I was able to see your post about what happened and that's genuinely terrifying. Glad to hear that your wife is well now and healing.
The only problem with FF16 side quests is that it's just too many of them. Some of them genuinely have good stories to them, but most of them, especially the earlier ones, are just padding and filler content.
I’d say my favorite recent implementation of side quests is in NieR:Automata. They don’t all have unique gameplay or anything, but many of them added to the world building. They all added to the melancholic feeling and would make me emotional by the end, as a lot of them discussed the ideas like how to live with the death of those close, how to stay happy in a horrible situations, mourning, etc. A few of them foreshadow main story events too, and at some points they made me as emotional as the main game.
Both Nier Games, when the sidequests deal with something character related, do a great job of reinforcing the themes of the Story that all kind of add to the impression the end of the games leaves on you.
Lots of great games use the "job boards" approach to side quest design. Hell, in the Trails in the Sky trilogy, there is a literal job board at every bracer guild house and your job as the JRPG protag is to read the board, do the quests to help people, and pocket the sweet, sweet mira. The sky trilogy turned the JRPG job board into a full-time occupation. A lot of really great games, such as Chained Echos, use the job board structure, and I would argue that the ones that don't suffer for not having it. You always want some side quests to be out in the wild, and be ones that players uncover through exploration (chained echos has a "quest board" in game, but some side quests are not on there and are found through just going out there and talking to every NPC), but one of the purposes of side quests is to have character interactions that don't fit neatly into the mainline game, but that are critical nonetheless. Note to anyone reading this: do the Ilya's stalker side quest in Trails to Zero, it's really important. You don't want to have all of these quests scattered to the wind, it would make the game feel disjointed and while some players will talk to every single NPC (especially if it's a trails game), there are a lot of players who just don't. There needs to be a balance, and posting most quests on a jobs board, but having a few that are found through exploration is a good, balanced compromise. Ultimately, what makes a side quest worth doing are pretty easy to list: it should have a good reward associated with it, it should have some key character growth or story progression for some side characters, it should be logical and not have any extra moving parts that are unnecessary and it should fit logically into the story and plot. Of those, the "no extra moving parts" thing seems to be the hardest to keep control on. Every JRPG, from the dawn of the genre, has had fetch-quests as a part of them, all the way back to the original Dragon Quest and the original Final Fantasy (go to the desert caravan, buy the fairy in the bottle, release the fairy, get the stuff you need to make your submarine work from her, and take the submarine to the water shrine, getting into the water shrine, and defeating the fiend of water, is the actual quest objective; the fairy is a fetch-quest). That's not a deal breaker for me, so long as the fetch quest has some tangible rewards or gives you a nice bit of additional story for the trouble. I just did the Alster Harvest Festival in Cold Steel 4 the other night, and it's a classic fetch-quest, but it was worth it to see just how deeply the people of Alster venerate "their prince" and how much he loves them and trusts them in return. Anyway, good to see you with a new upload Tarks, be sure you take care of the wife and baby first, that's highest priority, we'll still be here on youtube when that part of your life settles down. Please send us an update every once in awhile if you can, we're all rooting for you.
I'm not saying a job board can't be used well. With trails it's literally part of the characters jobs and makes sense. But I am saying Job boards can and often are the laziest way to implement a ton of empty sidequests.
@@TarksGauntletYou are 100% right, and I got that from the video. Used well, it's a great game mechanic that helps to organize side quests, assign a priority to them, and indicate where you need to go and what you need to do. Used poorly, it's a lazy cop-out that developers use to add cut-and-paste side quests that have no personality, rewards or a compelling reason to do them. I just think it's important to highlight why the mechanic exists in games, and why, properly done, it's a great method to use, alongside it's capacity for abuse.
XVI Quest Design takes a lot of inspiration from XIV questing design since its made by a few of the XIV development team. I describe the game to other XIV players as an unofficial XIV expansion since questing and story structure is just like XIV.
FFXV to me was the one with the absolute worst side "quests". I'm usually a completionist but had to train myself to avoid them in that game to avoid burnout.
totally agree, I feel like many of my favorite games have too much useless text, details, or side quests. Cosmic Star Heroine is a great example of a game that doesn't have any of these problems and it's so fantastic, you're always in the action or furthering the story. I'd go as far as to say it could have used a little more detail but man I loved that game.
Couldn't have said it better myself. Especially that part about map markers. I feel like that's a whole other topic in and of itself. I'm so sick of games marking everything for you and presenting it as a checklist because gamers have fomo. Even Yakuza, before Yakuza used to just let you randomly stumble onto substories on the street, and I thought that added a lot to the feel of them. Now, you just go toward the marker because you know something's there, complete the objective, point A to point B, then rinse and repeat for the next quest, and then the next, until the map is empty. To me, it's way more fulfilling to be walking down the street and suddenly come across a dine and dasher run out of a resraurant, leading into a spontaneous chase scene. Or going into a dance club and dancing to a couple songs and then being challenged to a dance-off by someone that I had no expectation if bumping into. Spontaneous encounters are generally way more interesting to me, and I'm excited to play baldur's gate 3, as I hear that game is full of this kind of quest structure.
There seems to be a few shots Atelier's way which got me thinking: I played FF for thirty years and dropped it like a bad habit when I found out how addicting Gust's games were. Job boards, 90% of the time, don't work, but Atelier is all about that sweet, sweet item game that makes every reward exciting. Even if a reward doesn't seem to do anything at first, it's likely an ingredient for a super powerful and unique item later on. FF sidequests of late usually end up as, "Here's a sword that does more damage than your last one", or worse: "Here's some money and some cooking ingredients for the cooking system you don't use."
Ateliers use of a job board makes in-universe sense, but the quests they provide are devoid of any meaningful or memorable content. It's just a plank of wood you visit periodically to exchange what you've gathered for other items, money and xp.
@@TarksGauntletStory-wise, for sure, it's completely lacking, but I find having my "to-do" list in Atelier games and knocking things off in priority super addicting: Optimizing productivity, finding exploits, farming top materials, etc. The fact that you can do most tasks while playing the main game is critical for it to work. I'm fine with story-based or gameplay-based sidequests (the best do both) but I found the reason FF is so lacking is that it does neither. In FF15, I caught one fish and picked up one dog tag and was done with those. I fought the Adamantoise at least, but I'd still say I had more fun with Atelier's job boards.
Ryza 3 was so hard to finish because I couldn't take three steps without someone going "Someone needs help!" That game was overstuffed with side quests for items combined with the side quests for world building.
I can understand some missables tbh. Ff16 would have good cause for some considering it has 2 time skips that would make doing an early game sidequest really late not make any sense, but generally I'd look down on them as well. That said, making quests invisible and require player discovery shouldn't make them missables. Just harder to find lol
I am not a fan of being forced to view a guide for sidequests. I enjoyed a lot of older tales of side quests, but the hidden nature was a detriment to that.
If a sidequest has a good reward or is interesting I will do it, but some that just give like 5 potions in certain games just feel like filler at the end of the day
Funny enough with Billboard quests, you are 100% right with Atelier games, i read the first ones, then stopped but at the same time, never say them as annoying since most of them are repeatable and I only accepted those I already had the ingridients for. The Billboard quests that annoyed me were more Legends of Heroes ones that got me out of my main quest to do something and in most gave me no importance to the plot
Interesting topic! I personally can't stand side quests, almost in any game...Yakuza I seem to be okay with them but even then, I don't want to do that many. Just not my thing I guess - I really like sticking to the main story and that's it. I think because I don't have tons of time, I like to complete games and move onto the next.
Great video! Agree about what makes a good sidequest. The Yakuza series is absolutely top-tier when it comes to this- I can’t recommend the series enough if someone hasn’t tired it. P.s. I’m relieved you and the family are doing okay and staying safe!
Great video. :) This thing that I most disagree with is the idea that side quests should be optional. They shouldn't. Skipping side quests is like skipping secondary POV chapters in a book. The only difference is that side quests can be missable (ideally because of choices made made by the player in the game). The type of side content that is skippable and is bloat - and are the mini game nonsense like chocobo racing, or clear this respawning fort etc. A game should and ought to be built around the idea that side content *isn't* optional and that it is a core part of the narrative that you'd only consider skipping if you were re-playing... That's actually how i'd do it. Side quests are only skippable in NG+ I'm not a huge fan of truly missable side quests that oblige you to talk to every npc and examine every object - I grew thoroughly fed up with that in the 90s - But game's liike Baldur's Gate 3 do a good enough tob of signposting everything whilst making it feel as though you are discovering things yourself. The quests in final fantasy 16 were definitely over-objectived but I think that the biggest problem by far is that they were backloaded - right when the evil god appears you get a dozen side quests about cake or something. I like those side quests and I don't need tangible rewards for them (if they are good for world and character building) but they are for the beginning or the middle of the game when I am looking to invest in all the world building. Not when the apocalypse is truly imminent - that is far, far to late to try and make me care about the world and its people.
If it's mandatory it's not really a sidequest. I think the "optional" part is implied by being a sidequest. I understand not wanting to skip any though.
I’m one of those people that tries to complete every single side quest in a game. I got a lot of enjoyment doing sidequests in the Xenoblades, SMT 5, and others. That said, sidequests were a lot cooler when there were only a few of them and you had to figure them out yourself. Some examples are finding the casino or the super boss in Mario RPG or all of the sidequests in Chrono Trigger.
Honestly, I feel like this is less of a Japanese RPG issue and more just a modern gaming issue in general. For example, I recently just finished playing "Resident Evil 4 Remake", which isn't remotely an RPG, and it had side-quests in the form of Merchant Requests. But as the theme of this video goes, they weren't that good. Sell a golden egg. Sell 3 vipers. Kill 3 rats. Kill 3 rats again...but over there. Shoot all blue medallions in a location. Shoot all blue medallions in another location. Kill a stronger enemy variant. Kill another stronger enemy variant. All for a rarer secondary currency for a special shop that had a limited selection of items. And of course the way they usually were implemented was also suspect. Some requiring you to backtrack through areas you already explored, often with no additional changes to them. They actively become a chore...in something that's supposed to be a survivor-horror shooter. Heck, remembering just now, just about anything from Ubisoft in the last decade is especially guilty of this. But really, I don't mind. I'm still finding modern RPGs that do side-quests well enough, either due to the activities involved or the narratives attached. "Bug Fables" has a wide array of side-quests with unique mini-bosses and even mini-games. Something like "The Cruel King and The Great Hero" might not have had every side-quest as a hit but the messages of some of them individually were touching, damn near teared up at one in particular. Much less the way they built upon each other and came together by the end just felt like it was worth the effort. Though I guess those are smaller experiences, free of the AAA budget bloat and expectations.
Every time i'd get a handfull of quests inside the hideway i would stop playing that day. It is abysmal how the game expects you to walk at the slowest pace possible inside your giant base from one side to the other multiple times in every single side quest, without a option to run or teleport through key points in it, all it did was make it more boring and a slog to go through. At some point is just started skiping dialog in side quests just to save time as i lost interest in the stories and just wanted to get over with it to 100% the game. To this day i still didn't finish the game, because after every major event there are those side quests and main quests that worked the same would make me lose the will to keep going on. Since last year i have been playing through the Trails series while doing every side quest available and i don't have the same issue i have with FF16 for these 3 reasons: 1)Trails games let me boost the speed, so the backtracking is minimized 2)Trails are turn based games, i don't feel like i'm wasting my time going through these side stories when i could be having more fun killing monsters and bosses like in FF16 3)Trails side quests feel more rewarding than FF16s, be it by giving more insight in the world that i'm more invested on than in FF since it has the promise of it caring on to future titles. Or because they give me actually usefull and meaningfull items/equipment. Like, i don't know how they could fumble this aspect of the game, i felt so dumbfounded when i crafted a cool sword from a side quest, just to imediatly get a new one from the bahamut main quest that gave me 2 more of every stat, than the one i took 1 side quest and 3 notorious mark to craft and never got to use.
It was both hilarious, and sad to me, when after slaving over getting these 2 blacksmiths to work together and gathering super rare materials for them to attempt to craft a legendary, ultimate sword for you, they hand it over and immediately say "hey, we're pretty sure we can make a better sword if you bring us these other materials." Before you even get to start enjoying this sword they present to you as the ultimate weapon they undercut it's power by telling you they can randomly make something stronger with no history attached to it. Like it's no big deal anymore.
You didn't do the last side quests that get dumped on you before the final boss? Those are actually the best ones with decent payoffs storywise. Quest objectives are still boring though.
I done most of them, and watched the Torgal one (it was the only one I missed that seemed worthwhile.) I tried, and I mean really tried to force myself through them, but after 2 hours and only completing a small handful that frankly weren't that great, I just couldn't bother anymore.
@@TarksGauntlet Gotcha. I think most of them are gated behind quest chains as well and act as the last act of the chain. So if you didn't do everything as they got unlocked you'd have to spend so much time doing menial tasks only to get to the final quest that's actually worth it. From the top of my head Torgal's, Jill's, Gav's and Dion's quests had emotional payoffs with fully produced cutscenes, not that C-tier scene BS where characters just stand in place exchanging pieces of dialogue. I just loved the world, so all these sidequests gave me an excuse to spend more time in it. But as you said, mechanically they're the same thing over and over, plus overexplained, so I wouldn't recommend pushing through them just to get the "checklist" done. Only dive in if you can't get enough of the game.
The issue with Final Fantasy XVI is that it lacks enjoyable gameplay, well-designed world exploration, and engaging traversal options. This makes the general experience outside of boss build-up missions feel like a chore.
I will usually do a few side quests, then skip the rest. Unless they are part of the story or have something awesome happen, then I generally consider them a waste of time.
This issue is so prevalent that it does hinder my ability to enjoy RPGs. I kind of burnt myself out on Trails/Kiseki because -- while the dialogue, stories, and world-building is often great in the sidequests -- what you actually have to do is very tedious and repetitive. I think that's why I like the older Zelda games; there's a very small, focused amount of sidequests, but they were varied and extremely meaningful. Especially the rewards and upgrades they give. Majora's Mask did this extremely well.
I think it's due to the writing and world building. The npcs really feel alive in the Trails games with their own agendas and schedules so when you get a quest from them it feels more organic. Not only that, the student council quests in Cold Steel are given by other student npcs, with whom you spend the whole game, which gives the vibe of being part of a community and helping them. What is impressive in Cold Steel 1 is that despite being a 100h game it has less sidequests than FF XVI which is a 50h game. That really makes FF XVI bloated despite being a shorter game and destroys sidequest quality.
@@darks820 That makes sense cause not gonna lie inwardly groaned in 16 when I see all the green quest icons pop up. Cold steel I was like, "Oh boy!!! What are we doing today before old school exploration!?"
For me ff16 sidequests became a drag because barely any rewards for doing optional content . Level up barely matters in game so the crafting and exp felt pointless . by time good ones with people I care I was kinda Check out because others was like super long winded convo that were presented the same and then the slow walking back to npc . Like more fast travel points in hideaway would. Lovely
Man even the yakuza games have way too many sidequests. Just tryna unlock them can be a chore and given its the same set of side content in every game, it got to the point its not so fun to do them all every time given its like 100 extra hours of gameplay after the story ends. But you definitely get a bang for your buck every time and the fans love it.
I agree, JRPGs need to improve their side quests, most of them are always lazy side quests of get me XX number of this or kill XX, although in FF16 I appreciated that most of them gave you more lore and information about the world and I did not mind as much. A good example is Xenoblade 3, You have the standard boring side quests and you get the character's side quest which IMO is important to do if you want to know more about the world and the party members. They are not as annoying as the side quest's objectives are more varied. My point is depending on your level of interest in the game world/lore if the side quest involves development on characters/lore/ I think they can have more freedom and make it more varied. Then again, this has always been an issue with JRPGs In general they are bloated with boring side quests and activities, I usually skip it and concentrate on the main quest.
I've been playing the first xenoblade on my switch and I like the balance between basic kill monsters quests and more involved quests that have involved dialogue. And I enjoy rebuilding colony 6. But even the basic quests don't bother me cause I love the battle system so much I wanna keep getting better at it and alotnof times the side objectives are near the main ones so I never feel I'm too out of the way. I feel like xenoblade does try to be different but also wants to do as much as ludicrously possible too lol
Well now that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is out I have to change my mind on this, the fetch quests or kill X monster in Final Fantasy XII-XVI didn't make me actively hate the game. The MMO style of quests maybe boring but the Minigame overload of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Like A Dragon and Breath of Fire IV make the game worse. Many people say that Breath of Fire IV is the best in the series, yet whenever I replay Breath of Fire III I never have a "oh God THAT segment is next". The only minigames that have ever worked were card or board minigames.
I'm a slut for minigames tbh, but moderation is key. They're special because of their rarity. When they're not rare in a game they can easily become an impediment.
I don't really have an issue with the writing quality or the over goal of deepening the world in the 16 side quests, I felt there were too many of them but I also tend to find even the good sidequests of Yakuza/Nier etc are just too many and don't complete all of them because doing so takes too much time away from completing the story. However I ended up finding the 16 sidequests more annoying than Yakuza/Nier ones for 2 reasons. First the lack of other party members meaning most other major characters story was only resolved thru side quest, or that certain npcs who would otherwise be minor like the Blacksmith/Itemshop lady having side quests as detailed as major characters. If these were party members or some of the Hideout characters had been made into composite characters promoted to party members and those plotlines explored in the main story it would have felt more like what older games did with characters (i.e the Wutai side mission, Kimahri or Fran taking a more leading role in the party when getting to their hometown etc). Second the desire that you not miss anything meant that all quests originated from world hubs like the towns or the hideout and often took you to parts of the map not used by the main story. However if you go to those places without the quest objective active they are empty and lifeless. The world would have felt so much more engaging and your experience as a player felt more unique if you could walk into some of these towns and discover the dark secrets of them without someone at the Hideout telling you "I need you to go here to wrap up the fucked up part of my backstory and teach the player about how dark and twisted the world is"
The hilarious thing is i remember how they were talking about how they wanted side quests to be different for ff16.. then ultimately most of side quests just become the exact same as every game. Deliver X or slay X or find X. Also, screw square for not revealing the homo scene until mid game. I would not have bought the damn game
I'm kind of a trophy whore so I do pretty much all side quests. A lot of them can add to the games and are enjoyable in their own ways. But, when it comes to repetitive fetch quests, timed trials or beat the boss you've already beaten again for "reasons" type quests; I can do without any of those ever again. I will say I liked the kingdom building part of Ni No Kuni overall, but it also got way too repetitive at the higher levels.
As optional content you'd still be able to, but it was nothing more than 1 simple suggestion to illustrate how easy it is to add variety to a game sorely lacking any.
I have quite a few in various states of completion, when they'll be listed though I'm not 100% sure. Having a newborn around makes day-to-day life really unpredictable and hard to schedule.
im so impressed by xenoblade 3's side quests. They just keep adding to the story and building connectiveness between the worlds inhabitance. Though i do question how many there actually are. Im really curious as to the budget difference between ff16 and XB3
I don’t see this mythical past where side quests were good. They were IMPOSSIBLE, missable, hidden, etc. And while I wish there was more secrets hidden into JRPG’s, the quality of life features we have now make it so much better. Side quests now are a way to grind without running in circles. Peoples expectations of them honestly baffle me. It’s optional. Don’t like it, don’t do it.
I think another problem with the the sidequests in FFXVI, was how terribly directed the cutscenes were. They pretty much all just involve talking ‘BioWare’ heads, where the animations are often poor. I replayed FF7 lately, and while I don’t think the game is great, it did give me an appreciation for sidequests done right. The Yuffie one was especially a lot of fun.I don’t play that many JRPGs, but generally it seems just as well. The indie ones seem to be the best around now.
heyy tarks! great vid and agreed. maybe FF16 is one of the worst exemple in recent times tbf for me, something about them feels wrong, somehow. At least not what I've expected from such an ambitious game
I played tales of arise after beating ffxvi and i got to say most of the sides quest stories where just dull it was just killl mosters or fetch items. The Stories in the side quest where just not interesting.
It's amazing that 8 years after the Witcher 3, which had amazing side quests which often tied back into the main story, we have the dull as ditchwater sidequests in FF XVI, a game that has clearly looked at The Witcher 3, and learned all of the wrong lessons from it.
I would also say that thisis generally a JRPG problem rather than a general RPG one, as the sidequests in Larian, Bioware, Bethesda, Obsidian games etc are often great.
What you describe for FF16 here is exactly what I disliked in FF14 (not just the side quests though, the main story as well). Glad I've decided to skip 16 for now.
I was kind of used to completing every side quest in Final Fantasy 16, the same way I completed 80 % of the side quests in Tales of Arise. But over time, I felt that completing those quests were a huge waste of time as I have more important things to be doing like trying to stop Prince Dion Lesage from destroying the city of the twins, saving Jill from King Barnabas (for the third time) and traveling with Joshua to find out more what Ultima is after. Hell in Tales of Arise, some of the side quests were filler anyway as when I arrived on Ganath Haros, I had to help out some people in the beach village I wound up in when really I should be going to Vholran’s castle and rescuing Shionne. Side questing isn’t just on JRPGs, the same thing happened to games like Greedfall, Hogwarts Legacy and Diablo 4. In Greedfall, I have to complete a number of side quests in order to get on the good sides of my companions as well as gaining the trust of the factions that inhabit the island I’m in. But there are other important things I should be doing like trying to save my cousin Constantin from a mad king and trying to find a cure for the plague that ravage my home continent. In Hogwarts Legacy, I have to complete a f**k ton of side quests in order to reach level 34 so I can take the O.W.L.s exams. But my major grip with side questing is that it’s required that I have to get to a certain level in order to progress through the story, like Diablo 4 for example. Plus Dragon Age Inquisition also suffer from this problem as I have to complete some quests, mainly sealing up rifts and capturing forts in order to get to the next main quest. My biggest grip with side questing in order to progress is Assassins Creed Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla. The next story quest is lock due to a higher level requirement and if you choose to take that quest, while under leveled, you’ll get your ass kicked over and over again, meaning you have to grind your ass off in order to get to the right level. My main point about this is that side quests do tend to get in the way of important main story quests by level requirements or a boss with a higher level cap than you.
Honestly, probably not. As much as I wanted to do that Tales of the Abyss recap I found the task of making it almost mind-numbing. It wasn't something I could get creative with and that wore on me throughout the course of putting it together (And it took a long time to put together.) It's hard to stick with a project like that when your heart kind of slips out of it.
Modern JRPG sidequests are in shambles. They consist of mostly time filler useless trash. It's wild how much better older games like ff6, chrono trigger, and shadow hearts 2 absolutely killed it compared to today.
FFVII had just a few side quests but the main story was huge and spanned continents. Modern games are much more bloated. I loved FFVIIR but they padded the game a bit too much. Making the Midgar section take forever. Probably because it takes so long to make environments today because they need to be so detailed. You they need to reuse them as much as possible. I’m really liking FFXVi that I’m playing at the moment and I haven’t yet gotten burned out but I just got to the second time skip (didn’t know how to say it without spoiling but you must know what I mean) and have been playing for maybe 15-20 hours? I don’t see anywhere to tell the play time but it feels like it. I’m probably about half way through and so far still feels epic and not like busywork. But sounds like most of the side stuff is at the end.
Kinda odd you start with EVERY sidequest in ff16 is this detailed long thing. And then give yourself example of talking to guy five feets away from you. I can asure you its not the only sidequest in the game that is like that.
Talking to that guy who's just a few feet away is just a really good example of how the game gives you superfluous objectives to fill run time. I certainly don't mean to imply every quest is like this but it becomes an issue more-often-than-not after a certain point, making even the best sidequests a tad annoying to wade through. Honestly one of the games best quests was the one with that farmer and his son luring slaves towards monsters early on because the whole thing starts and ends without much travel or superfluous objectives and actually says something interesting about the world in that brisk time. It would be nice if so many quests didn't take the opposite approach to that. But alas, here we are.
Thanks for the reply. I think about this more when I get farther in the game. Honestly been so busy with bg3, armored core, blasphemous 2 etc. @@TarksGauntlet
@@TarksGauntlet dude the number 2 was perfect if you liked the first. I am going to final boss next. It fixes for me the biggest problem of the orginal. That being no str weapon.
I think my least favorite implementation of Sidequests in recent times was in Xenoblade 3, were they were honestly also pretty great all things considered, definitely above industry standard in effort too, and had a lot of incentive to do them, but often took away from the main story and could last hours at a time. Hell, sometimes the game outright forced you to do some them even though they had nothing to do with the main story (which nearly always had some alleged urgency to it), while on the other hand some quests that feel like they really should've been integrated to the main story just weren't. And even though they are optional, there's so many important stuff locked behind them that the game becomes a lot shallower in gameplay depth for not doing them.
@@DJK1NGGaming I wouldn't say disguised, the Hero Quests are minor narrative branches of Main Story. Same with the Ascension Quests and main character Side Stories. They aren't side quests, they are largely optional chunks of the main story campaign that you can choose to do in any order or to skip. Side quests are an entirely different set of quests and are far less important.
@@badlatency9979 They disguised all of the main Hero characters that is mandatory for the story as Hero Quests when reality it shouldn't be. Since they are needed to progress the story. Ethel, Valdi and others. Instead of doing it like Monica and Ghondor they force you to do a main quest that disguised as side content.
@@DJK1NGGaming while there are a couple of Hero Quests that are mandatory yes, my argument is that _all_ Hero Quests are part of the Main Quest, because they are narrative branches off the Main Quest that tie back into it. And that's the case whether optional or not.
*Update*
Hey all. Had this vid started a while ago but a little late getting it finished here. As many of you know my wife and I had been expecting. Though the baby was only due a couple days ago she decided to surprise us 3 weeks early.
Baby is in good health and though there have been complications with my wife she is recovering cleanly so far as well.
With the state of things at home even more work has come down to me to complete than I was initially expecting with a newborn, but it is slowly evening out some.
I have quite a few other videos in production, some basically finished as it is, but I will be holding some back so I can release a few as if I actually had a regular upload schedule later.
This one I just decided to release now as ff16 is quickly becoming "old news" and the type of video isn't my usual thing.
Congrats dude!!! We've had 2 preemies so totally get it. So happy your wife and baby girl are well. Cheers to you.
I guess first off, congratulations on the baby. Best regards for the future.
Secondly, I'm sorry to hear about the complications. I was able to see your post about what happened and that's genuinely terrifying. Glad to hear that your wife is well now and healing.
When was the last time you've gotten laid
The only problem with FF16 side quests is that it's just too many of them. Some of them genuinely have good stories to them, but most of them, especially the earlier ones, are just padding and filler content.
90% of them wwere ass
I’d say my favorite recent implementation of side quests is in NieR:Automata. They don’t all have unique gameplay or anything, but many of them added to the world building. They all added to the melancholic feeling and would make me emotional by the end, as a lot of them discussed the ideas like how to live with the death of those close, how to stay happy in a horrible situations, mourning, etc. A few of them foreshadow main story events too, and at some points they made me as emotional as the main game.
Both Nier Games, when the sidequests deal with something character related, do a great job of reinforcing the themes of the Story that all kind of add to the impression the end of the games leaves on you.
Lots of great games use the "job boards" approach to side quest design. Hell, in the Trails in the Sky trilogy, there is a literal job board at every bracer guild house and your job as the JRPG protag is to read the board, do the quests to help people, and pocket the sweet, sweet mira. The sky trilogy turned the JRPG job board into a full-time occupation.
A lot of really great games, such as Chained Echos, use the job board structure, and I would argue that the ones that don't suffer for not having it. You always want some side quests to be out in the wild, and be ones that players uncover through exploration (chained echos has a "quest board" in game, but some side quests are not on there and are found through just going out there and talking to every NPC), but one of the purposes of side quests is to have character interactions that don't fit neatly into the mainline game, but that are critical nonetheless. Note to anyone reading this: do the Ilya's stalker side quest in Trails to Zero, it's really important. You don't want to have all of these quests scattered to the wind, it would make the game feel disjointed and while some players will talk to every single NPC (especially if it's a trails game), there are a lot of players who just don't. There needs to be a balance, and posting most quests on a jobs board, but having a few that are found through exploration is a good, balanced compromise.
Ultimately, what makes a side quest worth doing are pretty easy to list: it should have a good reward associated with it, it should have some key character growth or story progression for some side characters, it should be logical and not have any extra moving parts that are unnecessary and it should fit logically into the story and plot. Of those, the "no extra moving parts" thing seems to be the hardest to keep control on. Every JRPG, from the dawn of the genre, has had fetch-quests as a part of them, all the way back to the original Dragon Quest and the original Final Fantasy (go to the desert caravan, buy the fairy in the bottle, release the fairy, get the stuff you need to make your submarine work from her, and take the submarine to the water shrine, getting into the water shrine, and defeating the fiend of water, is the actual quest objective; the fairy is a fetch-quest). That's not a deal breaker for me, so long as the fetch quest has some tangible rewards or gives you a nice bit of additional story for the trouble. I just did the Alster Harvest Festival in Cold Steel 4 the other night, and it's a classic fetch-quest, but it was worth it to see just how deeply the people of Alster venerate "their prince" and how much he loves them and trusts them in return.
Anyway, good to see you with a new upload Tarks, be sure you take care of the wife and baby first, that's highest priority, we'll still be here on youtube when that part of your life settles down. Please send us an update every once in awhile if you can, we're all rooting for you.
I'm not saying a job board can't be used well. With trails it's literally part of the characters jobs and makes sense. But I am saying Job boards can and often are the laziest way to implement a ton of empty sidequests.
@@TarksGauntletYou are 100% right, and I got that from the video. Used well, it's a great game mechanic that helps to organize side quests, assign a priority to them, and indicate where you need to go and what you need to do. Used poorly, it's a lazy cop-out that developers use to add cut-and-paste side quests that have no personality, rewards or a compelling reason to do them. I just think it's important to highlight why the mechanic exists in games, and why, properly done, it's a great method to use, alongside it's capacity for abuse.
XVI Quest Design takes a lot of inspiration from XIV questing design since its made by a few of the XIV development team. I describe the game to other XIV players as an unofficial XIV expansion since questing and story structure is just like XIV.
FFXV to me was the one with the absolute worst side "quests". I'm usually a completionist but had to train myself to avoid them in that game to avoid burnout.
I really don't even remember them other than looking for dog tags and frogs.
I would gladly take fishing, car-related side quests, and royal arms quests over any side quest from XVI.
totally agree, I feel like many of my favorite games have too much useless text, details, or side quests. Cosmic Star Heroine is a great example of a game that doesn't have any of these problems and it's so fantastic, you're always in the action or furthering the story. I'd go as far as to say it could have used a little more detail but man I loved that game.
Couldn't have said it better myself. Especially that part about map markers. I feel like that's a whole other topic in and of itself. I'm so sick of games marking everything for you and presenting it as a checklist because gamers have fomo. Even Yakuza, before Yakuza used to just let you randomly stumble onto substories on the street, and I thought that added a lot to the feel of them. Now, you just go toward the marker because you know something's there, complete the objective, point A to point B, then rinse and repeat for the next quest, and then the next, until the map is empty.
To me, it's way more fulfilling to be walking down the street and suddenly come across a dine and dasher run out of a resraurant, leading into a spontaneous chase scene. Or going into a dance club and dancing to a couple songs and then being challenged to a dance-off by someone that I had no expectation if bumping into. Spontaneous encounters are generally way more interesting to me, and I'm excited to play baldur's gate 3, as I hear that game is full of this kind of quest structure.
There seems to be a few shots Atelier's way which got me thinking: I played FF for thirty years and dropped it like a bad habit when I found out how addicting Gust's games were. Job boards, 90% of the time, don't work, but Atelier is all about that sweet, sweet item game that makes every reward exciting. Even if a reward doesn't seem to do anything at first, it's likely an ingredient for a super powerful and unique item later on. FF sidequests of late usually end up as, "Here's a sword that does more damage than your last one", or worse: "Here's some money and some cooking ingredients for the cooking system you don't use."
Ateliers use of a job board makes in-universe sense, but the quests they provide are devoid of any meaningful or memorable content. It's just a plank of wood you visit periodically to exchange what you've gathered for other items, money and xp.
@@TarksGauntletStory-wise, for sure, it's completely lacking, but I find having my "to-do" list in Atelier games and knocking things off in priority super addicting: Optimizing productivity, finding exploits, farming top materials, etc. The fact that you can do most tasks while playing the main game is critical for it to work. I'm fine with story-based or gameplay-based sidequests (the best do both) but I found the reason FF is so lacking is that it does neither. In FF15, I caught one fish and picked up one dog tag and was done with those. I fought the Adamantoise at least, but I'd still say I had more fun with Atelier's job boards.
Ryza 3 was so hard to finish because I couldn't take three steps without someone going "Someone needs help!" That game was overstuffed with side quests for items combined with the side quests for world building.
Missables and post-game only content are the only 2 types of side quests that I really dislike.
I can understand some missables tbh. Ff16 would have good cause for some considering it has 2 time skips that would make doing an early game sidequest really late not make any sense, but generally I'd look down on them as well. That said, making quests invisible and require player discovery shouldn't make them missables. Just harder to find lol
I am not a fan of being forced to view a guide for sidequests. I enjoyed a lot of older tales of side quests, but the hidden nature was a detriment to that.
Tales of was definitely a little more cruel with hiding quests than I would like but I think there's a good medium.
Glad to hear the baby and wife r doing good 👍 I'll keep u and ur family in my prayers 🙏 😊
If a sidequest has a good reward or is interesting I will do it, but some that just give like 5 potions in certain games just feel like filler at the end of the day
Funny enough with Billboard quests, you are 100% right with Atelier games, i read the first ones, then stopped but at the same time, never say them as annoying since most of them are repeatable and I only accepted those I already had the ingridients for.
The Billboard quests that annoyed me were more Legends of Heroes ones that got me out of my main quest to do something and in most gave me no importance to the plot
Interesting topic! I personally can't stand side quests, almost in any game...Yakuza I seem to be okay with them but even then, I don't want to do that many. Just not my thing I guess - I really like sticking to the main story and that's it. I think because I don't have tons of time, I like to complete games and move onto the next.
Great video! Agree about what makes a good sidequest. The Yakuza series is absolutely top-tier when it comes to this- I can’t recommend the series enough if someone hasn’t tired it.
P.s. I’m relieved you and the family are doing okay and staying safe!
Great video. :)
This thing that I most disagree with is the idea that side quests should be optional. They shouldn't. Skipping side quests is like skipping secondary POV chapters in a book.
The only difference is that side quests can be missable (ideally because of choices made made by the player in the game).
The type of side content that is skippable and is bloat - and are the mini game nonsense like chocobo racing, or clear this respawning fort etc.
A game should and ought to be built around the idea that side content *isn't* optional and that it is a core part of the narrative that you'd only consider skipping
if you were re-playing... That's actually how i'd do it. Side quests are only skippable in NG+
I'm not a huge fan of truly missable side quests that oblige you to talk to every npc and examine every object - I grew thoroughly fed up with that in the 90s - But game's liike Baldur's Gate 3 do a good enough tob of signposting everything whilst making it feel as though you are discovering things yourself.
The quests in final fantasy 16 were definitely over-objectived but I think that the biggest problem by far is that they were backloaded - right when the evil god appears you get a dozen side quests about cake or something. I like those side quests and I don't need tangible rewards for them (if they are good for world and character building) but they are for the beginning or the middle of the game when I am looking to invest in all the world building. Not when the apocalypse is truly imminent - that is far, far to late to try and make me care about the world and its people.
If it's mandatory it's not really a sidequest. I think the "optional" part is implied by being a sidequest.
I understand not wanting to skip any though.
I’m one of those people that tries to complete every single side quest in a game. I got a lot of enjoyment doing sidequests in the Xenoblades, SMT 5, and others. That said, sidequests were a lot cooler when there were only a few of them and you had to figure them out yourself. Some examples are finding the casino or the super boss in Mario RPG or all of the sidequests in Chrono Trigger.
Honestly, I feel like this is less of a Japanese RPG issue and more just a modern gaming issue in general.
For example, I recently just finished playing "Resident Evil 4 Remake", which isn't remotely an RPG, and it had side-quests in the form of Merchant Requests. But as the theme of this video goes, they weren't that good. Sell a golden egg. Sell 3 vipers. Kill 3 rats. Kill 3 rats again...but over there. Shoot all blue medallions in a location. Shoot all blue medallions in another location. Kill a stronger enemy variant. Kill another stronger enemy variant. All for a rarer secondary currency for a special shop that had a limited selection of items. And of course the way they usually were implemented was also suspect. Some requiring you to backtrack through areas you already explored, often with no additional changes to them. They actively become a chore...in something that's supposed to be a survivor-horror shooter.
Heck, remembering just now, just about anything from Ubisoft in the last decade is especially guilty of this.
But really, I don't mind. I'm still finding modern RPGs that do side-quests well enough, either due to the activities involved or the narratives attached. "Bug Fables" has a wide array of side-quests with unique mini-bosses and even mini-games. Something like "The Cruel King and The Great Hero" might not have had every side-quest as a hit but the messages of some of them individually were touching, damn near teared up at one in particular. Much less the way they built upon each other and came together by the end just felt like it was worth the effort.
Though I guess those are smaller experiences, free of the AAA budget bloat and expectations.
Every time i'd get a handfull of quests inside the hideway i would stop playing that day. It is abysmal how the game expects you to walk at the slowest pace possible inside your giant base from one side to the other multiple times in every single side quest, without a option to run or teleport through key points in it, all it did was make it more boring and a slog to go through. At some point is just started skiping dialog in side quests just to save time as i lost interest in the stories and just wanted to get over with it to 100% the game.
To this day i still didn't finish the game, because after every major event there are those side quests and main quests that worked the same would make me lose the will to keep going on.
Since last year i have been playing through the Trails series while doing every side quest available and i don't have the same issue i have with FF16 for these 3 reasons:
1)Trails games let me boost the speed, so the backtracking is minimized
2)Trails are turn based games, i don't feel like i'm wasting my time going through these side stories when i could be having more fun killing monsters and bosses like in FF16
3)Trails side quests feel more rewarding than FF16s, be it by giving more insight in the world that i'm more invested on than in FF since it has the promise of it caring on to future titles. Or because they give me actually usefull and meaningfull items/equipment. Like, i don't know how they could fumble this aspect of the game, i felt so dumbfounded when i crafted a cool sword from a side quest, just to imediatly get a new one from the bahamut main quest that gave me 2 more of every stat, than the one i took 1 side quest and 3 notorious mark to craft and never got to use.
It was both hilarious, and sad to me, when after slaving over getting these 2 blacksmiths to work together and gathering super rare materials for them to attempt to craft a legendary, ultimate sword for you, they hand it over and immediately say "hey, we're pretty sure we can make a better sword if you bring us these other materials."
Before you even get to start enjoying this sword they present to you as the ultimate weapon they undercut it's power by telling you they can randomly make something stronger with no history attached to it. Like it's no big deal anymore.
You didn't do the last side quests that get dumped on you before the final boss? Those are actually the best ones with decent payoffs storywise. Quest objectives are still boring though.
I done most of them, and watched the Torgal one (it was the only one I missed that seemed worthwhile.)
I tried, and I mean really tried to force myself through them, but after 2 hours and only completing a small handful that frankly weren't that great, I just couldn't bother anymore.
@@TarksGauntlet Gotcha. I think most of them are gated behind quest chains as well and act as the last act of the chain. So if you didn't do everything as they got unlocked you'd have to spend so much time doing menial tasks only to get to the final quest that's actually worth it.
From the top of my head Torgal's, Jill's, Gav's and Dion's quests had emotional payoffs with fully produced cutscenes, not that C-tier scene BS where characters just stand in place exchanging pieces of dialogue.
I just loved the world, so all these sidequests gave me an excuse to spend more time in it. But as you said, mechanically they're the same thing over and over, plus overexplained, so I wouldn't recommend pushing through them just to get the "checklist" done. Only dive in if you can't get enough of the game.
The issue with Final Fantasy XVI is that it lacks enjoyable gameplay, well-designed world exploration, and engaging traversal options. This makes the general experience outside of boss build-up missions feel like a chore.
Just found this channel! Looks like I'm in perfect time. Cheers
Question : did you play Baldur's Gate 3? If yes, what did you think of it?
I haven't yet, but I trust Larian to nail their sidequests. Divinity OS 1 and 2 were amazing and made great co-op experiences with the wife.
I love how you most of your solutions to the side quest problem are what elden ring did minus the quantity elden ring was able to provide of course.
I will usually do a few side quests, then skip the rest. Unless they are part of the story or have something awesome happen, then I generally consider them a waste of time.
This issue is so prevalent that it does hinder my ability to enjoy RPGs. I kind of burnt myself out on Trails/Kiseki because -- while the dialogue, stories, and world-building is often great in the sidequests -- what you actually have to do is very tedious and repetitive.
I think that's why I like the older Zelda games; there's a very small, focused amount of sidequests, but they were varied and extremely meaningful. Especially the rewards and upgrades they give. Majora's Mask did this extremely well.
I was wondering why I didn't enjoy these ones. I mean i literally done student council crap in cold steel but i found that oddly more exciting
I think it's due to the writing and world building. The npcs really feel alive in the Trails games with their own agendas and schedules so when you get a quest from them it feels more organic. Not only that, the student council quests in Cold Steel are given by other student npcs, with whom you spend the whole game, which gives the vibe of being part of a community and helping them. What is impressive in Cold Steel 1 is that despite being a 100h game it has less sidequests than FF XVI which is a 50h game. That really makes FF XVI bloated despite being a shorter game and destroys sidequest quality.
@@darks820 That makes sense cause not gonna lie inwardly groaned in 16 when I see all the green quest icons pop up.
Cold steel I was like, "Oh boy!!! What are we doing today before old school exploration!?"
For me ff16 sidequests became a drag because barely any rewards for doing optional content . Level up barely matters in game so the crafting and exp felt pointless . by time good ones with people I care I was kinda
Check out because others was like super long winded convo that were presented the same and then the slow walking back to npc . Like more fast travel points in hideaway would. Lovely
Man even the yakuza games have way too many sidequests. Just tryna unlock them can be a chore and given its the same set of side content in every game, it got to the point its not so fun to do them all every time given its like 100 extra hours of gameplay after the story ends. But you definitely get a bang for your buck every time and the fans love it.
I agree, JRPGs need to improve their side quests, most of them are always lazy side quests of get me XX number of this or kill XX, although in FF16 I appreciated that most of them gave you more lore and information about the world and I did not mind as much.
A good example is Xenoblade 3, You have the standard boring side quests and you get the character's side quest which IMO is important to do if you want to know more about the world and the party members. They are not as annoying as the side quest's objectives are more varied.
My point is depending on your level of interest in the game world/lore if the side quest involves development on characters/lore/ I think they can have more freedom and make it more varied.
Then again, this has always been an issue with JRPGs In general they are bloated with boring side quests and activities, I usually skip it and concentrate on the main quest.
I've been playing the first xenoblade on my switch and I like the balance between basic kill monsters quests and more involved quests that have involved dialogue. And I enjoy rebuilding colony 6. But even the basic quests don't bother me cause I love the battle system so much I wanna keep getting better at it and alotnof times the side objectives are near the main ones so I never feel I'm too out of the way. I feel like xenoblade does try to be different but also wants to do as much as ludicrously possible too lol
Well now that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is out I have to change my mind on this, the fetch quests or kill X monster in Final Fantasy XII-XVI didn't make me actively hate the game. The MMO style of quests maybe boring but the Minigame overload of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Like A Dragon and Breath of Fire IV make the game worse.
Many people say that Breath of Fire IV is the best in the series, yet whenever I replay Breath of Fire III I never have a "oh God THAT segment is next".
The only minigames that have ever worked were card or board minigames.
I'm a slut for minigames tbh, but moderation is key. They're special because of their rarity. When they're not rare in a game they can easily become an impediment.
I don't really have an issue with the writing quality or the over goal of deepening the world in the 16 side quests, I felt there were too many of them but I also tend to find even the good sidequests of Yakuza/Nier etc are just too many and don't complete all of them because doing so takes too much time away from completing the story.
However I ended up finding the 16 sidequests more annoying than Yakuza/Nier ones for 2 reasons.
First the lack of other party members meaning most other major characters story was only resolved thru side quest, or that certain npcs who would otherwise be minor like the Blacksmith/Itemshop lady having side quests as detailed as major characters. If these were party members or some of the Hideout characters had been made into composite characters promoted to party members and those plotlines explored in the main story it would have felt more like what older games did with characters (i.e the Wutai side mission, Kimahri or Fran taking a more leading role in the party when getting to their hometown etc).
Second the desire that you not miss anything meant that all quests originated from world hubs like the towns or the hideout and often took you to parts of the map not used by the main story. However if you go to those places without the quest objective active they are empty and lifeless. The world would have felt so much more engaging and your experience as a player felt more unique if you could walk into some of these towns and discover the dark secrets of them without someone at the Hideout telling you "I need you to go here to wrap up the fucked up part of my backstory and teach the player about how dark and twisted the world is"
The hilarious thing is i remember how they were talking about how they wanted side quests to be different for ff16.. then ultimately most of side quests just become the exact same as every game. Deliver X or slay X or find X. Also, screw square for not revealing the homo scene until mid game. I would not have bought the damn game
I'm kind of a trophy whore so I do pretty much all side quests. A lot of them can add to the games and are enjoyable in their own ways. But, when it comes to repetitive fetch quests, timed trials or beat the boss you've already beaten again for "reasons" type quests; I can do without any of those ever again. I will say I liked the kingdom building part of Ni No Kuni overall, but it also got way too repetitive at the higher levels.
I can live without button mashing mini games in jrpgs.
As optional content you'd still be able to, but it was nothing more than 1 simple suggestion to illustrate how easy it is to add variety to a game sorely lacking any.
I'm still replaying Skyrim side quests.
Long time no see. More videos in the upcoming months ?
I have quite a few in various states of completion, when they'll be listed though I'm not 100% sure.
Having a newborn around makes day-to-day life really unpredictable and hard to schedule.
could you do a comparison between Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and FF16 side quests? These are the two most recent big JRPG's.
im so impressed by xenoblade 3's side quests. They just keep adding to the story and building connectiveness between the worlds inhabitance. Though i do question how many there actually are. Im really curious as to the budget difference between ff16 and XB3
I don’t see this mythical past where side quests were good. They were IMPOSSIBLE, missable, hidden, etc. And while I wish there was more secrets hidden into JRPG’s, the quality of life features we have now make it so much better. Side quests now are a way to grind without running in circles. Peoples expectations of them honestly baffle me. It’s optional. Don’t like it, don’t do it.
Fewer sidequests and more minigames please
I think another problem with the the sidequests in FFXVI, was how terribly directed the cutscenes were. They pretty much all just involve talking ‘BioWare’ heads, where the animations are often poor.
I replayed FF7 lately, and while I don’t think the game is great, it did give me an appreciation for sidequests done right. The Yuffie one was especially a lot of fun.I don’t play that many JRPGs, but generally it seems just as well. The indie ones seem to be the best around now.
heyy tarks!
great vid and agreed. maybe FF16 is one of the worst exemple in recent times tbf for me, something about them feels wrong, somehow.
At least not what I've expected from such an ambitious game
こんにちは Astrea!
Still waiting for new content. Take your time.
Dang this is a great vid and it speaks truth cuz modern side quest have definitely fallen hard 😊
I played tales of arise after beating ffxvi and i got to say most of the sides quest stories where just dull it was just killl mosters or fetch items. The
Stories in the side quest where just not interesting.
It's amazing that 8 years after the Witcher 3, which had amazing side quests which often tied back into the main story, we have the dull as ditchwater sidequests in FF XVI, a game that has clearly looked at The Witcher 3, and learned all of the wrong lessons from it.
I would also say that thisis generally a JRPG problem rather than a general RPG one, as the sidequests in Larian, Bioware, Bethesda, Obsidian games etc are often great.
What you describe for FF16 here is exactly what I disliked in FF14 (not just the side quests though, the main story as well). Glad I've decided to skip 16 for now.
Great insights sir!
I was kind of used to completing every side quest in Final Fantasy 16, the same way I completed 80 % of the side quests in Tales of Arise. But over time, I felt that completing those quests were a huge waste of time as I have more important things to be doing like trying to stop Prince Dion Lesage from destroying the city of the twins, saving Jill from King Barnabas (for the third time) and traveling with Joshua to find out more what Ultima is after. Hell in Tales of Arise, some of the side quests were filler anyway as when I arrived on Ganath Haros, I had to help out some people in the beach village I wound up in when really I should be going to Vholran’s castle and rescuing Shionne. Side questing isn’t just on JRPGs, the same thing happened to games like Greedfall, Hogwarts Legacy and Diablo 4. In Greedfall, I have to complete a number of side quests in order to get on the good sides of my companions as well as gaining the trust of the factions that inhabit the island I’m in. But there are other important things I should be doing like trying to save my cousin Constantin from a mad king and trying to find a cure for the plague that ravage my home continent. In Hogwarts Legacy, I have to complete a f**k ton of side quests in order to reach level 34 so I can take the O.W.L.s exams. But my major grip with side questing is that it’s required that I have to get to a certain level in order to progress through the story, like Diablo 4 for example. Plus Dragon Age Inquisition also suffer from this problem as I have to complete some quests, mainly sealing up rifts and capturing forts in order to get to the next main quest. My biggest grip with side questing in order to progress is Assassins Creed Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla. The next story quest is lock due to a higher level requirement and if you choose to take that quest, while under leveled, you’ll get your ass kicked over and over again, meaning you have to grind your ass off in order to get to the right level.
My main point about this is that side quests do tend to get in the way of important main story quests by level requirements or a boss with a higher level cap than you.
Hey Tark are you going to Recap like you did to Tales of the Abyss it is a good video that i watch
Honestly, probably not. As much as I wanted to do that Tales of the Abyss recap I found the task of making it almost mind-numbing. It wasn't something I could get creative with and that wore on me throughout the course of putting it together (And it took a long time to put together.)
It's hard to stick with a project like that when your heart kind of slips out of it.
but but tark. ff 16 is no rpg. it's a shallow action adventure :D
Modern JRPG sidequests are in shambles. They consist of mostly time filler useless trash. It's wild how much better older games like ff6, chrono trigger, and shadow hearts 2 absolutely killed it compared to today.
FFVII had just a few side quests but the main story was huge and spanned continents. Modern games are much more bloated. I loved FFVIIR but they padded the game a bit too much. Making the Midgar section take forever. Probably because it takes so long to make environments today because they need to be so detailed. You they need to reuse them as much as possible. I’m really liking FFXVi that I’m playing at the moment and I haven’t yet gotten burned out but I just got to the second time skip (didn’t know how to say it without spoiling but you must know what I mean) and have been playing for maybe 15-20 hours? I don’t see anywhere to tell the play time but it feels like it. I’m probably about half way through and so far still feels epic and not like busywork. But sounds like most of the side stuff is at the end.
Kinda odd you start with EVERY sidequest in ff16 is this detailed long thing. And then give yourself example of talking to guy five feets away from you. I can asure you its not the only sidequest in the game that is like that.
Talking to that guy who's just a few feet away is just a really good example of how the game gives you superfluous objectives to fill run time. I certainly don't mean to imply every quest is like this but it becomes an issue more-often-than-not after a certain point, making even the best sidequests a tad annoying to wade through.
Honestly one of the games best quests was the one with that farmer and his son luring slaves towards monsters early on because the whole thing starts and ends without much travel or superfluous objectives and actually says something interesting about the world in that brisk time.
It would be nice if so many quests didn't take the opposite approach to that. But alas, here we are.
Thanks for the reply. I think about this more when I get farther in the game. Honestly been so busy with bg3, armored core, blasphemous 2 etc. @@TarksGauntlet
Didn't even realize blasphemous 2 was out. Gotta wishlist it or something. I loved the first.
@@TarksGauntlet dude the number 2 was perfect if you liked the first. I am going to final boss next. It fixes for me the biggest problem of the orginal. That being no str weapon.
That idea of discovering something is well represented in Trails in the Sky.
Nah ff16 is just a boring mess of a game with lazy design choice and mmo style questing.
careful. Yoshi-P don't want you to call it a JRPG
He'll be okay.
I think my least favorite implementation of Sidequests in recent times was in Xenoblade 3, were they were honestly also pretty great all things considered, definitely above industry standard in effort too, and had a lot of incentive to do them, but often took away from the main story and could last hours at a time. Hell, sometimes the game outright forced you to do some them even though they had nothing to do with the main story (which nearly always had some alleged urgency to it), while on the other hand some quests that feel like they really should've been integrated to the main story just weren't. And even though they are optional, there's so many important stuff locked behind them that the game becomes a lot shallower in gameplay depth for not doing them.
because majority of the Hero Quests were disguised as main story.
@@DJK1NGGaming I wouldn't say disguised, the Hero Quests are minor narrative branches of Main Story. Same with the Ascension Quests and main character Side Stories. They aren't side quests, they are largely optional chunks of the main story campaign that you can choose to do in any order or to skip.
Side quests are an entirely different set of quests and are far less important.
@@badlatency9979 They disguised all of the main Hero characters that is mandatory for the story as Hero Quests when reality it shouldn't be. Since they are needed to progress the story. Ethel, Valdi and others.
Instead of doing it like Monica and Ghondor they force you to do a main quest that disguised as side content.
@@DJK1NGGaming while there are a couple of Hero Quests that are mandatory yes, my argument is that _all_ Hero Quests are part of the Main Quest, because they are narrative branches off the Main Quest that tie back into it. And that's the case whether optional or not.