Wednesday 10 January, 2007

Side quests blasted side quests!

If there's something that developers want to add that will immediately make me trapped in a time sink, it's side quests, and FFXII is full of optional material. Being a completion whore, I must have 100% completion, which includes optional sidequest materials, and there's a ton of them. A good idea on how long I've spent doing side quest material is a quick comparison, a friend of mine who focuses nearly 100% on the main storyline is about 30 hours into the game, at about 68 hours, I just passed him in the main storyline.
Thus I've spent about 40 extra hours doing side quests. Let alone the fact that like half the side quest stuff, doesn't actually result in any sort of indication that you've done extra material, which confuses me cause I'm still walking around with a bottle of alcohol from Bhejurba that I've yet to find any use for. On a side note, I opened the four random chests your not supposed to open so that you can get the Zodiac Spear, and though I was close to 50 hours in, I was sorely tempted to start over, but common sense kicked in so I managed to continue on, mainly with the thought that I don't currently have anyone using spears anyway.
But besides this ranting on side quests, so far the game is excellent. I'm enjoying the new battle system, and while I thought Gambits were a bit cheap at first, I don't think I would have the microing skills to keep my party up with the way I just run into groups of monsters. However Quickening seem to be a bit overpowered and broken, in the fact that if your luck prevails you could chain Quickening four times on a single mob, though you'd have to get lucky with the Mist Charges.

Formatting has seemed to fail me, my paragraphs came out all weird. I may have forgotten relevent information like play time, but the exact times alude me, it would have to be like 3 hour chunks cause really, you can't accomplish much in the span of 45 minutes to an hour, especially if you spend that time making sure that your entire map is filled out, and that your secondary party isn't falling tragically behind your main party in levels.

I should probably also add that this is for the assignment due 1/12/2006, rather than any of my other logs which I've added.

I know exactly what you mean about the whole side quest thing. The same thing's happened to me. I'm 60 hours through the game, but I'm in the same place story-wise as a friend of mine who's only played 35 hours.

I know exactly what you mean about the whole side quest thing. The same thing's happened to me. I'm 60 hours through the game, but I'm in the same place story-wise as a friend of mine who's only played 35 hours.

I know exactly what you mean about the whole side quest thing. The same thing's happened to me. I'm 60 hours through the game, but I'm in the same place story-wise as a friend of mine who's only played 35 hours.

a bottle of alcohol from Bhejurba that you've yet to find any use for?

I take it the game doesn't let you get smashed. One of the old ID guys...I want to say Carmack had a phrase "Don't give a player a bomb they can't blow up." One thing I don't really like about a lot of Final Fantasy side quests is that the actual things you are supposed to do with sidequests are so obscure. Sometimes I think it would work better if players were rewarded for doing things they'de like to do anyway. Just a thought.

I know what you mean about the sidequests but if you want you can buy the guide (I did). It helped me beat the game (with all the sidequests) in about 80 hours. and don't worry the guide won't spoil any plot details.