For whatever reason my inner-completionist broke free during my run to finish Radiant Historia. So now, along with the help of this handy FAQ, I'm running through all of the game's sidequests. It definitely didn't help when I caught mention of a "true ending" within that FAQ - there's no way that I'll accept a false ending from such a game! Just so long as I can help it, anyway.
Surprisingly the first batch of sidequests was pretty quickly dispatched. There was a little bit of running around for Red-Letter Day, in which Stocke acts as a go between for Sonja and Rosch (even more in the quest to get the Satyros Liese together with a Granorg gateman), but the node and the reward were worth it. Actually, the quest involving Liese and the gateman can be downright heartbreaking, though we don't really see much of the Satyros troupe after the story's finished with it. Vanoss comes back in the Alternate history a few times, but mostly for political plot points.
Though, that does raise a bit of an issue with the game. An issue that weirdly becomes a non issue in retrospect. This is, as mentioned before, the way in which some characters seem to vanish from the story, are gone for a lengthy portion of it, and then brought back in when necessary. Specifically, let's look at the example of Sonja.
Early in the game you see a lot of this Alistellian MD. But, once you hit the sand fortress, or are on the way to Granorg for the first time, she may as well have never existed. At the time when you realize this it's irksome because you know that she has to be a major secondary character. It's obvious that she and Rosch have a history, and that there's more to her than what you see in the story-specific cutscenes.
Then, far later in the game (at least for me, just now completing the Red-Letter Day sidequest from chapter one), it's revealed that she and Rosch reveal their feelings for each other and officially become a couple. So your sense that she's a major figure in the game's story winds up being true - but only after an extended absence which before had been ended by more story-related events.
It's difficult to say how this problem could be fixed, though. A sidequest, after all, is something that is extra and that some (maybe most) players won't fully experience. In that way, as much of a time sink most RPGs can be (especially J-RPGs), I wonder if the mark of a great one is having meaningful sidequests that add to the game's story and character development or if a truly great RPG is one where such things are just window dressing and the game's main events tell the story and develop the characters well enough.
If you've got some thoughts on this be sure to leave them in the comments.
One of the things that I liked the most about RH are the sidequests, especially because they relate to the main story. As you said on another entry, the "couples" in the game were pretty obvious from the beginning, so you don't really need the sidequests to follow the whole story. But the fact that they add to the characters' backgrounds (and, ultimately, to the outcome of the story) makes them more alluring to complete, and at the same time more rewarding. Also consider that, unlike most RPGs, in RH none of the NPCs give you random items for no reason.
ReplyDeleteI understand your thoughts about Sonja being left out of a large portion of the game, but that made me realize it might have to do with the fact that she was intended to be a playable character at some point of development (there are plenty evidence for this, but no official statement that I know of yet, though). Maybe they wanted to have her as a major character in the Alternate History with Rosch, and leave Raynie and Marco for the Standard?
The overall absence of the characters didn't bother me that much, since most of the time they explain that they are doing something else while you do your thing (besides you're jumping through time so much that it might just feel like they've been gone for ages). Vanoss for example leads the travelling troupe, while his real mission is to gather information about the state of the war and bring it back to Celestia (although that one time he shows up in Skalla still seems kinda random).
PS: I'm on my way to finish the game for the third time, and found your blog on a random Google search. Nice work here ;)