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Best RPGs for main quest / side quests?

Cyberpunkd

Member
Ok, let's hear from everyone that played RPGs for many years, curious to see if there is something I missed in the last 30 years (ranked at random):

Main Quest:
1. Morrowind - "come take this thing from the hand of god". Perfection, don't remember any side quest. Now that I think about it probably my most favorite game of all time.
2. Witcher 3
3. Planescape Torment - perfection, don't remember a single side quest
4. FF VII
5. Witcher 1
6. Vampire: Bloodlines 1
7. Summoner - don't remember a single thing but you become a god at the end, GG WP

Side Quests:
1. Witcher 3
2. Rogue Trader
3. TES: Oblivion - although mechanically it's very meh

I would prefer cRPGs over jRPGs.
 
Trails as a whole is surprisingly decent with combining main and side content so far (CS III).

Really love that some quests are hidden too.
 
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I have it on GOG bruh, need to finish Oblivion and Hogwart's Legacy, and then we are jumping right in.
Fucking nice. I'm not too savvy when it comes to RPGs as I still have to play some classics like Planescape, VTMB or Gothic, but imho KCD has a real good main quest (story is real good and very well written, with a great set of characters) and at least the sequel has some of the best sidequests I've seen in a game.

Can I hit on the court ladies?
From lowly prostitutes to court ladies, the answer is yes. :lollipop_content:
 
For a wrpg? The best is CP2077 if you include the phantom liberty expansion.

Best side quests though I would go with Baldurs Gate 3.
 
liked a lot the Last Remnant side quests back then, but you need to like the particular battle system, as the game is 99% that

i would like to try Witcher 1 in future, never had the pleasure until now

EDIT just remembered another one, Kingdoms of Amalur
 
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Yeah, CP2077 has a really good main quest. Don't remember much of side quests except that one on the human harvest farm.
The sidequest about the mayor and his wife having their minds controlled or some shit like that was super cool imo.

In fact I wish more sidequests were into that kind of cyberpunk shit. Some others felt like they could fit in any GTA game.
 
Aside from those you mentioned:

KCD
KCD2
Fallout 1/2/New Vegas
Enderal: Forgotten Stories
Archolos: Chronicles of Myrtana
Disco Elysium
Mass Effect Trilogy
KOTOR 1&2
Baldur's Gate 2&3
Wasteland 3
Alpha Protocol

All of these have great handcrafted main and side content without checklist and shitty Ubisoft school of design.
 
Aside from those you mentioned:

KCD
KCD2
Fallout 1/2/New Vegas
Enderal: Forgotten Stories
Archolos: Chronicles of Myrtana
Disco Elysium
Mass Effect Trilogy
KOTOR 1&2
Baldur's Gate 2&3
Wasteland 3
Alpha Protocol

All of these have great handcrafted main and side content without checklist and shitty Ubisoft school of design.
Played everything except KCD and Archolos. Disco Elysium is thrash.
Fable II is still really good for both main and side quest.
Played it, it was good.
 
Main:
Cyberpunk 2077 (Nothing can touch this)
Final Fantasy 7 (Still great)
Mass Effect trilogy (It's still fantastic)

Side:
Skyrim (How do you actually finish this game?)
Starfield (Especially faction quests are superb)
The Witcher 3 (Top 3 fleshed out side stuff)
 
Mass Effect 2 is my number one for both. Not a single side quest felt like a waste of time and they were all treated like their own main stories. It didn't make you farm or grind unnecessarily either. It is the peak example of how to write and pace a story in an RPG.

homelander-the-boys.gif
 
MQ
--------------
Nier Automata
Metaphor
Divinity Original Sin 2
FF 14 - All expansions, except AAR (crazy good).
 
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Greedfall's main quests and companion quests were pretty engaging for me. It's an AA eurojank game, but it did reminisce some old school bioware style.

Also, we exhausted the WRPGs, just throw a few modern JRPGs.

YS 8
Judgment
Xenoblade 1
 
Metaphor is really intriguing, I was thinking Persona 5 but I still have 4 Golden to finish. Is the Metaphor story really good?
Fuck no. It's insanely predictable and the one part early on they introduced that could've made for a mind bender they did nothing with lol.
 
Great villain and the writting is more mature than in the Persona games. I liked that aspect of the game for sure.

My dude no way you predicted the stuff about the main character's origin. Shit was crazy.
I shit you not I did. It's why the game when we were all discussing it on release was a 6/10 for me.

I'd still recommend it for Atlus fans but it's the weakest offering from them I've ever had.
 
Mass Effect 2 is my number one for both. Not a single side quest felt like a waste of time and they were all treated like their own main stories. It didn't make you farm or grind unnecessarily either. It is the peak example of how to write and pace a story in an RPG.

homelander-the-boys.gif

The companion quests in ME2 are still better than the main quests in 99% modern games.

Such a good fucking structure that game had.
 
In no order.

Main Quest
Fallout (The Fallout franchise at its best and most focused.)
Baldur's Gate II w/ Throne of Bhaal expansion (It might not be as cinematic and deeply plotted as JRPGs and some modern CRPGs, but by the end you're a demigod going around killing other demigods on a quest to become an actual god and you have your own private realm and butler. Also this was back when not every game had to be perfectly balanced, so magic is crazy overpowered by the end in a super fun way that makes it feel even more epic.)
Kingdom Come Deliverance (Over the course of the main quest, the sense of progression in this might be even more satisfying than in BG2. You start as the son of a blacksmith, who doesn't really know how to do much of anything, and you become basically an unlanded knight taking part in battles and sieges alongside lords. This is also maybe the only medieval European RPG that doesn't have any kind of fantasy elements? So you won't find anything quite like this anywhere else.)
Chrono Trigger (Of all the JRPGs I've played, this one might have the most epic main quest.)
Dragon Quest IV (The way that this game has you play a bunch of different characters introductions one after another is really effective, because they're all so different.)
Shin Megami Tensei 4 (Very creative game with a really interesting story and great atmosphere.)

Side Quests
Final Fantasy XIII-2 (The timeline system in this game makes it really fun to try to unlock hidden side-paths which can then in turn unlock other hidden paths that you didn't know about. Amazing, underrated game.)
The Witcher 3 (Some of the best side quests I've ever played.)
Darklands (This game is set in the late medieval Holy Roman Empire as superstitious people of the time might have believed it to be. It's basically 100% mostly repeatable side quests, and even though it feels like an unfinished game, the fact that it can keep your attention for so long despite the repetition speaks to how good these side quests are.)
 
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I forgot The World Ends With You. Definitely belongs on the list for Main Quest :pie_open_mouth:.

Also MagiusNecros MagiusNecros that's interesting. I hated the main quest of Neverwinter Nights. The player created content was amazing, but the story they included with the game felt super basic, in my opinion. Didn't help that that game has always run terribly.
 
Also MagiusNecros MagiusNecros that's interesting. I hated the main quest of Neverwinter Nights. The player created content was amazing, but the story they included with the game felt super basic, in my opinion. Didn't help that that game has always run terribly.
Expansions are objectively better then main campaign. Game's longevity definitely is the player created stuff. Pretty hard to recommend many cRPGs.

TintoConCasera TintoConCasera Metaphor's weakness unironically to me is the Visual Novel design it feels it needs to tack on to. If it focused on the daytime activities and avoided the Majora's Mask system(which if you know what you are doing is negligible) I feel it would be a much better game. I like Metaphor but it's kinda similar to FE Three Houses where parts of the game drag it down a lot. It's clearly a mashup of all of Atlus's games primarily SMT/Persona/Etrian Odyssey but to me their best game is still SMT4.
 
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I really liked the side quests Trails 1st Chapter and I liked the fact it makes sense in context of the world.

I also really like side quests in Nier Replicant and Nier Automata.

Also some of the Blade quests in Xenoblade 2 its really well done but unfortunately its tide to RNG if you get the Blade soon enough in order invest on their quests.
 
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