Sidequestin'

Well, as predicted, I've gotten the Blue Dragon campaign to the point of absurd sidequests and distraction galore.  It's a long and glorious RPG tradition; you get whatever the game's equivalent of airship and/or fast travel (in this case the airship, fast travel is useful, but you need the airship to get the extra dungeons), the game tells you its the time of reckoning.  Speeches are often made, camaraderie affirmed, sometimes the oh-so-hidden love is confessed.  But then the player regains agency, and you wander about through the Scary Dungeon of Neverheardofit, Plunder the Region of Obscurehint, then finally smack around the Fearsome Beast Didyoubuyaguideyet.  All of this so you can acquire the MacGuffin of Unlocktherealgoodies and access the Equipment Set of Whythehelldoesntthebadguyusethisheisanidiot.

It can be fun; while we usually wind up with recolored caves and ruins, sometimes we get a game that actually has interesting and flavorful extra dungeons.  I am happy to report that so far, Blue Dragon's stuff belongs to the latter catergory.  There is some of the obligatory backtracking and unlocking things you couldn't get the first time, but its actually fairly painless and gives good rewards.  It can also give an opportunity to find all those search points (and wonderful, wonderful Nothings) you've managed to skip.  And at the very least, we don't seem to have That One Sidequest where you waste two weeks of your life racing and juicing up birds over and over again.  Even us fans never learned to like that one.

In any case, hopefully I put this one to bed at the end of the week, rampage about in a hack-and-slash palate cleanser like Diablo and move on to a Atelier game or something.  We're still on course for the Craft System, Dork Factor Three!