So I’ve hit Gran Pulse, and I’ve stepped into side quest hell. I’ve spent the last few hours doing hunting missions, and just before I called it a night, I unlocked the ability to ride chocobos, which was rewarding, and I also fought a Cactuar all very nostalgic.

The side quests are basically “Missions” that you get from monuments scattered around Gran Pulse, that give you a target that you have to kill. The location of your mark is flagged on your Map, so they’re easy to find, but traveling there can be time consuming. I have a complaint here which is pretty much the same complaint I had with Borderlands… Since there isn’t a world map (at least not one that I found), if the indicator is outside of your current zone, it shows you which exit you need to get to, which is good, the problem is that you can’t zoom out to see the next zone, so it isn’t entirely clear which waypoint is the best to teleport to. Completing missions unlock other monuments to do more missions, I’ve done about half of them but I suspect the later ones are going to be much harder. I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to spend on doing these missions, but it’s a welcome distraction from the main story line at this point.

I’ve also ran into some bad guys that are definitely hiding some loot behind them that I haven’t been able to beat yet, I’m not sure how much time I want to spend on such foes either. I’m talking about baddies with hp in the millions… hard to kill! and time consuming! but this is also a very Final Fantasy thing to do as well which makes me happy.