Final Fantasy Quests Guide

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Final Fantasy is one of the only game series in videogame history that can say it has titles that have been released for the past 4 decades. While it started as a simple 2D game about Warriors of Light coming to save the world, it has completely evolved into an incredible series filled with iconic characters, amazing worlds, tragic moments, and unforgettable battles.

It’s also a series that has inspired so much nostalgia through the years, and you can bet that for any Final Fantasy fan you know, they will be able to tell you what their favorite quest was in every Final Fantasy game that they played.

I have been a Final Fantasy fan since 1997, and like a lot of fans of the series, I was brought on board by the iconic landmark title of the series in Final Fantasy 7, and from there, I never looked back.

Something about the worlds the series created mixed with characters that felt real in so many ways just gripped me, and although it took me a little bit to come to grips with the turn-based combat system, it quickly became my favorite type of combat at the time considering we were still in the very early days of action games.

I’ve played just about every game in the series since then, and some of the spinoffs have been a great time as well. Within each of these games comes some amazing stories, and to go along with those stories, an epic quest design.

Whether you’re saving kings and queens in the days of old Final Fantasies or exploring the fusion of medieval and futuristic worlds that have come to define the games of recent memory, the quests are always the main draw of the game.

Our Final Fantasy quests guide is going to take a look at Final Fantasy quests throughout the years. Let’s begin.

What Are Quests in Final Fantasy?

A quest in Final Fantasy is what drives you forward throughout the game. In the early days of Final Fantasy, this would mean the larger quest at hand that you would be pushing towards, and there would be very little variety in terms of variation here, although there were a couple of quests available that concerned improving your characters.

Since then, there has been the introduction of many kinds of quests in each game, with different rewards and incentives involved in completing them.

How Does Each Final Fantasy Game Handle Quests

Throughout the series, there are plenty of ways the series handles quests. As the series matured, your options for what pace you wanted to complete things became more and more varied. The side quests, in particular, became huge in their number, offering you tons of diversions from the main game and making it, so the total playtime of these games increased exponentially because of it.

Each game offers there own variety of quests. While the main quest is different from game to game, you may find yourself fighting a lot of familiar monsters or acquiring the same types of summons throughout the series. This is how the quests are broken down in Final Fantasy.

Main Quests

In each Final Fantasy game, the main quest is what your party’s larger goal is overall, and it’s what pushes you along in the plot. In Final Fantasy as a whole, you are never forced to go anywhere, and you usually have a good amount of freedom where you want to go and what you want to do once you reach the section of the game that opens you up to the world map.

While you can pretty much explore at your leisure, the main quest will always be the thing that pushes you forward into the next part of the game.

In order to figure out what your main quest is in each game, you have to pay attention to the story. For example, in the older Final Fantasy games like Final Fantasy VII, there were no map markers available, so you needed to carefully follow along with what was being said by your party to understand what the next objective was. In the early going, you need to destroy the Mako Reactors in the city.

With that in mind, you should be exploring every path that would seemingly lead you to that objective. You can always talk to the character in your party at various times in these games in case you are lost, so it should never get too confusing because of that.

As the games progressed towards more modern sensibilities, they now allow you to select your quests manually, and when you do, a map marker generally will follow, pointing you in the correct direction.

While this gets rid of some of the investigative nature of the old games, it definitely streamlines the experience in a big way and keeps players from getting frustrated with getting lost.

Examples of Main Quests in the Series

  • Confront the President of Shinra
  • Assassinate the Sorceress
  • Defeat Sin
  • Take back your throne
  • Save the world

The older games in the series will usually not be this obvious with what your quest is as you need to pay attention to actually know exactly what you should do, but the newer ones will blatantly shove you in the right direction, so the story can continue.

Prerequisite Quests

The main quest is always the ultimate goal at whatever point in the story you’re in during each game, but sometimes, that goal won’t be immediately accessible to you. Sometimes, there will be an activity that needs to be completed before the actual main quest can be continued.

For example, in Final Fantasy VIII, at the beginning of the game, Squall is training for his SEED exam, which is a military operation taking place in a nearby town. In order to get to that part of the story, you first have to take on Ifrit in a nearby cave and acquire his power by defeating him in battle. Many Final Fantasy games have these sub-quests that are required before the larger task at hand can be dealt with.

ff8 seed exam

Usually, these quests will be pretty obvious as to what needs to happen next, but annoyingly enough, some Final Fantasy games on occasion decide to hide the solution behind things like finding a particular item in an area or speaking to a specific character before the story can pick up again.

When this happens, and you’re in a confined area, you need to exhaust all options on what needs to happen next. Talk to every character, search every corner of the room for the item you need, or sometimes, you simply need to follow a tutorial in your character menu before things can proceed.

Examples of Prerequisite Quests

  • Talk to Barret and Tifa
  • Buy a train ticket
  • Help X character out with a problem
  • Find Esther
  • Get a disguise for Cloud

These are generally the least thrilling quests available in any Final Fantasy game, but they are very important when it comes to story. This is where you will get valuable information on the backstory of your characters, get to enjoy the calm before the storm moments, and also engage in some pretty funny situations as well.

It’s not all dire at all times in Final Fantasy, and a lot of the levity in this series happens during these quests that come right before the big events in the games.

It’s during these missions that you’ll likely be given a chance to go out and do anything you’ve forgotten to do prior, as many main quest scenarios place you in specific places like dungeons and the like where you cannot leave until you finish the area.

During these times, any side quests or level grinding you’ve wanted to do should be taken care of. You should also take this time to purchase any weapons and armor that you may be in need of, as it’s likely that the main quest you’re about to head out on will have shops available for equipment like that, including items as well.

Side quests

As the series grew more, there began to be side quests which were miniature adventures that a player could choose to go on if they wanted to, and completing these sidequests often led to amazing rewards like new weapons, spells, summons, and items.

Unlike the main quests and prerequisite quests, side quests have always been completely optional when it comes to Final Fantasy games. While some RPGs tend to connect side quests to the main plotline in some way and can even influence the main events in a story, Final Fantasy side quests are generally completely separate from what’s going on in your main quest.

That’s not to say they take place in a different world or anything, as side quests generally are found right in the same places that the main quests are. For example, you might be exploring a town on your way to the main quest, but in that town, there may be people who need your help with something.

Examples of Side Quests

  • Helping someone find a lost friend
  • Defeating X amount of monsters
  • Searching for a missing item
  • Recruiting a party member
  • Exploring a dungeon and fighting a difficult boss
  • Finding parts to make a new weapon
  • Discovering a new summon
  • Going on Hunts
  • Unlocking special attacks
  • Discover optional Super Bosses to face

As you can see, the side quests available in these games can range from the mundane to the absolutely epic. It’s hard to tell exactly what you’re going to get when you come across a sidequest, so if you’ve got some extra time on your hands, you might want to follow a few of these through as the rewards can be shockingly great.

On occasion, side quests can be only temporary and specific to a certain point in the story. For example, in Final Fantasy X, there is a massive area late in the game that allows you to explore and do any of the side quests you’ve neglected till that point.

Final Fantasy X Side Quests

Once you continue on to the main quest, you will reach a point of no return, and those quests will no longer be doable. While you never want to take on all of the side quests at once, you want to make sure you aren’t leaving behind any weapons or special attacks that can help you out in big battles.

Tips For Questing in Final Fantasy

Many of the Final Fantasy games can be pretty overwhelming, so it’s a good idea to take note of what’s around you in any particular area. In a lot of games in the series, you’ll be exploring several towns and cities, and generally, within those places will be both a way forward through the main quest as well as several side activities to take part in.

Take a Look Around

The first thing you’ll want to do is check every new city you come upon for shops. Generally, there will be new armor and weapons in every new place you’ll go to. The issue then is paying for those things as the better armor and weapons will always cost more.

Luckily for us, side quests pay for that the majority of the time, although you can also wander the open world and fight monsters to increase the amount of Gil you have as well.

In games like Final Fantasy XII, you’re able to go on side quests called Hunts which send you on adventures to defeat massive monsters that are occasionally tougher than the bosses in the main game. These side quests generally yield massive rewards. Final Fantasy XV and Final Fantasy XIV use similar systems as well.

Main Quest Tips

When it comes to the main quest, the difficulty of the games will vary greatly. Usually, the main quest will present some of the toughest challenges you can find in the game, and sometimes, those challenges will be too difficult to overcome. When that happens, you have a few options.

You can grind your levels up by fighting monsters in the open world of the game, but that can get grating after a while. You can also stock up on items like potions and Phoenix Downs, so you have more of a chance to survive a tough fight.

You can also try out things like different magic spells to see if an enemy has a weakness that you didn’t think of the first time. Mixing up your strategy is usually key to winning any tough fight in a Final Fantasy game, so never get stuck in your ways just because it worked on an earlier fight in the game.

Side Quest Tips

The side quests will vary from game to game, but for me, the most important ones have always surrounded the ones that will unlock the best weapons, summons, new characters, and Limit Breaks.

It’s hard to know which quest is going to unlock what, and that’s what strategy guides have classically helped with. This does remove the feeling of discovery, but trust me when I say that you don’t want to find out you missed out on a great weapon or summon because you gave up on a side quest early.

final fantasy side quests weapon

Some of these quests can be incredibly lengthy and might not seem worth it. From my long time experience with the series, these are always the quests that unlock the best items, summons, and attacks in the game.

Examples of this are the quest to get the strongest summon in Final Fantasy VII, which involves Chocobo racing, breeding, and overall, it takes a long time to complete. The juice, however, is very much worth the squeeze.

In addition to these lengthy quests, sometimes a side quest will lead to an impossibly tough boss, like the Ultimate Weapon throughout the series or the famous Yiazamat battle in Final Fantasy XII. These side quests are generally available throughout the whole game, and that’s a good thing because you will likely be nowhere close to defeating them the first time you encounter them.

Beating these super bosses takes a ton of preparation, strategy, and patience to come away victorious from. You generally want to make sure that you have the best weapons in the game, the strongest summons, the most powerful spells, and a ton of curative items for both health and status effects before daring to take on any of these challenging fights.

Memorable Quests Throughout the Series

Memorable Main Quests

Final Fantasy VII- Shinra Headquarters

Shinra Headquarters

The opening segment in Midgar is one of the most mind-blowing moments in all of gaming for me. The futuristic yet downtrodden city was a watershed moment in gaming, and the buildup to the infiltration of Shinra was just brilliant.

You finally make your way to the big bad corporation in charge of the Mako Reactors and work your way through floor after floor of fights against their soldiers until you finally go to confront President Shinra himself.

Only someone has beaten you to it. The halls to his office are covered in blood and suddenly, what has been a pretty calm adventure, for the most part, takes a very dark turn.

Upon going into the office, you see President Shinra dead on his desk with a sword sticking out of his back.

That sword belongs to Sephiroth, and this acts as one of the most chilling moments in the series history, and it’s just the start of the game.

Final Fantasy VIII- The Battle of the Gardens

FINAL FANTASY VIII Remastered_20191024225231

Final Fantasy VIII has some incredibly unique ideas going on, and one of those is the ideas of a student military. See, there are these huge structures called Gardens, and they are essentially colleges mixed with military training facilities.

You play as Squall, hailing from Balamb Garden, and after a few hours into the story, you’re told the enemy that is supporting a dangerous Sorceress is Galbadia Garden. Furthermore, your arch-rival Seifer has left Balamb to go to Galbadia to fight for the Sorceress.

The buildup to this quest is incredible and tragic because you’re hearing epic speeches and the like, but at the same time, these are kids that are going to be fighting each other to the death at the whim of adults, much like actual wars in a way.

The cinematic and music that accompanies your approach onto the battlefield is still one of the most visually impressive sequences in gaming history. When you finally touch down on the ground, the background is filled with scenes of warfare as the opposing forces clash and students are launching spells, and clashing blades left and right, making for an incredible spectacle.

Once you get into Galbadia Garden, the eerie quiet of it is broken up by multiple fights against students simply fighting to protect their home. It all culminates with an epic fight against Seifer, and it’s easily one of the best quests in the entire series.

Final Fantasy XV: Altissia

The first few hours of Final Fantasy XV are relatively mundane compared to the spectacle that you get with the majority of the games throughout the series, but once you reach the fantastical city on the water of Altissia, things kick into high gear.

Although the quest surrounds the royal wedding between Prince Noctis and Lady Lunafreya, it quickly spins out of control as the Nilfgardian Empire invades. Once this happens, all hell breaks loose, and you’re suddenly fighting off soldiers left and right while in the background, the legendary Leviathan has been summoned.

While you’re fighting with the soldiers, Leviathan starts absolutely destroying the city, and the chaos unfolding is a sight to behold. Although the story doesn’t exactly make sense as to what’s happening at this point, it’s all about the visuals and combat here.

You end up coming face to face with Leviathan shortly thereafter, and Noctis goes full Dragonball Z on it, becoming airborne and suddenly having the ability to launch energy blasts at the terrifying creature.

It’s completely nuts and fascinating to watch unfold, and although there have been many better-written quests in the series, none have approached the visual grandeur on display here.

Final Fantasy IX– The Truth about the Black Mages

Final Fantasy IX is one of the most beloved games in the series for many reasons, and one of the biggest is how it reframes some of the most classic classes throughout the series, such as the Paladin and the Black Mage.

Vivi is a Black Mage and a valuable member of your party, and when you get to the Black Mage village, you finally discover where he came from. Things don’t feel right here, though, as most of the Black Mages you encounter have a number next to their name.

There is an eeriness in the air, and soon after, you discover a factory where the Black Mages are being created by the evil Alexandrian Empire under the guidance of the villain Queen Brahne.

The realization for Vivi is among one of the most tragic moments in the entire series and is an iconic moment in the series’ history. The impressive thing about the impact of this quest is that it involves very little combat. This is mostly about exploration and eventually a terrifying discovery.

The writing on display here takes the place of any over-the-top cutscenes, and it’s a quest that will remain with you, just as it has with me, many years after your journey in Final Fantasy IX has ended.

Final Fantasy X- Zanarkand

The beginning of Final Fantasy X was important for many reasons. You had a game that was welcoming Final Fantasy into the next generation of gaming, and you also had a game that was coming on the heels of the highest-rated Final Fantasy game ever in Final Fantasy IX.

Luckily for us, Final Fantasy X was up to the task, and the opening quest places you in the shoes of Tidus, a futuristic sports star, and initially, the vibe is wild.

You’re in the futuristic city of Zanarkand, and you’re the star of a sports team with your adoring fans all over you begging for autographs.

For veterans of the series, this was plain bizarre. Things get even stranger when the Blitzball game starts, and it seems very weird for an opening quest of a Final Fantasy game.

All of this comes crashing down in moments, though, as the massive creature known as Sin appears and absolutely decimates the city. Soon, the sports arena is turned into a warzone, and creatures are killing civilians right and left.

Out of nowhere, the badass known as Auron jumps down into the fray and comes to your aid, giving you your father’s sword in the process, and within seconds, you’re thrown into a classic Final Fantasy battle.

The wild mix of themes here ends in classic Final Fantasy fashion, and after your initial battles, you’re thrown into the world of Spira, a suspiciously primitive place compared to the futuristic city of Zanarkand, and so begins one of the greatest stories the long-running franchise had ever told.

Memorable Side Quests

Final Fantasy V – The Phoenix Tower

This is a quest you can take on in the merged world. While here, you will find a massive tower located south of the North Moutain, and this is the Phoenix Tower.

Here, you will undergo an insane challenge as the tower is a massive 30 floors, and each, you will encounter some of the toughest enemies in the game.

If you manage to reach the top of the tower, you will get the powerful summon, Phoenix.

Final Fantasy VII- Vincent Valentine

Final Fantasy VII is one of the only games in the series that has multiple optional characters to recruit. Vincent is among the coolest of them, and this shape-shifting vampire is acquirable during your trip to Nibelheim.

Although things seem quite nice in the formerly burnt down hometown of Cloud and Tifa, wandering over to the Shinra Manor immediately puts a dire tone on everything, and venturing further into the manor will reveal the horrific creature called the Lost Number.

If you emerge from this battle victorious, you will get the basement key, and once down there, you can activate a coffin where Vincent will emerge from. He then joins your party as immediately one of the most powerful members.

Final Fantasy VIII– Deep-Sea Research Center

deep sea research center

This side quest has multiple parts to it. The first one has you taking on the legendary GF, Bahamut. This fight is tough enough as it is, and if you succeed, you can then summon him from thereon out.

If you return to the Deep Sea Research center, though, you will eventually activate a timer, and at the bottom of the area, you will encounter Ultima Weapon.

This is an incredibly tough fight, and during it, you can acquire the GF Eden by drawing from Ultima Weapon. One area, two of the most powerful summons in the game. Not a bad deal if you ask me.

Final Fantasy VI– Recruiting Umaro

The cast in Final Fantasy VI is massive, and it can get even bigger if you want it to. Umaro is a Yeti that can be fought in the world of Ruin.

He makes for a tough boss, and acquiring him as a character right after is a unique proposition as well, considering he cannot be controlled and is permanently in a state of Berserk.

Anything helps while marching towards the final fight with Kefka, even out of control Yeti companions.

FAQs

Question: What is the hardest Final Fantasy Quest?

Anwer: For me, it’s acquiring the Knights of the Round Materia in Final Fantasy VII. This quest is endless and is filled with frustration, although the end result is great.

Question: What is the hardest boss in Final Fantasy?

Anwer: Yiazamat. This fight takes literal hours to win, and the result is just shame mixed with exhaustion.

Question: Which is the hardest Final Fantasy game?

Anwer: Final Fantasy Tactics is incredibly tough, and there is a point midway through the game that has forced many players to quit.

Conclusion

For me, the quests are what makes a Final Fantasy game worth it. I could go on for hours about memorable moments throughout the series, and it’s because there are just so many great ones out there.

For those new to the series, hopefully, this gives you a taste of the majesty in store and, for the veterans, a trip down memory lane.

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