While the recently released Cris Tales, a lovely storybook-like RPG game, is a 20+ hour relatively enjoyable experience, most of that comes from the mainline narrative. Columbian development studio Dreams Uncorporated did a great job integrating Side Quests naturally into each arc of the story, but there sure isn't a huge amount of them. Side Quests are there, and they reward you with extra equipment, but most of your rewards are also things you can just buy at Elizbeth the NPC Merchant.
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To be more specific, there are just about 10 of them in total. So, with those aspects in mind, we’re going to go through and pick the best ones out of them all, based on the writing, how tedious the Side Quest felt, and how many Marbles the reward likely saved you from spending.
To Be Honest…You Should Really Do Every Side Quest
First and foremost we have to say that basically all of these Side Quests are required to get the “best ending” in this visually stunning game. Most of them have to do with improving the lives of important NPCs in each city, and once you complete all the Side Quests related to a specific area, you get an extra option when Crisbell has a big decision in regards to each city like Neva Tulira or Cinder.
So while these are what we believe to be the five best Side Quests overall, you really shouldn’t be skipping any of them if you want to get the best ending and experience everything this game has to offer. This, and a few other aspects of the game, are what separate it from classic JRPGs, both in a good and bad way.
St. Clarity: In Need Of Repairs
This is quite literally the first “Side Quest” you can take on in Cris Tales, and it comes from the hands of Adri the Inventor. Adri is one of the characters in this game that has such an interesting design that it’d be understandable to think that she would eventually become a party member.
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As far as the quest is concerned, all you need to do is:
- Go talk to Armando in Floodside, who tells you the now-ruined Blueprints are at his home on the left-hand side of the lower city.
- Go to the house, send Mathias to the past so that he can grab the pristine Blueprints.
- Walk all the way back up to Adri, give her the Blueprints, and she’ll say that she needs a Power Cell.
- Keep progressing through St. Clarity’s main story and you’ll eventually come across a boss fight that drops this Power Cell.
- Return to Adri, send Matias into the future, and bring Adri's future invention to her present self.
While the reward for completing this is only 2000 Marbles, it's worth being on here because it’s one of the only ones that interestingly integrates the time-hopping mechanics with the Side Quest task. The idea of giving Adri everything she needs to invent something, only to steal it from her future self and give it to her present version is such a neat idea that we really wished the game played around with more.
St. Clarity: A Memorial To The Fallen
This is the second Side Quest found during the adventures in St. Clarity, and one of the most easily missable Side Quests in the game. Once you enter Mt. Thysia and walk maybe 15 feet you'll see this kid named Noah being attacked by Wulfs. Drop everything and save him before you move on to the next screen. Ignoring him for now almost assuredly means that he’ll die to Wulfs, and you’ll have missed this Side Quest forever. Now, if you successfully rescued Noah, the rest of this Side Quest includes:
- Finding five different flowers throughout Floodside (not the Walled City) specifically.
- Bring all these back to Noah, and he’ll arrange them into a bouquet for the memorial in Evergreen Forest.
- You likely already interacted with the memorial in Evergreen Forest, as it was the little area locked behind the white gate.
- Return here and put the flowers down, fight off the random Wulf encounter, then return to Noah once again.
The Silver Ring you’ll receive as a reward isn’t exactly a stellar gift, but the quest is about honoring a bunch of people who died in the war against the Empress and is a reminder that this story does get pretty dark. Plus, the extra dialog you’ll get from Cristopher and Wilhelm is worth it for anyone invested in the story.
Neva Tulira: Unlucky In Love
Next up is a Side Quest called Unlucky In Love that’s part of the Neva Tulira series of optional missions. This Side Quest is only accessible once you’ve gained the ability to restore or decay objects underneath the Museum.
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After that, the nice Cinderian Girl on the right-hand side of Neva Tulira’s bottom-most area should have the Side Quest icon over her head. This girl’s name is Sol, and she has a pretty strong connection to the guy standing two feet from her, Joseph. To get these two back on good terms, you’ll need to:
- Speak with both of them, then eavesdrop on Gladys and Joseph talking in the past.
- If you didn't find the Magic Mirror in the Museum Basement already, you'll have to go back and find it.
- Head directly left to talk to Rojo’s son, Rojizo, who says he can likely fix the mirror.
- Travel back to the Rainbow Lake real quick and grab some water from any of the lakes, fight off the mandatory enemy encounter.
- Go back to Rojizo, give him the Rainbow Water, and get the mirror fixed
- Give the mirror to Joseph, then speak with Sol.
Now compared to the other Side Quest rewards so far, this is one of the better ones as Sol gives you a Cinder Signet, a ring that boosts Max HP, Magic Defense, and standard Defense. That said, the ring is nice, this cute love story is nice too, though it is odd how heavily dependant Joseph is on other people to convince him not to be a racist jerk.
Neva Tulira: The Grand Carnival
This next one is by far one of the easiest Side Quests in the game with one of the best rewards. At about the same point as you would usually do the Unlucky In Love Side Quest, there’s another one to do just up the stairs and to the left of Joseph and Sol, and her name is Dreena. To help her out, you just need to collect three ribbons by talking to NPCs around town:
- Elizabeth the Merchant has one, you’ll need to open her menu and then select the “talk” option to get the ribbon from her.
- Brandon has ribbon number two – he's the random guy standing just to the right of Sol.
- And the last one comes from the University students standing outside the school.
- Gather all three then take them back to Dreena.
The Fiery Keychain you get from this is one of those “Upgrade” Keychains that you can slap on any party member's weapon. It gives the weapon a 30 percent chance to inflict the burning status effect on each hit, which makes it an insanely good choice for a multi-hitter like JKR-721.
Cinder: A Heart Made Whole
Our last choice is the Side Quest “A Heart Made Whole”, which is another love-focused optional objective, this time it involves curing the love of Jaru’s life, a girl named Kimber, and bringing her back to him. Much like a lot of other classic JRPGs, this side quest is all about saving a couple from being tragically separated.
Now, to complete this quest, all you have to do is:
- Cure the Cinderian in the center of town (the ones the Volcano Sisters, a reoccurring mini-boss encounter, thought they had already cured).
- He’ll tell you about Kimber, Jaru’s love, who ran to Ceniza after she came down with Glass Lung.
- Talk to Jaru, he’ll mention their wedding ring, go get it back from the Graveyard by hopping Mathias into the past.
- Give the Ring to Jaru, then go to Ceniza to find Kim.
- You’ll talk to all the NPCs here, curing them of their Glass Lung, until you stumble across Kimber.
- After curing Kim, you’ll bring her back with you to Jaru, and the two will be reunited finally.
The reward for all this is a Distortion Ring, one of the best items in the game since it helps you avoid the way-too-frequent Random Encounters.