Alright, let's go through the rest of the sidequests.
To begin, you need to read this conversation from a bar in and around Zeltennia. This opens up an island off its coast...where, oddly, nothing happens.
To progress this further, you need to go back to Goug after clearing Bethla, where Mustadio's father has excavated yet another machine from the depths. This one requires an entirely different stone, and given that Nelveska Temple had mysteriously opened up earlier through a rumor without being actually visitable, the stone could only be placed there.
Sure enough, there's a fight there now. It's pretty rude, featuring lots of fast fighters that can easily attack any member of your team within their first turn, and an extremely powerful robot that spams exceptionally powerful lasers! That being said, my samurai was powerful enough to singlehandedly kill half of them, and Revier handled the other half.
This fight is also notable for being one of the few places where the item finding skill is worthwhile, my friend let me know of the four great treasures that can be found with it. Now of course, it's not easy to get them, even if you can handle the enemies. First of all, two of them are atop high pillars, and your characters can't reach them with the item finding skill on, as it takes up the movement skill slot. A "large creature", like the friendly robot here, can however make up for it, providing 3 units of height and acting as a "stepping stone" for the tile it occupies.
The treasures are pretty awesome, featuring a great spear, shield, ninja sword and a gimmicky, yet potentially useful weapon that has great evasion and the capability to turn its targets into frogs. That being said, none of this is really necessary, and I only broke out the item finding skill for demonstration purposes.
Upon defeat, the robot resurrects itself with 1 HP, and, on its second demise, turns into the stone the machine requires. But that's not all, as the stone also has the power of decursing Reis, transforming her into her human form! Yep, all these sidequests are connected to each other, lol.
Speaking of! The machine, once revived, teleports in Cloud from Final Fantasy 7! He's very standoffish, being under the influence of drugs and Sephiroth's mindfucking. He abruptly rushes outside before anyone can even ask him about his destination!
Thankfully, it's not too hard to trace him. Remember the dilapidated trade town with the Aeris reference? Yeah, Cloud goes there, and saves her from some brigands trying to harass her into paying off her debts, but then gets mindfucked again! A quick mission follows against some rabble, provided you slew Dycedarg first. Yeah, this mission doesn't unlock until then, for some reason.
The reward for this is recruiting Cloud, who comes with some cool gear. Sadly he's also level 1, and doesn't even have any of his skillset unlocked! What a pain lol.
I suppose I should also briefly touch on Beowulf, Reis and Worker 8, the robot activated after the mine quest. Beowulf is essentially an Oracle with swords, heavy armor and instantly casted spells. So basically, better than them in almost every way. Reis is a funky take on the Dragon Tamer from Tactics Ogre, having a bunch of breaths and dragon specific buffs. She can't equip much, but she gets good HP to compensate. Worker 8 is just like the robot at Nelveska, dealing damage with lots of powerful moves. The catch is, they self damage the robot, and with innate magic immunity, it's impossible to heal or buff it with spells. Items work just fine, though, and with proper support it can easily obliterate entire enemy parties on its own!
That about covers the sidequests in the PS1 version, barring the endgame side dungeon, which is unlocked by visiting Warjilis after the events of Murond's cathedral. I'm not covering it, because I tend not to enjoy endgame side dungeons in my games. Hell Gate/Palace of the Dead in Tactics Ogre was no exception, being a goddamn chore involving a series of tedious fights.
But now for the PSP version.
First, let's cover the "essentials". There's an additional scene where they tie up the entire reed flute arc, making Delita teach the princess how to play it well and also having her fall for him more. There's a brief battle against one of the surviving cabal leaders with Meliadoul in tow, where they're hinted at having some long distant relationship. Sadly the game doesn't bother elaborating the exact nature of this relationship, or why the guy chose to become a demon.
The most notable of these is a rematch with a resurrected vampiric Algus in Limberry, right after the fight with Elmdor, and right before the fight with his demonic form. Algus is mostly an upgraded Gafgarion who is extra resilient against spells, thanks to having innate Reflect and low Faith. His minions, the Ultima Demons, are mildly threatening because they all possess a variety of mediocre magical aoes, which nevertheless can add up quite quickly if you aren't careful to space out.
That being said, they're also rather brittle, especially if a character can catch them while they're casting. Really though, the battle isn't difficult, just mildly frustrating as Algus heals too fast and blocks out too many damage sources to be bursted down easily, to say nothing of his counter skill that can heal him to full whenever he drops to critical HP! Ugh! That being said, I still appreciated the inclusion of this fight, as it made the Limberry sequence feel more meaty and imposing, much like the earlier battle sequences.
Now for the version's specific sidequests. The first one is fairly straightforward, as long as you check all the bars for new gossip. Balthier shows up in Dorter, facing off against a band of brigands gunning for his treasures. This is a fairly easy battle, because he's fast as hell, often double turning the entire enemy squad, and has a powerful gun to his name!
Naturally, he's pretty powerful as a party member too, having improved theft skills, very high speed, x-fight, and of course, an awesome gun. If you need some help, he's certainly a handy pick! Of course, Orlandu is an even better pick, but he shows up later, and Balthier's got more style.
The rest of the sidequests unlock after Mullonde's cathedral, and are essentially expansions of plot points brought up earlier. One has Agrias meeting with Ovelia, discovering Delita's arrogance and brashness, and handing her a knife to keep her safe. Another, occurring afterwards, has her fight off some of Dycedarg's former soldiers who've gone brigand.
The most notable of them is the expansion to Beowulf and Reis' storyline, which has one of Beowulf's former friends kidnap Reis for a sleazy, cowardly cardnial, newly appointed to replace the slain one at Lionel. Not only do they have him face off against the one behind Reis' curse, they also provide a good source of thieving targets for people looking for good gear. Indeed, the battle against the brigands actually has items from the endgame side dungeon itself!
Alright, hopefully that's an enjoyable and extensive enough coverage of the side quests of this game, both in its original and the PSP versions. I will say, while I was hoping for a bit more of a solid narrative foundation to them, as well as better/more original level design, the fights themselves were still pretty entertaining, with some of them even posing an enjoyable challenge ever so often. And of course, they provide a variety of interesting special characters, even if I dislike how powerful most of them are with respect to your generic units, given that the character customization is a major portion of this game's appeal, and making characters just outdo your handgrown characters with little effort required goes against its very premise.
That will be all. Next time, I get to complete the game! See you all then!
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