NieR: Automata will definitely go down as one of the best games I played in 2021/2022. This comes from the fact that the game has one of the best stories and lore that I've witnessed in quite some time. Much of this comes down to the fact that the game has really good side quests.
Side content in general should, in my opinion, be used to fill in gaps about the lore and story in the world. They shouldn't be necessary to do unless you want to know more about the world. This is what NieR does right with their side quests. They fill in the lore of the world.
Because of this I really enjoyed completing them and at one point I was more absorbed in the side quests than I was in the actual story. Even though most of them are mere fetch quests with a combat challenge every now and then the stories they tell are just really good. Everything from the resistance member who stole android parts to build his own friend to the machine who locked himself in his room repeatedly because he didn't want to be around people.
Let's take the side quest in the image above for instance. In this one the robot has us finding some parts he needs to create a video game and for every part we find we need to test the game for bugs. He does all of this just so he can spread some joy in an otherwise depressing world. This kinda fits the theme for all the circus machine side quests.
Especially the one where you're tasked with escorting a procession of circus machines around the world as they try to spread joy. Instead all the other machines just try to destroy them and we have to defend them. Kinda depressing...
Picking favorites...
My favorite side quest had us helping a couple of androids that wanted to just get away from it all. It starts out by us scouting out some locations for them before finding some guy who can help them across the sea for a hefty sum of money. After helping them with the money they are attacked by this person after paying him.
In the end we find them both damaged and after repairing them the female android is hell bent on resetting their own memories to just forget this whole incident. During this its also revealed that this is the 6th time the female android resets the male android in hopes that he'll become a version of himself that she likes more.
It all ends with this quite from Pascal:
"The experience with the female android who wanted to modify her partner has taught Pascal that women can be scary." Wiki
I don't really know why I liked this one so much but for some reason it just stuck with me. The woman trying to change her man to something he's not was just kinda... depressing. Like the rest of this game.
Apparently I didn't snap any screenshots during this whole quest so here's one of Emil, who is involved in my other favorite quest, instead.
Emils quests lead to some pretty cool moments. In the picture above he shows us his little hiding place deep underground where all of these beautiful flowers grow. In the quest leading up to this we collect a bunch of these flowers as Emils forgotten memories slowly unravel. This ending quite really stuck with me:
"After you found a wide space covered with lunar tears in the basement of the commercial facility, Emil appeared and told you of his life. He was built long ago as a weapon, and he himself was but one of many copies produced during the war against the aliens. He said that the place you were standing was very dear to the original Emil who had lived so long before. Your Emil then wistfully explained how echoes of that memory lingered on inside him." Wiki
I later learned through the very last quest involving Emil that he's actually a character from the earlier NieR game that was recently re-released as NieR Replicant. You can even see him in the trailer. I'm definitely more excited to play that game now and unravel even more of the lore and story involving this universe.
All in all NieR just does side quests right. They're completely optional but you're rewarded with a lot of cool lore and a lot of depressing moments. These depressing moments are however sugarcoated in a lot of humor and comedy. I was laughing just as much as I was feeling sorry for most of these characters.
If you end up playing NieR: Automata at some point don't hesitate to do the side quests. My recommendation is to play through the main story and not do a lot of side quests during your first playthrough. Then when you do your second run, which you need to do to get the whole story, you focus more on these side quests. There's more side quests available during the second playthrough and you don't have to disconnect yourself from the main story to do them. At least that's what I did and it worked out really well.
Completing all of the side quests is also an achievement so if you're an achievement hunter like me then this is a must.
All images in this post are screenshots taken by me.