Nier Replicant is a game that encourages multiple playthroughs as it features five different endings, and New Game Plus playthroughs offer additional insight and details into the world and story. The game also features many optional quests that players can choose to undertake, some of which offer fantastic rewards, comedic moments, and some that even tie into the main plotline.
We've picked out ten of the best optional quests to complete in Nier Replicant so that you can ensure that you don't miss out on them on your next playthrough. Be warned, there are spoilers ahead in this list.
10 Shopping List
The "Shopping List" quest is available in Part One and is well worth doing as it unlocks the garden beside your house, allowing you to cultivate your own plants. The follow-up quest "A Return to Shopping" will also expand your garden plot size.
Cultivating plants is a great way to earn some money and is also required if you want to grow your own Lunar Tear. If you happen to miss these quests, you can simply buy an item in Part Two that unlocks these features, but the quests are super easy to complete in Part One and will let you get a headstart on gardening.
9 The Ballad of the Twins
The "The Ballad of the Twins" quest is available in Part One and is given by a villager in the tavern in Nier's village. Though it has a little bit of running around and requires the collection of some obscure ingredients, this quest offers a chance for players to see both Devola and Popola singing together.
The great thing about this quest is that you can listen to the beautiful song as long as you want, as you have to speak to Devola to quit out of this scene and to complete the quest.
8 The Lighthouse Lady Quest Chain
This is a series of quests that revolve around the woman living in the lighthouse at Seafront. These quests are obtained by speaking to Devola in the tavern in Nier's village in Part One and is one of the first instances in the game where players will face a moral conundrum.
Though the choices you make don't impact the quest progression or rewards, when decision time comes, it still feels as though your choice has meaning. The concept of believing in a white lie to stay happy rather than face the harsh truth appears more than once in the game.
7 The Pride of a Lover
"The Pride of a Lover" quest is often overlooked by players as it requires you to speak to the quest giver three times before he'll actually give you the quest, not to mention that he's tucked away on the Seafront map. However, it's a relatively short quest for some rather hefty rewards.
Completing this quest will give you the decent sum of 30,000 gold, as well as clueing you in on a great place to find Fluorite, which is needed for some weapon upgrades.
6 The Runaway Son
"The Runaway Son" quest is available in Part One of the game and is one of the more convoluted and long-winded quests as you have to keep tracking down the son without many clues as to where exactly he is next. This quest is particularly interesting as you discover at the end that you were kind of playing the bad guy, albeit unwittingly.
The son wanted to leave a life of crime, but you unknowingly convinced him to return home and stay in the family business of swindling. This quest offers no rewards and foreshadows one of the overall themes of the game — that you're not necessarily the good guy here.
5 The Missing Girl and Shadows of the Desert
There are two quests in the game that are linked together. The first is in Part One, "The Missing Girl", and sees you unraveling the mystery of the missing girl from Facade. It turns out her boyfriend accidentally killed her and got rid of the body, yet inexplicably she returns unharmed at the end.
If you completed the first quest, in Part Two you can unlock "Shadows of the Desert" that follows up on the original. It reveals that the girl who returned was not the real girl at all, but a shade. This quest offers a great mystery to solve, which leaves players scratching their heads at first, only to later find out the dark truth.
4 The Great Tree
Available in Part Two, "The Great Tree" quest has an old man in Seafront asking you to retrieve a piece of root from the large tree found within the Lost Shrine. On your return, the old man explains that fossils show that plantlife completely disappeared from the world at some point.
He goes on to say that evidently, there are plants there now, so he wants to know how they managed to come back. This is another great quest that, with hindsight, clearly ties into some of the overall themes of the game, with humanity becoming extinct and trying to find a way to come back. As an added bonus, this quest rewards you with 20,000 gold.
3 Learning a Trade
"Learning a Trade" is available in Part Two providing that you completed the Part One quest "The New Merchant in Town". Nier is sent to get different medicinal items for an NPC, but each time he asks for the required materials he gets some eyebrow-raising responses.
Essentially, it turns out that the medicines Nier was asking for were a stimulant for use in the bedroom and another to keep you up all night. This leads to some hilarious moments and some cracking lines from Weiss. This is a great little quest for a laugh and some decent money as it rewards you with 20,000 gold on completion.
2 The Despicable Man
"The Despicable Man" quest is available in Part Two from a woman in Nier's village. She asks you to track down her boyfriend who has been missing for five years, resulting in you traveling from town to town and realizing that the man in question is a serial womanizer.
At first, this simply seems like your average runaround quest, however, in the end, you realize that it actually ties into the main plot events of Part One. During the events of the first half of the game, you go to find the mother of the two brothers who live at the Junk Heap and find her dead beside her lover. That's right, you already found the guy five years prior.
1 The Magical Stone
"The Magical Stone" quest is available in Part Two once you have collected all key fragments and you can unlock the quest by speaking to the Fortune Teller in the Forest of Myth. At first, the quest seems relatively straightforward, but eventually, you'll end up traveling back to the prologue area.
It's pretty cool to go back to the initial tutorial area, but additionally, you can find the Iron Pipe weapon you first wield in one of the crates there too. As an added bonus, when you complete the quest, you'll also get 10,000 gold.