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[vetrox]

The Aztec temple and moonraker levels of Goldeneye were great.

 

[Orochinagis]

Mostly all the optional content in souls games except the ice reindeers....god lord

 

[Aselith]

DQ Casino is awesome too

 

[Seven Force]

Chrono Trigger, The World Ends With You and SoTN have already been brought up, so my work's pretty much done.

Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix+ reigns supreme in this category.

Birth by Sleep Final Mix is no slouch, either:

There's the Unversed Missions:

A few optional (regular) bosses, like Monstro:

Some of the Mirage Arena Unversed boss fights (Some are mandatory, at least for Terra, but only the first three or so, I believe)

And about four post-game super bosses (Vanitas Remnant, Mysterious Figure (a.k.a

Spoiler

Young Xehanort from Kingdom Hearts 3D)

, Armor of the Master, and No Heart.)

And that's not even getting into some of the other stuff like the racing, rhythm and tennis minigames, as well as the addictive Command Board board games. Honestly, half the fun of KH games these days are digging into the crazy optional content.

 

[GametimeUK]

Everything other than the main quest line in a Bethesda game.

 

[Special C]

You all are going to laugh at me, but I really enjoyed the extra stuff in FF13 and Ff13-2.

 

[DedValve]

Shit this is a good one.

Also another vote for No Man's Wharf in DS2. That was a cool area.

No Mans Wharf and the area after it are optional? Holy shit I always ran through them.

God I love DS2.

 

[Tigel]

You all are going to laugh at me, but I really enjoyed the extra stuff in FF13 and Ff13-2.

I can't remember any extra stuff in the first FF13. That game was ony cutscenes and combat.

 

[Sword Of Doom]

Cainhurst Castle is amazing imo. My personal favorite

 

[NinjamicWZ]

Gilgamesh in FFXII is one of my favorite things ever:

I loved all the optional mark hunts etc in that game.

 

[Shifty]

Actually I think the original poster was referring to going to his apartment in Mercury Suites to kill him if you let him live after Fort Frolic.

Ah, I stand corrected. Never did do a playthrough where I spared him.

 

[JustSomeone]

Mostly all the optional content in souls games except the ice reindeers....god lord

They were fun

 

[JBwB]

Everything that was optional (apart from the numerous point of interest markers) in the Witcher 3 was great.

Gilgamesh in FFXII is one of my favorite things ever:

I loved all the optional mark hunts etc in that game.

Same here. I hope a remaster is announced soon.

 

[aravuus]

Gilgamesh in FFXII is one of my favorite things ever:

I loved all the optional mark hunts etc in that game.

Yeah, there was something super enjoyable about FFXII's optional marks. Essentially they're just simple kill quests, but somehow I always end up doing most of them.

Really I'd say PS1 and PS2 Final Fantasies in general. Aside from FFX's mini-games (which all suck dick) pretty much all of the optional stuff is fun in VII-XII.

 

[Tizoc]

Almost all of the Yakuza-games, mainly play them for the optional content.

One and done.

 

[Semajer]

I'm a big fan of the cameo battles in the Tales of series. Being able to fight characters from old games, with remixed music is usually the biggest challenge in the game.

 

[Hylian7]

The Arena and True Arena in Kirby Super Star (Ultra in particular), Return to Dreamland, Triple Deluxe, and Planet Robobot. All of those have great bosses, and the True Arena especially can be challenging, which is a pretty large leap in difficulty for Kirby games. Often it's about picking the right ability, and reading the boss's telegraphed attacks. The True Arenas always have nice surprise bosses at the end such as Galacta Knight and Sectionia Soul (or any Soul form boss). I'm really glad the developers of Return to Dreamland, Triple Deluxe, and Planet Robobot understand why the fanbase liked Super Star Ultra so much.

 

[CyanideFuse]

The Witcher 3: The sidequests and Witcher Contract missions are, mostly, well fleshed out and enjoyable and far more than the usual go fetch this-and-that side quest.

 

[Cikay]

The Painted World of Ariamis in Dark Souls. Totally optional BUT the best level in the game.

 

[Castef]

The Windmill in Shadowman.

I discovered it after having completed the game and it was wonderful.

 

[Neoleo2143]

Pretty much anything Mauville in ORAS. Pretty dark stuff in general but it's handled with a nice level of subtlety without being too convoluted or confusing.

 

[Aurongel]

Cainhurst Castle in Bloodborne.

 

[Lulubop]

Cave of trials is my favorite. STar Ocean 2 in general has my favorite opitional content in a game. There's so much.

 

[Malawhur]

How about the cow level from Diablo? I have never played it myself but heard it was good.

 

[Nosgotham]

the dungeon crawling mode in Tobal no.1. i actually spent way more time in the rogue like mode than the main mode. to me, Tobal is a dungeon crawler, not a fighting game.

Runner up is Tekken 3's beat up mode.

 

[jotun?]

It's also amazing how several of them are rather hard to find even if you are looking for optional areas (there have been a few I didn't even know about until I read about them online).

That's one of my least-favorite things about Demon's Souls so far.. Too much shit that I'd never know without looking it up, so the choices are either spoil the game or miss out on a huge amount of it

 

[Mipcgamer]

Cave of trials is my favorite. STar Ocean 2 in general has my favorite opitional content in a game. There's so much.

WOAH the feels! I loved that dungeon. Your levels went up to 250 and the weapons were crazy!

Good choice.

 

[Zeuanimals]

Would the events and social links in Persona 3/4 count? They're the reason people play the games.

 

[Prototype Viktor]

FFX's optional bosses

 

[Zeuanimals]

That's one of my least-favorite things about Demon's Souls so far.. Too much shit that I'd never know without looking it up, so the choices are either spoil the game or miss out on a huge amount of it

I think that makes it extra special when you just stumble upon it without having looked it up beforehand. There's a chance you'll miss it but I think everyone knows the feeling of playing a game over again and finding something new, and from my experience, it's always a great feeling.

 

[Sayad]

More than half of Bloodborne is optional content, lol.

 

[SirNinja]

Adventure Mode in Diablo III. No end goal, no crappy story - just you and some friends plowing through an endless supply of random dungeons in a never-ending quest to see just how awesome you can get.