Is this the original dragon's dogma? I eventually gave up on side quests because it seemed like a lot of them were slightly buggy and random. As an example, I looked up one 'questline' involving a merchant that I was trying to figure out, and it just seemed like there were so many ways to mistakenly fail it, and only one little moment to actually do it without locking it out. And then there are the escort/long-way-away-fetch-quests that just killed my enjoyment.

I still haven't beaten the main storyline. I found most of my fun was randomly encountering a big mob and fighting it. The ballistas were also great fun that I returned to a few times.