Is Pesterquest any good?

Putting my own biases aside it depends on how badly you desire more interactions with the canon characters in base homestuck. Bear in mind that knowledge of the epilogues is required to understand certain plot elements that are referenced/come into play in some of the routes.

I think Pesterquest is worth a play but its route quality varies wildly. It's just fanservice, and not particularly fantastic fanservice either. If you have a group of pals with microphones, do a voice-along with them. That was the most fun I had with it.

RE: Rollypollypal

Okay now put your own bias up front and center (being silly). Ill be honest Im mostly asking for peoples personal opinions, if they liked it or not. Nobody in my normal hs circle really talks about it so I literally know nothing about its quality.

@missmonkeymode

My statements will mostly boil down to ones similar to Hokuto's. I do enjoy some of the routes however there are others that are lacking in quality and the fanservice can be a bit shallow at times. The game is at its most interesting imo when it pairs up characters together but for the most part you will be having one on one dialogues with each other like in FriendSim, which may or may not hold your interest.

i honestly really enjoyed pesterquest and id wholeheartedly reccomend it to anyone whos finished with homestuck + epilogues and wants more interactions with the canon characters.

i feel like they do a pretty good job just writing for the kids. it does sorta step away from the canon timeline/sequence of events at times and sets up its own little thing but i can genuienly enjoy how they use that opportunity to look into each of the kids struggles and arcs and shit outside of the context of sburb and even though it wasnt written by hussie i think it has its moments where some of his style of humor shines through too

defo play if ur interested in just. more homestuck. it has the same energy that the early acts has and i genuinely enjoyed playing it all thr way through

i will admit that it dooooes get kinda fanservicy and i think that certain characters did get just objectively better routes than others but its a fun time nonetheless

i think i liked it less than friendsim. there are preconceived notions that you have about the homestuck characters compared to the brand new characters that hiveswap friendsim came up with, so it feels a little harder to fully commit to pesterquest at times, since you might see the characters differently than the writing team. i also think some of the jokes are dated and corny but its still some fun. maybe pick it up for casual reading.

for the most part it is contained within its own timeline and isn't relevant to hsbc other than making references to it. so if you are interested in beyond canon, pesterquest is not required reading, but if you are interested in pesterquest, epilogues are required reading.

I sigh dramatically as I see others go "you need to read the epilogues and hsbc". Seems like I need to knuckle down and actually read it dont I.

Doc Scratch has 2 scenes worth of content, to me that's enough to satisfy.

Being serious though, I think it depends on what you like. People say it's fanservicy and I think I agree, it's definitely framed as a fix-it-fic type scenario and has lots of otherwise impossible interactions. If you prefer your supplementary content to be more grounded in logic/canon, then I would advise looking somewhere else.

It's also very closely tied to Hiveswap Friendsim's story, so that's also a must read before doing Pesterquest. Luckily you don't need to know anything about Hiveswap itself to enjoy what that game has to offer. And, wow, that game ALSO has Doc Scratch content! How amazing and revolutionary.

so remember how the end of Friendsim it pops open Homestuck in your browser? you are expected to read All Of It even the epilogues yes. It is in direct conversation with the epilogues even, though it does do its own thing and meander around as well lmao it does have a big cast to go through after all. But more to the point I liked it! It’s cute and I think exploring “what-ifs” is fun. Don’t expect anything super serious or with lasting consequences its just a fun little thing.

@Kit:

Pesterquest functions as two things: a salve to soothe the wounds postcanon left, and a vertical slice of the struggle session the fandom underwent in its wake.

It surmises that you want to swaddle these characters up like priceless Faberge eggs, and it will let you—but only after you strap on the jeweler's loupe and inspect the product. The lenses may not have been to everyone's preference, but the appraisals are valuable data if you subscribe to the idea of Homestuck-as-call-and-response. After all, a sizeable subset of us had PQ as their introductory or definitive Homestuck reading experience!

I think Pesterquest's overall quality is higher than friendsim's. There's no routes I think are outright unenjoyable whereas there's a few friendsim routes that I personally really don't like. The plot is very fanservice-y but it also goes in some interesting meta directions and if you enjoyed MSPAR as a character then there's a lot for you. Like Friendsim the quality varies pretty wildly from route to route. Personally I think Kanaya's and Terezi's are the weakest, while Nepeta's, Roxy's, Dirk's, Karkat's.... well, I like a lot of them lol. But yeah, your opinion may vary.

And as others have said, you should be caught up on the Epilogues. HS2 doesn't matter so much, and Beyond Canon I don't think has had any references to Pesterquest so far.

i played it this year and i really liked it
i think it gives some real nice insights into the characterisations of the characters
and while of course it is "dubiously canon" i do think the writing is on point

especially memorable to me are the vriska and the roxy routes
they hurt me most

Like other people are saying Pesterquest is *such* a mixed bag and has some genuinely heart-wrenching writing (roxy) butting up against things like kanaya's route. I think its *probably* worth it for the good bits but only just barely.

I liked it a lot - even more than Friendsim, in fact, which I didn't expect. It just has a really fresh take on the familiar characters. The fanserviceyness mainly takes the form of the Reader learning about each character's angsty pre-game situation and trying to help. So, it has the feel of the more melancholy Friendsm routes, though it's pretty damn funny in places too.

(The Epilogues connection only really comes up in the final chapter, which is Dirk's route and the ending.)