When you’re choosing a JRPG, you likely know the general outline of what you’re getting from the story: saving the world from impending doom. Par for the course when you’re the protagonist. However, with such a broad outline, story developers often take the opportunity to explore deeper themes.
Sometimes, it’s the exploration of human emotions, or maybe a character is waxing poetic about their life and how it affects the world around them. Deeper still are the talks about grief and even the existence of something higher than yourself. All while being hidden by cute graphics.
Mild Spoilers and the pulling of heartstrings below.
The instant you boot up Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, you’re hit with an incredible wave of nostalgia, even if you’ve never experienced aStudio Ghibli film. The bright colors and old-school design quickly pull you into a town that feels both familiar and strange, only to promptly hit you with a tragedy that sets everything into motion.
Before you know it, Oliver and company are on an adventure filled with grief, new friends, and bringing people back from the brink of despair. It’s a lot to put on the shoulders of a 12-year-old, but it also forces you to ask yourself the question: What would you go through to save a loved one?
Visually speaking, Eternal Sonata looks like a vibrant dream. The colors are bright, thecharacter design is cute and cel-shaded, and the music, its strongest point and overarching theme, captures both the mood of the game and the spirit of the main character, real-life pianist Frederic Chopin. That’s right, you play as the famed composer who has been isekai’d into another world. At least, that’s how it appears at first.
Instead, you find out that the world you’ve spent exploring with the friends you’ve made along the way takes place entirely inside Chopin’s dreams. You’re inside the mind of a man dying of tuberculosis, experiencing his final fleeting moments of happiness as his body fails him. It’s a twist you aren’t prepared for, and it hits differently when you find out what he does with that information in the end.
If there is a trope around magical girls, it’s that wherever they show up, tragedy is sure to follow. You’ve seen it inSailor Moon and Puella Magi Madoka Magica, why not here? Blue Reflection: Second Light takes place within a hub world in a school, which allows you to explore the heartscapes of each character that explore their inner struggles and manifest monsters of their creation.
While fighting their inner demons, they are also fighting to gain back memories that might be better off being forgotten… if their lives didn’t depend on it. There’s a lot more to these girls than meets the eye, and only you can figure out how deep this emotional well goes.
7Another Eden: The Cat Beyond Time And Space
Facing Consequences
Mobile games have come a long wayfrom being ‘low-effort’ games that only want your money. Sure, there’s plenty of that on the market, but Another Eden: The Cat Beyond Time and Space is much more than that. Itfeelslike a spiritual successor to Chrono Trigger, so much so that certain characters look exactly like Lucca (Ashtear) and Frog (Cyrus).
Though Another Eden takes a darker turn than its spiritual predecessor, it chooses to focus on the inevitability of the destruction of different timelines, thanks to your traversal through them. Even though you’re Aldo the hero, you’re going to damage more than you fix, at least right up until the end. It’s a game about facing the consequences of your actions, intended or otherwise.
Anytime politics and religion are at the forefront of a discussion, you know tragedy and pain are soon to follow. The Final Fantasy series isn’t exactly a stranger to exploring these and other dark themes, but there’s something visceral and overbearing about how the events of Final Fantasy Tactics go down.
What happens when the true story is covered up with lies and falsehoods? History is written by the victor, after all. As Ramza finds out, sometimes it’s better to be tossed away from history for doing the right thing, rather than cruelly fighting for the greater you instead of the greater good.
Before the likes of Metaphor: ReFantazio, Atlus experimented with their tried-and-true Persona formula using other IPs. The Caligula Effect: Overdose looks to be a mere Persona clone at first glance, with you primarily being in a school setting with bright colors and cutesy anime-like characters.
Peel back the anime-esque facade, and you’ll find characters and NPCs doing everything they can to stay where they are: inside an artificial reality to escape their painful realities. As the protagonist, it’s up to you not only to break out of that fictional world but also to help your fellow students find their way to healing and become willing to face reality by helping them with their various traumas. The game takes a good, hard look at the psychological effects of trauma going untreated.
Even among the other Tales titles in the series, Tales of Berseria stands out as something more than just your run-of-the-mill, stop the big bad story. It is a tale of revenge in a way that was rarely seen when it was released. You’re playing as Velvet, a woman who lost her only family in the worst way possible: bloody betrayal.
As you bear witness to Velvet’s catalyst to becoming a Daemon, you’ll easily accept her rage as your own while she demands that blood be paid back twofold. The road of revenge is a lonely one, and the associates you travel with are just as ready to see the Abbey fall from grace as she is.
Adorable, anthropomorphic animals that all resemble cats and dogs? What could go wrong? Well, for the kids in Fuga: Melodies of Steel, everything. Their home was torn apart by the Berman Empire’s forces, and not only do they have to try and survive long enough to hopefully find their families, they are going to have to make some tough decisions that could have lasting effects.
One huge elephant-in-the-room choice that you’ll be faced with no matter where you are in the game is whether you use the Soul Cannon. The weapon has the power to end any fight you use it in, but at the horrifying cost of choosing which of the children will serve as the ammunition. It takes war and strips it down to its most gruesome form for you to experience.
2Atelier Ayesha: The Alchemist Of Dusk
Alchemy Is Not What It Appears
The Atelier series, overall, isn’t known to dive too deeply into dark themes. Atelier Ayesha: The Alchemist of Dusk seems to follow in these usual footsteps by introducing us to Ayesha as she learns Alchemy. It seems like an admirable goal, but the world doesn’t see it that way. Alchemists are the cause of all the decay in the world.
At first, you’d probably think that it’s a misunderstanding, but no, the art you are learning through the game has become heresy for a very good reason. You and your ragtag group of heretics set out to not only save your loved ones but also prove that alchemy is more than just a tool of destruction. Nothing is what it seems at dusk.
1The Cruel King And Great Hero
Guilt And Secrets
The Cruel King and Great Hero is a cute, hand-drawn RPG that follows the protagonist, Yuu, who lives with the Dragon King and trains to become as great a hero as her father was. The art style is straight out of a classic children’s storybook and almost demands that you turn the page instead of pressing the button.
Underneath that adorable exterior lies a truth that could cause irreparable damage to the relationship between Yuu and her Dragon King. The game explores themes of forgiveness and guilt, as well as the lengths you will go to keep secrets from your closest friend.
