DDJRPGS

I'm looking for dark and depressing JRPGs. Right now I can only think of Xenogears and Legend of Dragoon where shit stays real pretty much throughout the whole game.
FF of any kind doesn't even come close and I'm not well versed in the genre to be honest.

(Nearly) all SMT games.
Persona 1 and 2 are adequate

Ogre Battle 64
Final Fantasy Tactics
Dragon Quest V

Isn't FFT pretty much for kids or really light-hearted or some shit?
At least that's what I've heard, or maybe misheard

You fucking wot

I cant speak for FFTA or A2, but FFT has a pretty dark story and only gets light hearted a couple times through the main quest. A bit more in the side stuff.

You're think of the gay ass kiddie GBA games. The original FFT is pure kino.

Shadow Hearts

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Xenoblade 1 isn't all that happier than Xenogears, despite a more colorful exterior. Riki and Reyn are more effective than chu-chu and Bart as comic relief but that's about it.

Not sad at all.

Terranigma
Chrono Cross if you can make sense of the story in the first place.
The Growlanser series can be very depressing depending on which routes/endings you pick. Most of them have over a dozen endings.

Koudelka has exactly what you want

Suikoden 2 for a wild card option, depending on what you do in it

You see this guy? He's one of your main allies in the first act. He's fully convinced that commoners are pieces of trash that only serve as disposable bags of meat to do the nobles' bidding, and laughs at them for wanting the most basic of human rights. He even kills your best friend's sister because she was commoner trash who simply was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he even brags about it to him on his face in the whole fight.
He wasn't the worst guy in the whole game by the slightest.

Seconding Koudelka, though it's kind of a hit or miss game in terms of gameplay. Shadow Hearts series (as mentioned by ) are sequels to it within the same world and chronology. Series had its niche as being darker, historical fantasy JRPGs (with Koudelka being a gothic horror/RPG hybrid), but could also just be fucking weird at times; as the series went on, the mechanics got more refined, but the ratio of dark-to-quirk skewed more and more heavily in the favor of quirk.

Final Fantasy Tactics is like to game of Thrones in jrpg form.

FFT has WAY better plot and characters.

Only FFTA on gba and FFTA2 on nds.
FFTA was ok, but FFTA2 is what killed that series.

Try FF type-0 most fucked up game in FF universe.

Shadow Hearts 2 is a great game.

DEEP♂DARK♂FANTASY(GAMES)

I felt FF6 was pretty dark throughout. Genocide is main villain commits genocide constantly, cast members attempt suicide, and the game goes full apocalypse in the third act

not really though

FFX-2 was pretty dark, once you got past the first 30 minutes. And that other section.

I nominate Dark Half. You switch between the antagonist and protagonist.


FFTA and FFTA2 are for children, but FFT is very grounded and dark than the other final fantasies out there. It's about class warfare and corruption.

When you look past that aspect of the game, it's pretty grim and serious.

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If you're not very good at any of the FE games, they can be quite depressing. That is kind of reaching, however, so maybe something like Dark Souls is better for you.
Why do you want a depressing game, anyway? Do you enjoy feeling like shit or are you a fetishist?

They don't really make ME feel like shit. I find such stories enjoyable.

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In 2 all of your allies die. Every time someone leaves your party it's because death. The emperor succeeds at taking over Hell. in the PSP version, your dead allies team up to fight their way out of Hell in the epilogue
6's second half is fucking grim
13-2 (yes really) has you fighting to make a good future when the death of humanity is guaranteed within 700 years. you fail

Lightning Returns is about saving the most souls you can during the literal last days of the world so I guess it must be even grimme.

Could always just vouch for someone's recommendation or try to strike up more of a tangent about it.

It's funny though, apparently SH1's reception in Japan was that it was too dark, too scary, and the monster designs too bizarre compared to the standard JRPG setup (worth noting that even in Japan, the game had the equivalent of an M rating with that red triangle warning on the cover, so it's not like it was some supposedly kid friendly game), which the developers at Sacnoth took as compliments. Unfortunately, their publisher, Aruze, didn't see that as something to be happy about. Still not sure why a pachislot loving publisher like them deigned to pick up such a niche series, other than "former square devs = square tier sales" logic.

That character looks pretty fucking cool. Shame the japs didn't like it. The boxart they used on the NA version didn't really grab me but I saw this game in plenty of stores and had plenty of opportunities to buy it. Regretting that I didn't now.

Motherfucking Tactics Ogre. Depending on how you go through the game it'll depress you.

It's a great game in what I consider to be a great series, though the first (Koudelka) and final (Shadow Hearts: From the New World) games are somewhat iffy amongst fans. Series is unfortunately a tad expensive these days (especially the first two games), and has never had a digital rerelease here in the west (and reprints have only helped so much). I got lucky and didn't have to pay too much for mine.

And yeah, Yuri is a great protagonist. Lovable jackass, pervert, and all around asskicker of demons and horrors of the beyond alike, who is able to subjugate the souls of various monsters and fuse his soul with theirs to shapeshift in battle.

It's not so much that they didn't like it, more that they didn't expect it (albeit the game is a chronological sequel in the same world as Koudelka was despite the different game title, so I'm not sure why they wouldn't expect more dark, gory, fucked up shit). Aruze though asked Sacnoth what the fuck they thought they were doing with their funding, and told them to make more normal games. So they toned down the darkness a bit and made up for it in getting really fucking weird, keeping the series niche. They even at some point ragged on their publisher in game, nipping at the hand that fed them. It's honestly a bit surprising it took four games (three of which under Aruze as publisher) before Aruze had enough and dissolved the team.

Just discovered they did wind up making a Shadow Hearts Covenant pachinko down the line. Doesn't surprise me (again, Aruze mainly does pachislot shit anyhow), but I'm still disappointed.

Not sure why I had do not bump on.
That game got screwed over a fair bit, both in Japan and west. The release timing wasn't real good in either region, being a month prior to FFX in Japan and WEEK prior in NA, so most RPG enthusiasts with PS2s were more willing to give Square their money than a company that had produced a game critics had treated rather harshly prior. And while the western box art is a mishmash of elements in a rather silly looking way, the Japanese art just has the game's logo, a mature content warning, and the Judgment Ring in the background on the front (and while player's will become very, very familiar with the Ring and it's certainly got better style to it, there's no indication on the front as to what the game might even be about, for better or worse). So it mostly got passed over here, despite some mixed praise in review (IGN were fuckers though, which I suppose is to be expected), and I've been left wondering if Aruze and Midway were just retarded to release it that close to a heavily anticipated Square title, or if Square decided to squash it by choosing to release that close in both regions. Though to my knowledge is did eventually do well enough in Japan to warrant a PS2 the BEST version, and Covenant even managed a (Japan only) Director's Cut under the PS2 the BEST line as well, so as a series it was popular enough out there, just perhaps not as big as it could have been, given comments from the developers about it competing badly against "bigger fish".

Copies of Koudelka are still hard to come by pricy to boot (and honestly it has awful load times played from disc, so if you do play it, play it digitally), and for a while SH1 was rather hard to find and got pricy once demand started getting up there as knowledge slowly spread. Midway did something awesome, and printed a whole new batch of SH1 as the preorder bonus for Shadow Hearts: Covenant out here (Covenant being a chronological sequel, things make more sense and have a lot more weight if you've played the first prior), but even now it's still hard to find SH1 (because Covenant didn't initially sell that well either, thus not a big bonus print for SH1), let alone at a price under $45 where I live.

It's a hodgepodge of European conflicts set in notEurope+Final Fantasy shit.

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Vandal Hearts 2
Dark story, like FFT.

Phantasy Star 2
Etrian Odyssey 1
Final Fantasy Legend I
Romancing SaGa 2, sort of bittersweet rather than depressing though