The older I get, the more emotional I become. I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve started to understand the intricacies of the works I consume, appreciate the small details of life, or simply because of emotional growth. But in short, I turned into a crybaby fellow.
And if there’s one medium that never fails to make me bawl my eyes out, it’s video games, especiallyJRPGs. The game doesn’t even have to be that good, but if it has a plot that connects intimately with something I have lived or I am living through, I shatter into a thousand pieces.
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As much as these JRPGs were highly regarded back in their time, not every old is gold.
Thinking about that, I wanted to talk about some JRPGs that will make you cry throughout their journey. Perhaps you’re not as emotional as I am, or some experience won’t resonate with you personally because it’s subjective to each individual.
But if you share some sensibilities similar to mine, and you’re not a heartless being who will diss me in the comments as if I offended your mum, I’ll leave some tissues over there, just in case.
There’s no way to describe these experiences without mentioning spoilers from various titles listed here. Caution is advised.
10Final Fantasy X
Come Back, Tidus
Final Fantasy 10
I could put half a dozenFinal Fantasyhere on this list, but I’ll stick to just two to mix things up. So I picked the ones that hit me the hardest, likeFinal Fantasy X. Oh man, here we go again.
Granted, I playedFinal Fantasy Xin my teenage years, and much of the subplot involving Fayth, Dream Zanarkand, and Yu Yevon went over my head. The only thing I knew and cared about was that Tidus was basically dead and going away. And much like Yuna, I learned to love this energetic and goofy jock.
Final Fantasy Xwas one of the few JRPGswith a fixed main character that actually made me feel in the protagonist’s shoes. I learned everything alongside Tidus. I grew with him and saw his actions and motivations shape the whole world of Spira.
Then, when the final moment came to say goodbye to Yuna, I wasn’t ready. The final drop was when Yuna declared her love for him, a very welcome localization choice, and Tidus tried to hug her while he was already fading away. It’s one of the most impactful and meaningful scenes I’ve ever seen in a JRPG.
9Sea of Stars
Living on Borrowed Time
Sea of Stars
I’m not the biggest fan of Garl inSea of Starsbecause I think they made him a bit too much of a Gary Stu, but I admit I got emotional when I found out he was on a timer. After being struck by the Fleshmancer, Garl only survived because he was literally on borrowed time.
The deal was that Garl would stay alive until he did his final deed, which was to prepare the world’s biggest oven and bake bread to feed a dragon. With that, the Solstice Warriors would get passage to the Sea of Stars.
And at no moment, knowing his fate, did Garl hold back, lose his enthusiasm, or waver, even though he was just an ordinary boy. When he finally managed to feed the dragon, and everyone was on its back, Garl drifted off peacefully, never to wake up again – until, you know,Sea of Stars' true ending.
The following scenes show his funeral and how each group member was dealing with the grief. I have some criticism about the characterization of the protagonists, Vale and Zale, but it was in this intimate and sad moment that I managed to feel a bit more connected to them.
8Metaphor: ReFantazio
Heismay’s Bond
Metaphor: ReFantazio
At its core, I don’t thinkMetaphor: ReFantaziois a sad game. I felt more outraged and resentful about the prejudice, inequality, and other themes presented in the game, but not as miserable as I did in somePersona, for example.
That is until I started witnessingHeismay’s bond storyline.Metaphorwas released in October 2024, and at that time, my son was 1 year old. That really messed with my perception of any work, because whenever a story involves parents and children, I’m instantly connected, like with Heismay.
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Each party member has a problem that the protagonist helps to support, and in the case of our seasoned eugief, it’s about overcoming the loss of his son and understanding that it wasn’t his fault. I mean, damn, maybe it wasn’t directly something he caused, but I understand why he was blaming himself as if he were the one holding the knife.
Every time Heismay shared his past experiences about his son, how he lost him, and how his life fell apart, I slowly lost it. Luckily, we got the most satisfying ending possible considering the circumstances, but one that resonated deeply with me as a fellow father.
7Lost Odyssey
Them Short Stories
Lost Odyssey
Hironobu Sakaguchi introduced a notable feature to enhance the worldbuilding ofLost Odyssey. There are numerous short stories titled"A Thousand Years of Dreams" that portray the passage of time through the eyes of our immortal protagonist, Kaim Argonar.
To ensure their quality, they were written by both Sakaguchi and the novelist Kiyoshi Shigematsu and localized by a Harvard professor. And believe me when I say that each short story is insanely impactful, mesmerizing and, most of all, inherently sad.
Every event witnessed by Kaim, such as watching nomads, seeing a young girl grow up, or even being trapped in oppressive darkness, all fades away with time. In the end, he’s always alone, side by side with his immortality.
There were a couple of short stories that made me cry for real, something I never expected in a game prior. There’s no narration, not even images. They’re just texts loaded with so much feeling and emotion.
The more you read, the more you grasp how Kaim’s life and this power make him miserable, and as our relationship with him grows, so does the sadness carried in every word.
6Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward
Haurchefant’s Dad
Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward
Nowadays,Final Fantasy XIVis a phenomenon, and the industry knows it. But in the beginning, especially with the reboot ofFinal Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, people still had their doubts. Nowadays, while version 2.0 is still more dragged than its expansions, it was all more tortuous and less polished some years ago.
Then cameHeavensward, the first expansion of the game. The narrative glow-up was astounding. The plots got more interesting, the writing less wordy, and the characters more engaging.
We go seek asylum in Ishgard after everything goes wrong, but we’re mistreated by many, except for Haurchefant, who is never a warm smile short to offer us.
To sum it up, Haurchefant dies in our arms, doing so while saying one of his most iconic lines: “a smile better suits a hero.” The thing is, even though it moved me, I didn’t cry and wasn’t as sad as I expected. The whiplash came later when we went to tell the knight’s fate to his father.
Ishgard was caught up in the Dragonsong War for a thousand years, so deaths were common, especially among conscripted knights.
Haurchefant was Edmont de Fortemps’s illegitimate son, so they had a distant relationship. But no matter how much Edmont tried to stay stoic, he broke down when he heard the news of Haurchefant’s death, and I just followed along, grieving with him.
5Breath of Fire III
Baby Dragon Mistreated
Breath of Fire III
This might be the most subjective experience I’ve ever written about, and a lot of it comes from the fact thatBreath of FireIIIis my favorite game, but every time I replay it to rekindle this passion, I cry during the opening scenes.
At the start of the game, miners rescue a baby dragon from a giant Chrysm crystal. A cute, lovely, sweet baby dragon, unaware of what’s going on–until he gets a pickaxe to the face and, well, fights back with fire breath. Self-defense at its best. From there, we take control of dragon Ryu as he tries to escape the mines.
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He fails and gets captured, caged, and treated like a rare commodity. The squeaks every time he gets hit, and the mistreatment towards him affects me deeply, because I know Ryu is only a child, an orphan, who never did anything wrong to anyone and is getting beaten for nothing.
Luckily, he breaks free, is found by Rei, and starts to get a fling of hope and a glimpse of what a home and family could be. But soon, all that is unfairly taken from him. Once again, the child Ryu is left alone, while life forces him to grow up too soon.
4NieR: Automata
Existential Crisis Incoming
NieR: Automata
Fextralife Wiki
I admit I didn’t cry that much inNieR: Automata, and a lot of that was because I went into an existential crisis and a contemplative state.
At several moments in the game, from arriving in Pascal’s Village to meeting the machine children in the factory and 9S’s gradual descent into error 404, I kept reconsidering my view of the world and whether I was treating Alexa with enough respect.
NieR: Automatastarts as a frantic hack ‘n slashwhere we go destroying machine after machine without a second thought. The game then gradually began to slip in some underlying messages here and there while I was just dancing to the tune of a world devoid of humanity.
This also impacts the protagonists, 2B, 9S, and A2, who start to question what their purpose is in this purposeless world. Are war, destruction, and repetition all they know, or are they allowed to want more? When they finally decide to take fate into their own hands, it’s fulfilling but too late.
3Xenoblade Chronicles 3
The Prison Scene
Xenoblade Chronicles 3
One of the perks of being a JRPG fan is that we’re used to lore dumps and vast worldbuilding before we get to the action.Xenoblade Chronicles 3manages to do both at once, giving us all the mythology of Aionios while throwing us right into the thick of it.
The whole world ofXenoblade Chronicles 3is horrible. It’s comprised of two nations perpetually at odds, locked in a state of perpetual war. There’s nothing good about it, but when the protagonists start to realize there’s something beyond this life of endless fighting, the game starts to hit directly into the feels.
There are many emotional moments, but what really got to me was the end of Chapter 5, in the jail. Up to that point, everyone’s fighting spirit was still alive, but during the entire scene, it slowly loses its spark.
I could see and feel that in their expressions, the voice acting, and the way each character carried themselves. It’s because until then, they didn’t care if they lived or died.
But when they finally accepted that they wanted to live and experience the world for what it is, that’s when death was closest. Mio’s acceptance in those last moments, her words towards Noah, mixed with tears and anger, hit me like a Gear being dropped from the Kukai Foundation colony.
2Kingdom Hearts 3
Damn That Finale
Kingdom Hearts 3
I played theKingdom Heartscollection in a row, one game after another, almost risking burnout. I endured it, and it was this insistence on absorbing everything the journey of the Keyblade Wielders had to offer that made me so intimately connected to them that my emotions were on edge.
There are countless moments throughout the franchise that tug at the heart, from the apparent deaths of Goofy and Donald to the reunions of Terra, Ventus, and Aqua and the many speeches about friendship.
In a vacuum, they might not hit you that hard. But since I consumed the whole thing non-stop, everything was so vivid and fresh that I felt it all as intensely as Bella Swan after turning vampire in Twilight.
That’s why, at the end of my journey inKingdom Hearts 3, when many of my companions were at Destiny Island celebrating victory, I felt serene, satisfied, and let my guard down. Finally, after investing hundreds of hours, everything worked out.
But it was a farce. In the final scene, we see Kairi and Sora sitting on a palm tree, a callback to the first game. When the two look at each other, Sora fades out into the horizon, showing that he saved her but never came back.
Mind you, I played it before the KH4 announcement or seeing the true ending, and that scene shattered me. I couldn’t stop crying for the entirety of the credits.
1Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
The Whole Game
WhenClair Obscur: Expedition 33was announced at the Xbox Showcase, I got a great impression of the game and a good feeling that it would be something special. So, the game dropped, and I started my adventure. One hour in, and I was already crying during the prologue. That’s when I knew it would bea truly unique experience.
I cried at so many moments inExpedition 33that it’s hard to pick just one. Oddly enough, I didn’t cry when Gustave died. I was so shocked and in denial that I didn’t have time to process what happened.
In my head, I just kept thinking, “nah, they wouldn’t do that. Gustave will come back eventually.” It’s like the game predicted this because right in the next area, they gave a moment for everyone, players included, to mourn Gustave’s death in an impromptu funeral.
I broke. The more Maelle spoke, the more I cracked. That scene left me so emotional and fragile that I kept crying over and over.
I bawled when Noko died, then when we returned to Lumière and delivered Gustave’s diaries to his apprentices and, of course, at Verso’s ending.Clair Obscur: Expedition 33was such a rewarding and fulfilling experience that I don’t regret almost getting PTSD from it.
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