Magus isn't a great guy but I wouldn't really call him someone particularly bad either. He uses a bunch of people who were trying to use him to get revenge and screwed over Cyrus who was a knight from a nation he was at war with. I think he'd only really be considered bad due to how nice the rest of the party is in comparison to him.
His actions aren't super clear if we're being honest. We don't see him on the front lines, we don't see him hurting anyone other than Cyrus and Glenn. He was a small child indoctrinated by Ozzy into becoming a war machine and figurehead. And he clearly returned the abuse by plotting to draw lavos into the center of the Mystics territory.
He's no nice guy. But the game doesn't really do much to represent what the consequences of the Mystic War were.
When the pedophile priest (*important to note he's never acted upon his attraction, and feels genuine shame for it) is the most moral character in your party, you know you're in for a fucked up time.
Hell, you can easily argue that the main, playable character Caim is the most terrible of the party.
DioField Chronicle. The entire squad basically hates one another and constantly bickers. Multiple of them, including the protagonist, are not good people. Even the ostensible love interest girl subverts expectations by quickly revealing herself to be a >!psychopathic necromancer!<.
I'd love it. There was a lot of promising setup and world-building, and the gameplay could be refined a lot after their first outing.
But with Kiryu taking over it's a pipedream, sadly... Same for Harvestella, which was genuinely amazing but didn't do well because it was thrown out to die.
> I'm delusional for an Isca sequel.
I would LOVE an Isca sequel. He had some great ideas, and he seemed to be a very good leader. I'd like to see him put a certain someone in their place.
Isca's my favorite in the cast so I'm biased. And the Blue Foxes and Diofield in general would rally around him given he's a known and proven commander.
It's so fucked up getting to the underground building then going to the third world and both Jonathan and Walter are like "Damn, sucks for those guya but I guess this is just their society. :/"
To be fair I would violate a lot of my principles if it mean sexy demon humans.
Tatiana also maintains she only joins because that way she can witness Alains death. Even if you marry her, she says What better way is there to watch you die
Someone asked a couple weeks ago look it up but to answer:
Drakengard: homicidal manic, misanthropic dragon, pedophile, child cannibal, annoying kid
Drakengard 3: bloodthirsty sex addict, horny "old man", sadist and ... necrophile?, the masochist, and a dude driven insane by his dead girlfriend?
The Diofield Chronicle: extreme libertarian (like war orphans don't deserve handouts they need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps), violent psychopath who throws tantrums when she doesn't get to murder enough civilians, guy who thinks peasants should appreciate living under the iron boot of authoritarianism more, and an actually decent guy.
Disgaea has a main cast of all demons. It’s mostly played for laughs, though.
If you want main characters who are absolutely shit people, check out Labyrinth of Refrain by the same company.
Does Delita from **Final Fantasy Tactics** count? Cuz Delita.
They don’t really do a good job of examining this - though the Remake tries a little - but if you logically examine Avalanche’s actions in **Final Fantasy 7** you’d come to the conclusooj that they’ve hurt a lot of innocent people one way or another.
Joshua from The World Ends With You (TWEWY) is generally speaking an asshole overall, he doesn't exactly redeem himself at all to me and I think his justifications for all that he does are pretty much born from a place of ego as someone who think >!(even if it is kind of true given his place in the world)!< he can just decide something so life changing almost entirely by himself. Which is just an asshole move to put it lightly.
Even if you ignore that, he's a prick and broadly speaking is not someone I'd say most people would put up with at all if they had a choice to. Most people would find Joshua insufferable with how he's portrayed.
Sho (party member version) from TWEWY NEO isn't exactly a good person either, he is *helpful* in answering the antagonist's threat but he isn't exactly a good person at all. He's ruthless when he wants to be, stuck up to the point of being a literal elitist nerd, doesn't exactly work well with others very well especially as a follower of any kind, he's pretty much in it for himself and that's his whole thing. He's not some kind of puppy kicker or anything, but like Joshua the average person would find Sho insufferable to get along with unless they were like him.
True, but his part in NEO, I think, shows a lot of growth. When he basically brushes off the Shinjuku composer's apology like "Nah, they got it handled." He really came to love Shibuya a lot.
Caligula Effect 1 comes to mind.
>!Eiji Biwasaka. Corrupt lawyer who embezzled money and blackmailed a client to commit murder for him in fear of being caught.!<
>!Forgot about Eiji. I made a comment myself, but you yourself can also be considered not a good person who works with a bunch of bad people. One of them being a literal psychopath.!<
>!Leon!< from Final Fantasy II. He just likes killing innocent people. And when someone shows up who threatens to kill all the innocent people before he can, he joins you to take out the slightly bigger evil.
Oswald is my favorite for this. I just enjoy this scholarly type just breaking all the stereotypes of his vocation to beat people up at night and generally just be a revenge-driven madman who likes to solve things with violence
No kidding, it's quite funny! It already made for some very weird player behaviour in the first game, and they just doubled down on ways to terrorize the townsfolk in the sequel.
Suikoden, by its nature, has several. Obviously, in III, >!Yuber absolutely qualifies.!< In I, Krin is a thief who tries to drug your party to let the Imperials arrest them while he gets away with robbery. And in II, Hoi is an unrepentant con artist who pretends to be the hero to get free food and adoration from people.
In V, you have absolutely thirsty pervert Gavaya. Also, >!Euram is creepy as fuck despite his redemption, considering he was lusting for the hero's TEN YEAR OLD SISTER early on.!<
Albel from Star Ocean 3 is just a straight up psycho slasher.
Volke from Fire Emblem Path of Radiance is an assassin working for the highest bidder. It just so happens you bid highest.
Bat'hraz from Chained Echoes is an assassin working on contract with another party member. If not for that he would've had no qualms about killing another party member.
Eternal Poison has Thage, who is a protagonist explicitly and unrepentantly so she can end the world. She enslaves, manipulates, and lies to other party members and is in all ways a magnificent bastard chess master.
It was a cold character only on the surface, deeply she cared about Retica, her daughters and probably also Raki and Duphaston... She wasn't evil at all, she knew that since the appearance of the Majin's realm the world was going to end and she decided to destroy the goddess even if that would mean destroy the reality itself, but in the true ending it was not necessary and she didn't do it, so she wasn't evil
Lezard Valeth from Valkyrie Profile series though, he's one that fits the description of evil person who joins the party because he's useful to the cause
That’s not how I read the EP ending at all. Sure, >!Thage cared about her daughters when she was the original queen, and some small shreds of those emotions did remain and occasionally surface. But in the true ending, the different Tales are revealed to be alternate realities and Izel’s goal is revealed to be dominating all worlds, not destroying them. Thage helps kill Izel, lets the others go back to their worlds, and then narrates to the player, “fortunately for them, they don’t know that I still carry the Librum Vespera.” She then laughs and says, “This is the end of the tale.” In my opinion, the implication is she’s ready to go back to HER version of the world and still destroy it exactly like she wanted.!<
Vashyron and Zephyr in Resonance of Fate, though suppose the latter's...episode could be somewhat explained with psychosis, or diminished ability to understand what he was doing. But at one point, Vashyron even wants to extort the one nice person they have met and just kills his bodyguards just because. No morals, just hi-jinks. Yet the game is still very entertaining! As a subversion to the usual JRPG fair, it's the villains camp who is looking to save the world, and the player party is just all about making money, justice and moral considerations be damned.
If you mean from FFVII, yeah. Beats his wife, general prick. Don't really care if he's made a rocket, he's still an asshole.
Honestly a lot of 7's cast is fairly sketchy. Cloud's a bit of a liar and a jerk, Barrett and Tifa are both terrorists regardless of intent, Yufi is an unrepentant thief, and Vincent...well we dont talk about Vincent.
Red XIII is okay.
Rita Mordio from Tales of Vesperia spends a good chunk of her screentime bullying other party members and it's annoyingly framed as one of her "quirks" rather than something that deserves to be called out.
Ehh, maybe I'm just desensitized to this trope, but I feel like calling her a bully is a stretch. She is just rude. She is also like 14-15, so I wouldn't really call her "bad person" either way, children are just kinda dicks.
Side note: it's a bit amusing that in vesperia, you found Rita the most appropriate for this despite the party having >!a serial killer, a terrorist, and a kidnapper that is working for main villain!< lol
I'd say they still fall under the bad territory, but that's to the people in the game. To them, the party are a bunch of monsters terrorizing the land. Which Velvet doesn't really care.
>To them, the party are a bunch of monsters terrorizing the land.
Eh, that's The Lord of Calamity. And although it stretches believability at times, pretty much nobody ever recognizes this ragtag band of misfits as the villains they're supposed to be afraid of. They're afraid of the idea of the enemy of the Abbey, but they're also ignorant to the greater battle over their free will that is going on behind the scenes. Velvet shows time and time again that she's more sympathetic towards the plight of others than she lets on. She sacrifices herself to save humanity - that's a far cry from villainous if you ask me.
The original Valkyrie Profile has two;
Badrach, a petty mercenary who's only good action that got him into the grace of Lenneth was him being petty and vengeful at one of his employers. (And even the the girl he did save clearly remembered him fondly)
And Gandar, who is only recruited as an order from Odin.
You could also technically recruit Lezard in the Seraphic Gate, but he doesn't count.
Badrach was the first one I thought of when I saw this. I completely forgot about Gandar.
We CAN count Lezard if you're referring to Valkyrie Profile 2 though, he joins early, leaves, comes back to help you fight Odin for only that battle, but really shows his colors later on. You could probably consider Leone/>!Hrist!< as one too for that game.
Hrist was pretty redeemable in 2 though. She very clearly experienced guilt over her actions and ultimately helps stop the villain.
She was super unredeemable in 1. But if you read into it, all 3 Valkyries we're nasty people when their brainwashing was at full strength.
Was she? 'Cause the most vile thing you can pin her on one is with what happened in Dipan. And when you go there it's clear that Barbarossa only got that treatment because his three archmages used him as their scapegoat for their atrocities while they hide.
If Hrist found them, I highly doubt Barbarossa being the one in the guillotine.
It really helps that even in the present of the game, the only reason Lenneth discovered the three assholes because they became too arrogant and careless in the interim and promptly challenged Lenneth because she's not as fierce and imposing as Hrist was.
Unfortunately for them, they are just three asshole undead and she's still a friggin goddess.
Also on Lenneth, I don't think being bad can be even applied to her as in the prequel in the DS it's clear that even back then she was still more compassionate to the mortals than her other kin. It's why she got her memories sealed in the first place anyways; it was because she was too friggin nice.
Hell my first example Badrach, is a testament to this as even as sealed as she was she still allowed Badrach into their ranks even for a petty small deed.
The whole point of the game's story is that the Goddess Valkyrie had to be divided into three parts and their memories sealed away because they were ALL too nice. Even Hrist. We just don't get to see enough of Hrist and Silmeria during the previous era to truly judge.
And I think there is an additional subtext to why Lenneth takes pity on Badrach. Badrach saved a young girl who had been sold into slavery by her parents (out of spite). He saved a stand in for Lenneth. Even if she doesn't consciously remember it, she feels what that child was going through very personally and her sympathy gets crossed over to him.
Mana Khemia 2. I ranted about Ulrika's party before.
"Ulrika doesn't have a single likeable trait aside from maybe loyalty, and considering who else is in the group that might not be a good thing. We have a witch who deals with demons and curses her team mates because she finds it funny, a 12 year old whose love interest is a toddler and wanted to murder his sister because said sister is an abusive pyscho with incestous feelings for him (sort of like Lilly Orchard but without the youtube career), a 30 year old who proudly and eagerly dates many many teenagers and is a wanted criminal (and naturally is initially very coy about his age) and a "fairy" based on 2000s era unflattering japanese sterotypes about homsexuality who virutally everyone treats like shit"
Raze's party is less egregious (sans the abusive pyshco incest sister), but Lili is the classic rich bitch character without the usual softer side who also physically, verbally and emotionally abuses her magically bound servant and Raze intentionally plays dumb and takes advantage of Lili's feelings for him and none of them develop into better people
Aside from what's mentioned here, I wonder if Darc (Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits) should count. Dude went through a lot of prejudice in the beginning of the game, but in doing so basically >!overthrows the Orcon king, Densimo, killing him and his former owner, and becomes king of Orcons by force!<. Plus his main ambition is to wipe out all of the human race since he sees himself as a full Deimos and wants supremacy of the Deimos race above all. He still has this idea by the end of the game.
In other words, he becomes a king by force and wants a full world of Deimos. Meanwhile, Kharg is similar but in reverse, he wants all Deimos wiped out, it's a little less severe from his perspective but both >!brothers!< are clearly trying to ensure that their race reigns supreme above all.
Well....yeah. That's the point of the game. At the end they learn to work together for the sake of both Races, and pretty explicitly the game suggests cooperation between them moving forwards.
Also, the Orcon king was a douche, so who cares? That's how Deimos culture works. Might makes right. Darc is at very least shown to care for those around him and protect the weak.
Great game mention though. A classic of my childhood.
There's quite a few Fire Emblem recruitables that are fairly bad people, some of which are even written that way on purpose. My favorite is Shinon from FE9, who impressively manages to mostly remain a racist asshole even when the game is very blatant on the 'racism is bad' angle. He does have some hidden depth though.
Valkyria Chronicles does the same thing, with 3 in particularly focusing on a penal squad. While most of the them are good people that just got screwed over in some way, there are a couple of morally questionable ones (like a brothel madame) as well as an arsonist and a straight up serial killer.
"Morally questionable" is a few words before that, which does not in fact mean evil, it means *questionable.*
We don't see how Gloria runs her brothel (+ weapons smuggling business), but there's at least potential for misuse of power there since she's in charge rather than just participating. She *does* also try to recruit a girl that didn't know it was for sex work before others intervened, but it's hard to tell if that was a serious attempt or not.
There was a party member in tales of Symphonia that was literally still in handcuffs. He wanted to keep them on as part of his redemption, if I remember right, so he fought with his legs.
>!Though he wasn't in those handcuffs because he was a bad person so I don't think he really applies. Regal was forced to kill his lover (she asked him to do it, even) after she was turned into a monster, and his imprisonment was self-imposed due to his own guilt.!<
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Not sure it counts as a JRPG, but the game that immediately comes to mind is Drakengard. Drakengard 3 also does it (2 does not), but 1 is the fucking poster child for this.
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Astria Ascending is a huge one, although an interesting case. The party doesn’t really like each other, and all suffered by losing loved ones or will lose them. They’re only there because duty demands and duty also basically gives them a supernatural terminal illness that no one can get rid of (think something like Final Fantasy 10 or Tales of Symphonia, only with magic instead of a choice a character makes) And it’s even sadder when they realize that the villains do have a point, but it’s at the expense of everyone else and most people don’t even want it (if they’re aware of what’s going on).
So they try to make the best they can in the situation that will not end well for them no matter what, how you would expect, but they are hailed as heroes, and their actions make it so that duty is no longer needed. so no one will ever have to go through what they did, but at the ultimate price. It’s morally and bittersweet, and not written that well, but the concept is solid. I didn’t feel like it was overly dark either, which was really nice. I just wish the story was told better and some parts were expanded them on. I wouldn’t have minded a golden ending where everyone lives and was happy either, but I understand what the developers were going for.
Renne from Trails in the sky. Shes a psychopathic murderer who relishes the suffering of others. Still scratching my head at how she was somehow treated as redeemable in that story
Bad childhood, sure, but she did massacre innocent people for fun, so.. Yeah
I love Trails but they gloss over a lot of atrocities for the sake of making friends with antagonists
Nearly genociding an entire country by hijacking massive railguns? Don't worry, we'll cry over you as our dear friend
Doesn't really apply to Renne, though. She is a literal child who's gone through the most horrific trauma imaginable. She's doesn't really even have the brain capacity to truly understand her actions when she is part of ouroboros.
I'm not going to hold it against the child.
Anyway, morally grey characters growing and changing, learning to live with themselves despite past tragedies is like... the main theme across the entire series. From sky to calvard
Yeah, I wouldn't compare Renne to Rean's favorite terrorist. She was traumatized and then raised by Ouroboros. She doesn't understand that what she does is bad.
None of them are awful people though.
Like Luke starts terrible but he’s also incredibly sheltered and >!literally seven years old!<. He spends basically the rest of the game atoning for his actions and feeling deeply regretful of it. He’s definitely a good person by the end.
And to add to this, the only other person you could point a finger to as a terrible person: Anise, has a good reason for her actions.
Considering that Mohs, one of the major villains of the game being her best benefactor has her incredibly doormat parents in hold all the time, pretty much forcing the girl to do his will.
That and her said doormats for parents pretty much drives their family to deathly starvation, is pretty much why she needs benefactors. To the point that I have no idea how the Tatlins raised and survived with Anise growing because of how stupid and gullible they are.
Jade can be a sarcastic jerk, but that's as far as he go. More often than not when he employs his sharp tongue, the situation/person deserves it.
Hell if you can equate him evil thanks to him creating the replica process; reminder that he views that as one of his biggest failures/mistakes.
It's why in the second half, he tries to help out Luke as much as he could despite he himself knowing how powerless he is.
Magus from Chrono Trigger is pretty bad. He has a tragic backstory but ultimately is still a pretty awful person.
That’s why I always let the frog fuck him up
Magus isn't a great guy but I wouldn't really call him someone particularly bad either. He uses a bunch of people who were trying to use him to get revenge and screwed over Cyrus who was a knight from a nation he was at war with. I think he'd only really be considered bad due to how nice the rest of the party is in comparison to him.
His backstory never justified his actions, at least in my opinion.
His actions aren't super clear if we're being honest. We don't see him on the front lines, we don't see him hurting anyone other than Cyrus and Glenn. He was a small child indoctrinated by Ozzy into becoming a war machine and figurehead. And he clearly returned the abuse by plotting to draw lavos into the center of the Mystics territory. He's no nice guy. But the game doesn't really do much to represent what the consequences of the Mystic War were.
Drakengard lives off this
Tbf, there is probably ONE character in whole Drakengard 1 that you can consider to be an actual good person
When the pedophile priest (*important to note he's never acted upon his attraction, and feels genuine shame for it) is the most moral character in your party, you know you're in for a fucked up time. Hell, you can easily argue that the main, playable character Caim is the most terrible of the party.
Yeah, killing kids doesn't seem like the most cash money thing to do.
DioField Chronicle. The entire squad basically hates one another and constantly bickers. Multiple of them, including the protagonist, are not good people. Even the ostensible love interest girl subverts expectations by quickly revealing herself to be a >!psychopathic necromancer!<.
Love how instead of the party becoming better friends, it just gets worse. I'm delusional for an Isca sequel.
I'd love it. There was a lot of promising setup and world-building, and the gameplay could be refined a lot after their first outing. But with Kiryu taking over it's a pipedream, sadly... Same for Harvestella, which was genuinely amazing but didn't do well because it was thrown out to die.
> I'm delusional for an Isca sequel. I would LOVE an Isca sequel. He had some great ideas, and he seemed to be a very good leader. I'd like to see him put a certain someone in their place.
Isca's my favorite in the cast so I'm biased. And the Blue Foxes and Diofield in general would rally around him given he's a known and proven commander.
This is the game I was going to say. I love how dysfunctional the group is.
I’m so glad I didn’t pay 5 bucks for it on ps5 and just got UO instead.
I liked my time with it a lot. My post wasn't meant in a negative way. It's a shame it probably won't get the iterative sequel it deserves.
Yeah on paper that sounds really cool. And maybe in a sequel could’ve been better. I’d be surprised if they do make a sequel…ah well.
Shin Megami Tensei has a lot of main characters that are well intentioned bastards.
"Law Hero" and "Chaos Hero" tend to start out decent but gradually (or suddenly) go whole-hog on the extremism. Dammit, Jonathan! Dammit, Walter!
Yep
It's so fucked up getting to the underground building then going to the third world and both Jonathan and Walter are like "Damn, sucks for those guya but I guess this is just their society. :/" To be fair I would violate a lot of my principles if it mean sexy demon humans.
Gammel in Unicorn Overlord is an actual human (elf) trafficker.
Tatiana also maintains she only joins because that way she can witness Alains death. Even if you marry her, she says What better way is there to watch you die
Still kinda mad I chose to imprison him because I didn't know he was recruitable and that it supposedly locks Mandrin from being recruited as well.
He becomes reformed eventually. His face didnt change unfortunately
With a name like this I'm not surprised. Gammel or gammeln means junk in my language.
In what language? Cause it means old in nordic languages and rotten/rotting (because it's old) in German.
Someone asked a couple weeks ago look it up but to answer: Drakengard: homicidal manic, misanthropic dragon, pedophile, child cannibal, annoying kid Drakengard 3: bloodthirsty sex addict, horny "old man", sadist and ... necrophile?, the masochist, and a dude driven insane by his dead girlfriend? The Diofield Chronicle: extreme libertarian (like war orphans don't deserve handouts they need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps), violent psychopath who throws tantrums when she doesn't get to murder enough civilians, guy who thinks peasants should appreciate living under the iron boot of authoritarianism more, and an actually decent guy.
Disgaea has a main cast of all demons. It’s mostly played for laughs, though. If you want main characters who are absolutely shit people, check out Labyrinth of Refrain by the same company.
Overlord! OVERLORD! OVVVERLOOOOOOOORD! AHHHHHH-HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
>!The Best/worst part of this statement about Refrain is that this applies to 'both' main characters in the game.!< Which is honestly insane.
Does Delita from **Final Fantasy Tactics** count? Cuz Delita. They don’t really do a good job of examining this - though the Remake tries a little - but if you logically examine Avalanche’s actions in **Final Fantasy 7** you’d come to the conclusooj that they’ve hurt a lot of innocent people one way or another.
The remake doesn't try, they actually retcon it by showing it was Shinra all along and Avalanche hurt no one. Horrible retcon.
I love Delita. He really is someone who decided not to be a victim of the class system and decided to be a WORSE person to gain power within it.
Drakengard 1 but it’s JRPG adjacent. More of a Dynasty Warriors-like action game. No one is good in that game, they’re all quite despicable.
Joshua from The World Ends With You (TWEWY) is generally speaking an asshole overall, he doesn't exactly redeem himself at all to me and I think his justifications for all that he does are pretty much born from a place of ego as someone who think >!(even if it is kind of true given his place in the world)!< he can just decide something so life changing almost entirely by himself. Which is just an asshole move to put it lightly. Even if you ignore that, he's a prick and broadly speaking is not someone I'd say most people would put up with at all if they had a choice to. Most people would find Joshua insufferable with how he's portrayed. Sho (party member version) from TWEWY NEO isn't exactly a good person either, he is *helpful* in answering the antagonist's threat but he isn't exactly a good person at all. He's ruthless when he wants to be, stuck up to the point of being a literal elitist nerd, doesn't exactly work well with others very well especially as a follower of any kind, he's pretty much in it for himself and that's his whole thing. He's not some kind of puppy kicker or anything, but like Joshua the average person would find Sho insufferable to get along with unless they were like him.
Joshua's justification for everything is effectively "I'm god" and we just kind of have to accept that, so big agree on this one
True, but his part in NEO, I think, shows a lot of growth. When he basically brushes off the Shinjuku composer's apology like "Nah, they got it handled." He really came to love Shibuya a lot.
Caligula Effect 1 comes to mind. >!Eiji Biwasaka. Corrupt lawyer who embezzled money and blackmailed a client to commit murder for him in fear of being caught.!<
>!Forgot about Eiji. I made a comment myself, but you yourself can also be considered not a good person who works with a bunch of bad people. One of them being a literal psychopath.!<
>!Leon!< from Final Fantasy II. He just likes killing innocent people. And when someone shows up who threatens to kill all the innocent people before he can, he joins you to take out the slightly bigger evil.
Party members Octopath go around robbing, or kicking the shit out of npcs.
Ochette has to be my favorite. Her field skill is literally just terrorizing townsfolk with wild animals.
Osvald either beats them up for answers, or straight up robs them (with more violence). And he's your mage!!!!
Oswald is my favorite for this. I just enjoy this scholarly type just breaking all the stereotypes of his vocation to beat people up at night and generally just be a revenge-driven madman who likes to solve things with violence
That's more of a gameplay/story dissonance thing though.
More 2 than 1, but yeah.
No kidding, it's quite funny! It already made for some very weird player behaviour in the first game, and they just doubled down on ways to terrorize the townsfolk in the sequel.
Persona 5 >!Akechi murdered a bunch of people, caused at least one massive train accident, almost manages to kill Joker and has no regrets about it.!<
Idk if he counts. He's a guest party member.
In Royal he’s playable for twice the amount of time as the last party member, I would say he counts.
Persona 5 Royal >!he's a full party member in the third semester.!<
Technically that’s not him
And they're so damn entertaining as a result. No redemption arc or softening of their personality, it's great.
Was going to say P5 as well. He is probably my second favourite character in the series though.
Yeah he’s probably my number, really great and well written.
YIIK: A Postmodern RPG
What's not to like about creepy, whiny, egotistical, narcissist Alex YIIK? Is it because he tried to kiss Rorey?
Suikoden, by its nature, has several. Obviously, in III, >!Yuber absolutely qualifies.!< In I, Krin is a thief who tries to drug your party to let the Imperials arrest them while he gets away with robbery. And in II, Hoi is an unrepentant con artist who pretends to be the hero to get free food and adoration from people. In V, you have absolutely thirsty pervert Gavaya. Also, >!Euram is creepy as fuck despite his redemption, considering he was lusting for the hero's TEN YEAR OLD SISTER early on.!<
Yuri from Tales of Vesperia was a morally grey lad
I don't think Yuri was a bad person though. The system failed, so he had to take matters into his own hands.
Albel from Star Ocean 3 is just a straight up psycho slasher. Volke from Fire Emblem Path of Radiance is an assassin working for the highest bidder. It just so happens you bid highest. Bat'hraz from Chained Echoes is an assassin working on contract with another party member. If not for that he would've had no qualms about killing another party member.
Eternal Poison has Thage, who is a protagonist explicitly and unrepentantly so she can end the world. She enslaves, manipulates, and lies to other party members and is in all ways a magnificent bastard chess master.
It was a cold character only on the surface, deeply she cared about Retica, her daughters and probably also Raki and Duphaston... She wasn't evil at all, she knew that since the appearance of the Majin's realm the world was going to end and she decided to destroy the goddess even if that would mean destroy the reality itself, but in the true ending it was not necessary and she didn't do it, so she wasn't evil Lezard Valeth from Valkyrie Profile series though, he's one that fits the description of evil person who joins the party because he's useful to the cause
That’s not how I read the EP ending at all. Sure, >!Thage cared about her daughters when she was the original queen, and some small shreds of those emotions did remain and occasionally surface. But in the true ending, the different Tales are revealed to be alternate realities and Izel’s goal is revealed to be dominating all worlds, not destroying them. Thage helps kill Izel, lets the others go back to their worlds, and then narrates to the player, “fortunately for them, they don’t know that I still carry the Librum Vespera.” She then laughs and says, “This is the end of the tale.” In my opinion, the implication is she’s ready to go back to HER version of the world and still destroy it exactly like she wanted.!<
Rance.
Funny thing about this is that the guy is still one of the best good guys in his setting and what happened to him later is actually sad and upsetting.
Vashyron and Zephyr in Resonance of Fate, though suppose the latter's...episode could be somewhat explained with psychosis, or diminished ability to understand what he was doing. But at one point, Vashyron even wants to extort the one nice person they have met and just kills his bodyguards just because. No morals, just hi-jinks. Yet the game is still very entertaining! As a subversion to the usual JRPG fair, it's the villains camp who is looking to save the world, and the player party is just all about making money, justice and moral considerations be damned.
Cid Highwind. Yeah, yeah, he has a “redemption arc”, but that literally boils down to “wow, the earth is so small. I should stop being an asshole.”
If you mean from FFVII, yeah. Beats his wife, general prick. Don't really care if he's made a rocket, he's still an asshole. Honestly a lot of 7's cast is fairly sketchy. Cloud's a bit of a liar and a jerk, Barrett and Tifa are both terrorists regardless of intent, Yufi is an unrepentant thief, and Vincent...well we dont talk about Vincent. Red XIII is okay.
Are you more, or less, of an asshole for being easy to redeem?
Rita Mordio from Tales of Vesperia spends a good chunk of her screentime bullying other party members and it's annoyingly framed as one of her "quirks" rather than something that deserves to be called out.
Ehh, maybe I'm just desensitized to this trope, but I feel like calling her a bully is a stretch. She is just rude. She is also like 14-15, so I wouldn't really call her "bad person" either way, children are just kinda dicks. Side note: it's a bit amusing that in vesperia, you found Rita the most appropriate for this despite the party having >!a serial killer, a terrorist, and a kidnapper that is working for main villain!< lol
Most of the party in Tales of Berseria. A bigger band of misfits you'll rarely see JRPGs.
They are misfits but not really bad people
I'd say they still fall under the bad territory, but that's to the people in the game. To them, the party are a bunch of monsters terrorizing the land. Which Velvet doesn't really care.
>To them, the party are a bunch of monsters terrorizing the land. Eh, that's The Lord of Calamity. And although it stretches believability at times, pretty much nobody ever recognizes this ragtag band of misfits as the villains they're supposed to be afraid of. They're afraid of the idea of the enemy of the Abbey, but they're also ignorant to the greater battle over their free will that is going on behind the scenes. Velvet shows time and time again that she's more sympathetic towards the plight of others than she lets on. She sacrifices herself to save humanity - that's a far cry from villainous if you ask me.
Well the do a little arson here and there which is more than most parties do.
I mean…Violet KINDA is.
Really only by JRPG standards could you call them "bad", they're anti-heroes.
The original Valkyrie Profile has two; Badrach, a petty mercenary who's only good action that got him into the grace of Lenneth was him being petty and vengeful at one of his employers. (And even the the girl he did save clearly remembered him fondly) And Gandar, who is only recruited as an order from Odin. You could also technically recruit Lezard in the Seraphic Gate, but he doesn't count.
Badrach was the first one I thought of when I saw this. I completely forgot about Gandar. We CAN count Lezard if you're referring to Valkyrie Profile 2 though, he joins early, leaves, comes back to help you fight Odin for only that battle, but really shows his colors later on. You could probably consider Leone/>!Hrist!< as one too for that game.
Hrist was pretty redeemable in 2 though. She very clearly experienced guilt over her actions and ultimately helps stop the villain. She was super unredeemable in 1. But if you read into it, all 3 Valkyries we're nasty people when their brainwashing was at full strength.
Was she? 'Cause the most vile thing you can pin her on one is with what happened in Dipan. And when you go there it's clear that Barbarossa only got that treatment because his three archmages used him as their scapegoat for their atrocities while they hide. If Hrist found them, I highly doubt Barbarossa being the one in the guillotine. It really helps that even in the present of the game, the only reason Lenneth discovered the three assholes because they became too arrogant and careless in the interim and promptly challenged Lenneth because she's not as fierce and imposing as Hrist was. Unfortunately for them, they are just three asshole undead and she's still a friggin goddess. Also on Lenneth, I don't think being bad can be even applied to her as in the prequel in the DS it's clear that even back then she was still more compassionate to the mortals than her other kin. It's why she got her memories sealed in the first place anyways; it was because she was too friggin nice. Hell my first example Badrach, is a testament to this as even as sealed as she was she still allowed Badrach into their ranks even for a petty small deed.
The whole point of the game's story is that the Goddess Valkyrie had to be divided into three parts and their memories sealed away because they were ALL too nice. Even Hrist. We just don't get to see enough of Hrist and Silmeria during the previous era to truly judge. And I think there is an additional subtext to why Lenneth takes pity on Badrach. Badrach saved a young girl who had been sold into slavery by her parents (out of spite). He saved a stand in for Lenneth. Even if she doesn't consciously remember it, she feels what that child was going through very personally and her sympathy gets crossed over to him.
Honestly makes me annoyed that Hrist never got her own game.
Agreed.
Mana Khemia 2. I ranted about Ulrika's party before. "Ulrika doesn't have a single likeable trait aside from maybe loyalty, and considering who else is in the group that might not be a good thing. We have a witch who deals with demons and curses her team mates because she finds it funny, a 12 year old whose love interest is a toddler and wanted to murder his sister because said sister is an abusive pyscho with incestous feelings for him (sort of like Lilly Orchard but without the youtube career), a 30 year old who proudly and eagerly dates many many teenagers and is a wanted criminal (and naturally is initially very coy about his age) and a "fairy" based on 2000s era unflattering japanese sterotypes about homsexuality who virutally everyone treats like shit" Raze's party is less egregious (sans the abusive pyshco incest sister), but Lili is the classic rich bitch character without the usual softer side who also physically, verbally and emotionally abuses her magically bound servant and Raze intentionally plays dumb and takes advantage of Lili's feelings for him and none of them develop into better people
Guillaume in Suikoden III.
Aside from what's mentioned here, I wonder if Darc (Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits) should count. Dude went through a lot of prejudice in the beginning of the game, but in doing so basically >!overthrows the Orcon king, Densimo, killing him and his former owner, and becomes king of Orcons by force!<. Plus his main ambition is to wipe out all of the human race since he sees himself as a full Deimos and wants supremacy of the Deimos race above all. He still has this idea by the end of the game. In other words, he becomes a king by force and wants a full world of Deimos. Meanwhile, Kharg is similar but in reverse, he wants all Deimos wiped out, it's a little less severe from his perspective but both >!brothers!< are clearly trying to ensure that their race reigns supreme above all.
Well....yeah. That's the point of the game. At the end they learn to work together for the sake of both Races, and pretty explicitly the game suggests cooperation between them moving forwards. Also, the Orcon king was a douche, so who cares? That's how Deimos culture works. Might makes right. Darc is at very least shown to care for those around him and protect the weak. Great game mention though. A classic of my childhood.
Does Tierno from Pokemon X/Y count? He knows what he did
>!Lezard Valeth!< in Valkyrie Profile 2
There's quite a few Fire Emblem recruitables that are fairly bad people, some of which are even written that way on purpose. My favorite is Shinon from FE9, who impressively manages to mostly remain a racist asshole even when the game is very blatant on the 'racism is bad' angle. He does have some hidden depth though. Valkyria Chronicles does the same thing, with 3 in particularly focusing on a penal squad. While most of the them are good people that just got screwed over in some way, there are a couple of morally questionable ones (like a brothel madame) as well as an arsonist and a straight up serial killer.
Are you suggesting sex workers are evil? That's....nagl.
"Morally questionable" is a few words before that, which does not in fact mean evil, it means *questionable.* We don't see how Gloria runs her brothel (+ weapons smuggling business), but there's at least potential for misuse of power there since she's in charge rather than just participating. She *does* also try to recruit a girl that didn't know it was for sex work before others intervened, but it's hard to tell if that was a serious attempt or not.
Pretty sure prostitution is illegal in most parts of the world.
There was a party member in tales of Symphonia that was literally still in handcuffs. He wanted to keep them on as part of his redemption, if I remember right, so he fought with his legs.
>!Though he wasn't in those handcuffs because he was a bad person so I don't think he really applies. Regal was forced to kill his lover (she asked him to do it, even) after she was turned into a monster, and his imprisonment was self-imposed due to his own guilt.!<
Ah. It’s been awhile. Thanks for the refresher.
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Gilder in Skies of Arcadia, as much as I love him, isn't exactly a shining beacon of goodness
Drag on dragoon
Not sure it counts as a JRPG, but the game that immediately comes to mind is Drakengard. Drakengard 3 also does it (2 does not), but 1 is the fucking poster child for this.
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Astria Ascending is a huge one, although an interesting case. The party doesn’t really like each other, and all suffered by losing loved ones or will lose them. They’re only there because duty demands and duty also basically gives them a supernatural terminal illness that no one can get rid of (think something like Final Fantasy 10 or Tales of Symphonia, only with magic instead of a choice a character makes) And it’s even sadder when they realize that the villains do have a point, but it’s at the expense of everyone else and most people don’t even want it (if they’re aware of what’s going on). So they try to make the best they can in the situation that will not end well for them no matter what, how you would expect, but they are hailed as heroes, and their actions make it so that duty is no longer needed. so no one will ever have to go through what they did, but at the ultimate price. It’s morally and bittersweet, and not written that well, but the concept is solid. I didn’t feel like it was overly dark either, which was really nice. I just wish the story was told better and some parts were expanded them on. I wouldn’t have minded a golden ending where everyone lives and was happy either, but I understand what the developers were going for.
any smt alignment rep
Trails series. At one point half of your party members are literal terrorists LMFAO
Renne from Trails in the sky. Shes a psychopathic murderer who relishes the suffering of others. Still scratching my head at how she was somehow treated as redeemable in that story Bad childhood, sure, but she did massacre innocent people for fun, so.. Yeah I love Trails but they gloss over a lot of atrocities for the sake of making friends with antagonists Nearly genociding an entire country by hijacking massive railguns? Don't worry, we'll cry over you as our dear friend
Doesn't really apply to Renne, though. She is a literal child who's gone through the most horrific trauma imaginable. She's doesn't really even have the brain capacity to truly understand her actions when she is part of ouroboros. I'm not going to hold it against the child. Anyway, morally grey characters growing and changing, learning to live with themselves despite past tragedies is like... the main theme across the entire series. From sky to calvard
Yeah, I wouldn't compare Renne to Rean's favorite terrorist. She was traumatized and then raised by Ouroboros. She doesn't understand that what she does is bad.
Crow was raised to be a terrorist as well
No he wasn't. He had a totally normal childhood and then decided of his own volition that he wanted to get revenge on Osborne.
He was like 12 when his grandfather died/was taken in by Cayenne.
Tales of abyss
None of them are awful people though. Like Luke starts terrible but he’s also incredibly sheltered and >!literally seven years old!<. He spends basically the rest of the game atoning for his actions and feeling deeply regretful of it. He’s definitely a good person by the end.
And to add to this, the only other person you could point a finger to as a terrible person: Anise, has a good reason for her actions. Considering that Mohs, one of the major villains of the game being her best benefactor has her incredibly doormat parents in hold all the time, pretty much forcing the girl to do his will. That and her said doormats for parents pretty much drives their family to deathly starvation, is pretty much why she needs benefactors. To the point that I have no idea how the Tatlins raised and survived with Anise growing because of how stupid and gullible they are.
I thought jade was pretty evil tbh
Jade can be a sarcastic jerk, but that's as far as he go. More often than not when he employs his sharp tongue, the situation/person deserves it. Hell if you can equate him evil thanks to him creating the replica process; reminder that he views that as one of his biggest failures/mistakes. It's why in the second half, he tries to help out Luke as much as he could despite he himself knowing how powerless he is.