Most Depressing Final Fantasy Game

Grab your tissue paper, put on some Joy Division or Cure album of choice, and let's discuss how depressing this series can be. So which game do you feel is the most depressing?

Hard to say since I only played three of them to completion (VII, X, XII) and out of those three I have to say X, even though it didn't really depress me while I was playing I could see they were going for that feeling.

FF8. We get to see Squall transformed from an insightful young military cadet to a cliche first-time-in-love idiot.

XIII because the whole thing screams emptiness to me even if it might look pretty at first glance.

Will get some weird looks but FFIX. A lot of bad stuff happened in that game and perhaps the usual cheerful/whimsical nature of it made the shocks so much sharper when they happened.

I would say FFVI because almost each character has a really dramatic backstory.

FFX, easily.

FFVI, with a nod to FFX.

FFVI has:
Locke and Rachel's story~
Locke is in luv with Rachel and wants to marry her. He takes her into the mountains to find her an engagement ring. A rickety bridge begins to collapse under Locke, so Rachel pushes him out of the way and falls instead. She doesn't die, but she loses her memory. The people of her hometown blame it all on Locke, so he goes away. While he's away, Rachel is killed in a raid by the empire. In her final moments, her memory returns and she sends word for Locke to come back. He does so, to find her cold dead body. But Locke can't let go, so he has her body "preserved" in the hopes of reviving her one day. After the world is destroyed, Locke finds a way to revive his Rachel through the life-giving power of the Phoenix, but oh wait the magicite is cracked and Rachel is revived only long enough to tell Locke to move on. And then she dies.

Cyan's family's story
Cyan's wife and little boy, his king, and almost all the people of his kingdom, are poisoned and killed by Kefka while Cyan's away trying to kill the commander of the empire's forces. Cyan gets to find all their dead bodies. He deals with survivor's guilt for the majority of the rest of the game. Oh and did I mention he gets to see them get on the train to hell, and say goodbye AGAIN?

Cyan and Lola
When the world falls apart, Cyan finds himself alone on top of Mt. Zozo. He also happens upon the letters of a poor miss Lola, whose boyfriend was an imperial soldier (who you meet earlier in the game. He's injured and can't write, so you can send letters to Lola in his stead) and who has stopped writing to her. What she doesn't know is that her boyfriend died. Cyan, twisted by his own guilt and fear, writes to poor Lola as if he were her boyfriend, leading the poor girl on. Eventually, upon returning to Lola's home in Maranda, Cyan can do the right thing and...leave Lola another letter that explains he's been lying to her and her boyfriend is actually dead. Good times, yeah?

Did I mention the part where at least half of the entire world is destroyed in a massive cataclysm?

Terra and Mobliz
Never mind the story of her family, her heritage, the destruction of the Espers. Never mind the fact that she was controlled by the empire and forced to kill people. Terra's story in the world of ruin, the post-cataclysm version of the world, is that she finds an entire village of orphans. Kefka kills 100% of Mobliz's adults. Kiddies get to watch their parents die, then fend for themselves for however long they've been alone before Terra finds them. And Mobliz is just a microcosm of the entire FFVI world, since nearly the whole world was gutted in one way or another.

Gau
How about Gau, whose father thinks he's a monster and sends him away to live on his own like a wild animal? Seriously, they're cute little sprites so it's not as impactful, but this is some dark trout.

General Leo
A light in the darkness. A rose among thorns. The few good men of the empire all fall to tragedy. The best of them all, General Leo is brought down way too soon. Mainly because I wanted him to be a smurfing playable character dammit. So cool. So depressing.

Setzer and Darill
Another tragic story of love cut short. Darill was Setzer's lover and fellow airship aficionado. Setzer challenges her to a race, and when he can't keep up she flies away into the distance and is never seen again. Setzer finds her smashed ship a year later though. She flew too high, too fast. Lived too hard. Died too hard. Setzer takes her ship and buries it in a giant beautiful catacomb shrine.

Mog
He's the only one of his kind left in the world. All his people are dead.
RIP Mogsy, Mogwin, Mugmug, Cosmog, Moggrie, Moglin, Mogret, Moghan, Molulu, and Moguel.

Celes
Yeah, Celes. Just everything. Cid, the empire, her unrequited love of Locke, her lame special skill.

And there's more, but I hope you get the picture. That should cover it, yeah? FFVI, hands down.

Yeah, VI. No question.

I mean, even when you win, you're still left with a world that has been torn to shreds. They even call it the 'World of Ruin'. There are a few other FF games that have had heartbreaking moments in them, but VI had them along with real, tangible awfulness for the entire planet.

I'd say VI and X too.

VI and X are up there, but I voted for II. Emperor destroys half the world with his airship bombing, and it just seems like quality of life is generally terrible.

VI for pretty much the reasons chionos outlined. Several others have strong claims to being depressing as well (let's not forget that the world of FFVII is controlled by an evil corporation that drops a plate on Sector 7 just for funsies because of "terrorists") but I think VI beats them all because almost all of the central characters' stories are inextricably linked with the intrinsic tragedy of the game to an extent that simply isn't found in other games of the series.

That said, I'm told Tactics is mighty depressing as well, but I haven't played enough of it to evaluate it. (I suck at SRPGs).

Yeah, Tactics is bad, but I thought we were sticking to the numbered entries. Although, I still think it's FFVI, because Tactics isn't so much depressing because it's not...I dunno, it's not universally sad. The stories of the main character and the people who directly surround him are bad, but the tragedy perhaps doesn't extend as far as it does in FFVI. In FFVI there's little hope for anyone at all. In Tactics there's just no hope for 1 or 2 families.

I dunno. Maybe I'm selling FFT a little short.

Interesting, I never considered FF6 as depressing. Lots of bad stuff happens for sure, but I always took it as a message that there is always hope.

I'd say VI after reading this thread.

On an only semi-related note, Sazh's story in the XIII trilogy is kind of depressing to think about. Literally all he wants is to just reunite with his son and live with him. Spoilers for the XIII trilogy I guess Yet his plot in every single game involves him being separated from Dajh in some form or fashion. It's pretty easy to see the possibility that they are separated again after the end of Lightning Returns too. Although, I think it more depresses me that they just couldn't think of anything else to do with his character.

Most of the FF games have the existence of hope as a central theme. FFVI just lets things get a lot darker before it shows up.

Btw Scotty, your spoiler tag is broken.

Yeah, I'm too sleepy to do spoiler tags right apparently, not that it was a big spoiler.

If we were including spin-offs in this I'd like to put in a note for Crisis Core. It's nowhere near as depressing as VI in terms of what actually happens, but playing the entire game with foreknowledge of what's going to happen in the end was pretty devastating.

Also the way it happened was pretty devastating. That entire final sequence, the way it was worked into the gameplay, was so unbelievably well done. I cried a lot, I am not ashamed to admit.

VI is the easy answer but I could see IX. Alot of mass murder goes down that hits harder because of the larger populations and otherwise whimsical feel. The black mages falling out of the airship was pretty heart-wrencing and there's also the implied ending.

It depends. Regarding a game's ending, Crisis Core and Type-0 are the most depressing games to me. They really made me cry.
Regarding the overall atmosphere of a game, I'd choose X out of all the FF entries I've finished so far. I don't know if I can explain it well, but I think that "death" and "farewells" are major themes during the entire game which often create a heavy and depressing atmosphere. The few times you see the characters having "a good time" it's actually more or less faked (except for Tidus), so it's really not a pleasant journey at all at any point of the story.

VI. Racism, imperialism, loss of family, genocide, a literal apocalypse, suicide, and rape allegory makes it pretty much sad as hell.

This may seem cliche, but I think I was most depressed playing FF7 not because the game itself was depressing, but because of this screen.

Attachment 59830

I don't know, but when I played this game as a twelve year old, I played with the illusion that these characters were somehow real in their own living, breathing universe. The game over was a harsh wakeup call that even in the context of FFVII's universe, the whole thing's just a movie. Like, your punishment for losing is BEING REMINDED THAT YOU'RE JUST LIVING A HOLLOW FANTASY.

And then there was that time when I beat the game and didn't know they lived until the credits ended...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Psychotic

Will get some weird looks but FFIX. A lot of bad stuff happened in that game and perhaps the usual cheerful/whimsical nature of it made the shocks so much sharper when they happened.

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Don't worry. The beauty of being on an online forum is that any weird looks you get you'll be blissfully unaware of.

:erm:

VI

IX is depressing but it also feels so hopeful. Most of the FF games do. VI for some reason to me does not. It feels hopeless the whole time