Ocarina of Time
Breath of Fire III
Tales of Graces f
What are some games you've played where the heroes age during the journey of the game?
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Ocarina of Time
Breath of Fire III
Tales of Graces f
What are some games you've played where the heroes age during the journey of the game?
Dragon Quest V. Probably the absolute best example of this, actually.
Fable
Rune Factory 2, maybe? The second half of the game you play as your kid.
Fallout 3 - From the cradle to the grave... quite literally actually...
Lufia 2 - To a lesser extent, you start as a teenager and become an adult with a family halfway through the game.
SaGa Frontier 2 - Multiple times actually with different characters.
Suikoden Tactics - Start as a kid and grow up to be an obnoxious immortal teen.
Horizon: Zero Dawn, The Last of Us - granted in both of these all of the aging happens very early in the game, but there is some gameplay pre-aging.
Beyond: Two Souls
Assassin's Creed 2 and 3
Fire Emblem Genealogy of the Holy War (which by the way has a pretty dark story for that era of JRPGs), Fire Emblem Three Houses
Final Fantasy XV!
Tales of Berseria to a small extent...
Yakuza.
Of course, most of these are simple one off time-skips with some narrative impact but little mechanical change. I'd be really interested in seeing games with aging more meaningfully aligned with the mechanics. A few games have done this over the course of a series, like Metal Gear Solid, but few do so during the span of one game.
The only ones I can think of is Ocarina of Time and Beyond Two Soul.
Breath of Fire II also
In Fable 2, age is a consequence of a particular path along the light. However, as my ex-girlfriend pointed out, the aesthetics could be easily reversed (first with hairdye which is unrealistically permanent). I chose the evil path just to be a deck (I think it was sacrificing someone? A woman or a child, I don't remember)
Also, don't you go from being adolescents to teenagers in Lunar?
When they came out? Like, none.
When I spent most of my time playing it? FFX, I was 16 at the time, Rikku's 15, Yuna's 17.
Sadly, I'll never really get to experience that again because I'm about to turn 28, and that means I'm a hag by Japan's standards.
Ryo ages in Shenmue - just very, very slowly.
Also, if you want to get technical
The Sims (2-4)
If we want to get super technical about slow aging, probably just about every protagonist ages during the course of the game, if not explicitly, except for rare instances like Suikoden protagonists with true runes.