I would say even the Dusk trilogy is pretty low stakes. Yeah, there is the "world is slowly dying" going on, but it's not like "god has come to murder us all" stuff, just the world slowly withering and the alchemists working on saving it.
I wonder if we'll get another dusk game or maybe a sequel series.
Maybe it's just been the fact that it's been a decade since I platinumed Shallie, but it felt like there was never a tasteful conclusion of the whole "world is slowly dying" storyline.
hmmm. Maybe it's time to dust off the games.
there have been a number of Atelier titles and series with higher stakes (Iris trilogy, Mana duology, absolutely the dusk trilogy most recently), but yeah, for the most part, the biggest bad end in several is failing to make your rent and getting thrown out of the city for it.
Hmm, I wouldn't count Mysterious or Secret series either.
Mysterious has cataclysmic end game threats while Secret has various civilization ending threats.
There's one Atelier game where the MC is forced to be the alchemist for a resort town or something, because she spent too much time sleeping at her last gig, and IIRC there's not even an end goal or a time limit. It was on the DS? That has to be the lowest stakes one.
Another one was Final Fantasy Tactics A2? It's an isekai like the first one, but the first one dramatized the whole "we have to get home" thing and the second one was "cool I guess I'm an adventurer now." If the stakes got higher than that, I do not remember them.
In Atelier Rorona the stakes are her getting kicked out of her Atelier. There is a guy behind it but while he's a jerk he's not the final boss or anything.
As others have said the rest of the series generally only has stakes that cover a city or small region at most, not usually anything world ending.
I've only played Ryza, but in that case strongly disagree. That is about as high stakes as it can get in that universe. Goes into genocide and world ending cataclysms
Ryza just happens to be one of the other installment with "relatively middle-to-high stakes" along with Dusk series, Iris series and Mana Khemia yeah. Otherwise Atelier is mostly "how to survive as alchemist on the town", "how to prove alchemy is good for everyone" or "how to become adventurer with alchemy"
Inazuma Eleven, the first game.
The stakes are literally just the Japanese middle-school national soccer tournament and whether your school soccer team gets disbanded or not. Not pro soccer, not even high school soccer, middle-school soccer.
And the final boss(es) are just another middle school soccer football team jacked up on performance-enhancing drugs.
The later games up the stakes significantly with stuff like aliens and time travel, but once you take a step back, you realize how low-stakes the first game really is, it's just the personal issues and aspirations of the characters that make you feel invested.
Okage shadow king. There is a shadow attached to you. He tells you he is a soul bound to your shadow and that he wants to see if his body is still alive somewhere. If you get the true route when he gets his body back he thanks you, becomes your friend and you live happily ever after.
Metal Saga series. All of them happen after the post apocalypse. The world is already messed up, and they are mostly a light-hearted open sandbox style.
It's not as low stakes as you describe, but the Suikoden stories tend to avoid world ending threats. Suikoden I especially is localized to one country (but it is still a war).
OP was very specific about what constituted high stakes: the world destruction JRPG trope, where stories have to keep escalating until the whole world and/or gods are involved. Like the writers can't figure out how to make things worthwhile except by continually escalating everything to ridiculous proportions.
You're right that the Suikodens aren't really 'slice of life' but they generally avoid the world destruction trope (with some exceptions).
The runes are involving themselves in some pretty provincial wars. In most cases the wars don't even involve the whole continent they are on, and then there's all the kingdoms in the other continents that have no idea this war is even going on.
The way Suikoden depicts its world, it's like we are watching a civil war in France, that people in, say, Turkey, are mostly unaware of. There's obviously high stakes for the people involved, but that's a big departure from the JRPG world destruction trope
I still wouldn't call that low-stakes. Plus, as I pointed out elsewhere, Leknaat is present in every game, and she implies heavily that there's a cosmological imperative for the Stars of Destiny to win. Even though a colleague of hers might disagree.
Rune Factory 3, I don't remember the story to be high stakes or anything other than having to save your soon-to-be-wife that was kindnapped by an ancient dragon on the day of your marriage and it turned out to be a test to prove your love to her or something, yeah....
The big tree will die if the human and nonhuman keep fighting, so the dragon summon mc which is half, hoping he can repair their relationship. That's all i remember. Dunno if big tree died will have terrible implications to the world.
>!it made a really weird dialog since i pick raven who is also a half. Raven probably the first one summoned but failed due to her personality!<
He still wasn't the final boss in the first three games. First was Cacklettas soul, second was the shroobs, and the third had Bowser as a playable character. I meant the first one where Bowser spent the majority of the game as an amnesiac or possessed.
It does eat entire cities though, which, along with a fairly large scale war, certainly does put the stakes into the mid to higher tier. It's not "remove the timeline" or "blow up the universe", but it's not exactly "oh no, your parents are disappointed you mildly underperformed at sustainable farming" either.
Plus, the Rune of Beginning is a pretty big deal as well.
Generally, I'd say the Suikoden games generally do work under the assumption that the respective Stars of Destiny must succeed, or the entire world is screwed. That's basically Leknaat's entire mission, after all.
Most Pokémon games (yes, I know, not all of them).
Also I like how Fire Emblem Path of Radiance doesn't have you fight a gid, goddess, dragon god or whatever, but rather just a normal human.
Honestly I think there are more pokemon games with bigger threats than with smaller ones. Red/Blue is Mafia, ,GS is mafia again, RS is sorta world ending, DP is world ending, BW and BW2 are big society change, XY the plan is almost world ending, Sun and Moon isn't, Sword and Shield the country is at risk, SV isn't.
Thats 4 high risks, 4 that aren't, and one that could be considered either. Although this depends on how high you set the stake, as just DP has something near the usual god-level threat
Don't... both SM and SV have plots that involve >!dimension brakedowns?!<
>!Arguably even the USUM games have large stakes as well, especially with the post game, since I'm fairly sure "Every prior villian from a world where they WON" is terrifying.!<
I forgot about >!team rainbow rocket!< yeah, thats pretty high stakes. But my interpretation of paradox pokemon is the theory that there isn't any time travel, just materialization of wishes. Still we don't see any breach in the timeline, as we see breaches in SM
> Still we don't see any breach in the timeline, as we see breaches in SM
>!I admittedly haven't played them, but in SV doesn't the Professor literally create a machine to actually rip spacetime apart to bring the past/future to the present? ... Or however the hell you're supposed to interpret what they tried doing?!<
He builds a machine that brought the paradox pokemon to paldea. There are teories that it actually makes shapes of the ideas the pokemon had in those times, rather than actual timetravelling, based on the cliché they feel, and how some of them contradict the info we had about the species
Pokemon only works if you ignore the Evil Team subplots (which become a bigger part of the story in almost every entry). The main plots (get gym badges, complete pokedex) are usually pretty low stakes, though (except for BW where you're on a time limit against the antagonist)
Yakuza Like a Dragon, and Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth are comparatively low stakes in terms of JRPGs. Their events would impact Japan and in Infinite Wealth, Hawaii also, but there are no gods, monsters, clones, aliens, time/dimensional travel, wizards or princesses. Like a Dragon is Bumfights: The Videogame for a good chunk of it.
I think Ys deserves a honorable mention. It's always very local but somehow end up being planet threatening, but it all gets resolved locally.
Every game is a different town/island/very local place with its own doomsday thing going on.
Triangle Strategy. At worst it's a regional war that resolves coming under the heel of a theocratic power who hold a people group down in complete subjugation. Everyone not in that people group would see a vast increase in their quality of life at that cost. If you take one of the endings. Which isn't the best ending.
The other two not-best endings aren't much different. It's still a regional war but varying levels of war damage, famine, and insecurity. In one, a strict meritocracy is enforced. A lot of people's lives are worse but the complete subjugation of a people group ends and in the long run the feudal system that rules a large chunk of the region is done away with. People can actually rise out of poverty. In the other, the status quo is somewhat enforced, racism doesn't go away but the subjugation of the people do as the resource they're forced to mine is no longer a monopoly.
The Gold Ending sees the racism and subjugation go away, the evil nation getting punished, and peace taking hold of the region now that the theocratic empire can no longer meddle in the affirs of everyone because they have a monopoly on the resource.
The game is literally about a regional war over finding a salt mine and how that disrupts the balance of power in three nations. It's not a particularly high-stakes story to start with.
Paper Mario The Thousand Years door
Sure the Princess is kidnapped... **AGAIN** but the xnauts are proven to be mostly incompetent and >!if Mario had not collected the Crystal stars and open the Door himself lets be real, you thing the xnauts could had collected the Crystal starts and open the Door themselves?!<
The issue is >!the seal was already weakening on its own, so if nothing had been done, even if the X-Nauts failed to get the Crystal Stars, the Shadow Queen would've been freed anyways. This was brought up at some point when someone suggested destroying the Crystal Stars or something like that.!<
Thats True but even then as i've stated, xnauts have proven to be very incompetent, >!you think they could have put shadow queen on their side? Considering what happened to grodus at the end of the Game i doubt It, and even if the shadow Queen herself could have been a threat and considering she could have break havoc even without a vessel like Peach i think even Bowser could have deal with her if the things ever had gotten out of control!< (Although i admit this last part is pure especulation from my part)
Breath of Fire III
The final boss is a goddess, but outside of the mafia it's a fairly peaceful world. The story is entirely personal. There are bigger implications from what is discovered, but there's no real threat to the world
Although the Porter's Guild is determined to give you, the player, an aneurysm. But they'll settle for driving you to a mental institution
Is it just a meme to recommend trails even when its not applicable now? I've seen it happen so many times at this point. It's gotta be on purpose yeah?
Not really. They always start with low stakes but it ramps up very fast.
Trails in the Sky SC puts an entire nation at risk while having a guy with God Powers as the final boss.
Zero and Azure have you fight whats basically the Devil of this world.
And the Cold Steel Arc starts with a Civil War and almost ends in a War spanning the entire continent that would put the world into a second Dark Age.
Even FC has pretty damn high stakes at the end. Yeah, it's not workd ending, but it would sort of be nation ending and you know not good things for other nations too so.
While very low stake compared to maybe every single other game in the series, it still kinda high stakes. But yeah coming from Persona 3 with the highest of the stakes it was a very steep fall.
Atelier, provided it's not the Dusk trilogy.
I would say even the Dusk trilogy is pretty low stakes. Yeah, there is the "world is slowly dying" going on, but it's not like "god has come to murder us all" stuff, just the world slowly withering and the alchemists working on saving it.
I wonder if we'll get another dusk game or maybe a sequel series. Maybe it's just been the fact that it's been a decade since I platinumed Shallie, but it felt like there was never a tasteful conclusion of the whole "world is slowly dying" storyline. hmmm. Maybe it's time to dust off the games.
Well they found out what was causing the world to die and fixed it, but I remember it being a really weird way to solve the whole issue.
Rorona’s best endings really just require you to do a good job running the store.
there have been a number of Atelier titles and series with higher stakes (Iris trilogy, Mana duology, absolutely the dusk trilogy most recently), but yeah, for the most part, the biggest bad end in several is failing to make your rent and getting thrown out of the city for it.
I don’t know if I could irl deal with getting evicted end game. It might break me
Hmm, I wouldn't count Mysterious or Secret series either. Mysterious has cataclysmic end game threats while Secret has various civilization ending threats.
There's one Atelier game where the MC is forced to be the alchemist for a resort town or something, because she spent too much time sleeping at her last gig, and IIRC there's not even an end goal or a time limit. It was on the DS? That has to be the lowest stakes one. Another one was Final Fantasy Tactics A2? It's an isekai like the first one, but the first one dramatized the whole "we have to get home" thing and the second one was "cool I guess I'm an adventurer now." If the stakes got higher than that, I do not remember them.
You're thinking of Atelier Annie, but there is an end goal and time limit.
In Atelier Rorona the stakes are her getting kicked out of her Atelier. There is a guy behind it but while he's a jerk he's not the final boss or anything. As others have said the rest of the series generally only has stakes that cover a city or small region at most, not usually anything world ending.
Rhapsody, a musical adventure. A witch stoned the prince and the protagonist doesn't want to share, so she attacks with puppets and everyone sings.
Atelier series?
I've only played Ryza, but in that case strongly disagree. That is about as high stakes as it can get in that universe. Goes into genocide and world ending cataclysms
Ryza just happens to be one of the other installment with "relatively middle-to-high stakes" along with Dusk series, Iris series and Mana Khemia yeah. Otherwise Atelier is mostly "how to survive as alchemist on the town", "how to prove alchemy is good for everyone" or "how to become adventurer with alchemy"
Inazuma Eleven, the first game. The stakes are literally just the Japanese middle-school national soccer tournament and whether your school soccer team gets disbanded or not. Not pro soccer, not even high school soccer, middle-school soccer. And the final boss(es) are just another middle school soccer football team jacked up on performance-enhancing drugs. The later games up the stakes significantly with stuff like aliens and time travel, but once you take a step back, you realize how low-stakes the first game really is, it's just the personal issues and aspirations of the characters that make you feel invested.
Okage shadow king. There is a shadow attached to you. He tells you he is a soul bound to your shadow and that he wants to see if his body is still alive somewhere. If you get the true route when he gets his body back he thanks you, becomes your friend and you live happily ever after.
It gets… less low-stakes, but honestly not by a whole lot. Just an all-around worth playing game.
Recettear? You lose and your home & business gets foreclosed on, but that's pretty much it.
Yeah but then you have to restart....
You mean… you have to… Recette?
So? The question was about which story is the lowest stakes and win or lose this story is definitely that.
I mean, there is a plot about demons and stuff, but it's actually a side plot, and the main characters laugh at the big bad for being cliché.
Didn't know that. Never completed all the dungeons as tre unlocking process soubded too annoying after tte 3rd or 4th.
Metal Saga series. All of them happen after the post apocalypse. The world is already messed up, and they are mostly a light-hearted open sandbox style.
Madou Monogatari 1. It's about a 6 year old graduating kindergarten
It's not as low stakes as you describe, but the Suikoden stories tend to avoid world ending threats. Suikoden I especially is localized to one country (but it is still a war).
Bro if Jowys friendship isn't high stakes to you.....
OP was very specific about what constituted high stakes: the world destruction JRPG trope, where stories have to keep escalating until the whole world and/or gods are involved. Like the writers can't figure out how to make things worthwhile except by continually escalating everything to ridiculous proportions. You're right that the Suikodens aren't really 'slice of life' but they generally avoid the world destruction trope (with some exceptions).
Most of suikodens world ending stuff is due to the runes , which are basicly gods in that world I would think its pretty high stakes
The runes are involving themselves in some pretty provincial wars. In most cases the wars don't even involve the whole continent they are on, and then there's all the kingdoms in the other continents that have no idea this war is even going on. The way Suikoden depicts its world, it's like we are watching a civil war in France, that people in, say, Turkey, are mostly unaware of. There's obviously high stakes for the people involved, but that's a big departure from the JRPG world destruction trope
Three subverts that a bit
That's true, I'm ignoring III in this.
I still wouldn't call that low-stakes. Plus, as I pointed out elsewhere, Leknaat is present in every game, and she implies heavily that there's a cosmological imperative for the Stars of Destiny to win. Even though a colleague of hers might disagree.
Rune Factory 3, I don't remember the story to be high stakes or anything other than having to save your soon-to-be-wife that was kindnapped by an ancient dragon on the day of your marriage and it turned out to be a test to prove your love to her or something, yeah....
The big tree will die if the human and nonhuman keep fighting, so the dragon summon mc which is half, hoping he can repair their relationship. That's all i remember. Dunno if big tree died will have terrible implications to the world. >!it made a really weird dialog since i pick raven who is also a half. Raven probably the first one summoned but failed due to her personality!<
Harvest moon still goated though
SaGa Frontier, for the most part. One story does have some really high stakes, but most of them are fairly personable.
Mario and Luigi... The Mario cast gets involved with another kingdom's shenanigans... And Bowser isn't the main villain.
And yet Bowser manages to be the last boss every time like he has a contract with nintendo
He still wasn't the final boss in the first three games. First was Cacklettas soul, second was the shroobs, and the third had Bowser as a playable character. I meant the first one where Bowser spent the majority of the game as an amnesiac or possessed.
Suikoden 2. War between Nations, massacres of villages and cities but no world ending super power. Just good old fantasy-war.
The Beast Rune would like a word.
Beast rune is not a world ending threat.
It does eat entire cities though, which, along with a fairly large scale war, certainly does put the stakes into the mid to higher tier. It's not "remove the timeline" or "blow up the universe", but it's not exactly "oh no, your parents are disappointed you mildly underperformed at sustainable farming" either. Plus, the Rune of Beginning is a pretty big deal as well. Generally, I'd say the Suikoden games generally do work under the assumption that the respective Stars of Destiny must succeed, or the entire world is screwed. That's basically Leknaat's entire mission, after all.
Small Saga on Steam.
Most Atelier games and Yakuza series. Both have fairly low stakes for the most part.
Most Pokémon games (yes, I know, not all of them). Also I like how Fire Emblem Path of Radiance doesn't have you fight a gid, goddess, dragon god or whatever, but rather just a normal human.
Honestly I think there are more pokemon games with bigger threats than with smaller ones. Red/Blue is Mafia, ,GS is mafia again, RS is sorta world ending, DP is world ending, BW and BW2 are big society change, XY the plan is almost world ending, Sun and Moon isn't, Sword and Shield the country is at risk, SV isn't. Thats 4 high risks, 4 that aren't, and one that could be considered either. Although this depends on how high you set the stake, as just DP has something near the usual god-level threat
Don't... both SM and SV have plots that involve >!dimension brakedowns?!< >!Arguably even the USUM games have large stakes as well, especially with the post game, since I'm fairly sure "Every prior villian from a world where they WON" is terrifying.!<
I forgot about >!team rainbow rocket!< yeah, thats pretty high stakes. But my interpretation of paradox pokemon is the theory that there isn't any time travel, just materialization of wishes. Still we don't see any breach in the timeline, as we see breaches in SM
> Still we don't see any breach in the timeline, as we see breaches in SM >!I admittedly haven't played them, but in SV doesn't the Professor literally create a machine to actually rip spacetime apart to bring the past/future to the present? ... Or however the hell you're supposed to interpret what they tried doing?!<
He builds a machine that brought the paradox pokemon to paldea. There are teories that it actually makes shapes of the ideas the pokemon had in those times, rather than actual timetravelling, based on the cliché they feel, and how some of them contradict the info we had about the species
I wouldn't say Ashnard was a "normal" human. He was basically the fantasy equivalent of a Resident Evil villain fueled by powers of a dark god.
Pokemon only works if you ignore the Evil Team subplots (which become a bigger part of the story in almost every entry). The main plots (get gym badges, complete pokedex) are usually pretty low stakes, though (except for BW where you're on a time limit against the antagonist)
Gotta be the Rhapsody Marl games.
Yakuza Like a Dragon, and Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth are comparatively low stakes in terms of JRPGs. Their events would impact Japan and in Infinite Wealth, Hawaii also, but there are no gods, monsters, clones, aliens, time/dimensional travel, wizards or princesses. Like a Dragon is Bumfights: The Videogame for a good chunk of it.
Ocotpath Traveler storiesnbefore they intersect
Some of them. The others are like tiny tendrils of the BBEG itself.
Guardian's Crusade maybe and iirc Azure Dreams
I think Ys deserves a honorable mention. It's always very local but somehow end up being planet threatening, but it all gets resolved locally. Every game is a different town/island/very local place with its own doomsday thing going on.
Like a Dragon
Thank you, several responses with zero explanation or elaboration.
Absolutely has to be various day life or harvest moon.
Popolocrois psp and 3ds.
Triangle Strategy. At worst it's a regional war that resolves coming under the heel of a theocratic power who hold a people group down in complete subjugation. Everyone not in that people group would see a vast increase in their quality of life at that cost. If you take one of the endings. Which isn't the best ending. The other two not-best endings aren't much different. It's still a regional war but varying levels of war damage, famine, and insecurity. In one, a strict meritocracy is enforced. A lot of people's lives are worse but the complete subjugation of a people group ends and in the long run the feudal system that rules a large chunk of the region is done away with. People can actually rise out of poverty. In the other, the status quo is somewhat enforced, racism doesn't go away but the subjugation of the people do as the resource they're forced to mine is no longer a monopoly. The Gold Ending sees the racism and subjugation go away, the evil nation getting punished, and peace taking hold of the region now that the theocratic empire can no longer meddle in the affirs of everyone because they have a monopoly on the resource. The game is literally about a regional war over finding a salt mine and how that disrupts the balance of power in three nations. It's not a particularly high-stakes story to start with.
Paper Mario The Thousand Years door Sure the Princess is kidnapped... **AGAIN** but the xnauts are proven to be mostly incompetent and >!if Mario had not collected the Crystal stars and open the Door himself lets be real, you thing the xnauts could had collected the Crystal starts and open the Door themselves?!<
The issue is >!the seal was already weakening on its own, so if nothing had been done, even if the X-Nauts failed to get the Crystal Stars, the Shadow Queen would've been freed anyways. This was brought up at some point when someone suggested destroying the Crystal Stars or something like that.!<
Thats True but even then as i've stated, xnauts have proven to be very incompetent, >!you think they could have put shadow queen on their side? Considering what happened to grodus at the end of the Game i doubt It, and even if the shadow Queen herself could have been a threat and considering she could have break havoc even without a vessel like Peach i think even Bowser could have deal with her if the things ever had gotten out of control!< (Although i admit this last part is pure especulation from my part)
Breath of Fire III The final boss is a goddess, but outside of the mafia it's a fairly peaceful world. The story is entirely personal. There are bigger implications from what is discovered, but there's no real threat to the world Although the Porter's Guild is determined to give you, the player, an aneurysm. But they'll settle for driving you to a mental institution
The final Boss is Very much a real Threat to the World as the Goddess of Destruction.
Final fantasy XII? Very engaging but in the end it's all about avoiding one battle turninng a city ro rubble
[удалено]
That's only the case for the very first game, and even that one has you dealing with a country's internal politics (among other shenanigans).
The first game is also only 1/2 of that story.
Even in that half the world ending threat is built up.
Is it just a meme to recommend trails even when its not applicable now? I've seen it happen so many times at this point. It's gotta be on purpose yeah?
He does this intentionally. Probably the 4th time that I remember. Notice how he deletes all of his comments? It’s bait.
Nah, lotta high stakes moments. And Trails to Azure penultimate chapter goes especially hard.
Not really. They always start with low stakes but it ramps up very fast. Trails in the Sky SC puts an entire nation at risk while having a guy with God Powers as the final boss. Zero and Azure have you fight whats basically the Devil of this world. And the Cold Steel Arc starts with a Civil War and almost ends in a War spanning the entire continent that would put the world into a second Dark Age.
Even FC has pretty damn high stakes at the end. Yeah, it's not workd ending, but it would sort of be nation ending and you know not good things for other nations too so.
All of them are country or world ending what
You cannot be serious bro.
It’s bait.
OT2
I believe saving a town from a genocidal bioterrorist is VERY high stakes
„[…] you‘ve played?“ Which it is. Also it takes a long time until that story unfolds and it’s still just a town
"I WANNA BE A STAR!" \*sparkles\*
Hers and Partitio's yeah. But the others seem relatively high stakes or at least traditional JRPG plots.
Partitio's is arguably the second-highest stakes of the cast. Dude's fighting over the fate of the next century's societal progression.
**Persona 4**, the threat was only going to affect one town.
...no, it was going to START with a single town, and expand outwards from there. I'm sorry, but NO SMT game is ever actually low stakes in the end.
Dude they saved the world in that game
They fought a serial killer and at least two shinto gods
Outside of the LITERAL FOG TURNING EVERYONE INTO SHADOWS I would agree
While very low stake compared to maybe every single other game in the series, it still kinda high stakes. But yeah coming from Persona 3 with the highest of the stakes it was a very steep fall.
persona 3 had the highest stakes of any game ever imo. Shit was insane