JRPGs are never what they seem. It’s a common known trope at this point to go into a JRPG knowing that it’ll turn from taking down bugs a few steps away from your hometown into needing to kill god over the span of its 100-hour play time.

Along the way, it’s also likely we’ll experience a major plot twist that recontextualizes how we interpret everything that came before it. This can be a character suddenly betraying us, a dark secret foreshadowed throughout the game, or a time skip that, with more context, reframes the situation we find ourselves in.

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JRPG fans are sure to have several examples in their heads already just based on those tropes alone, but just because they’re tropes doesn’t mean that they can’t be executed well and make us want to play through the game again knowing what we’re getting into.

That’s why we’ll be looking at 10 of the best JRPG’s whose first major twists reframe the game entirely.

10

Bravely Default

Never Trust A Seemingly Kind Fairy Again

Bravely Default is a terrific take on the classic JRPG fantasy, not only with its unique battle mechanics, but with its story as well.

What starts off as your typical story that follows four heroes chosen by crystals to help restore balance by stopping a creeping darkness slowly reveals more depth to you as you continue to play. While journeying throughout the game, we learn that our dear fairy companion Airy is actually manipulating us to help fulfill her own hidden agenda.

This agenda being to pose as our ally, have us awaken the elemental crystals, all so she could feed their power to Ouroboros, the dark god she serves.

It’s an effective twist that lands because the genre conventions already make this story easy to trust. But in retrospect, it makes all of our victories up to this point feel tragic and gross. This leads us to eventually disobey Airy’s orders and destroy the crystals instead, exposing Airy’s real form. Which, if you haven’t seen it before, you’re in for quite the disturbing treat.

9

Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean

A Not So Noble Protagonist

JRPGs tend to have two kinds of protagonists: you either have the silent, self-insert main character, or the cocky and loud hero who overestimates their potential. In Baten Kaitos, you play the former, but there’s more to this character than his first impression implies.

In this 2004 JRPG, you play Kalas, a selfish and moody protagonist that occasionally makes the odd sarcastic comment here or there. But who can be surprised given this game is from 2004, of course.

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At the start of the game, we travel with Xelha to stop the Empire and restore the world’s balance. Not too out of the ordinary from your standard JRPG story. But, as we come to learn, Kalas is actually a traitor whose loyalties lie with those behind the Empire’s schemes. After a major confrontation which sees Kalos now as an enemy, we learn that his motivation from the start was to gain more power to enact revenge on those who wronged him.

The real plot twist here is that the game executes this with its main character, who at this point, you have little reason to suspect they could be a double agent.

8

Xenoblade Chronicles

Pawns In A Game of Chess

Xenoblade Chronicles starts out as your standard revenge story, but as we play on, we realize there’s a great conspiracy at hand.

We play as Shulk, a kind and clever Homs hero who sets out on his quest for revenge after his hometown is attacked, and his close childhood friend is killed. This immediately sets up the Homs conflict with the mechanical Mechon, although as we come to learn, the Mechon aren’t just malicious murderers for no reason.

As is later revealed when it turns out that the Bionis and the Mechonis originated from experiments. While we were made by the god Zanza, the Mechons were created by Egil, and we’re all just pawns in their conflict. This reshapes our quest from one of revenge to trying to broker peace between both sides to escape the conflict made for us. Also, we may have to kill a few gods along the way, but we all saw that coming the moment we saw it was a JRPG.

7

Tales of the Abyss

Coming-of-Age Story Interrupted By Dark Family Secrets

Tales of the Abyss opens up with us playing as Luke fon Fabre, a sheltered noble who is suddenly dragged into a wider conflict after preventing our future party member, Tear Grants, from killing your teacher. After thwarting her attempt, you find yourself whisked away and dragged into a political conspiracy, one that also seems to set up a coming of age journey for Luke.

That ends up getting interrupted as it turns out that the Luke we know is actually a clone of the actual Luke. The entire life we believed we had up until this point was all a lie, and that we have been an unknowing pawn in the conflict between the two nations.

This naturally sends our Luke into an existential spiral as he questions whether he has a right to exist or even live his own life knowing he is but a mere facsimile of the real thing. Not to mention all the dastardly deeds he committed, and his pompous behavior before this reveal as well.

6

The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 3rd

Where Your Therapist Sends You After Your Card Declines

Trails in The Sky the 3rd is already a shakeup from previous games in the franchise. Instead of following Estelle and Joshua on their journey across the region, we suddenly now follow Kevin Graham, a church agent sent off on what should have been a routine mission investigating a mysterious artifact.

This setup transforms quickly as Kevin and several familiar characters are pulled into the artificial realm known as Phantasma, made up of illusions and buried history. The major plot twist that’s revealed to us later on after exploring this area is that this entire dimension was actually subconsciously created by Kevin. It turns out, Kevin secretly wished for a place to die and to hide from his guilt after accidentally killing his foster sister and childhood friend Rufina.

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The ancient artifact Kevin was originally investigating latched onto Kevin’s trauma, manifesting this dimension around them, and setting up an environment where various characters can explore their trauma’s and find closure with them. It’s effectively Silent Hill, but with less Pyramid Heads brutally slaughtering people.

5

Final Fantasy 7

Final Fantasy: (Identity) Crisis Core

Final Fantasy 7’s plot twist is really funny to me, mostly due to how it subverts the “cool” and “brooding” protagonist archetype.

Throughout the game, we play as Cloud, a former First-Class SOLDIER who personally knew Sephiroth and was there when he turned evil. As we come to learn later in the game though, this couldn’t be further from the case. Yes, Cloud was at Nibelheim when Sephiroth attacked, but at that point in his career, he was just a lowly grunt no one noticed.

As it turns out, the First-Class SOLDIER Cloud thinks he is, is actually Zack Fair, the foreshadowed SOLDIER from Gongaga. Not only was he at Nibelheim, he’s also the man Aerith is waiting for at the start of the game. In saying that, Cloud was responsible for defeating Sephiroth in Nibelheim, flinging him into the reactor after being impaled by his sword. After suffering devastating injuries, Zack and Cloud are placed in restorative tanks filled with mako. During the recovery process, Cloud’s mind becomes fractured, and after recovering, he believes he’s actually the First- Class SOLDIER Zack actually was.

It’s a plot twist that entirely re-contextualizes Cloud’s character up until this point of the game, but also adds depth to Tifa’s character, and the relationship you had with Aerith as well.

4

Persona 5

“You Fool, I Meant To Get Caught”

Persona 5 opens with your main characters pulling off the heist of a lifetime, but in their hasty exit, you’re caught by the authorities and brought in for interrogation. This means that the story of the game is told as a flashback, as you recount how you and your friends became the highly wanted Phantom Thieves.

This narrative framing gets subverted later, as we learn there are sinister forces behind the scenes utilizing the same powers we control to kill high-ranking officials across Japan and pinning the blame on us. The major twist of the game comes as we enter Sae Nijima’s palace, who is the prosecutor interrogating us up to this point in the game. Players will quickly recognize that Sae’s palace is, in fact, the one we get arrested at trying to escape, and begin wondering how all the pieces fall into place afterwards.

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As it turns out, it was always the plan to get caught so we could fool Akechi, who was posing as our companion, into thinking he had successfully killed us. It also gave us an excuse to get into a room with Sae, confirming her change of heart, and to recruit her to our side.

On a replay, it makes all of our interrogation sequences almost comedic, and makes the game’s foreshadowing even better.

3

Star Ocean: Till the End of Time

Some Light Solipsism For You

Like a few other JRPGs on this list, Star Ocean: Till the End of Time also starts out as an unassuming tale, only to slowly spin out into an even grander threat than realized. Except unlike other titles restricted to a single world, Star Ocean 3 goes galactic.

This sci-fi adventure starts out with your standard space-fantasy journey, seeing your party explore ancient civilizations, maneuver through different races’ conflicts, and try to save the universe while they’re at it. However, all of this gets turned on its head once the party learns that their universe is actually part of a simulated reality called the Eternal Sphere, which is maintained by an even more advanced civilization in 4D space.

Unsurprisingly, this flips the entire game on its head, turning it from a standard sci-fi romp into a full philosophical exploration regarding free will, and one’s own identity. You have to give a game praise for throwing such an interesting curveball like this, going so far as to make the start of their game seem fairly generic, because, of course, a simulation would be. Which just makes a second playthrough with this knowledge feel like you’re also pulling a cosmic prank on the characters.

2

Chrono Trigger

Time Travel Shenanigans

Chrono Trigger is the template for a lot of modern JRPGs nowadays, especially ones that include time travel.

The start of the game starts off with plenty of whimsy and charm, depicting time travel as a fun adventure one can go on. However, as we keep playing, we learn that the future is far darker than expected, and now it’s up to us to save it. However, this plan comes to a head when Chrono, our main character, sacrifices himself to save everyone at the Ocean Palace.

It’s a dark moment in the game as even our remaining party of heroes feel aimless without Chrono to steer their direction. It also marks a major tone shift for the rest of the game, setting up some of the more significant emotional payoffs yet to come.

1

Final Fantasy 10

“People Die, and Yuna Keeps Dancing”

Final Fantasy 10 is a game with several twists that reframe Tidus’ journey across Spira and his conflict with Sin. But one of the most impactful plot twists of the game is one that stares right at us the entire time.

After Yuna is abducted by Seymour from Home, it’s confirmed that the Al Bhed were kidnapping summoners to prevent them from completing their Pilgrimage and summoning the Final Aeon. Throughout the game, this is framed in a sinister way, but once revealed, we learn it’s because Summoners die after completing their pilgrimage and defeating Sin. The Al Bhed, in their own altruistic way, have been developing Machina which they hope will be enough to defeat Sin, and no longer sacrifice bright-eyed summoners to the senseless cause.

Of course, this means that throughout the entire game, Yuna has been pushing through her pilgrimage, knowing it’ll likely mean her own death. Which is also a tragic reveal, as every single one of your companions knew the entire time and failed to mention this to you. On a second playthrough, Tidus’ promises to take Yuna to Zanarkand and all of these romantic plans have you grimacing, knowing the second-hand embarrassment everyone had to have felt in those moments.

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