JRPGs where the main villain's motivation doesn't boil down to emo moping

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Minor spoilers for Ni No Kuni I guess, but if you know what I'm talking about then it's no spoiler at all.

After reaching the final boss of Ni No Kuni today (and quitting the game after being forced to fight all its 3 forms again after losing to the last one in a fantastically bullshit way), I saw the good ol' JRPG routine play out once again in the final confrontation with the main baddie:

Big Bad: "The world is full of suffering, imperfection, war violence, betrayal yada yada etc. so therefore it must be destroyed for a better tomorrow!"

Protagonist: "You're wrong! The world isn't perfect, but there's good in it. Friendship, love, trust blah blah power of friendship and so on"

Despite having actually played an amount of JRPGs you could count with two hands at most, I felt like I'd seen this particular conversation a thousand times, thanks in part to Spoony's old reviews of former FF titles: Seymour in FFX, Shuyin in FFX-2, Barthandelus in FFXIII, and I'm sure there's tons more to add to the list. I started thinking of how many JRPGs do I know where this element doesn't show up. Chrono Trigger certainly doesn't have it, and neither do FF6 (was that the one with Kefka?) and 8 to my understanding, but are there many more? Is this villain motivation as overused as I think it is?

TLDR: Provide me with examples of JRPGs where the main villain's motivation isn't fueled by emo notions like "The world is suffering/full of hatred/pain/sorrow/pick your own brand of angst for the occasion". I'd really like to hear about them. Spoiler important reveals if necessary.

Spoiler: Unrelated side note about reading too much into Ni No Kuni's subtext, spoilers included

Once the boss Vileheart started talking about "the truth" I suddenly was overcome with adding layers of darkness to the story. The game being a children's RPG I knew none of them were possible, but it was still fun to toy with. Maybe the truth was that there was no other world. Maybe Oliver had simply gone insane and Shadar represented his fear of acceptance. Maybe Oliver had been locked up in a mental institution when he started acting like his doll was alive, and his quest was actually about breaking free from his madness. Maybe his mother had actually died because a nurse made an error or something, and Shadar represented that particular nurse. After defeating Shadar I thought that maybe in the real world Oliver had just viciously murdered a health care assistant with a lighter and some spray paint while dragging along his doll and two planks of cardboard with faces and names drawn on them with marker. Maybe it was because I'm kind of a mean bastard to begin with, or because the last game I finished was The Last of Us, a game with no shortage of grisly violence, but I found it really entertaining.

 

[ExDeath730]

Final Fantasy Tactics?

There are let's say, two villains in the game, the main one is a typical Omnicidal Maniac, the other is just someone who wants power. He does play the "emo" card in some interactions, but by the end of the day he is using it to manipulate people and to get power.

In Valkyria Chronicles, some daddy issues aside the villain is just there to conquer the country because...There's no emo motive or nothing like that, it's just war and that's it, the guy is most of the time pretty collected and rational.

Final Fantasy IX, Kuja is basically Vegeta without changing sides and wanting to provoke the war to use the situation as to conquer the planet. If i remember there are no emo thing about it, it was just conquest and killing, and the guy liked it that way.

Golden Sun there is an interesting twist. Let's just say that the emo guy wasn't being emo, and he wasn't evil as well, but to say what happens would be spoilery.

There's Final Fantasy IV as well, the main villain is just there to conquer as well, if i talk too much, there may be spoilers, so, shutting up now.

Final Fantasy V villain is Majin Boo as a smarter dude, no emo motives, just destruction.

 

[Steve Waltz]

Golden Sun is actually quite the opposite of that whole ?destroy the world? thing, but you?d actually have to play part 1 and part 2 in order to find that out. But the villains are still pointlessly emo and hateful.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

A lot of older ones probably. This didn't get to be the 'in' thing until later, although I suppose Persona villains tend to be like that if a personification of nihilism can be considered to be 'emo'. A few more motivations in a nutshell from my favourites devoid of emo (spoilers below):

-
Breath of Fire 3: 'The Dragon Brood's power is too dangerous, it destroyed so much of the world. They all need to be either killed or placed under my control because I'm the only one who can be trusted with that kind of power. Sorry main character, but that includes you and one of your best friends.'

Wild Arms 3: 'I just want to create (and by create I mean give birth to) a world that I can physically exist in instead of spending all my time in people's dreams. Sure that means I'll have to trick some people into destroying the old world, but it's almost dead anyway so who cares?'

Devil Survivor: 'God neglected me, spurned me, and cursed me to be constantly reincarnated after he TRICKED me into murdering my brother! He always loved him more! I will have my revenge on Him by corrupting my reincarnated brother into evil and gradually turning humanity against God!'

Front Mission 4: 'Being a celebrated veteran soldier and tactician sucks when there's no wars to fight, so I created one by manipulating Europe and America into attacking each other. This will also result in a badly-needed boost to my country's economy, but officially, I'm in it for the war!'

Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story: 'Fawful just wanted some kingdom-conquering! Fawful tried. Fawful gave the 110 percents. Fawful HATES the mustaches! Always... the mustaches... fury...!'

 

[Rozalia1]

Atelier Rorona - Minister wants your shop shut down so the state can build factories. The fact that his direct villainy is so minor (laxative to slow you down through illness, switching salt and sugar to mess up your alchemy, buying up all the stock of a basic item so you can't get any, that sort of stuff), and that its not even the typical badguy wanting the land so he can get rich, but instead him wanting the land for the state to get richer means its hard to call him a villain at all.

Wild Arms 1 - Depends on who you take as the main villain. Zeikfried wants to conquer the world so his race can finally have a world of their own (which would than be a base to than conquer more from), but his Mother who takes over after he revives her simply wishes to kill everything in the universe including her own children (after they've done their part obviously). As such Zeik does the sensible thing and gets rid of mommy as her goals clash with his own... than she returns and takes over his body... than he manages to break away before she finally dies to try and exert enough energy in a fight to at least collapse a dimension on you as revenge (in the original he was clearly messed up the point he simply was not surviving much longer).

Wild Arms 2 - Depending on who you take as the main. Guy who funds both the terrorists and guys fighting the terrorists so he can round up someone who will be able to save the world/ancient demonic being that wants to have a body again/sentient encroaching parallel universe that destroys simply because that is what it does naturally.

Wild Arms 3 - Dream Demon who wants to be free and needs to destroy the world to attain that goal... plan is the odd one of influencing people/events to get her own sentient world created which would destroy the current world.

Grandia 2 - Evil god who killed the good god, wants to wipe out the people who still worship the dead good god.

Star Ocean 3 -

Spoiler: only putting a spoiler as its plot twist is hated quite heavily and out there

Programmer CEO whose game characters invented a way to get into the 4D realm he resides in. He tried shift+deleting all the viruses away but that didn't work so he sends out his anti virus monsters with hacked stats to just kill everything, but even that can't stop the viruses so he just decides to delete everything in the end... which is for moot as after suiciding himself to do that it turns out there was a backup of the game all along... or something its not very clear so everyone in the game world lives.

I could continue for quite a long time but yes what you're talking about is common indeed. I can only assume its an attempt to not have a "generic" take over the world villain, so its believed that if he is doing it because he wants to destroy sadness/hate/whatever than it makes him less generic and better written...
Thing is I don't mind even big bad demonic gods who want to take over the world just because... as long as they literally don't pop in at the last second a la Necron.

 

[The Wykydtron]

I haven't played that many JRPGs and I happen to like those "friendship = win" final bosses so the only example I can think of right now is the final boss in Monster Girl Quest. I would spoiler this but i'm pretty sure anyone with an interest in the game has already played it and people I spoil never have and never will have an interest in playing it in the first place. Still skip over this post if you have any mind to pick it up, I really do recommend it.


Anyway, the final boss ends up being the goddess Illias who started you on your quest from the beginning and it is still a friendship wins ending but her reasoning for trying to destroy the world she's supposed to be the caretaker of is nothing so philosophical as your other examples. She's just fucked off that too many humans have stopped worshiping her seriously and they aren't following her commandments, particularly the one about not coming into contact with monsters.

The protagonist Luka himself was her final "test" of sorts, if he could make it to the Monster Lord's Castle and defeat the Monster Lord she would hold off her wrath for a while since humanity still has hope, this is all in her head by the way, she never tells anyone anything about this. He beats the Monster Lord at the end of Chapter 2 and then renounces Illias on the spot so she just says fuck it and starts the end world/recreate world plan she had ready, starting by siccing a group of her holy angels onto Luka.

Literally she's the most selfish deity you will probably ever see, she sits there in Heaven with pretty much an "end world" button and she and only she decides why and when to press it. She's basically the Christian God with no moral compass and irritated to all hell that she's not as powerful as the world thinks she is. Remember, it's not a true JRPG if it doesn't end with teenagers killing God with the power of friendship.

Then in true MGQ style, she makes a small speech as she dies and she suddenly seems so sympathetic from this new angle. They manage to pull the surprise "not actually that evil" card every damn time and it works.

 

[WendelI]

FF-XIV? well its a JMMORPG but the main vilains motivation is less emo butthurt and more "we got a big gigant army, why not just take over the world?"

 

[Erttheking]

Radiant Historia. It's kind of the whole "The world is shit" mindset, but it's less "It'll make everything better" and more "FUCK EVERYTHING!"

Also I find that the villain being a whiny brat who wants to destroy the world because he had a bad life to normally be annoying too, but I found the main villain of Radiant Historia really engaging. Despite the fuck everything aspect of his character, he is actually an interesting character, has people he cares about and when you learn his backstory you learn that he really got a shit hand in life that makes his actions understandable.

 

[Ryotknife]

FF 13-2, wants to destroy the universe to release someone he cares about from what he considered to be eternal torment.

Disgaea 1. Villain (who is an angel) considers demons to be the ultimate evil and angels to be the ultimate good, therefore any and all actions done by himself to eliminate demons are justified (including nearly getting millions of humans killed).

In both tales of vesperia and xillia, the villain is actually trying to SAVE the world, just their methods differ from the protagonists.

 

[Fappy]

- In Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars Smithy just wants to conquer the Mushroom Kingdom by flooding it with sentient weapons that serve him. He's got anger issues, but I wouldn't call him emo.

- In Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne some of the characters that may or may not become your enemies are pretty emo, but ultimately Kagutsuchi and Lucifer are just evil forces of nature. You could probably make the same point for a lot of other SMT games, honestly. It's usually a war over ideals, but it's never really whiny or lame.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I'm thinking really hard but I can't for the life of me remember what villains wanted in any JRPG I ever played, except that I was supposed to stop them.

 

[Dalisclock]

Does Lavos from Chrono Trigger count, being a giant space parasite?

 

[NeutralDrow]

"Emo" is kinda loaded, so I have no idea if you'd count Kefka from FFVI. Or Jenova from FFVII. Or Chaos from FFI. Or Richter from Tales of Symphonia 2, Giygas from Earthbound, Doskias from Septerra Core, Malpercio from Baten Kaitos, Wiseman from Baten Kaitos Origins...

 

[Marik2]

Xenogears and Xenosaga

They both had antagonists that wanted to have an ideal world or something different than the current world

 

[MysticSlayer]

Xenoblade Chronicles has a couple main antagonists over the course of the story. I don't think either of them had the, "The world is so awful!" speech:

Spoiler: Antagonist #1

Egil

Egil is, at least in part, motivated by revenge. During the war between the titans Bionis and Mechonis, he lost many of his friends to the Bionis's attacks. Furthermore, he lost his best friend, a giant named Arglas, to possession by Zanza, the god of Bionis. His primary motivation is basically the destruction of all life on Bionis, most notably the death of Zanza. This drives him to the point of even rejecting Meyneth, his goddess, because she wouldn't join him in his pursuits.

As for the party, they basically just want to stop their home from being destroyed. Nothing more, nothing less.

Spoiler: Antagonist #2

Zanza

Zanza is a power-hungry god who views life on Bionis as nothing more than a food source. He laments that he ever created sentient life that had free will, as it gave that life the ability to rebel against him. His ultimate intention is to do away with all life on Bionis and create a new world with creatures that couldn't rebel against him.

As for why he created sentient life in the first place: He claims that he desired some form of friendship. However, his concept of friendship is quite twisted and entirely self-serving. This is, largely, what lead the life to rebel against him, but he is far too self-absorbed to see this, blaming free will for the rebellion. If I remember correctly, he even mocks Meyneth, the goddess of Mechonis, for being too weak in her dealings with her creations.

As for the party: Again, they just don't want him destroying all life. They don't really care how good or bad the world is.

 

[Pyrian]

Not strictly (or even remotely) a JRPG, but still a turn-based fantasy tactical RPG: Shadowrun Returns: Dragonfall. The villain's motivation is to save the world, and you must stop him. =D

 

[syaoran728]

Tales of Xillia has a pretty good villain. Gaius just wants to conquer the world, but damn if he doesn't make a good case for why he should be in charge.

 

[Pete Oddly]

Lavos from Chrono Trigger, as already mentioned, is a parasite that consumes worlds for sustenance, so I believe he counts.

Also; Giygas from EarthBound. He is the mindless embodiment of all evil with no real sense of his own actions or their effects, so I'd say he definitely counts as well.

 

[BoredRolePlayer]

Giugu from Mother, his motivation is simply "The ones who took care of me abandon and stole from me, kill them all". Pretty much a child throwing a temper tantrum so hard core it would destroy the planet.

Garland and The Emprer from Final Fantasy I and II, is pretty much fuck it we have power let's use it.

Zeromus was trying to wipe out the humans on Earth to make room for his people, pretty much we need this planet for our own needs let's kill them.

Exdeath from FFV is just a evil tree, think Cloud of Darkness with more brains (or kefka with less personality) who wants to destroy stuff.

While I do agree Kefka isn't "emo" his speech at his final fight is pretty much "What is the point of happiness if your all going to die".

On the other hand your definition is really broad because I would argue the big baddie from Tales of Symphnoia does the whole "The world is evil" thing, but he is a reason his motivation and world view is fueled that way.

Shin Megami Tensei 4 is just two sides at war and you pick the one you wanna help.

 

[deathbydeath]

While I do agree Kefka isn't "emo" his speech at his final fight is pretty much "What is the point of happiness if you are all going to die".

A) 'Emo' means nothing; you'll have an easier time getting a consensus on what 'art' is.

B) To directly contradict A, Kefka is nihilistic and 'emo' != nihilism. At first they seem similar because neither of them say that the world is good, but 'emo' is generally "everything sucks" while nihilism is "everything is meaningless". 'Emo' people express their worldview by feeling sad; nihilists express their worldview by feeling nothing in particular. Besides, Kefka is motivated by pure batshit insanity and a depraved sense of importance as well as curiosity "Life...Dreams...Hope...Where do they come from? And where do they go? None of that junk is enough to fulfill your hearts! Destruction...Destruction is what makes life worth living! Destroy! Destroy! Destroy! Let's destroy everything!"