Final Fantasy 4 (or II, as it was originally known in the US)

This one's an odd one to me and probably the best recipient I can think of for the 2/5 category because I absolutely love and adore the protagonist's journey for the first fifth of the game and use it as motivation for self-improvement in the back of my head literally all of the time but honestly most (if not all) of the other writing and characters are extremely weak and the gameplay is not super fun or interesting compared to later FF games like 6 (which does BOTH of these aspects well). Honestly I don't think I could recommend this game to anyone but diehard FF fans, and instead will spend the rest of this review summarizing best part of the game and invite you to go listen to the music instead.

Warning: Spoilers will follow!

You play as Cecil, a Dark Knight and captain of the Red Wings of Baron (basically an air force), in the very beginning of the game in a cutscene you and your crew march into a town full of mages called Mysidia and basically no-russianing them all, killing them just to get some stupid orb. All of your men are very worried after this, questioning the kings orders and if this was necessary to slaughter so many people like that to which Cecil tells them to be quiet and that the kings orders are not to be questioned. In reality though, Cecil is very upset about this, and upon getting back from his mission with the orb he tells the king much the same thing, obviously weighing heavy on him, to which the king immediately scorns him and removes his position as captain of the red wings. He then says that his only two options are to be exiled immediately or to go kill this dragon and deliver this "package" to the town of the summoners. He sets out to do this along with his friend Kain (the name is very fitting if you know the story in the bible...)

So you go off to do that after telling all of this to your wife, and you succeed in what you're supposed to do, you kill the dragon and deliver the package. But what was in that package was actually an uncle-ted style bomb and it detonates when it gets there, killing nearly everyone in the village and further adding to your list of atrocities. Even better, turns out that dragon you killed was the mom of the only survivor of the whole village, who obviously completely hates you as a result. You were completely tricked and kain is nowhere to be found. After that theres an earthquake or something and everything fades to black.

You do a couple things between now and then but most of them are pretty irrelevant to go into specifics, but eventually as you continue on your journey you end up stranded, alone from the rest of your party members that you've met between the earthquake and then in the very place you started: Mysidia, where you are very painfully forced to confront your shame and ALL the people that you hurt. Obviously, nearly all of these people hate you, considering you led an entire massacre onto them for no reason but one man's greed. But the village elder, the same one who you pushed out of the way in the beginning to get to the crystal, says you may have a way to both be saved and to stop the king (who is now obviously not who he seems anymore), which is to climb Mt. Ordeals and become a paladin. Most people in the town are extremely offended by this, ranging from how it's ridiculous to suggest such a thing to laughing at the prospect of *you*, who has caused so much harm, EVER becoming a paladin. After this you are joined by these two kids palom and porom who are appointed to help you climb Mt Ordeals.

The climb is extremely rough, and in fact showcases that it would be impossible to do on your own. Cecil is a Dark Knight, and almost all of the enemies on this mountain are undead which makes your darkness completely useless against them as they are only healed by it. The only way you can win most battles is to use palom and porom, signaling the only way to truly get help is to confide in others to help get you there and you can never do everything in life alone.

After a little bit of the climb you start learning a bit more about Cecil in that he never actually wanted to become a Dark Knight in the first place, he just did what was asked of him years ago by the king who he idolized at the time and didn't want to disappoint him. (Great allegory for conformism and being forced to do things against your own will just to appeal to the others around you)

At the end of all this, you finally get to the top of the mountain where you can finally become a paladin. You ask for forgiveness for all the atrocities you have commited, all of the lives you destroyed, all of the people including yourself who's lives you made worse by your own actions. Your prayers are heard and you are enveloped by light after picking up a sword, completely transforming your dark knight attire beforehand into a beautiful armor of light. You did what everyone said you could not.

However you have to complete one last trial: facing your old self, and you are then placed into a battle as a paladin against your old self as a dark knight. I will describe for gameplay purposes because I think it is important to this, as a dark knight you previously had to use called "darkness", it was a useful ability that did area damage to enemies - at the cost of your own health each time you used it. During this "battle", as a paladin you no longer have access to this ability (instead possessing white magic, healing and nurturing, as well as a "cover" ability which helps protect your allies from damage). You don't actually do anything in this fight at all, you just sit there healing yourself with white magic as your past self uses the darkness ability over, and over, and over again, until he fizzles out and the battle is over. This is a wonderful moment to me, and is wonderful proof that you can't sustain yourself on darkness. (bad habits) It takes from until there is nothing left.

After all of this, you return to Mysidia, confronting all of the people you hurt again but this time as a shining, resplendent, beautiful Paladin with the will to do better. I absolutely love the reactions from here, because of how much of a mixed bag they are which is very accurate to real life. Many of them are completely shocked and can't believe it for themselves, some of them hate you for it, some of them are proud of you but still can't find it in them to forgive you for what you did, some of them are shocked but forgive you and are happy you're on a better path. There are so many emotions and it's crazy how real it all is. But You did it. And it's a beautiful conclusion to the end of an old life and a start to another.

...unfortunately that's pretty much all the development he gets and the entire rest of the game is a complete laughingstock in terms of plot and nothing really more happens to Cecil, just the people around him. But it's still a wonderful and inspiring story to me about self improvement, and I choose to write the "after" part with my own trials in life!! :)

Overall Score 2/5 (Wasted potential)

Bonus: Want to check it out for yourself? Here's a link to it on Steam!