Trope or not, gods just end up being a common target for games about heroes escalating in power while fighting increasingly world-destroying consequences.
So, for each post, name a game and describe it, with the assumption being that every description automatically ends with the phrase:
“…and then it ends with you fighting a god.”
Bayonetta invents an entirely new god in the last 10 minutes of the game that was never explained or alluded to before, and then has you piledrive it into the sun.
sounds neat tbh
Immortals Fenyx Rising
Another Crab’s Treasure is a cute, fun, cartoony soulslike game where you play as a hermit crab whose shell has been stolen! He heads out on an adventure to get it back.
Grezzo 2 (you fight the actual Christian god)
Hollow Knight is a game where you start out as a little bug discovering a bug’s nest. Then you unlock some secrets, find the secret true final boss, and next thing you know, it ends with you fighting a god.
The Talos Principle.
Elohim DESTROYED with Facts and Logic!
God of war?
I mean you fight all the Gods
And it starts with you fighting a God!
The original Baldur’s Gate story (1 and 2 + expansions) begin with you being a barely trained orphan sent on an unexpected journey by your foster father…
Fantastic games. Irenicus while not the god boss you’re referring to, is my favourite villain ever.
Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous.
You start as a level 1 pf1e character and get thrown into a war against demons. This game is pretty hard if you don’t know 1e rules but completely viable, i played it before knowing any 1e. And you don’t end with a level 20 character, you end up much more powerful.
If you are good at making builds, you can have some wild combos, it’s great. It balances the power trip you can have with some brutal fights. Fuck those Bodaks.
I highly recommend it if you enjoy real time CRPGs. Turn based mode exists, but it makes some fights (cough cough tavern *cough cough) take multiple hours.
I’ve owned this game for years and I love RTwP combat in games like PoE and Baldurs Gate (first two). You’ve convinced me to give it another try!
I would say anyone interested in the game a general rule of thumb would be trash mobs and easy fights = real time and bosses and difficult fights turn based.
One can luckily change that on the fly.
I mean if one is confident in their micro, then one can do most of the game in real time, but the game does have enemy encounters that just feel unfair when fighting real time while feeling better tuned in turn based.
Good game though as one journeys through one of initially 2 “ascension” paths that can eventually branch out into one of 10 different paths as one takes the fight against, technically, gods - but not in the heavenly sense.
Im about four months into my first playthrough of Wrath. Love it.
Recently finished that game as an Azata and transcended. The story is great and the mythic paths are really quite fun, but I found combat to be a slog on the higher difficulties. Ended up turning it down to normal (from core) in act 4 due to the sheer amount of fights that take ages. The Defender’s Heart battle took me almost 2 hours! I get they want to make it feel grand, but it just slowed it down too much. For any new players, I recommend picking a lower difficulty, and use liberal use of real time for easy fights, of which there are far too many. You also need some resilience against bugs, as there are many. Only a few are game breaking, but most are really annoying and cause you to lose actions or items or something. Despite all this criticism, behind all that is a great game and I do recommend it to crpg fans, especially if they like pf1e (which I hadn’t played at the time).
Azata was a fun character. Love myself some elysian whimsy.
But good lord the defender’s hearth fight. I played a build based on stunlocks and didn’t have good dps at that point. I ended up wobbling enemies for about 5 hours. I started the fight drunk and finished it sober -_-
Yeah, I was built around slumber and coup de grace, so I feel your pain. I nearly died to the Minotaur too as I started using levelled spells just to make it go faster and then I was out when it attacked. Had Ember give him a run around while Lann killed him lol.
Path of Exile has you clearing out the entire pantheon. Then the main campaign is over and you begin the post-game part, which is what actually matters.
“Doom” is a pretty good one.
“Advent Rising” you find out you are a god.
“Dread Delusion” prisoner to decider of gods fate.
A lot of Kirby games.
Even with the weird Mormon allusions, I really wish we could’ve gotten an Advent Rising sequel.
Persona 5 starts with you being transferred to a high school far from home in Tokyo due to being expelled…
Kirby Superstar: Milky Way Wishes. Ohh you think it’s a game about pink ball stopping the sun and moon from fighting? NOPE, here’s a jester with power of god.
Pokemon. Technically you don’t end with fighting god but somewhere you’re fighting a pokemon that’s basically god of something.
Also does Hades count lol.
Even better for Pokemon, God (Arceus) lets you capture it in a pokeball
You can always spot a Kirby fan based on how they react to a butterfly appearing late into the game.
Final Fantasy Legends!
Final Fantasy 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 13
- Start off figuring out why meteors are falling and the wind has died
- Start off fighting a snail while using magic machines
- Start off as a terrorist
- Start off as an emo student
- Start off sneaking into a play
- Start off with blitzball
- Start heading down the hallway
Haven’t finished 1,2,3 but spoilers below:
spoiler
Ff4 - have to stop a vengeful manifestation of an advanced race
Ff5 - stopping a tree
Ff6 - stopping a clown’s divinity
Ff7 - well, that is more an alien with support from the spirit of the planet protecting itself
Ff8 - sorceressess and time shenanigans
Ff9 - ends with an abrupt challenge from a death god to convince it not to delete the current universe
Ff10 - and be transported to a land where a dominant religion is enforced through the power of a wmd that is maintained by “faith”
Ff12 - prevent the folly of a man trying to become a god, through the power of a renegade of the universe godhood pantheon
Ff13 - become pawns of higher beings wanting to stop the nihilism of one of its brethen tired of the infinite cycle
FF8 spoiler
Was Ultimecia characterized as (a) god, or wanting to be one?
I think Ultimecia wanted a world that consists of only her, hence she could be considered a god in her own world. She succeeded until the power of friendship and love defeated her but …
I don’t think it counts under what I understood the prompt in the OP is all about. But then again, it’s been a while since I last played that game, and I hardly paid much attention to the story (got too icked out by the love story). Cool game mechanics tho.
spoiler
In a way, I guess technically her goal was very godlike as she wanted to control and compress time to create a favourable timeline for herself.
That goal however just created a self-fulling circular loop prophesy as her fear of SeeD was ultimately her demise.
As for the time shenanigans:
- Her being killed by your group in the future leads to her essence finding Cid’s Wife as a host in the past
- Leads to the founding of SeeD
- Introduce main character and group for the game
- Leads to perpetuating a cycle
I suppose one can think of her desperately trying to win a time loop and going mad from failure
Edit
spoiler
Laguna’s Love Story wasn’t too bad, although a little on the nose for Squall falling in love with Laguna’s first Crush, but him settling down with Raine was bitter sweet at the end.
That last sentence in the first spoiler is more or less my take on her situation.
FF8 spoiler
I saw Ultimecia as more of a tragic character than someone who really wanted power for its own sake, which is why I don’t really see her as wanting to be a god. She just wanted a way out of the time loop. As you’ve said: she went mad from repeated (?) failure.
Coincidentally, I thought Squall, at the very end, could have had ended the time loop. In that cutscene after Ultimecia’s defeat, as he was wandering back to his own time, he met a much younger Edea, who has then just inherited Ultimecia’s power. He could have chosen not to tell Edea about SeeD at this point, but I don’t think he’s aware he was talking to that Edea he knew (even though I think the surroundings should have sufficiently clued him in).
FF8 B-plot spoilers
I found Squall falling in love with the daughter of Laguna’s first crush to be a nice little thing. I also liked Laguna far better as a character, and his love story with Raine a far superior love story than the main one. I think he really fell in love with Raine, but his fatherly love for Ellone far outweighed it.
FF8 spoiler response
spoiler
Yeah, I agree especially with her being a tragic character her final lines sounds line someone desperate:
“Recall a memory from your childhood. The sensations, emotions, the words from back then. Growing up means leaving something behind and throwing something away. Time will not wait, no matter how hard you hold onto it, it escapes you. And …”,
especially considering how Ellone’s powers work
I think it is repeated (at least once already) or she achieved some form of omnipotence with her time compression as her plans seem to have a definitive goal to them like she knows who to look for (Adel and Ellone) and what to do to achieve her ends. Edea (forgot her name) probably still had enough power to “guide” her a bit but ultimately she was overpowered most likely, until Ultimecia released her power to hop to the next one.
Yeah, Squall could have finished that in a few ways - although, I guess seeing Ultimecia survive (especially after she implanted that final thought, in retrospect), his instincts probably didn’t want to take the chance of her time hopping again and wanted the time line to be prepared. Also he couldn’t kill an innocent person either and risk one of the orphans getting the power as Edea tells him
The love story between Squall and Rinoa can be melodramatic, but it is done well enough with Rinoa peeling away the layers of edge off of Squall.
Laguna and Raine though, I agree was a lot better and I think Raine understood the type of person Laguna was and supported him - her personality was like his in some ways. She probably saw Ellone as a daughter as well and knew how far he would go to protect her, which is why she probably kept her pregnancy quiet to not distract him on his quest to save their “daughter”.
Oh! Forgot which event happened after which other event in that long cutscene after the final boss battle.
FF8 spoilers
I thought Squall met the younger Edea after receiving Ultimecia’s powers. I only remembered the fact that Squall implanted the idea of SeeD into Edea, but I couldn’t remember how exactly it happened.
As for Rinoa, back when I first played the game, I was a bit younger than Squall is, and Rinoa annoyed the hell out of me—far more than I got annoyed with Selphie, supposedly the annoying one. Younger me would have preferred if Squall fell in love with someone else, heck, even Seifer would have been a better love interest for Squall as far as younger me was concerned. I guess then, their love story worked nicely, and younger me was just too stubbornly edgy to appreciate that.
I think Laguna and Raine’s love story resonated with me far better because it’s far less “abrasive” and in-your-face. It might be a more bland and ordinary love story, but it’s a nice foil to the main love story between Squall and Rinoa.
EDIT: failed my spoiler formatting
FF 8 Spoiler Response
spoiler
If I recall, Squall sees a defeated Ultimecia staggering and ready to pass her powers on before dying, but Edea stops him from finishing her off They sort of have a conversation and SeeD is mentioned and young Squall comes running to Edea
Rinoa grew on me, at first hated the brattiness but over time she grew on me as a character who acts a blunt force determined to break Squall out of his shell. The Ragnarok scene and her becoming a sorceress locked her in as she matured and leaned on Squall for support in a reversal of her wanting to be his support and Squall being more “human”
The real love story is Zell and Hot Dogs (oh, almost forgot, Pig-tail girl)
Laguna and Raine was a lot more wholesome and mature with it not having any internal drama. The drama is more external elements leading to a more bitter sweet tale of Laguna accomplishing his mission but living with guilt of his failures
