As Valentine's approaches, so do the many traditions the day comes with. Whether this be a romantic film or a date with their significant other, people have their own idealized way on how they spend their Valentines. Personally, I don’t necessarily have a predetermined way of spending the day. I simply live the day as any other, without a certain plan in mind. However, this changed two years ago when I decided to play a video game that was “romantic.”
Before I dive in, there are a few things to note. For this list, I decided to pick out games that have romance intertwined within the story, which develops alongside the main plot. I won't be including games that include multiple romantic choices. Certain genres such as dating sims or games like Mass Effect or the Persona series, have multiple romantic partners to choose from.
Another thing to keep in mind is that all the games were chosen under the pretense of them not being traditionally labeled as “romantic”. In a sense, I wanted to compile games that had romances/love stories in them, but were more well-known for other aspects.
In this list, the options aren’t in any specific order. The games in question aren’t ranked in best to worst, or anything similar. These are all games I’ve not only played, but felt and kept in mind the theme of love or romance throughout their stories, and continued with them well into the end credits
Without further ado, let’s begin!
Shadow of the Colossus (PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4)
(For players 13 and up)
Arguably the only game on this list that can be considered “not romantic." Shadow of the Colossus is a PS2 title released in 2005 and developed by Team Ico and Sony Interactive Entertainment. I first played this game in 2021 on the PS3 remaster, which also included Team Ico’s previous game Ico (released in 2001).
The game tells a deceptively simple story of a young man named Wander bringing a deceased woman, Mono, to the “Forbidden Lands” in order to bring her back to life. Wander does this by making a deal with a presence called Dormin, where he has to defeat 16 colossi in order to bring Mono back. His journey would take him all across the Forbidden Lands, all leading to a heartbreaking climax.
When I first played Shadow of the Colossus, I was shocked by the minimal detail given to the story, the characters—everything. The player is essentially given nothing. And it’s this reason that makes the relationship between Mono and Wander a mystery, and whether or not it was romantic to begin with. All of these details—backstories, events, etc.—are left up to the player to imagine. Personally, I do like the idea of the two being in a romantic relationship. Not only does this make the idea of their past a lot more interesting, but it also makes several plot points much more tragic when they take place.
The romance between Mono and Wander, although minimal and left up to the imagination of players, have a sense of warmth throughout the course of the game. The player, essentially, is Wander; everything we experience is from his point of view. Certain moments throughout the game became much more painful at a second playthrough, and the imagery became more striking. The way Mono’s dead body somewhat glows in the sunlight pouring in—the white doves gathering around her symbolizing the number of colossi you defeated thus far and a short sequence where, halfway through the journey, Wander strokes Mono’s cheek gently, so close to his goal. It’s these little moments that make an impression on what they could have been before, and it’s beautiful.
While the game itself isn’t for everyone, with the controls (even in modern remasters or editions) a bit sloppy and won’t work at times, the story itself is what makes this game one of the best and as impactful as it is. It’s not perfect, but it is beautiful and impactful for what little it does. The “romantic” aspects of the game are few and far between, but if it’s something that you may be able to see, then many aspects of the game will hit you that much harder, as it did with me.
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series S and Series X, Microsoft Windows, Xbox Cloud Gaming)
(For players 15 and up)
Hellblade, developed by Ninja Theory and QLOC, is an “overbearing” game. Everything feels as if it’s out to get you, and it never lets up throughout this somber journey.
I first played this game on my birthday. I had COVID-19, and I was cooped up in my older brother’s room for about 7 days. I had heard of the game from YouTube gameplay videos, and it intrigued me as I love finding games that are, in a few ways, “experimental.” I woke up that morning to my mom knocking on the door and giving me this game as a birthday present. (I had asked for it a month before and was happy she remembered.) That whole day, I played Hellblade and felt sad and afraid of the world that I had entered.
The game tells the story of Senua, who, similarly to Shadow of the Colossus, goes out of her way to bring back a dead lover. This game not only is set in the Viking ages, it also particularly notes that this journey is for a lover. Another aspect of the game that makes it unique is its use of sound. Senua has a form of psychosis that allows her to hear voices and have mild hallucinations. The player also understands this, with voices constantly whispering in your ears as you play. To many this can be seen as annoying or irritating the longer you play. But then you remember: this is what Senua experiences; we’re in her head. The love story that is here is barely visible at all on-screen, but we feel this pain of loss, this desperation feeding at her as she tries to get someone she loves back to life. It’s in her struggles that we see that she does love this person, and is willing to do what she can to ensure that she will see him again, which I think is quite touching albeit melancholy throughout the whole journey.
The game itself is rather straightforward, yet elevates itself with the presentation and the way it uses sound/audio for the player. Not only that, the story itself is rather beautiful and effective with how it handles the audio and imagery the rest of the game presents. The romance itself is minimal, yet the way it’s intertwined with all the other aspects this game presents. Hellblade is always going to an overbearing game for how it assaults the player, but even in its horror there is warmth.
“Do not mourn the waves, the leaves, and the clouds. Because even in darkness the wonder and the beauty of the world never leaves, it's always there, waiting to be seen again.”
- Senua
Deadly Premonition (Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 3, Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360)
(For players 15 and up)
Deadly Premonition is not a very good game. However, it is also a game I really love and think about every so often, but I cannot entirely understand why. There are so many things it does wrong, but everytime I start to think about that, it always follows things up with a genuinely good moment or scene. One of these “genuinely good” instances is with the love story, which I feel is one of the best in a video game I’ve played thus far.
Deadly Premonition was developed by Access Games and mainly written and directed by Hidetaka “Swery65” Suehiro. (Yes, his name is “Swery65”, and believe me he makes some pretty wild and bonkers stuff.) The game was released in 2010 on XBOX-360 and PlayStation 3 consoles. Many said that it’s quite literally the ramblings of a madman (who happens to be a big fan of the 90s television show Twin Peaks) put into a story, which isn’t entirely wrong, in my opinion.
The main reason as to why this game is so widely disliked is in the technical side of things. Not only does the game’s graphics look like it was made for PlayStation 2, but the sound effects are odd in places. The voice acting ranges from okay to pretty bad, and the controls are slippery and weird, even in modern consoles. But once again, even through all these bad aspects, what makes up for these faults are the story and the characters. They are consistently good throughout the entire game.
The game tells the story of Francis York Morgan, a special FBI agent sent to the small town in Greenvale to investigate the death of a teenage girl. Connected to the gameplay is your exploration in this town. You may talk to the residents, explore the town, and just really dig into what this place you have to call home is. One of these characters is York's love interest, Emily Wyatt.
What makes the two’s relationship work as well as it does is how realistically things develop. When they first meet each other, Emily isn’t very keen on having an FBI agent in the town, but slowly begins to respect York more as the plot begins to unfold. Even if the player decides not to do her sidequests, her character still develops quite a bit, the main plot itself shows this love blossoming and does so naturally. And I think this is why the romance in Deadly Premonition is so strong, as the player can readily believe that both York and Emily could be together. Not only that, but small moments really help emphasize the impact the two had on one another, particularly York.
A memorable moment for me with this game was in the beginning hours. After having to run down this long road, the first character you truly see as York is Emily and a beautiful track from the OST called “Goddess” begins to play. Personally, this is my favorite track (in a pretty good soundtrack overall), and it plays only once or twice more after this. Its usage has always been one that makes me think fondly of this game and will be one to always make me think that.
In a sense, all these aspects make me miss this game. I miss Greenvale and all the people in it, which goes to show how developed these people are. It’s definitely not perfect, but it is something that was clearly made with a lot of love and I just wish more people would try it out. Even if they just listen to “Goddess,” I’d be happy just because they know this game. I’d be happy that they know Deadly Premonition.
(P.S. Another game of Swery’s I really love is The Missing: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories, which is a rather niche horror game, but a lovely puzzle side-scroller that's quite short at 5 hours or less.)
Catherine (Classic) (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows)
(For players 17 and up)
(NOTE: For this section, I was only able to play Catherine Classic instead of the recently released port to modern consoles Catherine: Full Body due to me not knowing of the latter’s existence until half-way through my playthrough of the original game. So for the rest of this section of the article, I will be referring to Catherine Classic, without any of the new content featured in later releases.)
Catherine is “weird”. Well, it may not explain everything the game has to offer, but in the general sense it is quite weird and odd for a puzzle game. Being a fan of the developer Atlus, due to the Shin Megami Tensei and Persona series of games, I was interested in seeing what else they had in their catalog. While looking through Steam, I saw Catherine and remembered hearing about it in a YouTube video talking about horror puzzle games. Once I saw Atlus made it, I got interested and played it the next day. And I was not ready for what I experienced.
The game tells the story of Vincent, a man who is a bit wary around his girlfriend, Katherine, who wishes to get married. One night in a bar, he meets Catherine. who he accidentally goes back home with and wakes up next to. After this event, he begins having nightmares where he must climb a large tower through block puzzles in order to escape the nightmare.
What makes this game as interesting as it is is in how it manages to explore the nature of relationships in such an odd way. After every climb, you get to stay in a platform where you may talk with others who are sheep (which you can see in the bar) and eventually go inside an elevator. Inside this elevator, a mysterious and unseen character asks the player questions about love, loyalty, etc., filling up a morality meter that will determine which side you’ll go to by the end of the game. Is it Katherine or Catherine? Both choices lead to interesting paths: Katherine is your girlfriend and one who wishes to marry you; this is the choice of commitment. The next is Cathrine, who represents freedom, one that stays away from the concept of marriage that Vincent so fears.
By building the game around this concept of love, it allows an interesting discourse that truly shows the darker sides of humanity, particularly men who cheat on their significant other and the price they pay for it. Personally, I feel it is the most “truly romantic” game in this list, but it feels closer to a game of morality than anything else. The character of Vincent, more or less, is an insert character for the player as a means of deciding what they’d do in that situation.
Overall, there’s not much to say about the game itself, but the way it mixes and matches the idea of morality and puzzle gameplay is pretty unique and quite different from a lot of other games. And with Catherine’s 8 endings, all based on the karma system, there’s a lot to explore.
Final Fantasy (Different consoles depending on which Final Fantasy you want to play, most of which have been ported to modern consoles)
(For players 12 and up)
The Final Fantasy series of games is no stranger to romance intertwined within their plots. While this series of games is more well-known for its RPG mechanics, music, characters, or even its graphics, the romantic stories they tell are usually some of the best to be found in gaming. Starting from Final Fantasy IV, these games have included romance in one way or another for the rest of the series, in big and small ways.
On a personal note, I first got into the series in early 2021 with Final Fantasy VIII. As someone who wasn’t very familiar with many JRPGs at the time, I was a bit lost but loved the journey as I went on. And in particular, the love story between the main leads: Squall and Rinoa, which is why I made this list in the first place.
The most prominent games to have love stories in them from the series are Final Fantasy IV, VI, VIII, IX, and X, with other entries having either a little bit of romance or containing one that does not intertwine itself with the story. The couples in these games, throughout the years, have ranged from extremely well written to simply existing as a couple. While I won’t go into each individual game and discuss them from there, I will mention my favorites that can be seen in the series.
I noted them before but they are a big reason as to why I love this series as much as I do, but I really like the story between Squall and Rinoa. It’s definitely not the best romance, but to see how the two influence each other and how they change from that is endearing. It’s seeing that change in both of them that makes this romance beautiful and seeing how Squall acts by the end of the game allowed his character to grow and change his prior ideals.
Another romance I quite like is from FFXV, this is the story of Noctis and Lunafreya. While the two didn’t have much development on-screen (much of it being turned into the novel Final Fantasy XV: Dawn of the Future), the story they do have is one I find loving yet sad at the same time. XV was the second entry I played and enjoyed how expansive the world was in relation to its characters.
The last one I’d like to mention is from FFVI, with Locke and Celes. Why I love this romance is that it not only changes in the course of the story, but it also develops on its own because of the characters themselves. They both lived through tragic moments in their life, so finding solace in one another is comforting and a nice closing arc for them. One of my favorite moments in the game comes in the end credits where the music both includes the beat of Locke’s theme and the melody of Celes’. It’s all so sweet and I can’t help but smile each time I hear it.
So while each game has a different kind of romantic couple, I think each has their own strong points that certain players could love in one way or another. I can’t say whether you’d like the games themselves, but they’re all well-crafted and each worth experiencing.
That concludes this list, and I do hope that you found interest in a few of the games mentioned here. I will admit that more games were considered, but couldn’t make it because it didn't fit within the parameters I set in the beginning of this article. I will say that most of these games don’t entirely focus within the romantic aspect, and more within the gameplay and other important parts of the plot, which is understandable. But even so, many of these games are great and worth playing if you have the time.
I hope, whenever you’re reading this, you’re having a good day/night and that everything goes well for you. Thank you for reading!
About the author:
Comentarios