Bittersweet Ending / Video Games (N to Z)

Bittersweet Endings in video games, from N to Z.

• If you don't find the all the pieces of the title artifact in Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer, you have a choice between staying forever on the Fugue Plane to seal away the Spirit Eater or curing yourself and returning to Faerun, but leaving the Spirit eater free to ravage Rashemen. There's also an additional ending if you got One of Many instead of Okku, and you romance Zafiya. It generally follows the good one, but with one major difference: After you marry Zafiya and return to Faern, One of Many kills her and consumes her soul. In revenge, you hunt him down and eventually kill him as he pleads to you to spare his life in Zafiya's voice.
• The New Order Last Days Of Europe: Thermonuclear War. The nukes fly. Many people, both sympathetic and unsympathetic, die. Civilization as we know it ends. But out of the ashes of the old world order, like a phoenix, rises a new, more tolerant one, one that ultimately puts man on the moon once more.
• A careful reading of the Story Breadcrumbs found during the Laurentia arc of Nexus Clash reveals that the pioneer era of Laurentia ended on a depressing note, as the Succession Crisis over the legacy of Lucien Moreau ended with one of his legitimate heirs Driven to Suicide and the other to lifelong depression, while Lucien's less scrupulous son Jacques took over the family name. However, Jacques had some worthy goals and both he and his heirs became better people through an indirect legacy of the Moreaus that he displaced. By the time the player characters arrive on the scene, Laurentia had become a Shining City that was an uncommonly nice place to live by any reasonable standard.
• NieR ends like this in all paths.
  • In ending A, Nier defeats the Shadowlord and rescues Yonah, but the world is still a slowly dying husk, Facade is in ruins and without a king, Emil (seemingly) died in a Heroic Sacrifice, Weiss fades from existence after losing his power, and Kainé, despite her feelings for Nier, has to leave them to attend to "unfinished business".
  • In ending B, not only does all of the above happen, but the Shadowlord, and the Shades in general, are given the mother of all Alas, Poor Villain moments. On the plus side, The Stinger shows that Emil is still alive... as a disembodied head. To his credit, he doesn't seem to mind all that much.
  • In ending C, Nier is forced to kill Kainé to prevent her turning into a Shade. Kainé finally has the peace she longed for, and Nier finally realizes he loves her, but now he's lost his one remaining companion.
  • In ending D, Kainé lives, but no-one remembers Nier or anything he did, beyond Kainé's brief flash of memory which is... Nier's back, she doesn't even remember his face.
• Endings C through E of NieR: Automata are like this:
  • meaningless [C]ode: A2 saves 9S from the logic virus corrupting him. She then has Pod 042 escort 9S away while she stays behind on the crumbling Tower before she is reunited with her lost friends.
  • chil[D]hood's end: 9S and A2 run each other through. Before he dies, 9S is contacted by the collective consciousness of the machine lifeforms, including Adam and Eve. The machines have transformed the tower from a weapon to a launch platform that will send the machines' consciousness into space, and they offer to take 9S along. Afterwards, Pods 042 and 153 will begin deleting all data pertaining to 2B, 9S, and A2. However...
  • the [E]nd of YoRHa: Pod 042 decides it cannot delete the data and instead commences a data salvaging operation to give them the happy ending it feels they deserve, thus leading to Bullet Hell Minigame Credits that gets progressively harder to the point of impossibility. Eventually, after enough losses, the player begins to receive messages of hope and encouragement from other players, until they receive help from another player who sacrifices their data to help them see the ending through. Pod 042 concedes that there is no telling whether repairing 2B, 9S, and A2 will lead to events repeating themselves, but believes that they should try anyway for the hope that things will be better. Afterwards, the player is given the choice to send a message and aid to another randomly selected player, in exchange for allowing their save data to be erased.
• Night in the Woods: The story ends with most of the main cast still stuck in Possum Springs for the foreseeable future. Bea's still stuck working at her family's store and her college dreams are beyond her reach. Gregg still has issues, even with Angus' love. Mae still has mental health problems with no way to treat them. Possum Springs is still in a downward spiral. And Casey is still dead, and his family will never know the truth. But on the other hand, Mae and Bea have renewed their friendship, Gregg and Angus are still together and hope to move away to a better city, the cult is dead, meaning no one else will be sacrificed, and Mae has decided to finally open up to her parents about why she dropped out, so hopefully, they can get her the help she needs. Mae concludes that one day, everything will end, and when it does, she wants it to hurt.
  ...Because that means it meant something.
• The true ending of Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors is bittersweet as anything, what with the flashback scene with Junpei and Akane when they were children and the realization that they can never actually be together, despite the fact that everyone (well, almost) got out relatively unscathed. The GoldenEndings for the sequels take their relationship in different directions. In Virtue's Last Reward, Junpei lives on as an old man in a post-apocalyptic world with an adopted grandson, but is bitter and disillusioned about having been manipulated and abandoned by Akane yet again, to the point that he effectively gives up on her. In Zero Time Dilemma, he and Akane actually end up together and are engaged, but they've put their wedding on hold because they're on the tail of an extremely dangerous Omnicidal Maniac who could end up causing the extinction of the entire human race.
• In Nocturne: Rebirth, the party manages to defeat their Big Bad Friend, Khaos, and stop his plan to deconstruct and reconstruct the world. Unfortunately, despite trying to reason with him, he commits suicide due to losing all means of reviving his lover. As a result, his familiar, Shylphiel, is left without her master and decides to take care of his house for the rest of her life, though Ristill promises to visit her and supply her with mana. Luna is accepted back into her village despite her vampirism, but Reviel decides to go on a journey by himself to seek redemption and to observe humanity with a more open mind.
• The Omega Ending of no-one has to die. ends with the four people who were trapped in the building at the start all surviving thanks to your efforts, but Christina goes back into the TEMPEST Machine to try to save her mother, believing that there is no reality where her mother and her love, Steve, can both survive. In addition, everyone might survive in your reality, but countless other versions of the main cast have been killed off across the multiverse.
• Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi: You killed Malachi and saved the world, but your sister is dead. And, depending on how badly you did, any number of your other family members could be dead as well.
• ObsCure: While the first game can potentially end like this (depending on if the player manages to keep all five teens alive), the second game definitely ends on a bittersweet note (bordering on outright depressing): Out of the protagonists, three (Mei, Jun, Sven) were killed in varying brutal ways in front of their friends; Corey decided to shoot himself rather than risk becoming a monster; Amy died giving birth to Kenny's horrific offspring; and Kenny has mutated into a monster that is directly (and gleefully) responsible for three of the aforementioned Deaths before being put down by his own sister. Furthermore, most/everyone else one the Campus has been either turned into a horrific monster or killed; and the group responsible is implied to reach further than the small fraction we saw. And an optional collectible reveals that Ashley and Josh from the first game were murdered by Jedediah in-between games. On the plus side, Stan and Shannon survived, Leonard and Jedediah are both dead for good, and Delta Theta Gamma has failed in their ventures, for now.
• Odin Sphere: It's The End of the World as We Know It, and only four of the main characters remain alive. That said, it's more Ragnarok in practice, Gwendolyn and Oswald become the Adam and Eve to a new world, and, in the complete ending, after untold millennia, Cornelius and Velvet finally lift the Pooka Curse on all the afflicted living and dead.
• The Golden Ending of OMORI is one. The good news is that Sunny has rid himself of the personification of his death wish, is all but stated to have confessed to his Accidental Murder to his friends, and both he and Basil are ready to move on from their roles in it. The bad news is that Sunny has been left with eye damage from a prior fight with Basil, and since we're never shown the reaction from Sunny's and Basil's mutual friends to Sunny's confession, it's inconclusive whether they forgave the two or not.
• Both endings of OneShot. If you choose to place the light in the spire, the sun is restored to the land and you get to see the world's inhabitants bask in the sunlight. However, the world will almost certainly degrade away, even if it happens much slower and Niko will never go home. Alternately, if you shatter the light bulb instead, Niko is allowed to return home and be with their mother again. That also dooms the world and everyone in it to living in total darkness and complete destruction is in sight. The Solstice ending is even more heart-wrenching, you finally fix the entity, save the world, and Niko can finally return home. However you have to bid farewell to Niko for good, for you will not see them again after that. (unless you reset the game, of course.)
• Oni ends when you kill Konoko's brother, Muro, and interrupt his plan to poison the Earth's atmosphere, killing everyone who doesn't have a Daodan Chrysalis... by only poisoning most of Earth's atmosphere, giving humanity (now decimated) enough time to adopt the chrysalises. Whether this actually succeeds or not is left hanging.
• The ending of OPUS: Echo of Starsong leans more towards the bitter end, but Jun manages to find the remains of the Red Chamber within his lifetime and finds that even in death, Eda managed to keep her promise of letting him see the fields of flowers of her homeworld, bringing to the story to a heartrending but sweet conclusion.
• Ori and the Blind Forest ends with Kuro realizing that her actions nearly doomed the forest and her last remaining egg before sacrificing herself to restore the Spirit Tree and the forest. Naru is brought back to life and she, Gumo, and Ori become a family and also watch over Kuro's egg until it hatches. Gumo, however, is the last of his kind, and the forest will never truly be the same.
• Ori and the Will of the Wisps has an even more bittersweet ending than the first game. The only way to revive Ku and save Niwen is for Ori to give up their existence as a leaf spirit and become a Spirit Tree. Gumo, Ku, and Naru mourn that the Ori they knew is gone, but they lovingly care for the tree Ori's been reborn as, continuing to live and grow as a family. Many, many, many years later, Ori has fully grown into a new tree, and a glowing leaf is blown away by the wind, implied to be their offspring.
• The ending of The Orion Conspiracy is definitely this. Devlin found out who killed his son Danny, and the murderer is dead. The xenomorphs have been destroyed and the space station and asteroid have been blown to smithereens. Unfortunately, out of the 20 people making up the crew, Devlin, LaPaz, and Meyer are the only survivors. Their fates are left hanging. The matter of LaPaz being pregnant, and the matter of her unborn child being a human, xenomorph, or a hybrid is left hanging. There is a walkthrough that apparently aims for a Downer Ending.
• Outcast ends with you saving both Earth from being swallowed by a singularity and Adelpha from tyranny. However, the team you were supposed to protect are all dead. One of them became the tyrant Fae Rahn you had to take down, but not before he fatally shot your love interest Marion. The game ends with a funeral for Marion, her body carried away to parts unknown in an unfamiliar world. The last we see of our hero is him strapping into the teleportation device which will bring him back to earth, with a rather grim look on his face. The game started out with Cutter Slade being a drunk and after the trauma he endured he might return to the bottle.
• PAYDAY 2 reaches its bittersweet ending at the final heist. The crew steal pardons from the White House and effectively erased their criminal histories. However, Bain was slowly dying due to being injected with a virus by his enemies when he was captured, and by the time the crew pull off the White House heist, he dies. The crew go to Mexico to hold a makeshift funeral for Bain with everyone tossing their masks into the open grave as their last sign of respect for their mentor. The crew is finally free from law enforcement, but without their friend that helped them reach that point. Additionally, the Dentist, who likely was the one who infected Bain with the virus, is still alive and could cause more trouble in the future.
• Phantasy Star IV: The Sealed Evil in a Can that has plagued Algo for over three thousand years has been defeated, and the souls of the heroes who lost their lives to protect the solar system can finally rest in peace... but the planet Parma is still gone, and the heroes who survived the battle have to return to their normal lives with no way to see each other again. Further, the environmental control systems, which have been slowly declining since their installation, have been damaged beyond repair; although Wren and Demi have stabilized them and will watch over them for as long as possible, there will eventually come a day when the system finally dies, and the remaining planets will return to their natural climates: a freezing wasteland, and an arid desert, respectively, neither of which were ever meant to support Parmanian life.
• In Phantom Brave, yes, you save the world, but Castile's brother Walnut sacrificed his life to beat the Big Bad, and Ash is still dead. A phantom, yes, but dead.
• Planescape: Torment's best ending is as follows: you have regained your mortality, learned your true name, and brought your friends Back from the Dead... And now all your hard work pays off, as you get to die and go to hell to be punished for the crimes of the First Incarnation. (Of course, the entire point of the game was to figure out a) who you are and b) how to die... Which you just did. Just too bad the person you are is overall an irredeemable bastard.)
• Pokémon Mystery Dungeon:
  • It's standard for the series. When you and your partner are recovering with your good friends, everyone is happy to have you back with them and that the world is saved... until Gardevoir shows up and informs you that your time in this world is over. The last few shots we have of the Pokémon world before the end credits is of everyone moping over your departure, and your partner sobbing uncontrollably.
  • If you ignore the stuff that happens after the credits roll in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers, it's pretty depressing. Your character basically gets erased out of time because the planet didn't go into paralysis (so no one from the future could have come back, including you) and after your companion returns and tells everyone, the last shot you see is them crying on a friend's shoulder at the place you first met, in pretty similar circumstances too. Except he's all grown up. Considering everything you went through, and the fact that this scene takes place a good couple of months after everything's restored, it's pretty jarring.
  • Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity is no different. The hero is ultimately forced to return home after everything is saved, as it's revealed the prolonged presence of humans in the Pokémon world will cause a distortion that will threaten its existence, plus they're told they'll be forgotten by everyone once they depart, making them decide to leave without telling anybody. Though their friends are made aware of this and manage to give them a fond farewell via a recording, it only serves to make things more painful for the hero; the last shot being of them on their hands and in tears after realizing that they weren't forgotten as they had been led to believe. Most notably, in a contrast from the other games, they don't come back in The Stinger.
• Pokémon Sun and Moon ends on this note. You've become Alola's first official champion, Lusamine's back to normal, and the world has been saved, with the Aether foundation back to focusing on its original goals of preserving and helping Pokémon. However, Lillie leaves for Kanto to purge what's left of Nihilego's neurotoxins from Lusamine's body, and until you clear a post-game quest, Ultra Beasts are still roaming Alola.
• By the end of Policenauts, Jonathan leaves his friends and his daughter on Beyond to go back to his sad, lonely life on Earth. Many people that Jonathan and aforementioned friends cared about are dead. Beyond's future is uncertain with the exposure of Tokugawa.
• Portal: Chell survived, only to be dragged from the ruins by a robot, presumably to undergo yet another round of 'testing' in Portal 2.
• Portal 2 has GLaDOS deciding that she's tired of dealing with Chell and releasing her to the surface, along with her Companion Cube (which apparently survived incineration). Of course, this is several hundred years into the future and Chell has also just expelled Wheatley, her only other friend into space, and she has effectively traded his freedom for her own.
• Prayer of the Faithless: The Resolve ending ends on a surprisingly positive note despite the situation. Aeyr and Mia don't fully reconcile their differences, but agree to live together so that if the other goes too far in opposing or leading society respectively, they'll cut each other down. Unlike the Love ending, the other party members don't attack the duo, meaning this is the only ending where the entire main cast survives. However, like all other endings, the Fog hasn't fully dissipated and humanity's survival is still uncertain.
• Prey (2006) ends with Tommy defeating the Mother and destroying the Sphere. However, his grandfather and his girlfriend, the only people he felt any connection with, are both dead. Neither seems terribly bothered by this and her spirit tells Tommy she will be waiting for him, so it's not so bad.
• Professor Layton games are fond of this.
  • Last Specter, especially when you consider Arianna. Though they find the Golden Garden, which eventually cures Arianna of her sickness, they reach it at the cost of Loosha's life. Considering Tony and Loosha had been her only friends for nearly a year when everyone, including Arianna herself, thought she was a witch, it's more than a little heartbreaking to see Arianna begging Loosha not to go.
  • Unwound Future: Clive's giant robot is stopped from rampaging through London, but the Prime Minister gets away with the political backstabbing involved years ago from the first time travel experiment (though it is implied that Inspector Chelmey will try to take the case). Also, Claire's time in the present is up, and she must return to the past to her death. Then Luke has to move away, complete with a scene of him crying as he says goodbye to Layton, but Luke writes back often and seems to be fitting in at his new school well. The fact that both times, Layton of all people starts crying only makes it so much worse.
  • Azran Legacy: The world is saved from the Azran's automatons which Leon Bronev (revealed to be Jean Descole's and Hershel Layton's biological father) had planned to activate to gain power. But this comes at the cost of Aurora's sacrifice, as she is the descendant of the extinct Azran civilization and thus is the only one capable of depowering all the machinery; this breaks Luke's heart, and then Emmy, who was previously revelaed to have worked for Bronev all along, bids a tearful farewell to Hershel, feeling that she'll never forgive herself for her betrayal (despite Layton and Luke forgiving her). Not all is bad, as while Bronev is arrested for his crimes, his humanity has been restored after many years, and while Layton declines Bronev's identity as his birthfather, he hopes that they will meet again, not as father and son, but as friends and fellow archaeologists. Luke and Layton eventually resume their normal lives and then receive a letter whose information kickstarts the events of the first game in the series.
• [PROTOTYPE] has Alex having destroyed the nuke to save New York City, but he is unhappy with the truth that he is the Blacklight Virus having been unleashed by the real Alex Mercer, his sister is in a comatose state, his ex-girlfriend has betrayed him, and the virus is yet to be stopped.
• Puck OFF when Dominator is finally defeated, but it did cost the life of our grumpy Coach.
• Punch-Out!!: The Wii version ends with Mac's Last Stand - and true to his word, once he loses three times he hangs up his gloves and retires from boxing. However, his blaze of glory has elevated him to a Living Legend popular enough for a museum exhibit to be dedicated to his career.
  Doc Louis: Good job, son. Good job.
• Both Puyo Puyo Tetris and Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 end this way. The Puyo and Tetris dimensions separate, and Ringo and Tee promise each other that they're never going to forget each other.
  Ringo and Tee: I'll never forget you!
• Quake IV: The Nexus is destroyed, striking a crippling blow the Strogg will never recover from, and the end of the war is just a matter of time. But a lot of good people died to make it possible, and Kane receives new orders before he can celebrate with the rest of Rhino Squad, plunging back into the thick of it. And because of his stroggification, he may never be able to return to Earth.
• Rakuen: Everyone at the hospital is helped, and the Boy makes their lives better with his actions in the fantasy world. But Sue still dies, as does Uma and Kisaburo, and the Boy himself ends up wishing to go to Rakuen, and die, by default. His mother promises to be strong without him, and she goes back to take care of his little brother.
• Randal's Monday: Matt is saved and the loop has stopped, but the ring is still out there, and Sally is dead.
• Rave Heart: After the final battle, Niredia is defeated and peace is restored to the Galaxy of Xerxes, but Klein had to sacrifice himself to take Count Vorakia Estuuban down with him.
• RAY Series:
  • The ending of RayForce. The heroine's fighter is hit by the blast of the Earth's explosion after she destroys Con-Human and the Earth with it before she can escape. Oh, and destroying Earth was her objective, as humanity had fled to space and Earth had become so corrupted by Con-Human that destroying the entire planet was the only option left (thus, this trope was guaranteed whether or not she survived).
  • RayStorm ends with the Secilian rebellion being crushed by plunging the entire space colony into another planet. And while you do neutralize the threat, what's to say that there aren't any innocent bystanders out of its 78 billion inhabitants?
• Re:Kuroi: Most of the monsters in the region have been exterminated and Noelle is turned back to normal, but Michelle erases Kaito's memories and everyone's memories of him in order to prevent his magic from transforming Noelle into a monster again. Additionally, Michelle's associates are still trying to get rid of the Black Pearl in order to remove magic and monsters from the world, but it's unknown if they will succeed. Fortunately, Asha is allowed to bring Kaito out of his coma so he can rejoin society with a clean slate, but the glossary states that Asha ran off for unknown purposes afterwards, prompting the Magic School remnants to hunt her down.
• Red Dead Redemption. While the ending initially appears to be a Downer Ending, it shifts to this as a result of an Easter Egg in Grand Theft Auto V. Initially, Jack gets revenge for John's murder, but that doesn't change the fact that the man he grew to admire and sympathize with is dead. Furthermore, Jack has become a wandering gunslinger and a broken shell of a man, exactly what his father didn't want for him. However, it's revealed in GTA 5 that Jack eventually became a writer and found some type of peace.
• Red Dead Redemption 2: John, Sadie and Charles have gotten revenge on Micah, and with the Blackwater money, John can live comfortably on Beecher's Hope with his family, and be a rancher. But Agent Ross and Fordham are on his trail, and anyone who's played the first game knows that John's peaceful days are numbered.
• Resident Evil is no stranger to bittersweet endings:
  • Resident Evil 0 ends with Rebecca and Billy finally escaping from Marcus's facility, killing him in the process. Billy is let go and is free to escape despite being framed for murders he didn't commit. Meanwhile, Rebecca is separated from the S.T.A.R.S. Bravo Team and is still in the middle of nowhere, so her only option is to take shelter in a nearby mansion... Fridge Horror also kicks in when you realize that Billy took off into the woods, which are still infested with zombified dogs and God knows what else. To this day, Capcom still hasn't revealed what happened to Billy.
  • Resident Evil has bittersweet endings all around no matter which one you get. Canonically, only Chris, Jill, Rebecca, Barry, and Brad (and Wesker, who survived the ordeal of the incident and would later cause more trouble in future games) survive, while everyone else in the S.T.A.R.S. unit perishes. In the alternate endings, it's possible to have only the player character and their partner survive, both player characters being the only survivors, or even being the only survivor that escapes.
  • Resident Evil 2 isn't as heartwrenching, but it is still pretty bitter. Leon, Claire, and Sherry escape, but Sherry's parents are both dead, Leon's police buddies at the RPD have either died or became zombies, and Claire never found her brother Chris. In the canonical ending (Claire A/Leon B scenario), Sherry still has the G-Virus in her body, despite it being suppressed by the vaccine given to her by Claire. Later on, Sherry and Leon are captured by the U.S. government, since they've both seen things they should not have witnessed. While Leon does agree to become a federal agent for Sherry's safety, Sherry herself is taken into government custody while undergoing lots of testing to make sure the G-Virus inside her isn't causing problems. Granted, she does get better by Resident Evil 6, but she does admit her childhood and teenage years weren't fun.
  • Resident Evil – Code: Veronica. Chris kills Alexia and Claire is finally reunited with him. But Steve is infected with the T-Veronica Virus and dies after he tells Claire he loves her, with Wesker taking his body to acquire the virus for himself.
  • Resident Evil 4 isn't quite as depressing as most of the other entries, but it's still up there. Leon rescues Ashley and takes her home, but an entire village was doomed thanks to Saddler's scheming, Luis is dead, and Wesker now has a sample of Las Plagas thanks to Ada.
  • Resident Evil 5 finally sees the end of Wesker when Chris and Sheva finish him off for good with two rockets to his face. While Wesker is finally defeated, a lot of Chris and Sheva's comrades in the B.S.A.A. are dead, as well as many innocent people thanks to Wesker's machinations.
  • Resident Evil 6 has a lot of bittersweetness to go around. Simmons is finally put down by Leon and Helena, while Carla is killed by Ada, but by that point, a lot of shit has hit the fan; the President of the United States had to be put down by Leon after he turned into a zombie, Tall Oaks is nuked off the map after the C-Virus is unleashed there, a large city in China is also infected with the virus, and Helena is forced to kill her sister after being subjected to an experiment by Simmons. For Chris, he lost all of his men thanks to Carla's actions and months later, he loses them to her again before Piers begins to turn into a monster, performing a Heroic Sacrifice to get Chris to safety.
  • Resident Evil 7: Biohazard's good ending definitely qualifies. Ethan finally kills Eveline, and he and Mia are rescued by Chris and a now reformed Umbrella. However, Jack and Marguerite are dead, along with who knows how many other people, Zoe is left behind, and Lucas gets away scot free. The DLC, however, ties up several loose ends, resulting in a much happier ending; Chris kills Lucas, and Zoe is saved from her infection by her uncle Joe.
  • Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles's "Operation Javier" concludes with an incredibly bittersweet note, thanks to being a Prequel for 4. Manuela survives and suffers no further problems with her infection, but has to live with the loss of her parents and the knowledge that her father murdered dozens of girls to save her. Meanwhile, Krauser is Doomed by Canon to become The Dragon of 4, thanks to losing both the use of his left arm and his military career. The next time Leon and Krauser meet, they'll be enemies trying to kill each other.
  • Resident Evil Village counts as well. The story ends with both Rose and Mia rescued, and the Big Bad defeated for good. This comes at the cost of Ethan's life, however, as he stays behind and sacrifices himself to save his family and friends. Mia, as a result, is left a widow, Rose left with no father, and Chris now has to suffer with the thought that a friend of his traded their life for his own again. What's more, the ending card after the games epilogue shows only this: "The father's story is now done."
• Rise of the Third Power: Rowan seemingly dies in a Mutual Kill with Sparrow and Noraskov escapes after his defeat. However, Gage successfully earns the approval of the Sages of Peren Desh, resulting in him gaining his own faction to oppose Noraskov in a civil war. While Arkadya is ravaged by war, Noraskov will be too busy to wage war on the rest of Rin.
• Risk of Rain's ending is, for almost all the characters, like this. The creature that shot down your ship is dead, and you've carved a swath of carnage and death across the whole planet, have exposed yourself to so many dangerous agents and artifacts so as to mutate and change into something not particularly human, and are finally able to reach the ship's controls. And so you left, your mind utterly shattered, and your humanity lost to the very things that let you keep your life.
• Riven: Gehn is trapped, Catherine is freed and travels safely to D'ni with Atrus, the Stranger travels home via the Star Fissure, and the Rivenese natives are safe in Tay. But the age of Riven dies, along with all its wildlife, plant life and constructions. It's even worse if you trap Gehn but fail to free Catherine; Catherine is unable to free the villagers and perhishes with them, leaving Atrus th the futile task of keeping Riven stable. And even worse if you also fail to trap Gehn before opening the fissure; Atrus confronts you by the fissure, just as Gehn shows up to shoot Atrus, before confronting you and then telling his guard to shoot you. In addition, Catherine and the Rivenese also die.
• RoboCop: Rogue City: How bittersweet it is, however, can vary depending on the player's choices. Despite becoming a cyborg, the Old Man dies as the original OCP building collapses while fighting Robocop, though the player can decide whether to kill him, leave him to his fate, or attempt to save him. Regardless, Robo is saddened at the loss of the one man in OCP who not only genuinely wanted to help Detroit, but also one of the few outside the police force that saw Murphy as both a human being and a friend. Depending on dialogue choices made by the player, Detroit might be left without a mayor, the side characters introduced could go astray, and the public's opinions on Robocop himself could be altered. But with the events of Robocop 3 a few months away, we know that while things will get worse, they will get better.
• In Robotech: Battlecry, Jack Archer and the Wolf Squadron push the villanious warlord Zeraal and his forces back to their base in Zen City. In a last, desperate bid for victory, Zeraal activates the fold drive of a ship that the city was built around, sending himself and Jack (along with most of Zen City) into deep space. Archer manages to defeat Zeraal afterwards, but with his Veritech fighter low on power and oxygen, and lightyears away from civilization, it looks as though his battle with Zeraal would be his last...
• RosenkreuzStilette:
  • From Spiritia's point of view, her ending could be seen as part bittersweet, as she wonders what happened to Iris after she self-destructed her palace. Nevertheless, the rest of the ending is happy, seeing as how she feels good about her victory, and she happily reunites with everyone. Of course, as revealed in Freudenstachel, Iris is indeed still making mischief.
  • Grollschwert's ending is even more bittersweet. It ends with Grolla defeating Iris, but she self-destructs her palace and escapes, thus living to plot anew. Grolla escapes the palace, of course, and watches it collapse from a nearby cliff. She then goes to place a wreath of flowers at her grandfather's grave, and takes up his own Grollschwert for him.
• Rule of Rose: If the good ending is achieved, Jennifer wanders the orphanage making nostalgic comments, revealing that her family died in the airship crash, that Wendy had gotten Brown killed and that all orphans except her died in the Stray Dog killings. And then goes to the shed to metaphorically lock the puppy version of her dead dog, Brown, away in her heart forever. The game ends with her leaving as he whimpers.
• Sailor Moon: Another Story: The second ending (if you lose the final battle with Sailor Moon's team, but succeed with Sailor Chibimoon's team). With everything reverted to how it was previously, Anshar and the Opposito Senshi are given normal lives in Crystal Tokyo, but have no memory of the game's events. Chibiusa bumps into Anshar, who drops the pendant she dropped in the introductory cutscenes, and admits that he doesn't know why he has it. Sin calls Anshar to catch up to her and Chibiusa stares wistfully after him, with Pluto reminding her that, if the two were to properly meet, it could lead to his life being entangled in battles again.
• If you choose to go after Killbane near the end of Saints Row: The Third, you do kill him and effectively destroy what's left of the gangs in Steelport as well as destroying STAG, but your friends die in the explosion at the monument and the Saints go back to their old ways of being hardcore gangsters.
• The normal ending of Saints Row IV. On one hand, Zinyak is dead and the Saints are now in control of his galactic empire. On the other hand, Earth has been destroyed and the surviving humans are left without a home.
• Sakura Wars:
  • Sakura Wars (1996): Satan/Shinnosuke Yamazaki has been sent back to hell, the Hive of Darkness is obliterated and Tokyo is saved, but Ayame commits a Heroic Sacrifice and ascends into heaven as Michael.
  • Sakura Wars 2: Thou Shalt Not Die: Keigo Kyogoku is dead, the Black Demons are no more, Musashi has been destroyed and Tokyo is saved once again. But Ichiro Ogami has to leave for France to lead the Paris Combat Revue, and Kazuma and Yamazaki are Killed Off for Real.
  • Sakura Wars 3: Is Paris Burning?: Salu has been defeated, the Paris Phantoms are no more and Paris is saved. However, Ogami must return to Tokyo to rejoin his friends.
  • Sakura Wars 4: Fall in Love, Maidens: Nagayasu's spirit has been purified but the Mikasa has been destroyed, the Rose and Wind Divisions retire and the Paris Combat Revue returns to France.
  • Sakura Wars (2019): Both President G/Sotetsu Genan and Yaksha are dead, Tokyo is saved once again, Sakura Amamiya has achieved her goal to become an actress, the Imperial Combat Revue gains the respect of the other Combat Revues as well as the adoration of the public. But the Archdemon is still out there and the original Combat Revues are still trapped in Shadow Tokyo.
• At the end of Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse, the world is saved, but Max is dead. Yes, he is replaced by a duplicate from an Alternate Timeline, but that doesn't change the fact that the original one is gone for good.
• Seraphic Blue gives a fairly happy ending to all the playable characters, though the main character, Vene, is still struggling with thoughts of suicide and nihilism. While she did muster the will to live long enough to save the world, her nihilistic mindset is so deeply ingrained that she often lapses back into depression, especially when she learns she doesn't have long to live (though she miraculously survives that). On the bright side, her friends make sure that she gets proper counseling to deal with these issues. This could be seen as a more realistic take on the trope, Took a Level in Cheerfulness, showing that one can't really turn themselves around overnight.
• Secret Scout in the Temple of Demise: Doctor Demise may be dead, but the protagonist is Buried Alive within the Temple - his group writing him off as a lost cause.
• The Sexy Brutale: Lafcadio is actually Lucas, and he has the chance to forgive himself and move on with his life after tormenting himself for forty years. Upon forgiving himself, he's able to save all of the guest's lives, but it's purely metaphorical and a hallucination. They all died in the fire years ago.
• Shadow Hearts:
  • The first game ended sadly as well, though not quite so finally. Simply put: "she" (you know who) dies to save his soul from being devoured. Yuri's soul sure comes under fire a lot...
  • Shadow Hearts 2 ends with the hero finally deciding to let himself die rather than allow the curse he's under to take his soul and memories. Not to mention the team is split up, they have just taken the life of the sympathetic Necessarily Evil Big Bad, and the world is a decade or so away from WW2. Though there is an upside — Yuri is sent back to the beginning of the first game by his dying thoughts, and it's implied that this time he'll be able to save Alice from the curse of the Four Masks.
  • Shadow Hearts 3 ends with the heroes discovering that the Big Bad "Lady" is actually the main character's sister, Grace, resurrected in body but not in soul. Contrary to RPG conventions, there is no way to actually save the sister, and in the bad ending (yes, there's one worse than being forced to murder the main character's sister) the Malice that powers Lady and her cohorts - and that she used to resurrect Killer, Edna Capone, Shania, and Johnny - corrupts the main female character. The Shadow Hearts series doesn't go for happy endings.
  • Koudelka. In the official ending of the game, one of the three main characters sacrifices his life to defeat the Big Bad, and the other two (who have spent most of the game flirting) wind up going their separate ways. And, of course, the central character from the game shows up again in Shadow Hearts, having been captured by witch hunters and locked away in an asylum, where she is tortured for years, which effectively orphans her only child. And then Yuri rescues her.
• Shadow of the Colossus:
  • Although the girl is brought back to life, Wander dies just before she wakes up, and his body is "borrowed" by Dormin as part of the terrible price Dormin warned him about in the beginning of the game. Lord Emon (the "bad guy, I guess") casts a spell that sucks Dormin into a giant pool of light, and because part of Wander is in Dormin, he gets sucked in as well. The girl wakes up to find a crying baby (which is implied to be Wander), and goes up to the Secret Garden to live happily ever after, maybe. Or she dies again, who knows. Also, the baby, according to the director, is a direct ancestor of Ico, hero of the previous game by the same company. That girl? She's implied to be the White Queen from Ico. The White Queen was the game's Big Bad. Judging by the caskets lining the walls in the castle in Ico, generations of children have now been doomed to suffer the curse brought upon by Wander.
  • Even more so, especially If one assumes that Mono found out everything about Wander's in-game actions (as implied through the credits vision according to Word of God), realizes that the horned infant she's been led to is him and once loved or cared for him to varying degree. If you assume that their relationship was that they were lovers, she's stuck alone in a land cut off from the world she once knew, forced to be a surrogate mother instead of a lover/friend. In addition, the infant 'Wander' may never grow to remember or realize what he once did, and the repercussions will haunt him and Mono for the rest of their lives.
• Almost any ending in the Shin Megami Tensei series is guaranteed to be bittersweet, and there exist certain trends for how bittersweet each of the Multiple Endings is:
  • In general, the Law and Chaos endings will lean more toward the "bitter," with whatever the conflict is being resolved permanently, but at the cost of thousands (at least) of lives and with yourself typically made a servant to morally dubious gods and/or demons. Neutral endings tend more toward "sweet," with both the Law and the Chaos factions beating a hasty retreat and humanity free to rebuilt, but this solution is usually noted to be temporary and the Forever War will begin anew, albeit with another hero likely to appear when that happens.
  • Shin Megami Tensei I. In the Law and Chaos paths, you achieve the goal of whichever faction you sided with...but nuclear war has left the planet in a state of disrepair, Tokyo has been flooded to death by God, and both of your best friends are dead—one either due to not being able to handle a powerful artifact or due to mortal conflict with the other, and the other thanks very much to you. In Neutral, you set out to pave the way for a new world that balances order and chaos...except you've made enemies of both the Messians and the Gaians and murdered both of your best friends.
  • Devil Summoner. The main character (in Kyouji's body) and Rei have defeated Inaruna and Sid Davis to save the city, but the main character is stuck in Kyouji's body forever, unable to return to his family or girlfriend, and Kyouji himself is forced to hop from body to body in order to survive.
  • Persona. When the main heroine has to disappear in order for the world to go back to normal, it says a bit about the ending (albeit the bad one—made worse that it isn't so much as a on-her-own-will sacrifice as it is forced).
  • Persona 2: Innocent Sin, which ends as a pure Downer Ending, and Eternal Punishment is cleaning up after Innocent Sin. Which leads to less dramatic results, but still ends with the same tragedy of the close-knit friends of Innocent Sin losing their memories and friendship. The final scene is of Maya and Tatsuya, the characters who loved each other the most and whose tight-knit relationship was the entire crux of both games, acting as total strangers, because Tatsuya doesn't remember who she is. All of this is necessary - if he ever remembers her, the world will end again.
  • Persona 3:
    • The "good" ending results in the sealing away of a life-extinguishing monster that saves all life on Earth... But the main cast — with one exception — lose all of their memories of the Dark Hour and the year you spent exploring it, which takes with it all their significant Character Development, their memories of each other, and a whole lot of ugly — but necessary — truths. The cast are rendered casual acquaintances with little familiarity with each other; unaware of the struggles and personal victories they went through to save the Earth, save for flashes of Wistful Amnesia. In addition, the main character had to perform a Heroic Sacrifice to perform the sealing and dies just as the game ends — mere moments after the rest of the cast recover their memories and rush to his side.
    • In The Answer, the team is shown what really happened during the final battle — they witness the protagonist's soul being sealed in stone, becoming the seal that blocked the death monster Erebus from carrying out the fall of the world. After the battle with Erebus, the Abyss of Time dissipates, and the seal locking the party within the dorm disappears. The game ends with Aigis deciding to return to school with the others. However, they have realized that the protagonist has to remain as a seal for eternity, because they can never get rid of humanity's desire to die. He can never return to them, and they can only help him bear the burden by making the most out of their own lives.
    • The 'bad' ending is even worse. You decide to kill the avatar of Death's mortal body at his own request, but that won't stop him causing the end of the world, it will merely make you and everyone else forget long enough to enjoy the last few months of life. The game ends on the same day as the good ending, except everyone still doesn't know each other, have separated into their own cliques, and are enjoying a silly afternoon of fun, when the screen slowly fades to black...
  • Persona 4 has a certain scene where Magaret informs the party that she's there because Elizabeth went off to find a way to rescue the hero of Persona 3. Considering how ridiculously powerful Elizabeth is if you break the rules of engagement, there's a good chance she'll manage just fine in that regard.
  • Persona 4 also has the good ending. The protagonist ensures the arrest of the killer, and defeats the "conductor" behind the game's events, but is ultimately forced to say goodbye to his friends, uncle and cousin, and return home. That being said, he is able to return to visit, as he does for Golden Week and summer vacation.
  • Persona 5 likewise ends with the protagonist saving the world, but in order to ensure that Shido is convicted, he must surrender to the authorities and go to juvenile hall for violating his probation. He's eventually released through the help of his fellow Phantom Thieves and Confidants, but also has to go home in the end. In the updated version of Persona 5 Royal, the Phantom Thieves decide to all go their separate ways after defeating the new Final Boss and can no longer act as the Phantom Thieves without the Metaverse. But they promise that they'll see each other again someday, and most of them fulfill that vow in Persona 5 Strikers.
    • More than a few Social Links and Confidants have bittersweet endings, often involving the protagonist's friends suffering tragedy and hardship in the course of the storyline, and rising above it to become better people. This is especially true with Persona 5's Star Confidant, which ends with Hifumi free of her Stage Mom's control, but at a cost. The public now realizes that Mitsuyo rigged her daughter's matches, and that Hifumi did not earn her success. Hifumi is defeated in the exhibition match she'd hoped would redeem herself, and starts over as an amateur with the nickname "The Phony Princess". On the flip side, she informs the player just before he goes home that she's on a nine-game winning streak, and is slowly regaining her footing with genuine success.
    • Persona 5 Royal also adds an alternate ending where you agree to Dr. Maruki's plan and allows him to rewrite reality to create his utopia where there is no suffering, and you and your companions live lives full of bliss and comfort at the expense of desire. It's especially bitter after your companions make it clear that they would rather live in the real world rather than run from their problems and the struggles that helped them grow.
  • Shin Megami Tensei IV's "Nothing" / "Nihilism" ending is perhaps the closest there is to an outright Downer Ending in the series: You go along with the White's plans to overload the Yamato Perpetual Reactor until it creates an ever-expanding black hole, freeing all of life from its struggle against the Great Will by eliminating all of it from existence.
• A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004) ends with Count Olaf's plan to obtain the Baudelaire's fortune by marrying Violet failing, but he and his troupe escape and he's determined to get their fortune no matter what. While the children are no longer in his care, they're still looking a new home and have to live in fear knowing Olaf is still out there.
• Silent Hill games often end on a bittersweet note, depending on what you did during the journey.
  • Silent Hill: Even the Good+ Ending is bittersweet. Sure, Harry has defeated the Big Bad and saved the cop, but the little girl he worked so hard to save is gone, having been reborn AGAIN in the form of an infant. The third game reveals that Harry contemplated killing said infant to prevent Alessa reawakening on several occasions, but held back due to his love for Cheryl. And apparently his love for Alessa/Cheryl kept the cult's god within the girl's body in stasis for over ten years, as it feeds upon pain and hatred.
  • Silent Hill 2: The "Leave" ending is this, and incidentally is the closest thing to a "happy" ending in the game. James ultimately makes peace with the fact that he performed a Mercy Kill on Mary, accepts her forgiveness (and his own), and finds a new purpose in life by becoming a father figure to Laura, but Mary is still gone, and despite her terminal illness, he'll forever bear the burden of being the one who ultimately ended her life.
  • Silent Hill 3: The Good Ending has Heather finally defeating the cult's summoned god...only for her to break down crying afterward because her adoptive father Harry is dead, and while she's avenged him, he will not come back.
  • Silent Hill 4: The "Death" ending shows Henry stopping Walter's 21 Sacraments from being carried out, and the apartments return to normal. It appears that Henry is the only tenant still alive, and he is deeply saddened, as he could not save Eileen during the final battle.
  • All the endings in Silent Hill: Shattered Memories count, sans the U.F.O ending.
  • Every ending except the Normal Blood ending in Silent Hill: Book of Memories.
    • Pure Light: You decide to atone for your selfish uses of the Book by using it only to help others, but the final scene heavily implies you use a portion of your life force whenever you do so.
    • Normal Light: You resolve never to use the Book again and to make sure it never falls into the wrong hands. However, you slowly begin to become tempted by the Book's power once again...
    • Neutral: You're freed from the Book's influence, but the whole ordeal has shattered your mind, and you are sent to an asylum.
    • Pure Blood: With the Book's powers, you greatly improve your life, but quickly realize that it's Lonely at the Top.
• Skullgirls features bittersweet endings for the majority of its cast:
  • Filia: Deciding that atoning for what she might have done to Carol (now Painwheel) was more important than recovering her memories, Filia wishes upon the Skull Heart to give Carol a normal life. The Skull Heart grants the wish, but alas, the selfish desire for redemption caused her heart to be somewhat tainted. Filia will become the next Skullgirl, but her transformation will be very slow, so the Skull Heart advices her to make the most of her remaining time.
  • Cerebella: As Ms. Fortune threatens to use the Skull Heart to destroy the Medici family and avenge the Fishbone gang, Cerebella, who considers the Medicis her family, crushes her into a new Life Gem. She wins Vitale's approval upon returning with the Life Gem, but is filled with regret for murdering Ms. Fortune.
  • Parasoul: Determined to save Umbrella from death and with nothing left to lose, Parasoul wishes for the Skull Heart to save her sister. The wish is granted, but in time, Parasoul will become the next Skullgirl. Parasoul decides to use her remaining time training Umbrella to fight her when that time comes...
  • Peacock: The Skullgirl is actually Peacock's old friend, a fellow orphan named Marie, both of them having lost their families to the Medici mafia. Peacock destroys the Skull Heart, in doing so killing Marie, but vows to continue Marie's battle against the Medicis.
  • Ms. Fortune: Even though the Skull Heart could bring back her old friends in the Fishbone Gang, Nadia decides that what's more important is the new family she has, and destroys the Skull Heart.
  • Painwheel: With the Skull Heart destroyed and her newfound freedom, Painwheel returns to her old home, only to be shunned by her parents, who don't recognize their daughter. With nowhere else to go, she returns to Brain Drain, but makes a promise: "You're next!"
  • Valentine: The Skullgirl is destroyed, but knowing that wishing back her old friends from Last Hope would end badly, she wishes for the Skull Heart to turn her into the next Skullgirl. Painwheel, whom Valentine had fought and incapacitated earlier, goes down to the catacombs, only to find the Skull Heart gone and Valentine's bonesaw laying on the ground.
  • Squigly: After defeating Double alongside Filia, a Medici and thus a sworn enemy of her family, Squigly learns that Double had given her mother the Skull Heart, starting the blood feud between her and Filia's families that eventually resulted in Squigly's death. She destroys the Skull Heart, then returns to her eternal slumber with her parasite Leviathan. In a post-credits scene, Filia is seen standing before Squigly's grave.
• The endings of Soldiers of Anarchy:
  • If you side with NOAH, COTUC is destroyed and the threat of a second SGDS breakout is removed, but many people had to die to get to this point and COTUC's disappearance will cause a power vacuum amongst the gangs they've been keeping in check with their superior firepower. The narrator notes that while more missions will be necessary, at least the world now has a chance to recover.
  • If you side with COTUC, NOAH is destroyed and the creators of SGDS have paid with their lives for putting everybody through all the shit that happened. COTUC will bring stability to the region but they do so through brutal oppression, with every other faction powerless to oppose them or prevent them from killing everybody with a second SGDS breakout. Your entire team is either carted off to a COTUC laboratory for conversion into Death Knights or killed where they stand
• Sly Cooper: Just about every single game has some kind of bitter tinge to their endings:
  • Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus: Sly manages to get away with all the pages of the Thievius Raccoonus and take down all of the Fiendish Five, including Clockwerk. However, a little while later, Clockwerk performs an Eye Awaken from the lava, effectively guaranteeing his return at some point.
  • Sly 2: Band of Thieves: With Carmelita's help, Clockwerk's Hate Chip is destroyed, causing all of his parts to age to nothingness within seconds. Clockwerk is permanently dead, and the traitorous Neyla has gone down with him. But this came at the cost of Bentley being permanently paralysed from the waist-down and Murray blaming himself to the point of leaving the Cooper Gang, effectively meaning that the three must now go their separate ways (at least for the time being).
  • Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves: The Cooper Vault has been destroyed, and with it, the Cooper family legacy. Dr. M got crushed in the rubble, but Sly took such a bad hit that he's lost his memory, and Carmelita takes advantage of this to make him believe that he's her partner on the force. With this, Sly has given up his life of thievery to be with the woman he loves. But despite everything, Sly left the remaining Gang with a backdoor into what's left of the Cooper family's wealth. And while the Gang is officially parted, Bentley and Murray remain in close contact, and Bentley has started new ventures with his girlfriend, Penelope. And perhaps more than that, while Bentley spies on Sly from afar, the latter looks at Bentley and winks.
    Bentley: That sneaky devil...
  • Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time: Le Paradox is in jail, his time-spanning plan is in tatters, and all is as it should be with the past members of the Cooper family. But this came at the cost of Le Paradox stealing Sly's glider, leaving the latter stranded on the crashing blimp. As a result, Sly disappears, and his absence is felt by everyone. While Bentley remains confident that they'll see Sly again, not only has Penelope turned traitor and escaped prison, but the secret ending reveals that, thanks to Le Paradox's time rift, Sly is stranded in Ancient Egypt.
• SOMA: Yes, Simon and Catherine manage to launch the ARK in space and upload themselves on it... but biological mankind is either extinct or on the verge of extinction (if you spared the last survivor in Tau). Humans turned into monsters by WAU are, well, monsters (and if the player followed Ross's advice and destroyed WAU, they're all doomed anyway). Earth's surface is a hellish inferno due to the impact of a comet. What remains of civilization is an orbiting satellite with uploaded copies of the minds of people living in Pathos-II, which will last some thousand years before ultimately decaying (if it isn't hit before by a meteor or anything else). Simon isn't even truly uploaded but is only copied, thus he's left alone to die in the depths of the ocean after Catherine's circuits overload and short out her omnitool, while his last copy is living large on said satellite as a virtual human. Everything before him is a nightmare.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • In Sonic Adventure, Sonic got Perfect Chaos to calm down and stop being the destroyer of worlds... but by this point, Station Square was already flooded and in ruins. And it gets worse, the city was flooded/destroyed over the course of a few minutes, so it's likely that most, if not all, of the people living there couldn't get away in time.
  • Sonic Adventure 2 has Shadow sacrificing himself to save Earth and to accomplish his promise to Maria. Subverted in later games, when it turns out Shadow survived and Eggman's robots found him. The worst that happened to him afterward was a case of Laser-Guided Amnesia, from which he recovered.
  • In Sonic Unleashed, after Dark Gaia is stopped, Chip/Light Gaia seals himself along with the beast in the Earth's core.
  • Sonic Mania: Super Sonic defeats Eggman and destroys Heavy King, but the Chaos Emeralds react with the Phantom Ruby, cutting off Sonic's transformation and tearing a hole in time and space that pulls Sonic in. The Titanic Monarch is destroyed and the Little Planet is liberated once more, but Sonic is nowhere to be found...which leads into the events of Sonic Forces.
  • In Sonic Forces, after defeating Eggman and his Phantom Ruby-powered Death Egg Robot, Classic Sonic begins to fade away, about to go back home to his own dimension. He offers one last fist bump to Tails before he disappears. Sure, the world may be saved from Eggman's rule, but he has left quite a mess, so the Resistance has to clean it up; one at a time.
  • Sonic Frontiers has Sonic winning, but does so with a few saddening caveats: Sonic and Sage team up to defeat THE END, saving the universe from the threat and avenging the Ancients. However, Sage sacrifices herself to do so, and Sonic and his friends end up disbanding—for the time being, anyway. The Stinger after the Golden Ending lightens it to being more sweet than bitter, though, when Eggman manages to save Sage and upload her into his computer. "The Last Horizon" DLC introduces the real Golden Ending that negates the sacrifice and Sage gets to go home with Eggman.
• Soul Series: Maxi's ending in Soulcalibur. He dies in Kilik and Xianghua's arms. True, it was retconned later with Maxi barely surviving but becoming amnesiac, but still.
• Spiritfarer: Sadly, Stella is dead like every other spirit, the entire game confirmed by Word of God to be a Dying Dream she's having while passing away from a terminal illness. And eventually, she has to ferry herself to the Everdoor.
• Splatterhouse:
  • Splatterhouse 1: Rick ends the curse of West Mansion by setting it ablaze, and the Terror Mask lets him go... for now. Unfortunately, Rick not only failed to save Jennifer, but also had to put her out of her misery.
  • The neutral endings of Splatterhouse 3: Rick finally defeats the Terror Mask, foiling its plan for world domination... but was unable to save either his wife or his child, and must now live as either a widower or a bereaved parent.
• SpongeBob's Boating Bash: After Seymour is exposed as a fraud, SpongeBob stops him from escaping and gets him sent to jail, but this unfortunately means the driver's license he got from his classes is completely worthless. He's at least thrilled that he can keep taking classes with Mrs. Puff, but she isn't exactly looking forward to it.
• Two of three endings in Standstill Girl fall into that category. If Alice lets Tiska accept Order's punishment, then he is turned into a Shadeling, losing all of his memories to the point that he's essentially a different person. However, there's still hope that he can earn Order's mercy and have his memories restored. If Alice challenges Order to save Tiska, then they get to be together as themselves, but this also dooms the world to fall apart in due time, internal contradictions building up in the absence of Order.
• StarCraft:
  • StarCraft:
    • At the end of the final mission, Tassadar bravely sacrifices himself in order to destroy the Zerg Overmind, but Aiur has become a smoldering ruin due to the prior Zerg invasion on it and the newly-established central Terran government of the Terran Dominion is led with an iron fist by a tyrannic monster, which James Raynor bitterly regrets since not only did he willingly assist said monster with doing so, said tyrant also sadistically left poor Sarah Kerrigan to die in New Gettysburg on Tarsonis, only for the Overmind to capture her and transform her into another horrific monster who is crowned the "Queen of Blades". The expansion Brood War, on the other hand has an outright Downer Ending.
    • Brood War also, fairly early in its plot, turns the Bittersweet Ending of the original into a Downer Ending by having a new Overmind be created to rule the Zerg until Kerrigan's rise to power, basically rendering Tassadar's heroic sacrifice ultimately futile in the long run.
    • The Protoss campaign of Brood War has a bittersweet ending: The Protoss have driven the Zerg from their new homeworld of Shakuras and reunited with their Dark Templar brethren, but Aiur had to be abandoned as a lost cause and Kerrigan used the Protoss' attempts to reclaim Shakuras as a way to eliminate any Zerg who could oppose her.
  • StarCraft II:
    • Kerrigan has been deinfested which has accomplished three feats a.) breaking the Zerg and ensuring that billions of lives will be saved b.) ensuring that Kerrigan can now start working for redemption and c.) humanity no longer has to fear the Zerg. The bad news is that Raynor had to shoot Tychus (his best friend), Mengsk is still in power, and the Dark Voice is still working to jump start the apocalypse; the only difference with his plans is that humanity has a chance to stop him rather than being wholly boned.
    • At the end of Heart of the Swarm, Kerrigan has finally reconciled her human side with her potential as the Queen of Blades and come to a sort of understanding with Raynor. Arcturus Mengsk is dead, and in addition to settling personal scores this clears the way for the first truly good man to take the reins of power in Terran society in who knows how many decades. She is in complete control of the Swarm, and it will no longer threaten humanity, as she is taking it immediately to do battle with the Dark Voice. Only three things mar the outcome: the massive wreckage that is downtown Korhal, the fact that she still can't be with Raynor, and, oh yes, the bit where the Dark Voice is still planning to invade and destroy everything and they still only have the faintest idea how to fight it, let alone stop it.
• Star Fox Command's nine endings included several bittersweet ones, most of which included Krystal abandoning Star Fox to join Star Wolf, her relationship problems with Fox unresolved. The most gut-wrenching of them involves Krystal saving the universe with Star Wolf, only to be shunned by the public for her double-crossing of Star Fox, leading her to leave and wander alone, becoming a bounty hunter known as Kursed. The most bitter sting is that years later she comes across Fox, who does not recognize her. Other slightly more upbeat, yet still somewhat sad endings involve Peppy and his daughter reminiscing about their dead/wife mother while Fox and Krystal patch things up, Slippy retiring with his fiancee and years later telling tales about Star Fox while wondering if they were still out there, and one ending where Falco, depressed at not being able to rejoin Star Fox in time to rescue the universe, is convinced by Katt Monroe to start his own team called Star Falco. A variant on this ending has Fox and Falco both being depressed after Star Wolf beats them to the final boss, and they cope with it by dropping out to become G-Zero (an F-Zero reference) racers.
• Star Ocean: The Second Story: The planet of Expel is saved, the Sorcery Globe is dealt with, and most of the heroes can go back home. But at what cost? Remember Narl/Nall, Mirage, Marianna, Noel, and Chisato (if you didn't recruit them), the psynards, the buzzing Fun City, the wondrous technology, and all the random townspeople you ran into during the second half of the game? They're gone forever, and nobody other than the heroes realises that they ever existed.
• Star Shift Rebellion: Although the ORC drives the ESA off Infernis Prime, gets several interstellar nations on their side, and takes over the Zhelanov Array, Kern overloads Chronus-13 in the process and deleted most if not all traces of Chronus in the ESA's cyberspace. Worse yet, Kern used a data tap on the Supercarrier to determine the location of Time's Eclipse, which means the Order of Restoration isn't safe. However, Soren Xander continues to search for any traces of Chronus-13.
• Star Warrior II: In the true ending, obtained by not telling Boss about Vie, the party defeats the Cosmic Darkness, but they have to kill Vie in the process because it assimilated her.
• Star Wars: Battlefront II:
  • You spend the entire campaign learning about an unnamed clone trooper who's been in just about every major battle, only to have the last mission be on Hoth, with him declaring that the empire has won, meaning he wasn't on Endor and knows nothing about the Empire's defeat, or he died on the second Death Star, making all the battles he's been in pointless.
  • It's even worse with the Kamino mission. He and the other stormtroopers stop the uprising, but have to kill their younger brothers in the process, and the Emperor replaces the old cloning template with the useless incompetent stormtroopers of the original trilogy, basically making the 501st the last of their kind.
• Star Trek Online's Iconian War story arc ends this way — the Iconians come to an armistice with the Beta Quadrant powers after the Player Character returns an item thought lost to them for millenia, but the cost getting there was too high as numerous Starfleet, Klingon and Romulan members died fighting the Iconians and their servants, including Kahless II. Even worse, your actions unwittingly lead to the creation of the Sphere-Builders, who go to torment a young Starfleet in the 22nd century. On the plus side, the war has brought everyone closer together than before and leads to a number of changes in the future.
• At the end of Stationfall, you have saved the entire universe by destroying the Zeenak pyramid and its replicas. Unfortunately, you ended up having to kill your brainwashed robot buddy Floyd so at least he could die peacefully. However, little robot Oliver comes to life as Floyd's reincarnation and gets you to play with him, giving you solace over your old friend's loss.
• Stolen has this for an ending. Breeze is (likely) dead, Richard Killian has been arrested for murdering his own goon Night. The previous mayor is back in power. Louie, Anya's partner, puts a Lampshade Hanging on the trope by saying that nobody is better off, but nobody is worse off either. Louie and Anya's apartment has been blown up, and so the two of them take off on a motorcycle, perhaps to go on vacation.
• Stray (2022) ends with the Cat finally making it outside of the City they spent the game trapped within. However, not only are they still separated from their family, they had to leave behind all the companions they've made along the way. Of the Outsiders, only Clementine and (possibly) Zbaltazar have a realistic chance of heading Outside via Midtown's subway station — Doc, Momo and the rest of the Slum dwellers are unable to take the elevator up there as it was decommissioned previously due to the Zurk infestation. While many of the Zurks themselves have been killed off by the sun's sudden appearance, at least one of their major nests still lurks deep within the Sewers making passage through them to Midtown risky. Finally and most poignantly, the Cat's closest companion B-12 has sacrified their drone body to open up the City in the first place; the final scene implies they might still be alive within the city's systems, but nothing concrete is spelled out about their fate.
• String Tyrant has this for all of the good endings. The nature of the mansion you are trapped at requires someone to be sacrificed if anyone wants to escape. How bitter the ending depends on who the player decides to sacrifice to escape. To make things even more bitter, there's no way for Mary to retain her humanity.
• Each episode of The Ultimate DooM Cthulhu Mythos Game Mod Strange Aeons ends this way, but particularly the final three:
  • The Land that Time Forgot ends with the Traveler having killed Atlach-Nacha, and finally realizing that there is truly no way to bring his dead son David back, but gets stuck in the Plateau of Leng.
  • The Plateau of Leng ends with the Traveler making his way out of the Plateau, but coming home to find some sort of creature waiting for him.
  • Out of the Aeons concludes the saga with the Traveler saving the soul of his nephew, Daniel, from the Children of Cthulhu, but while Daniel wakes up, the Traveler stays in the collapsing city of Ry'lyeh to die and be reunited with his son David.
• By the end of Subnautica, you've cured the lethal bacteria you and the rest of the ocean planet you're trapped on are infected with, shut down the alien cannon built to keep the planet quarantined (the bacteria's that deadly), and built a rocket ship to escape. But the Big Good Gentle Giant who helped cure you is about to die of old age. She's okay with this, though, since you helped her babies hatch and they'll be able to spread the cure to the rest of the planet. You're also the Sole Survivor of your ship getting shot down by the cannon, and another ship that came to rescue you was also shot down, killing everyone on board. And to top it all off, you make it home, but the MegaCorp you work for preemptively claimed ownership of all the resources on the planet. Which you've been picking up and using to build everything you needed to survive. Which means they won't even let you land until you pay off the massive debt you now owe them. Which is about one TRILLION credits.
• Averting this becomes the main motivation (story-wise at least, completionists be damned) to obtain all 108 stars in most of the Suikoden series.
• Super Paper Mario leans more into the sweet than the bitter. All of existence has been saved from the Void, but Count Bleck and Tippi are "gone" after they sacrifice themselves to destroy the Void. Even if you look in the Overthere and the Underwhere, you can't find them. However, the end of the credits show that the two of them standing happily together somewhere in a grass meadow somewhere beyond the worlds, and Tippi has her human form back.
• Super Robot Wars:
  • Super Robot Wars: Original Generation ends with the heroes defending the Earth from both the Divine Crusaders, and the alien invasion of the Aerogaters. Nobody playable even dies, only losing the two Anti Villains. The problem? The Aerogaters were only one of the fleets of the Balmarian Empire, meaning that the Balmarian Empire might attack again, and even worse, The Guest, aliens that tried to conquer earth by forcing Earth to surrender that caused the Divine Wars in the first place, were not the Balmarian Empire, meaning a second alien menace is out there. Even worse, due to the nature of the Original Generation series, they had only scratched the surface of wars.
  • Super Robot Wars Original Generation 2 actually kills off an important playable character. The kind and good Earth Federation was secretly overthrown and replaced by jerks. Also the Inspectors were only a part of an alien menance starting with "Zu-" that the Guest are a part of, meaning they will be back. The conflict does get resolved in the sequels, but Dark Brain is only letting the Japanese be privy to the truth.
• Super Smash Bros.:
  • The games have these whenever your character clears a one-player mode (whether it be Classic Mode, Adventure Mode, or All-Star Mode). After defeating every opponent and clearing every stage, and/or especially after defeating Master Hand, your character falls to the table, reverted back to his/her/its trophy form (in the original, its original form was a plush doll).
  • While the ending of The Subspace Emissary in Super Smash Bros. Brawl is happy for the most part, there's still a sad twist to it. Tabuu has been defeated by everyone and all the locations that were sent to Subspace are sent back to their rightful, respective locations, except for, strangely enough, the Isle of Ancients, and for a good reason; the detonation of multiple Subspace Bombs in the same location damaged the island so much that it was unable to return to the World of Trophies, and thus, a bright "X" is left where it originally was instead (which the playable characters triumphantly look onward at from a nearby ocean cliff). Since Tabuu is responsible for the destruction of the R.O.B.s through the use of the Subspace Bombs, this also makes the playable R.O.B., who disguised itself as the Ancient Minister throughout the story until near the end, the Last of His Kind.
• Syphon Filter 2 ends with the Agency's conspiracy revealed and its leaders dead, but so is Teresa. Fans hated the last part so bad that it got retconned in the sequel.
• Tactics Ogre:
  • Some of the endings of Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis are quite the Downer Endings. In one of them, the hero's lover sacrifices herself to kill the Big Bad, the hero's best friend dies thanks in no small part to the hero, and said best friend's father, a duke, sends his army after the hero, forcing him to go into hiding. The game's secret ending (who is also the canonical one) is hardly any better, as all of the above happens and the hero is rewarded by the pope for killing the Big Bad with a new name, Lans Tartare, which reveals to fans of the series that this game was a prequel, and that the hero is an antagonist in Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together.
  • The endings Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together also wind up this way. If Denam becomes the ruler of Valeria, then it's because his sister (The rightful heir) is dead. He unites Valeria... but depending on your chaos frame, is either defeated by Lodis when they invade, or assassinated by a terrorist. It's better if Caitua/Kachua is still alive, then she becomes the ruler of Valeria. But in a thousand years, the Hittites invade Valeria. The PSP version tones this down a little by instead saying they "united" with Heth (Likely where the Hittites came from), and it sounds like the union was more consensual.
• All three The Tale of ALLTYNEX games:
  • Kamui ends with Alice killing her Ax-Crazy father who had uploaded his mind into the Adjudicator, and it's implied that she chooses to die with him.
  • RefleX ends with the ZODIAC's finally being defeated and will never threaten people again. However, Earth is in ruins and most of humanity is wiped out. And the Raiwat army, who has been hounding Earth? They get away, and even they're not exempt: their commander kills himself.
  • ALLTYNEX Second: ALLTYNEX #2 has been shut down, but the pilot, revealed to be Guehala Dennis (who has a major role in the backstory of RefleX, the game's chronological successor), ends up being flung forward some centuries into the future, and is officially declared MIA.
• Tales Series:
  • Tales of Phantasia ends with the heroes defeating the Big Bad... but then finding out that rather than being evil, Dhaos was just trying to keep his world alive. In which case the heroes are feeling slightly less heroic than they'd thought.
  • Tales of Rebirth: The world is saved, and Agarte can finally tell Milhaust her feelings, but suddenly she collapses and dies in Milhaust's arms. Then he realizes that he loves her too, but then again too late...
  • Tales of the Abyss ends with Luke using up what little remained of his life force to free Lorelei from Van, fulfilling Lorelei's desire to ascend to the fon belt. As Eldrant falls apart, the corpse of Asch falls into Luke's arms, and they both fade away into light. However, two years later, the party encounter a red-haired person who says he promised to wait for someone. It's never exactly stated whether it's Asch or Luke (or a fusion of the two) who came back, and depending on who the person is, Tear or Natalia will be very sad. Also, because it was necessary to destroy the Planet Storm, fontech and fonic artes will weaken, some phasing out of existence entirely.
  • The normal ending of Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World. The world is saved, but Ratatosk, and by extension, Emil, has to seal himself away for 1000 years so he can repair the Mana flow. At least he'll have Richter and the Centurions (including Tenebrae and Aqua) to keep him company. If the right choices are made, an after-credits stinger reveals Ratatosk seperated Emil from himself so he may be with Marta. Doesn't change the fact Ratatosk, Richter, and the Centurions are sealed away for 1000 years.
  • Sticking to its Darker and Edgier nature, two of the endings in Tales of Xillia 2 are like this. The normal ending has Elle sacrifice her life to save the world, while the true ending has Ludger do the deed instead.
  • Tales of Berseria ends with Velvet completing her revenge in killing Artorius and saving the world in the process, but to prevent Innominat's power from running wild she traps him and herself in an endless cycle of absorbing each other's energy. The pictures shown in the credits are implied to be her dreams of her life if the events that had led to the game had never happened, living happily with her family and friends.
• Target Earth features the protagonist Rex fighting to save Earth and her colonies from an unknown assailant. Throughout the course of the game, Rex learns that the enemy are a group of cyborg humans who traveled into the outer reaches of space as pioneers. He begins to sympathize with them once he learns that they ran into severe problems but their cries for help went unanswered. The reason was that Earth had undergone an apocalyptic world war and had to rebuild from the ground up; they were in no shape to send help, even if they did receive the transmission. Rex keeps fighting the good fight, but by the time he kills The Dragon, all he can say is "Another good man dead." Once he defeats the Big Bad, he sets his Assault Suit to self-destruct and symbolically walks away from it.
• Tenchu 2 ends with the Burning Dawn defeated, but Rikimaru & Ayame are the only Azuma ninja still around.
• Terra Invicta:
  • The Resistance: The forces of the Resistance succeed in destroying the wormhole device, albeit at tremendous cost. While some Hydra holdouts remain across the Sol system, humanity is saved and can rebuild.
  • Project Exodus: A huge arkship is built and launched just in time to sally out of the Sol system. For Director Khalid Al-Ashgar and those fortunate enough to get a seat aboard, they take a moment to look back melancholily at Earth one last time before setting off to their destiny.
• Terranigma: The hero Ark manages to restore the world and defeat all the baddies... in the process destroying his hometown and himself as well. The final credits sequence shows Ark, in one last gift, flying the skies as a bird. On the other hand, the game's emphasis on reincarnation keeps this from being more of a Downer Ending.
• Thief:
  • In Thief: The Dark Project, Garrett loses his eye, but ends up saving the world from The Trickster. Nevertheless, his accomplishment goes completely unnoticed and uncared for by everyone.
  • In Thief II: The Metal Age, Garrett saves The City again and possibly the world from Karras and the Mechanists. Not only does the achievement go unnoticed by The City, he loses the Pagan wood nymph, Viktoria, his one true romantic interest, in the process. The kicker? He didn't realize how deeply he cared about her until it was too late, and is informed that her loss was supposed to happen.
• All the endings of Timespinner have this for main character Lunais to one extent or another:
  • In one, Lunais gets her revenge on the emperor who killed her mother and ascends to the throne of the Empire, but she has to leave behind her family in order to do it.
  • The alternative is to return to the past and try to make a better future from there. This is slightly less bittersweet, since you get to stay with the friends you've made in the past, but you still have to leave behind your village after visiting them one last time.
  • The true ending also counts. After destroying the Sandman and becoming the Eternal Mother, Lunais repairs the timeline and gives everyone a happy ending, but is unable to experience any of it herself, since her mortal existence has to be erased from history as part of the usual cost for using the Timespinner.
• None of the games in Tomb Raider's Survivor Trilogy have completely happy endings.
  • Tomb Raider (2013): Lara rescues Sam and destroys Himiko's body, breaking her curse on Yamatai and allowing them to leave. But they, along with Reyes and Jonah, are the only survivors from the Endurance, and Lara is stricken with Survivor Guilt over Grim, Roth, and Alex dying, along with what she had to do to stay alive.
  • Rise of the Tomb Raider: Ana, Konstantin, and the Trinity force are all dead, but the Divine Source is destroyed, along with Lara's hope of restoring her father's reputation, and Jacob is dead, along with dozens of the Remnant. And Trinity is still out there...
  • Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Lara kills Dominguez, avenging her father's death, and averts the apocalypse. Trinity's High Council is also slaughtered by the Yaaxil, effectively toppling the ancient order for good, and Paititi is in good hands with Etzli as its new king. But none of this changes the fact that Etzli's mother is dead, on top of countless innocent people as a direct result of the disasters Lara unleashed when she took the dagger, which is something she'll likely have to live with for the rest of her life.
• Transformers: War for Cybertron: Optimus Prime and the Autobots have stopped Megatron's attempt to conquer Cybertron using Dark Energon. However, the planet's sentient core has been left partially corrupted by the Dark Energon and the only way for the corruption to be reversed is for the core to reboot itself, which will take thousands of years during which the planet will become unlivable, forcing Optimus to reluctantly order all surviving Autobots to evacuate Cybertron. Also, Megatron and the other major Decepticons (Starscream, Soundwave, etc.) are still alive and at large somewhere on Cybertron.
• Three of the four endings in Triangle Strategy are some degree of bittersweet. Some of Norzelia's issues are solved, but others are still ongoing, and one of Roland, Frederica, or Benedict will permanently leave the party depending on which ending you get. Also, Serenoa commits a Heroic Sacrifice in Frederica's ending. There is a Golden Ending to avert this, though it requires the player to make very specific choices in certain chapters.
• Two of the three endings in Tribal Hunter ends on a bittersweet note. The "Not my job!" ending, the island's core becomes unstable and destroys the entire island. With the help of the shark pirates, everyone escapes unharmed and vows to find a new island to call home. The "Destinty?" ending has Munch sacrificing himself in becoming the core's new seal, which keeps the island stable at the cost of being put into eternal slumber. Yisya is completely distraught and keeps making more Munch dolls in the hopes of summoning his spirit back before she breaks down crying knowing that he won't come back.
• Trinity: Souls of Zill O'll: In order to defeat Lord Balor, the only sword that can defeat him will wipe Areus from existence and no one will remember him.
• The Ultima series ends this way. When all is said and done, the Avatar and his companions manage to save Brittania one last time (hopefully for good) by finally defeating the Guardian. Sadly, the Avatar must perform a Heroic Sacrifice to do so because the Guardian is the manifestation of everything the Avatar cast aside after performing the Quest to become the Avatar of Virtue — as long as the Avatar lives, the Guardian will too.
• Undertale:
  • The Neutral ending has you defeating Flowey and putting an end to his deranged ambitions, but not before Flowey murdered King Asgore, who turned out to be a good hearted Well-Intentioned Extremist in the end. Frisk is allowed to return to the surface, and one of the surviving boss characters (or a minor NPC, if none of the bosses were spared) takes the throne, but with Asgore and the Human Souls he acquired gone, there is now little hope of the monsters ever returning to the surface, and dialogue from the surviving bosses heavily implies that the player character is wracked with guilt over their failure to save Asgore. However, if you spared Flowey at the end of the final battle, he appears in The Stinger, questioning your compassion before giving you hints on how to acquire the Pacifist and later the True Pacifist endings as an invitation to prove his nihilistic ideals wrong.
  • Even the True Pacifist ending (the Golden Ending) has shades of this. Everyone lives, and the Barrier is destroyed, finally allowing the monsters to leave the underground and return to peaceful coexistence with the humans on the surface. However, it's all but stated that Toriel never truly forgives Asgore for his crimes, and you couldn't save Asriel, who will be forced to revert back to the demented, nihilistic Flowey, and chooses to stay in the underground without ever seeing his parents again, because he doesn't want to break their hearts by letting them know what happened to him. That said, the ending credits show Asgore working at a school that Toriel runs, implying that they're at least back on speaking terms, and loading the game once more after completing this ending suggests that, at the very least, Flowey doesn't want you to take away everyone's happiness, so it seems he retained something. Still Bittersweet, but not as "bitter" as it would have been without those post-game clues.
• Undertale Yellow: In the True Pacifist Ending, Clover refuses to kill Ceroba, who apologizes for everything she did, and is forgiven by Clover, Starlo and Martlet. But Clover sacrifices their SOUL in order to the help the monsters break the barrier and dies.
• Until Dawn's Anyone Can Die mechanics mean that most of its Multiple Endings are this, but even the ending where everybody lives is depressing: Jess, Chris, Ashley, Mike, and Sam are all injured and/or traumatized by the night's events; Matt is beating himself up about Emily falling from the tower; Emily is trying to get Matt arrested (unless their relationship is high); and Josh is trapped in the mines and turning into a wendigo, about to chow down on the cops who find him.
• Vandal Hearts II, in three out of four of its endings, including the Golden Ending, is this.
  • The first is that, after you lost all of your childhood friends — Yuri, Adele, and Clive — you make good on the promise you made to Clive to take care of Rosaly, your adopted sister, and the ending is that she gave birth to your child.
  • The second is that, provided Clive lives, he will have a family with Rosaly, with you becoming a wandering, nameless adventurer.
  • The third is that you become bodyguard to Queen Adele. Despite this, she publicly renounced her intent on marrying, since offspring will only breed violence due to inheritance and Succession Crisis (a big, big part of the story in fact) and thus will remain without spouse. Adele does however, sneak a deep kiss outside the public eye with you, and while the epilogue says that she never took a consort or bore any child, you are described to be the closest she has to a husband.
  • The fourth ending has you become the King, presumably of Natra. You ruled with an iron fist like a despot, and later in your reign, get assassinated. The bittersweet part comes that this ending is possible if you select "I want to be the King" when Nicola asks you about your dream early in your childhood intro chapter.
• Varth: Operation Thunderstorm: DUO was destroyed, but DELTA-7 had to be destroyed as well to prevent mankind's extinction, which was reduced to 20% after DUO had the other 80% killed in a war.
• Vice: Project Doom has Quinn Hart beating the Big Bad of the Beda Corporation, Damian Hawke and saving the city from becoming a mutant infestation. Unfortunately, Hart has ended up injuring or killing his two friends whom Hawke turned into mutants or cyborgs, and is told that since he is a clone like Hawke, the organization will not be destroyed as long as he still has Hawke's blood in his veins. After the credits, the ending shows the Hawke clone in the capsule smiling, as it may be signifying Hawke's return.
• Vigil: The Longest Night has only bittersweet endings:
  • Dawn: Leila completes the Daylight ritual by killing the Eldritch Abomination her sister has become, reawakening the Goddess of the Sun and finally ending The Longest Night — but the Goddess is herself an Eldritch Abomination, and begins eating entire planets to sustain her sunlight.
  • Sisters: Leila breaks the cycle of death and rebirth by defying the ritual and restoring her sister. The machinations of the Dawn cult are thwarted, perhaps for good, but the victims of their slaughter litter the streets, and The Longest Night will last forever.
• The Walking Dead (Telltale) ends with almost all of its cast dead. Clementine survives, but she is alone after Lee is bitten and must be either abandoned or shot in the head. With Clementine's future uncertain, we can only hope that Lee's parting advice will help her.
• Warcraft III ends with the Burning Legion defeated for now, but Azeroth is still infested with undead and the World Tree has been destroyed, forcing the Night Elves to come out of hiding. In The Frozen Throne, peace is restored between the Horde and the Alliance, but Jaina has to kill her own father and Arthas succeeds in becoming the new Lich King.
• Warriors Orochi: The third game has the Normal and True Endings, which are bittersweet in different ways. In the former, Hydra is seemingly defeated, but the alliance has lost so many allies along the way that the victory seems hollow. In the True Ending, Hydra is definitely defeated, only for the world to begin collapsing (as the snake is the only thing that supports the world). The Mystics band together to send the warriors back to their respective timelines while erasing their memories in the dimensional world. This would have been a happy ending, except the memories aren't entirely erased, and thus they now live their lives feeling as if they had friendships that were inexplicably forgotten.
• We Happy Few: Arthur, Sally and Ollie escape Wellington Wells, but not completely unscathed; Arthur has to live with the fact that he betrayed Percy, Sally doesn't really know where to go after escaping and Ollie has to let go of Margaret while admitting that she isn't his daughter and that he was responsible for her death.
  • One of the endings of They Came From Below: Dr. Faraday is defeated and the robots are saved but James tells Roger to leave him and go through the portal to the robots' homeworld, leaving it unknown whether or not they'll ever see each other again.
  • Lightbearer: Foggy Jack is defeated and Nick has a new lease on life but not after Jack killed a good number of people.
  • We All Fall Down: Victoria successfully destroys Haworth Labs, cutting off all Joy production in Wellington Wells...setting off riots that destroys the city (Well, whatever wasn't already wrecked before). The survivors leave town, wanting nothing to do with any member of the old government, leaving Victoria in the ruins of Wellington Wells. "But...I saved them..." "They may never forgive you that."
• What Remains of Edith Finch: Edith dies giving birth to her son, her last narration stating that if he ever reads her journal, it means she never got to know him. He's returned to the family home, and has a cast on his arm, suggesting that he might perpetuate the family curse. However, the Finches are still standing, still take pride in their family history, and now there are two branches (Christopher and Monroe), implying that the curse is wearing down.
• Which: Giving the woman the heart causes her to feel enough compassion towards you to kill herself so that you can escape.
• Wild ARMs:
  • In Wild ARMs XF, victory costs the lives of Princess Katrina and King Hrathnir via Heroic Sacrifice to win the day, and Felius is missing and possibly dead after he sacrifices himself to save the world.
  • The rest of the series usually end with the bad guy dead and the world saved, but the very real threat of the planet dying still visibly a problem. Considering each game takes place on the same planet thousands of years apart, the planet's demise will always be a problem and eventually the heroes will be forgotten.
• WinBack:
  • The Good Ending counts as the Bittersweet one. Jean-Luc and the SCAT team have killed most, if not all of the Crying Lions terrorists and stopped the Gulf Satellite from firing again by destroying it, but most of the SCAT team had been killed over the course of the mission and only 3 members, Jean-Luc Cougar, Keith Birdy, and Lisa Roberts are left.
  • The Normal Ending counts as well, while the SCAT team have managed to kill all of the terrorists and stop the GULF sysyem from firing again and killing more innocent people, the terrorists managed to use it to destroy the White House and the SCAT team is brought down to 3 members. Plus, Cecile Carlyle, one of the main terrorists, manages to escape and remains at large. Thus he gets away with killing some of your team members and several other people in the White House. The good news about this is that the U.S. government know who he is, so he won't be able to run forever and will face justice sooner or later.
  • Averted with the third ending, the Bad Ending, which is a full-on Downer Ending.
• The Witcher:
  • Though the first game can end on a somewhat hopeful note, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings ends this way no matter what you do. On one hand, Geralt is reunited with Triss, has recovered much of his memory, and knows Yennefer might still be alive. Unfortunately, the seeds of chaos have been sewn across the Northern kingdoms, and Nilfgaard is planning on marching in. Just about everything accomplished in both games has been rendered effectively moot.
  • Potentially The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt can also end like this, with the right combination of factors. Depending on your choices in the game, the ending can either be sweet on a personal level or a political level, but bitter on the other aspect.
    • In one ending, Ciri becomes Witcheress, which is what she always wanted. However, the North has been fully taken over by either Nilfgaard or the mad king Radovid, meaning it's uncertain what future the people will face.
    • In the other ending, Ciri chooses to succeed her father as the new empress of Nilfgaard. While it is certain she will be The Good Empress, ensuring a brighter future for the common folk, her dream of becoming a Witcher is now permanently out of reach and it is also implied she can't see Geralt again for a long while.
  • The good ending of Hearts of Stone, the first expansion for Witcher III ends on a bittersweet note. After many years, Olgierd is finally free from his Deal with the Devil, but realizes that everyone he once cared for is now gone. While he is unsure about how he will face the future, he does seem somewhat hopeful about being able to start a new life free from demonic influence.
  • Two of the three endings in Blood and Wine, the second expansion are kind of this.
    • In the best ending, the duchess of Toussaint reconciles with her sister, Geralt receives Toussaint's highest honor and goes in retirement at his own vineyard with potentially his significant other moving in. Unfortunately, Detlaff had to be killed and because Regis delivered the final blow, he must go in hiding from other vampires, as killing another vampire is seen as a terrible sin.
    • The other ending results in Syanna being killed by Detlaff and Geralt being imprisoned for allowing the duchess' sister to die. Fortunately, he does get released due to Dandelion pulling a few strings here and there and is allowed to keep his vineyard. But, depending wether you let Detlaff live or not, both the duchess and the people of Toussaint will severely dislike you.
• Witch Hunter Izana: The good ending sees Izana sacrifices herself so that the others can escape the church and spread the truth of their crimes. In the process she avenges the many that the Church's human cloning program has reduced to suffering goop. The golden ending allows her to survive.
• Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land: The ritual to summon the dark god has been stopped, and the Endless Winter gripping Duhan has ended. Even though everyone has been Dead All Along, at the very least their souls have been freed to move on.
• The Wolf Among Us: No matter how well you handle things, the ending will always be at least a little bitter, though how much so depends on your choices. The case is solved and the murder victims avenged, but a lot of people are dead, Fabletown is still a shitty place to live, and Bigby is more uncertain about his life than ever.
• World of Horror: A successful run ensures the survival of humanity and the world... at least, for now. But the player character can easily end up in such a state that returning to a normal life is impossible, the eldritch monstrosities will inevitably have caused a lot of damage, and the Old Gods are only temporarily stopped.
• World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King:
  • Arthas has been defeated, and the scourge has been destroyed, but many soldiers died, and Bolvar gives up his chance at humanity to contain the scourge. The Horde in particular had hoped to rescue Bolvar so they could try and smooth out some of the issues stemming from the Wrathgate.
  • Another WoW: WoTLK questline has a spirit animal, Ursoc, become corrupted by a failed attempt to grow another Worldtree. The quest ending leads to Ursoc's death, his subsequent release from Vordrassil's taint as well as the corruption being lifted from the general area. Ursoc thanks you, his spirit finds rest, and Vordrassil can't corrupt any more of the environment... but unfortunately, when you return, the druid that set you on the quest only stares blankly at you with a broken mind (either due to the corruption, or because of lazy writing).
• X-COM: Terror from the Deep: Defeat the boss alien and you save the world, but the alien city explodes and takes all of your soldiers with it. It's even worse, because canon dictates that when it exploded, it sent a crapload of pollutants into the atmosphere and basically caused much of the world to need to be abandoned. Nice Job Breaking It, Hero.
• Xenogears ends with the defeat of the evil interstellar weapons system that created mankind to serve as biological parts. Fei and Elly are finally united after many incarnations of tragedy. However, 95%+ of the world's population is dead and civilization eradicated. The most poignant part however is Big Bad Krelian finally achieving his dream of living in a world without war or loss by ascending.
• Xenosaga, the spiritual successor to Xenogears ends with the Big Bad defeated and Shion and Allen finally together. In the process, though, we lost chaos, KOS-MOS, and Jin as well as many NPCs and most of the population of the galaxy. The UMN has been destroyed, leaving no method of faster-than-light travel or communication. However, the game ends with a ray of hope as MOMO is working to restore the UMN, Shion and the rest are on a quest for Lost Jerusalem (aka Earth), and a hint that they may find KOS-MOS again.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3, in contrast to the Earn Your Happy Ending of the first two games, has a more bittersweet feeling to it. Z is finally defeated, the world is free from his tyranny, and Noah and Mio finally acknowledge their feelings for one another. Sadly, Aionios must split again into the Bionis remnants and Alrest, which means the group must go back to the original world that they belong to. Even so, the group promised they will see each other again. The after-credits then hint that the worlds are still connected and the characters will meet again.
• Yes, Your Grace: While neglecting to provide for the kingdom will result in an early end to the game, it's possible to get to the end of the game with all the characters whose fates make up the Modular Epilogue either dead or suffering the worse fate the game has in stock for them. Since most of those characters are the Player Character's own family, it makes getting to the end of the game quite the Pyrrhic Victory.
• The Bad and Forgotten Dream endings of Yo-Jin-Bo. Hatsuhime is home safe, but Sayori doesn't get her guy.
• Yomawari: Night Alone: The main character has lost her eye and is forced to accept that her beloved dog Poro is dead, but she successfully saves her sister.
• Yomawari: Midnight Shadows: Yui saves Haru, but her spirit must move on to the afterlife. Haru is alive, adopts Chaco and makes a new friend (who turns out to be the girl from the first game) but she has lost an arm from her battle with the evil mountain spirit.
• Yomawari: Lost in the Dark: Yuzu is cured of her curse and learns to be more confident in herself, but the cat she thought was alive was Dead All Along and her friend Kotori remains cursed and has to stay behind.
• By the end of Yu-Gi-Oh! Reshef of Destruction, Reshef has been sealed away once more and Keith and the Neo Ghouls have fled. But Ishizu says Reshef may one day rise again, and Pegasus was sealed away with Reshef to stop his return. The Egyptian God Cards are hidden away to prevent such a recursion.