10 JRPGs Where the World Feels Like It’s Slowly Falling Apart Around the Player

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Published May 28, 2026, 2:44 PM EDT

Daniel Trock is a Writer at DualShockers specializing in PC games, lists, and reviews. He has been writing professionally since 2018 and covering games since 2020, with previous work spanning guides, news, lists, and reviews across multiple publications.

Before joining DualShockers, Daniel contributed guides to GamerJournalist and lists to TheGamer. He currently covers tech topics for SlashGear and BGR. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology from Marist College and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative and Professional Writing from Western Connecticut State University.

To paraphrase a better writer than myself, a large portion of JRPGs involve a team of scrappy folks gradually working their way up to punching a god in the face. The thing about punching a god in the face, though, is that both the build-up to such a major act and the act itself tend to create some waves in the world, both literally and metaphorically. Depending on the setting and its people, things may stay mostly stable, with everyone merely doing their best to keep a stiff upper lip while the party does its job. This isn’t always the case, though.

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In some cases, by the time you get up to the game’s final stretch, things are straight-up dire. The world is exhibiting physical signs of falling apart. People are screaming, crying, and falling into despair. It genuinely feels like, if you don’t give that god the punch in the face it’s waiting for, everything and everyone will be completely and utterly destroyed forever. Needless to say, it’s a good way to ramp up the stakes and set the proper mood for a big showdown.

10 Super Paper Mario

The End of Reality

Compared to most JRPGs, the Paper Mario games are relatively lower on the stakes scale. Yeah, you still got the odd cosmic horror to contend with, but nothing outright destroying the world. A notable exception to this is in Super Paper Mario, where the end of not just the world, but existence as we know it, is Count Bleck’s stated end goal from the very beginning.

Throughout the entire game, the enormous void that threatens to consume reality is constantly looming in the distance across all dimensional planes, growing in size with each chapter. We get a brief taste of what’s in store when the Sammer Guy Kingdom is consumed, leaving nothing behind but a blank white void that even Bowser is put off by. We don’t see any other worlds being consumed in this fashion, but considering we see them returning from nothingness during the game’s last cutscene, there’s definitely an implication that the worlds you had been visiting all fell to nothingness while you were fighting through Castle Bleck. I guess we got everything sorted just in time!

9 Mother 3

Painted in Porky’s Colors

Following the advent of the Pigmask Army in Mother 3’s initial arc and the subsequent timeskip, Lucas’s hometown of Tazmilly Village has undergone some major changes, and not for the better. There’s more infrastructure and nicer houses, sure, but everyone’s gotten both meaner and greedier as money has been introduced into their culture and Happy Boxes have proliferated through everyone’s homes.

We see the full scope of the mastermind’s designs in the last chapter, when both Lucas and company and just about everyone in the world are brought to New Pork City, a city-state built to reflect Porky’s twisted, childish desires. This is the kind of world he wants to make by having the Masked Man pull the needles and wake the Dark Dragon: one governed entirely by his whims and preferences, where the only people permitted to exist are those who are willing to kowtow to him unquestioningly. Anyone who hasn't already become a huge jerk can be found on the laboratory floor of the Empire Porky Building, being brainwashed by his “Nice Person Hot Spring.”

8 Digimon Story: Time Stranger

This is Why You Don’t Mess With Time

Digimon Story: Time Stranger

After our brave ADAMAS agent is sent back in time in Digimon Story: Time Stranger, their operator suggests trying to alter the flow of events for the better in order to prevent the apocalyptic event in the original timeline from ever taking place. Unfortunately, despite their best efforts, not only do things continue to get worse in both the real and digital worlds, but they get worse faster, with the timeline of apocalyptic events moving up much earlier than they originally were.

Not only that, but in the revised timeline, things have become much more dire for both humans and Digimon, the latter moreso. Most peaceful Digimon have been forced out of Illiad by the Titans and forced to seek refuge in the real world, but the humans have formed a militaristic, authoritarian organization to capture and weaponize Digimon, sparking off a massive war that culminates in precisely the reality-destroying space-time anomaly that our god-in-need-of-punching, Chronomon, was hoping for. This is why you don’t go messing with the past; causality is a very, very fickle mistress.

7 Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age

The Bad Guy Won

Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of An Elusive Age - Definitive Edition

Dragon Quest games form the bedrock of the archetypal JRPG story, with a powerful hero going off to defeat a demon lord and save the world from chaos and sorrow. Dragon Quest XI starts out in a similar fashion, but said demon lord, Mordegon, already thought ahead, possessing King Carnelian to condemn the hero and, ultimately, beating them to the Sword of Light and assuming ultimate control over the world. In short, at least for half the story, the bad guy wins.

When the Luminary returns to the world, everything has completely fallen into ruin. Humanity is on the backfoot against the monster hordes, and not only is your party scattered, but Veronica straight-up died trying to protect everyone when things first went south. Even after the party successfully defeats Mordegon, it doesn’t really fix what he broke: the world is still trashed, and a lot of people still died. The only solution they come to is to send the Luminary back in time for a cosmic retcon, though as we just discussed, futzing with the past has its own consequences.

6 Shin Megami Tensei IV

It Ended Once, But it Can End Again

The big early-plot twist in Shin Megami Tensei IV is that the medieval Eastern Kingdom of Mikado is, in fact, built upon a gigantic indestructible dome enclosing a post-apocalyptic Tokyo. The end of the world has already come and gone, but unfortunately, the powers that be on both ends of the divine spectrum aren’t quite satisfied yet. The angels want to destroy Tokyo properly to preserve their orderly utopia in Mikado, while the demons want to destroy Mikado and start a new war against God.

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No matter whether you side with Order or Chaos, a lot of demons and angels get set loose on Tokyo after the Yamato Perpetual Reactor is activated, and it’s total madness. At the end of either path, a major civilization is going to be destroyed, and a lot of people are going to be killed, so someone’s world is falling apart either way. Even in the best-case Neutral ending, where Mikado’s people are safely evacuated to Tokyo, Mikado itself is still destroyed to unseal the dome, so nobody’s getting out of this unscathed.

5 Xenoblade Chronicles

Launching Cleanup

From the start of Xenoblade Chronicles, the Mechon and, by extension, the Mechonis, are portrayed as the ultimate threat to humanity’s life on the Bionis and the cause of the ongoing war. While the war against the Mechon is definitely a problem, though, it’s only a symptom of a wider issue, which becomes all too clear only when the war actually ends and the Mechonis is destroyed.

See, the entire reason that the Mechon attacked was that the Bionis itself had launched an unprovoked attack at the Mechonis. With the Mechonis destroyed, the Bionis was now free to do whatever it darn well pleased, which included destroying all the beings living on it to suck up their ether. A large portion of High Entia are forcibly converted into Telethia to effectively act as the Bionis’ white blood cells, purging all sapient life. If you think it’s bad living in a world that’s falling apart, try living in a world that’s actively trying to murder you and drink your soul.

4 Persona 3 Reload

Everyone’s Ready for the End

If there were any JRPG series that has punching god in the face down to a science, it’d be Persona. All three of the modern Persona games do a good job of raising the stakes and showing the effects of the looming god-punching on the world, though the one I personally find most interesting is Persona 3.

A certain ways into the story, a cult of Nyx begins cropping up in the streets during the day, proclaiming the coming of the Mother of Night and Fall of Humanity. At first, it’s just the odd kook on a street corner, but by the game’s last stretch, they’re all over the place, alongside the Lost, who have already had their Shadows taken from them. Part of this can be attributed to Takaya’s messianic tendencies, but there is also mankind’s symbiotic relationship with Nyx via its Shadows to consider. As the arrival of Nyx looms closer and closer, it’s almost like everyone’s Shadows are trying to leap off them to return to her, instilling this uncanny, fanatic sense of longing for their own destruction.

3 Tales of Berseria

Crushed by the Status Quo

Tales of Berseria is meant to serve as a prequel to Tales of Zestiria, illuminating how the twin titles of “Shepherd” and “Lord of Calamity” came about. As opposed to Zestiria, where the Shepherd is more or less definitively in the right of things, though, the matter is inverted in Berseria. The Shepherd, Artorious, is trying to bring about the end of human suffering by robbing humanity of its emotions with the power of Innominat, but he’s also the hero of the Abbey and beloved by the people.

Velvet is named the “Lord of Calamity” because she goes against the Abbey and upsets the status quo, introducing chaos into the world. Those in the know like Aifread’s Pirates know that she and the party are ultimately working toward humanity’s greater good, but to the populace, she’s a terrifying monster that only Artorious can save them from. By continuing to praise and aid the Abbey, the people of the world are accelerating their own subjugation by Innominat’s power. It is genuinely unsettling when Inominat first begins spreading his influence, resulting in all the normal humans of the world becoming emotionless husks.

“This is How Liberty Dies, With Thunderous Applause”

Speaking of challenging the status quo, nothing makes you feel like the world is falling apart around you quite like a bad election season. From the moment he’s introduced at the game’s outset, Metaphor: ReFantazio’s antagonist, Louis, makes it pretty obvious he’s a complete monster and has no qualms about that, and for some reason, that makes him really popular with people. After he forcefully transforms Will into a Human, costing him his place in the race for the crown, he becomes the de facto candidate for king of Euchronia, taking hold of its Royal Magic for his own ends.

Even as Louis takes control of the castle in the sky, casting the entirety of Grand Trad in a pall of blood-red haze, he somehow still has ample support on the ground from a statistically-significant portion of the populace, with another sizable chunk just going completely bonkers from the anxiety-inducing Magla suffusing the air. Whether they’re terrified or just crummy people, they have no one else to put their faith in (as far as they know), so they just hold out hope that the all-powerful megalomaniac in the sky will end up doing right by them. Spoilers: he ain’t gonna.

1 Final Fantasy VII

The Planet is Bleeding

From the start of Final Fantasy VII, it’s clear that the planet generally isn’t doing so hot with all the Mako that the Shinra Company is sucking out of the ground. However, Barret’s rant is only the tip of the iceberg: Mako isn’t just the “lifeblood” of the planet, it’s the Lifestream, the spiritual origin of both life and physical matter. Sephiroth’s whole plan is to call down a Meteor spell in order to physically devastate the planet, banking on the Lifestream surging forth to fix the proverbial wound so he can absorb its energy and become a god.

Even before the Meteor looms over the planet, things are already swiftly spiraling out of control. Sephiroth’s rise prompts the appearance of the Weapons, enormous biomechanical monsters spawned by the planet to protect it, which begin attacking human cities and settlements since they can’t get at Sephiroth. Even the Shinra Company is in full panic mode, attempting to use the Sister Ray as its major offensive tool, though while it does successfully kill a Weapon, it can’t do anything against Sephiroth.