Empathy games

Do you fight with your party members?

beside
Avlora+the Brigant dad and daughter
I don't think it's the case.
It's mostly ex bad guys turned good rather than your allies turning on you
If you consider having to change their opinions to do what you want, kinda.
Except for the golden route, one of your party members challenges you to a duel and leaves. The epilogue is them undermining your actions so it's not part of the gameplay but is part of the story.
And ex bad guys joining you is also excellent. The one or two lines of dialogue on the battlefield between former comrades always hit hard.
 
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Okay, so something I should have mentioned, my idea of the "empathy game" also has the trait that the setting is mundane, dealing with subject matter that literature would call realistic fiction or literary fiction. Any game that has any sort of "moral choice" does not automatically qualify.


Third World Farmer is a flash game that fits the bill (but is too easy so it messes up), the premise being that you live in a shithole country and (shock and horror) can't afford to send your kids to school all the time.
 
Illusion Of Gaia.

I guess I was about 14/15 when I played it. And it was rather shocking for me to see the stuff going on that you can't do anything about. You have to learn to deal with the fact that life really sucks for a lot of people. At the last area you can talk to the spirits of the people you met that died. It's very interesting.

Emerald Dragon has ghost towns that you can go to. They are phantom towns that are full of people that died and don't know it. There's also a character that dies because of a child foolishly playing with real arrows. A horrible accident just kills one of the best characters. There's a bunch of likable characters you cannot save.

Alundra comes to mind too. A lot of tragedy. Just because you're the hero doesn't mean you can save everyone.

I think a lot of the older games do this sort of thing well because they don't have to deal with modern day agendas.
 
Unmanned. You're an army man sitting in somewhere in the US, flying a drone one the other side of the world and bombing haiji's if it looks like they're up to something, then you go home to your family and play call of duty with your kid. That's the basics. You mostly control the thoughts of the main character(while doing things in a splitscreen setup) and the dialogue. It's pretty neat, not long(20 minutes) and free.

 
Spec Ops: The Line?
Alpha Procotol, nigga, Spec Ops you can easily burn through with your brain turned off and it won't meteor one bit, not even the twist at the end of the story will.

Op's question and definition is a bit faggish though, emotional shit? what are you... a faggot? go play snoot game then get ending 1 if you want feels to hit you like a damn truck or pick basic bitch emo shit like undertale or omori but undertale has some damn good gameplay though, if you want dread, emulate devil may cry 2, if you want cringe go play nu-devil may cry and increase dialogue volume so you can hear all the fuckawful shit they say.
Many games have moments of cruelty and villainy, if only with some personal creativity.
there's starmancer, dwarf fortress and even oxygen not included because the game kind of ties them to a gameover condition, if you want maximum suffering play the sims and poorly manage them on purpose, sims2 due to aspiration failure is even better.
postal 2 is token though but you can beat the game without killing almost anyone, the OG i mean because the one in steam is bundled with a fan mission where you need to kill some cows.

Unmanned. You're an army man sitting in somewhere in the US, flying a drone one the other side of the world and bombing haiji's if it looks like they're up to something, then you go home to your family and play call of duty with your kid.
this description made me wish nool added the 'merica sticker... 4 july is a bit far, ain't it?
 
For anyone who has played Undertale, would you consider that to be - in part - an empathy game? With how many of its systems and narrative require some sort of emotional investment to truly pay off, or even encourage playing through it more than once. Though this is from the lens of someone who doesn't care much for the gameplay segments in Undertale and thus hasn't played the game, though I have watched it.
 
For anyone who has played Undertale, would you consider that to be - in part - an empathy game? With how many of its systems and narrative require some sort of emotional investment to truly pay off, or even encourage playing through it more than once. Though this is from the lens of someone who doesn't care much for the gameplay segments in Undertale and thus hasn't played the game, though I have watched it.
No, at its core it is a novelty comedy game. The game itself is utterly fucked to death by now and the stench of tumblr BO and furry semen will never wash out but it had parts that were genuinely funny.

Life is Strange is some kind of empathy game if empathy often means feeling guilty. People here hate that game but it's pretty decent if you get through the first episode or so.
 
Life is Strange is some kind of empathy game if empathy often means feeling guilty. People here hate that game but it's pretty decent if you get through the first episode or so.
After getting almost everybody killed, I realized the moral of that game is, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."
 
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