Quote Originally Posted by Midareyukki View Post
- FF4, FF6, FF7, FF9, FF10 (kinda, especially in the new sound novel they made as a sequel to 10-2) FF13... but it's complicated. And FF15. These are all mainline games where at least one of the main playable characters dies permanently at some point.
- Crisis Core and Type-0 feature the death of the entire playable roster. Though Type-0 does have a way to avert it, but it doesn't erase the fact that those deaths still happened.
- Dissidia 012 kills off its prologue characters before the main Dissidia campaign. They're brought back somehow in NT tho.
- FFT makes it ambiguous whether or not the main character and his sister survive. We don't know whether he's actually alive, Delita's dying hallucination or just a gratuitous image to contrast the circumstances of Delita's death, like an allegory.

Death does happen somewhat regularly. It's never the entire cast except for two games: the first one is a single-player adventure, so it doesn't count, and the 2nd one has a secret ending where you can un-make the entire campaign.

Edit: If anyone's curious, the FF10 death is that Tidus is such a bigshot blitzball player and neglects Yuna for a bit, he then goes to the beach, finds a ball, thinks it's a Blitzball and kicks it. It's actually a Bomb and he dies. Yuna mourns him and tries to bring him back, but out of nowhere, Sin comes back. The end. Just... no further context, that's all the narration says xD
Tellah in IV is solid and you missed Galuf in V. VI isn't a given. Shadow doesn't have to die. Aerith in VII is one of the obvious ones, of course. Vivi dies in IX offscreen and after the final battle. X is solid though X-2's canon ending reverses it and then that sound novel reverses that reversal and then reverses it again (yeah that's not confusing). LR reverses the deaths that happened in XIII. XV is solid...kind of. The intended story to my understanding would have been resolved quite differently.

But there are other series. Fei goes to the end of the world to rescue Elly in Xenogears and the entire party comes home triumphantly. The cast of Chrono Trigger travel to the past and the future and beyond to defeat Lavos and comes home triumphantly. Alex saves Luna in the first Lunar game when she's been overtaken as her Althena persona by singing their song to her and everyone comes home triumphantly. Even in the first game in this series, the Warriors of Light travel into the past and defeat Garland as Chaos and...return home triumphantly.

Some games subvert this. Type-0 like you mentioned. Rose at the end of Legend of Dragoon because she's someone out of time, though the very end gives some hope there. That's why I said not unheard of even in this series. But it's just not a trend you see in JRPGs a lot.