Cornwind Evil posted:

Suikoden 5.

In case anyone doesn't know, the Suikoden series is based around gathering 108 chosen people to battle in massive campaigns and wars and whatnot: if you find all 108 in one of the games, you generally get some bonus (usually a better ending). This ending is somewhat circumstantial, but eh.

The plot of Suikoden 5 boils down to trying to settle down a country's troubles and claim 'The Sun Rune'. The main character and his bodyguard/lifelong friend in the course of the game claim two 'guardian runes' that are tied to the Sun Rune. One of the mini games of the series is dueling, which is basically rock paper scissors. Generally, if you lose a duel, it's game over and you die.

One of the secondary villains is a former peer of the prince's bodyguard turned assassin, and you fight him just before the last boss in a duel with said bodyguard. I screwed up and lost, but instead of a game over, the prince took over as the duelist (which I won). Heading to face the final boss...

If you don't have 108 Stars, your bodyguard ends up dying of her wounds after the final boss fight, whether you won the duel with her or not. This is the 'bad' ending. If, however, you find all 108 Stars, she will also die, but your two guardian runes will resonate with the Sun Rune and (after a scene with various ghosts of important people who died in the game's plot, including the main character's parents) bring her back to life for the good ending. What made this extra effective is I thought because I lost the duel with the bodyguard, I'd blown it and was going to get the bad ending, so the good ending ended up being an accidental fakeout and hence was even more satisfying.

Ending shown here. Might not work in a vacuum: you have to picture playing through the whole game, getting to know the characters, and make the mistakes I did. You can definitely see why, from how it is structured, I thought I got the bad ending, as well.