Gamertell

Ah, villainy. A sacred and necessary vocation. After all, if there’s no antagonist, what’s the protagonist supposed to do all day, stay at home growing crops, raising animals and making friends with the neighbors? Inconceivable! Even when that situation arises, some ill-intentioned individual pops up and turns some earth goddess to stone.

While players typically rejoice after vanquishing a particularly evil and challenging nemesis, it isn’t uncommon to have a soft spot in your heart for the baddie. After all, he’s just doing his job. Maintaining balance and such. Plus, he represents a way of life people don’t get to experience.

Perhaps this is why gamers enjoy games where the villain is the star. For a brief moment, players get to see how the other side lives by vicariously living through an evil-doer who can be bumbling, sympathetic, humorous or down-right nasty.

So today, Gamertell’s going through, in no particular order, 11 games where players get to ditch their consciences and let loose, if only for a little while.

1. Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! What Did I Do to Deserve This? aka Yuusha no Kuse ni Namaikida

In Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! What Did I Do to Deserve This? the villain may be called the God of Destruction, but he doesn’t seem like all that bad a dude. After all, he spends pretty much the whole game in his underground lair. He’s just trying to defend his home and maintain a working dungeon ecosystem. So a few heroes get eaten along the way. Big deal. It’s part of the circle of life and frankly, their own fault. If they’d just stayed above ground, where normal humans are supposed to be, then they wouldn’t have encountered zombies, dragons and other assorted monsters.

So when players pick up this game, they get to play the defensive side. Set some traps for unsuspecting heroes. Build up a legion of monster bodyguards. The villain here is bad, sure, but even bad guys are entitled to a little down time, alone, in an cavern deep beneath the Earth’s surface.

2. Practically every strategic RPG ever created by NIS (Disgaea, Disgaea 3, Soul Nomad & the World Eaters, Makai Kingdom)

Before we get into this category - yes, I’m aware that Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! is being published by NIS America. It’s technically still an SCEI game, so it gets a separate spot. Plus, it’s an entirely different setup than the NIS strategic RPG’s we’re about to discuss.

What game comes to mind when you think NIS? Disgaea: Hour of Darkness. The strategic RPG is famous for it’s star Laharl, an overlord who wants to become the ultimate overlord. But NIS didn’t stop there. Disgaea 3: Absense of Justice for the PS3 has another idealistic star named Mao who also wants to become the top overlord. Then there’s Makai Kingdom, the story of an overlord who becomes trapped in a book and is fighting to regain his glory and original body. NIS is known for creating games where humorous “evil” characters all attempt in some way to become the ultimate overlord. Their actions aren’t always evil, sometimes they can be quite considerate, but they still qualify as villains.

Soul Nomad & the World Eaters is an NIS strategic RPG that can go either way. Throughout the game, players have the ability to choose the path the main character goes down, which then determines whether he/she ends up being good or evil. If players make the darker decisions, they end up on the Demon Path. An interesting twist to this is that characters who were originally allies will desert the hero and become foes if the player decides to become a villain.

3. The Overlord series

With a name like Overlord, a game has got to have a anti-hero as the star. And, it does. The Overlord series of games lets players be overlords who are trying to take over the land from heroes so they can be number one. The overlords even get little monster/goblin minions.

The whole situation is always handled in a humorous fashion, though it’s typically dark humor. Players get to choose just how bad their overlord character is, resulting in a character that could be considered simply a misguided delinquent to a pretty evil individual. It offers an interesting amount of freedom, while still keeping players along a set path of conquering the surrounding lands.

4. The Fable series

One of the hallmarks of the Fable series is the total freedom players are given. You can have your character undertake any action you want - there’s no right or wrong. There’s good and evil though, and depending on how the players treat the NPCs and behave, they can become evil.

Treading the dark path in Fable or Fable II results in some substantial changes. NPC characters will treat you differently, there are different abilities and, probably most striking, players will look different. As a character becomes more good or evil, the appearance changes. In Fable II, a player’s dog even becomes contaminated by dark acts.

5. Der Langrisser aka Langrisser II

Der Langrisser, an SNES game never released outside of Japan, is a bit like NIS’ Soul Nomad & the World Eaters. There are four possible paths that can be taken through the game, based on who the player decides the hero, Erwin, should side with. The Light and Imperial paths both could be considered the good, hero routes, while the Independent and Chaos paths could be considered villain routes.

The Independent path can be considered a villain route, simply because the player ends up facing off against the heroes in the Light and Imperial paths. However, Erwin’s ultimate goal in the Independent path is the idea of peace between humans and demons. While Erwin’s means of reaching that peace may not be entirely good, he’s working towards a good goal.

The Chaos path is a straightforward villain route. In it, Erwin sides with the Demon Tribe and the Prince of Darkness Boser. His ultimate goal and motivation in this scenario is to become the absolute ruler of everything, no matter what the cost, and totally decimate any Demon Tribe enemies in the process.

6. Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain

Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain is one of those games where you’re playing as an anti-hero with the ultimate potential to be good or evil. The sequels all occur under the assumption that the player chooses the dark end for Kain in Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, so that ending is considered canon.

Kain is killed and turned into a vampire in the game. He then sets out to kill the people who killed him. Then, the Guardian of the Pillar of Balance Ariel tells him to go and kill the corrupt human guardians of the Pillars. He does that. After a long saga of killing loads of important people, Kain is faced with a choice. He’s the last Guardian of the Pillar of Balance. If he sacrifices himself, Ariel, the previous guardian, will be revived, the world of Nosgoth will be revitalized and all vampires will be gone. Or, he can refuse to sacrifice himself and become ruler of everything.

Of course, Kain doesn’t sacrifice himself, and he goes on to be a vampire overlord who repeatedly takes over everything.

7. City of Villains

City of Villains is an awesome option for people looking to explore the dark side. It is both a stand-alone massive multiplayer online RPG, as well as an expansion to the MMO City of Heroes. Players create a villain, and begin the game by escaping from a prison. The villains then gather on the Rogue Isles with other villains, taking missions that allow them to perform dastardly deeds, create a lair to plot future nefarious schemes with other villains and face off against City of Heroes hero players.

If a gamer ever wanted to be a comic book villain, City of Villains will give him or her the chance.

8. The Destroy all Humans series

I suppose you could argue Crypto, star of the Destroy All Humans series of games, is a hero to fellow furons. After all, he’s salvaging furon DNA from human brain stems to save the furon race.

Of course, this mission requires him to kill humans, harvesting the DNA from their brain stems and occasionally has him taking over the United States, a fast food franchise and a casino. So much for being a good guy - to humans he’s just another villain. Even worse, he’s a villain who enjoys probing.

9. The Misadventures of Tron Bonne

It’s easy to feel somewhat bad for Tron Bonne. Yes, she’s a member of the Bonne air pirate family, known for their greed and antagonizing of MegaMan Volnutt from Mega Man Legends.

The Misadventures of Tron Bonne has Tron working to save the other members of the Bonne family, Teisel and Bon, after they’ve been captured because Teisel hasn’t paid back a one million zenny loan. Tron has to repay the one million zennies using any means possible, though she mainly goes around stealing stuff.

While Tron’s a villain, both her and her family aren’t all that malicious. They’re more annoying than evil. Nonetheless, a villain’s a villain.

10. Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume

Depending on how you play Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume, the antihero Wylfred can end up being a really despicable person. He’s not exactly a hero to begin with - the game chronicles his quest to find and kill the Valkyrie. Years before, she chose his father as one of her einherjar and Wylfred has decided that if she hadn’t, his father might have lived and then his mother wouldn’t have gone crazy and his sister wouldn’t have died.

In order to gain the power to kill the Valkyrie Lenneth, Wylfred has to sacrifice his friends to turn a plume from Hel dark. If he succeeds, he’ll gain the power and his chance to take her down. It only works if a friend is sacrificed, which means that Wylfred (and the player) has to get close to characters and care about them before a sacrifice can be made.

Nothing’s lower than sacrificing trusting friends to defeat a goddess who’s doing her job and, in a way, giving fallen warriors a second chance.

11. Evil Genius

Evil Genius is a strategy game that seems tailor made for fans of Austin Powers or Bond films, since you get to play a colorful villain like the ones in those movies. The goal is to take over the world, with the help of one of three superweapons which your villain spends the entire game researching and creating. You get a top secret lair, henchmen to order around and five government agencies to feud with and vanquish.

It succeeds in a sort of sarcastic sort of way. You can’t really take your villain character seriously, but the adventure’s still fun and it keeps the dream of world domination alive.