Games that have meta progression between playthroughs?

[rusty_shackleford]

Excluding roguelikes/roguelites. Games like Eternal Darkness where you have to beat the game three separate times to unlock the real ending.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The only two substantial cases I know of are Fate/SN and Nier Automata.

Fate/Stay Night: you have to finish the baseline Fate storyline, which then unlocks a dialogue option early on your second playthrough that diverges to the 2nd route Unlimited Blade Works, and then completing that unlocks a third option on your third playthrough that leads to Heaven's Feel. They are three different stories in one box, with each story building upon the last, so you can't start at whichever route looks the most appealing to you. The baseline Fate route establishes the characters and setting. UBW is when you start getting into the meat and potatoes of what Fate is really about (men can toil for their entire lives or even forever, but will never realize a lasting utopia. They and their works will always perish), and the HW is a followup to UBW's story (because being a fulltime hero trying to singlehandedly save the world is pointless, you should instead concentrate on helping yourself and the people around you, when possible). And then you get the true ending.

Nier Automata: same situation as Fate/SN where you have an initial playthrough, but that is not actually the real story. You continue and then get several different campaigns (route A > B > C > D > E) until you reach the true ending.


Outside of those two cases, you are either looking at visual novels where there are multiple routes and completing all of them unlocks a true ending, but the other routes are not mandatory or must be played in a sequential order. Or stuff like Sakura Wars V or Trails of Cold Steel 2 where you get a few extra scenes on your second playthrough (Ratchet romance route for SW5, extra magic knight boss battle and an epilogue scene that sets up CS3 in CS2), but you are still pretty much playing through the same storyline as your first playthrough.


EDIT: Tactics Ogre has two and a half routes. The PSP rerelease lets you retain your party member's progression and equipment if you rewind time to an earlier decision point to explore the other route, though the routes are meant to be standalone, ie you don't need to play more than one to get the full experience.

[ERYFKRAD]

Way of the Samurai 4. Depending on specific faction jobs, you can open or close down specific buildings/businesses which in turn affect the endings you can go for.

[Norfleet]

What do we mean by "meta progression", really? Any game which requires you to replay the game in multiple runs to see additional content or endings, even though each run is still more or less exactly the same as the first? The original Zero Wing ("All Your Base Are Belong To Us") comes to mind, where after beating the game repeatedly in a single run, you'd start to see increasingly weird endings and admonishments to go to sleep.

Any game which has a New Game+ where you carry over some or all items from a previous playthrough?

Ribaorld has endings in which your playthrough is partially carried over to the next one, in that you can select several characters and/or items to carry over.

Any game which has a progression system that is outside any individual playthrough which grants effects or unlocks game items/modes/options that wouldn't otherwise exist?

Pretty much every match-based PvP game has some kind of meta-progression other than the individual matches where you unlock higher tiers of stuff or more resources to build your loadout with.

AOW:PF had the "Empire" mode where each playthrough unlocks features and gains XP in various paths that are applied to subsequent matches, AOW4 has the "Pantheon" mode that unlocks additional creation features and whatnot.

I assume by "roguelikes", we're also excluding Diabloesques, such Diablo, Diablo With Guns, Diablo Can Into Space, and soforth, so I've omitted anything that falls into this category.

[Vergil]

It's pure dogshit and I refuse to do it ever.

[Vergil]

Way of the Samurai 4. Depending on specific faction jobs, you can open or close down specific buildings/businesses which in turn affect the endings you can go for.

Except this one

[Breathe]

I enjoyed Nier Automata way more than I thought I would because of this. It's why I now have the Drakengard games in my backlog. After quick search it looks like the Drakengard series is similar in nature.

[Oyster Sauce]

In Dragon's Dogma your old character becomes the new final boss every time you play

[NotAI]

Here is the outline for a game with amazing metaprogression.

It is the story of a boy and his dog.

If you play and beat the game once, the dog dies.

If you beat it twice, the boy dies.

If you beat it three times, the boy and the dog both die. Even worse.

If you beat it four times, the boy eats the dog.

If you beat it five times, the dog eats the boy.

If you beat it six times, you discover that in the true ending, the boy hallucinated the dog.

Seven times: in the real true ending, the boy is not real. The dog hallucinated him.

Eight times: the boy is actually a zombie.

Nine times: the dog is actually a vampire.

Ten times: in the definitive true ending, after many adventures, the boy cuts off his **** and writes with it on a wall of a ruined city: everything is okay. The dog eats his ****, because it's a dog. Except it's not a dog. It's actually his zombie sister, who has been running around on all fours the entire game, but the boy was crazy, and hallucinated about having a dog. This is very sad. Actually she is not his sister, but his mother. So the boy revives. Because he too is a zombie. Then he murders the narrator, who was following them around with a camera, which is actually the third person camera used throughout the game. Sad music plays. Then a pop song. Credits roll. WOAH. HOLY ****. THAT'S DEEP POWERFUL ****, says the reviewer. 10/10, says the reviewer. (He didn't play it. He watched a streamer play it.)

[J1M]

Dragon Age Origins has character options locked behind achievements, not in-game actions. So once you unlock something like the Blood Mage specialization you can use it in another playthrough. Or load your game from before the mutually exclusive choice and still get the benefit.

[Manny V]

Mordheim lets you unlock things that make subsequent attempts easier/less frustrating, so when you inevitably ragequit your current run from all your guys getting killed/crippled at least your next run should be a bit less aids

In hindsight i guess it's a bit roguelike in some ways

[gerey]

Nier Automata: same situation as Fate/SN where you have an initial playthrough, but that is not actually the real story. You continue and then get several different campaigns (route A > B > C > D > E) until you reach the true ending.

Automata is really quite unique in how it slowly builds upon the plot. At the end of route A you think that's it, you have achieved a logical conclusion to the story, but no, the game opens up a new layer, advancing the plot forward, revealing new things, and then the other routes keep building up on this until the whole thing reaches a crescendo, with an epic ending sequence accompanied by an even greater soundtrack.

People dismiss the game because 2B is goonerbait, but it's a really nice story. Pity the team didn't have more money to fully realize their vision. I can imagine just what kind of neat things they could have done with half the budget Square-Enix lights up on fire every time they **** out another Final Fantasy flop.

Pity there's not more devs that are copying what Automata did narratively.

As for games with metaprogression, there's Resindet Evil 2, both the original and the remake. In the original, besides the four routes (Claire A / Leon B, Leon A / Claire B) there was also the "zapping" system. Certain things you did in one playthrough would affect events in the other - so if you picked up a weapon in the Claire A scenario, that weapon would not be available to Leon in the Leon B scenario.

The remake did away with the zapping system, but kept the four routes, so playing with Claire first would make Leon's campaign different, and vice versa.

Dunno if weapon and infinite ammo unlocks, a staple of RE games, count?

[fork]

Do classic Resident Evil 2's A/B scenarios count?
Fake edit: I see gerey already mentioned it. I agree. Remake is a poor imitation though.

Withering Rooms also needs NG+ for the true Ending (great game btw.).

[DemoGraph]

Pathologic, Vangers (well, you can get the best ending in both games on the first try, but it's almost impossible without meta knowledge).

[rusty_shackleford]

bump.