Older games with female protagonists?
Older games with female protagonists?
What games of older generations would you put up? i dont mind the genre really, id would just love to hear yalls suggestions.
EDIT: Just remembered Perfect Dark
How old are we talking? Final Fantasy VI, Super Metroid, Resident Evil 2, and the OG Tomb Raider series are all pretty old but great.
Portal, Portal 2, Mirror's Edge, Alien Isolation, Child of Light, Celeste, Tales of Berseria, Final Fantasy XIII, Slime Rancher, the newer Tomb Raifer games, and A Plague Tale are a few games from previous gens that hold up really well.
A more recent game that flew under a lot of people's radars is Kena: Bridge of Spirits, and it was a lot of fun. Also, Atelier Ryza and Alba: A Wildlife Adventure are very worth mentioning, too. :)
Portal
Perfect Dark
Tomb Raider
Metroid
Mirror's Edge
No One Lives Forever.
Tomb Raider
I remember creating a female Twi'lek Jedi in some of the old LucasArts Jedi games.
- LucasArts Jedi something something
- KOTOR
- Baldur's Gate
- Fallout Although these were more like "create-your-own protagonists" rather than "known hero protagonists" that people recognize.
Aside from the classics already mentioned in the thread, Lara, Chell, Samus, Valentine, Redfield, etc. here's a few that come to mind:
- Peach in Super Mario 2, the game that feels more like a mushroom trip, than a trip to mushroom kingdom
- Aya from Parasite Eve
- Chun Li from Street Fighter, also Cammy
- Mortal Kombat
- Tekken
- Soulcalibur
- Dead or Alive
- Sarah Kerrigan in Starcraft(s), although it's an RTS, so protagonist is a bit loose.
- Rayne from BloodRayne, the first video game character to appear in PlayBoy, eh
- Ellie from The Last Of Us, damn it's been 10 years already? Is that an old game already? Am I old? Nevermind, don't answer.
- Clem from The Walking Dead
- Joanna from Perfect Dark
I'm sure I'm forgetting a few others.
Final Fantasy VI is a great one!
Could look into Oni - One of Bungie's first game
Some of these aren't that old, but still...
Blades of Time - fun hack & slash
Crosscode - great SNES inspired action rpg
Gianna Sisters - platformer, has co-op
Icey - another hack & slash
Mirror's Edge - first person parkour simulator with a great main character and good story
Psuedoregalia - short indie metroidvania, best movement mechanics of any game in a long time
Transistor - awesome story, interesting mechanics.
Iji is a free game released in 2008. Sidescrolling shooter with a story, fun boss fights, and a great soundtrack. It's really a shame it isn't as well known in these circles, it's quite good.
Trying to think of some obscure, unknown games: Eien no Filena, a JRPG on the Super Nintendo. The protagonist is a woman pretending to be a man as a lower class citizen forced to be a gladiator. Awkwardness ensues when she is "assigned" a wife and the men around her start being very confused about their sexuality.
I believe all Elder Scrolls (at least the mainline games: Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim) let you select your character's gender.
Also, what is "old"? Mass Effect 1 is already 15 years old.
Ulala from Space Channel 5.
Syberia, if you're into point and click adventure games. I think they made three of them.
Phantasy Star. Love that game.
I put together a list of games for every letter of the alphabet with playable female characters that I've personally played and a lot of them are pretty old.
The main protagonist in Final Fantasy 6 is female. There's a large number of games that age or newer with Female protags... older is a bit harder (but not too hard. You just unfortunately end up with a lot of fringe games or exploitive games)
And below, some cheatiness (a fairly exhaustive list of both :) )
The older Resident Evil games (1, 2, Code Veronica, RE:Zero) have playable female protagonists. Actually most of the RE games have at least one segment where you play as a female character.
The swapping of two protagonists is actually something I wish they would bring back to the modern games in the franchise.
Since no one's mentioned it: Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2
How about Mrs Mopp?
Donkey Kong Country 3 if you count anthro characters. Dixie is also in DKC2 but there she is the sidekick and not the main character, not that there's much difference from a gameplay perspective.
I haven't seen it mentioned so i'll go with Ion Fury. It's not really that old, but it's made on Build engine. The same was used in Duke Nukem 3D or Blood. Same roots means main protagonist have badass comments on lot of game occasions.
How in the world did y'all miss Silent Hill 3? It's October, and there are even other horror games mentioned. No excuse! Tsk tsk.
Primal on PS2
Siberia!!! And Dreamfall!!! Best games ever!!!
edit: also I saw Life is strange in the comments, this is a really good game. And also I remembered bayonetta!!!
Don't know if PS1 counts as old but Valkyrie profile is one of my favorite games and you play as a Valkyrie recruiting fallen warriors and training them up for Valhalla.
Star Ocean 2 (also on PS1) is another one of my favorites and you can choose between a guy or girl at the beginning, which changes the story a bit.Napple Tale: Arisa in Daydream
A game for the Dreamcast that had a primarily female dev team. It was exclusive to Japan, but a translation patch was released a couple years ago.Atelier series
There are a bunch of these. They’re RPGs based heavily around crafting. Actually, they basically pioneered crafting in RPGs.Um Jammer Lammy
A spin-off of Parappa the Rapper. Lammy has only 15 minutes to make it to her band’s performance, but getting there won’t be easy.
Note that Stage 6 is censored in the North American release. Also as a bonus, completing the game unlocks Parappa mode, with new versions of every song after Stage 1.Athena
Stick with the original arcade version. The NES port is infamously bad.Psycho Soldier
A spin-off of Athena (sort of) starring Athena’s descendant/reincarnation (it depends on the writer), Athena Asamiya (and Sie Kensou as player 2’s character). Athena (and Kensou) would later become staples of the King of Fighters series. The game is notable for being the first game with a vocal soundtrack.Baraduke
An arcade title from Namco. Being on this list is actually a pretty big spoiler because the fact that the protagonist is a woman isn’t revealed until the end of the game. Now that probably sounds like a ripoff of Metroid, but here’s the thing: Baraduke did it first.Koudelka
An obscure horror RPG for the PlayStation.
The game is an unhappy compromise between the creator and the dev team. One side wanting to make a survival horror game and the other going for something like Final Fantasy VII. I’ve never actually gotten very far in this one because I hate the battle system. Also, this game has connections to the later Shadow Hearts series.Literally every game in the Otome genre
Probably not what you’re looking for, but technically fits your criteria of having a female protagonist.I might add more to this post if I can think of something else.
No One Lives Forever (and 2)
It's also rare to have a female protagonist in an FPS.
If you accept games where you fully create the character, you've got a ton of RPGs. Baldur's gate, elder scrolls, arcanum, fallout.
I'll recommend a few from different genres:
- Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade (later FE games also allowed the player to choose between male and female)
- Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (or Bloodstained: RotN for a newer, but aging, game)
- A Hat In Time (not sure if this is really that old but it's an amazing platformed)
- any Touhou game
- Life Is Strange (again, not sure if you'd consider this old)
Eien no Filena on the SNES/SFC (it was Japan-only but it's been fan-translated).
Not only is the protagonist a woman - that fact is repeatedly plot-relevant.
Wet is a fun game if you can handle the loading screens.
Cult: Heretic Kingdoms
Fantastic RPG game, with a badass female protagonist.
Ms. Pacman :)
Super Hang-On had a female protagonist but you only found out if you beat the hardest arcade mode
Erica
The Syberia Series
The Longest Journey
Gone Home
Virginia
What remains of Edith Finch
Beyond Good and Evil
Gabriel Knight 3 has shared protagonists that you switch between; one is a woman.
Likewise some of the Broken Sword series
Talos Principle is either non-gendered or whatever you want the protagonist to be.
The first Blair Witch game from 2000
Everyone's gone to the Rapture
Also, holla at whoever said "No One Lives Forever"; that game rules.
Most of my suggestions were already mentioned, but PN03 & darkened skye come to mind.
Pedantry aside, if you count the option of selecting a female character, trickstyle, borderlands, super mario bros 2, vigilante 8 second offense, tony hawk 3 (4, underground and probably any in this series but I haven't played them lol)
- Broken Age - point & click
- Little Dew - ARPG/Zelda-like
- most RPGs with character selection (Elder Scrolls, Mount & Blade)
- Raven's Hike - puzzle/platforming
- Shantae - platformer
I don't think anyone has mentioned this yet.
Venetica
A roleplaying game with a female hero and an interesting story:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/338140/Venetica__Gold_Edition/
One of my top 3 JRPGs, Star Ocean: The Second Story, has a remake coming out early November. In the beginning of the game, you get the choice to play as one of the main characters, a male or a female, each of whom has their own story arc and exclusive party members that can be found during the playthrough.
Metroid!
A bit late to the thread, but I just wanted to say Beyond Two Souls recently had its 10 year anniversary, if that counts as old.
Noone lives forever
No One Lives Forever
Siberia 100%.
Oni Parasite Eve X-Blades
Actually not from older generations, but Tacoma and Deliver Us The Moon are a few years old and both are short, sweet space-related narrative games with a female protagonist.
- Monster World IV
- Twinkle Tail
- If Tomb Raider is old enough for you
- Contra
- Touho
- another game I played (forgot the name, will edit later)
- most games where you could choose between 2 or more playable characters
Now that I think of it, the only not oversexualised female protagonists in retro games (I can think of rn) are from japanese titles. The USSR didn't import video games and Europe and the US were just too conservative ig.