Fantasy Gun Control / Video Games

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• Angband: A few variants add guns, although they tend to just be different flavours of crossbow aside from Animeband (obviously built on anime tropes, but it kinda sucks because development died) and Steamband, which is set in the Victorian era.
• Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura: Played With. The battle between Science and Magick is an actual rule of Nature and a major sort of world-point; as to particularities of gun usage, the backstory examines the "conscript versus knight" problem, and firearms are both common and fairly effective... against unarmored humans and low-level monsters. Enchanted armor and mid-to-high-level monsters laugh at handguns, meaning that late-game technologists will be packing BFGs and lots of ammo. It's a recurring plot point as well in many of the sidequests, though it only becomes important to the main quest near the end.
• Arknights: Zig-zagged.
  • Every citizen of Laterano is entitled to at least one firearm for personal defense, and a good chunk of gun-wielding characters are native Sankta. For everyone else, though, guns are extremely rare and expensive pieces of hardware, with non-Sankta gunslingers are either wealthy enough to afford firearms or veterans who can be entrusted with such valuable weapons. Even then, these Operators carry only handguns at most. Other Snipers are stuck with crossbows or bow and arrows.
  • The Originum Dust crossover event with Rainbow Six Siege shines some more light on this. The natives of Terra are significantly stronger than humans from Earth, with Tachanka barely being able to pull back the string a standard Terran crossbow. In addition, all firearm propellants on Terra require both Originum and some training in Originum Arts to be able to shoot. Because of these factors, Terran bows and crossbows hit nearly as hard as guns and are much easier to access and use, which is why most Sniper operators use them.
• BattleCry has the absence of guns as a plot point in its backstory. Specifically, gunpowder was "banned following a cataclysmic world war at the dawn of the 20th century", providing a plot reason for the game's melee-leaning, gun-free combat mechanics.
• Battle for Wesnoth has a tech level equivalent to around the middle ages in terms of armour, shipbuilding, etc. But only the Dwarves have access to guns. And those are held up as very rare, with their secret unknown to anyone else. This is Handwaved as being due to the components for gunpowder being rare in-world. Oh, and they're called Thundersticks/Dragonstaves, not guns. Flame wars result otherwise.
• Bloodborne — unlike Demon's Souls and the Dark Souls trilogy, FromSoftware's previous games — averts this. The game is based on Victorian England, so there are plenty of guns to be used in tandem with a melee weapon, which is the preferred fighting style of Yharnam's Hunters. There are pistols, blunderbusses, shotguns, sniper rifles, spears and rapiers combined with guns, cannons, and one instance of an NPC putting a mounted Gatling gun to deadly use against the player.
• Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night averts this for the protagonist but strangely plays it straight for the demons. Miriam's magically-reloaded flintlock pistols are the equivalent of semi-auto pistols; while they start out relatively weak, the lowest-grade ammo is infinite and can attack enemies across the screen, and with the right equipment they can become the most powerful weapons in the game^note The Recycle Hat gives infinite ammo to any bullet type — especially diamond-tipped ammunition. For some reason, despite having access to firearms (and the technological know-how to engineer/use them), demons stick to arrows and magic.
• Averted in Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross, where guns exist alongside magic (though, guns are implied to be a recent invention). Three technologically-minded characters (Lucca, Norris, and Starky) use them and gun-wielding soldiers replacing sword-wielding knights is part of the backstory of Chrono Cross.
• Darklands averts this trope. It takes place in 15th-century central Europe, and you can find a few forms of gunpowder alongside the "natural" medieval weapon variety. And no, the guns are definitely not overpowered — they take ages to reload and are only useful against armored opponents (where a bow would cause very little damage, albeit repeatedly). Then again, this is a setting where alchemical concoctions made from things like Antimoni and Phlegmatic Base can do a lot more damage than any weapon.
• Diablo III: The Demon Hunter goes way beyond an Automatic Crossbow, firing rockets, grenades, bolas, and nets, often on semi- or full-auto, from a crossbow, or even a hand bow.
• Dishonored: Small arms appear to be commonplace. Most city watchmen and Overseers carry pistols which look like wheel-locks, but which seem to use some kind of modern-ish mechanism with trans (refined whale oil) as a propellant. The player character, Corvo, can purchase quite a few modifications for his pistol, which when fully upgraded becomes a revolver. So far, we have only seen pistols, but it can be reasonably assumed that muskets and cannon with similar mechanisms are used elsewhere.
• Dofus started out relatively gun-free (for the most part; some of the pirate enemies used flintlock pistols), but many steampunk and clockpunk enemies wielding guns and bombs (and the occasional laser gun) have been added to the game as the years have gone by. Moreover, back in 2008, they added an equippable gun called a Tormentator that transforms the player into an elemental knight wielding the gun plus a sword, and in 2010, they added a class called Rogue that uses guns and bombs for its "spells".
• Dragon Age:
  • The setting toys with this — the native humans, elves, and dwarves haven't invented cannons due to relying on magic of various sorts (golems and rune-based enchanting on the part of the dwarves), but the qunari, a race invading from another continent, do have cannons, and their invasion was only stopped after four grand religious crusades against them and the use of high-powered magic that the qunari see as abomination. According to the qunari who can join the party (who himself uses a greatsword), they're planning another invasion.
  • According to the Awakenings' epilogue, the qunari have a policy to assassinate anyone else trying to develop gunpowder or non-magic explosives. A couple of side plots in Dragon Age II have to do with attempts at obtaining the formula from the qunari, and the qunari response. Inquisition has a dwarf sapper named Rocky who's trying to develop it on his own, but his Qunari boss assures everyone he's really not close to doing it.
  • Dragon Age: Inquisition has Solas ask why Bianca, who made Varric's incredibly powerful crossbow, doesn't mass produce them. Varric claims they didn't want to make dwarven warfare worse than it already was.
    • The same game's Trespasser expansion reveals that Qunari black powder is not actually gunpowder, it's a much more complicated and less stable alchemical concoction. Making it involves harvesting caustic chemicals from captive dragons. The expansion also shows that the human kingdoms do have gunpowder, enough to make fireworks anyways.
• While not explicitly called "guns", the hand cannons in Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup are basically the work's equivalent of firearms. They're described as using "magical dust" and "applied alchemy" to launch bolts, and they emit smoke when used. They have pretty solid damage and are one-handed, so it's possible to combine them with a shield or orb, but they're also loud and fairly slow. The unique hand cannon, Mule, even incorporates a recoil mechanic, knocking the player back when used.
• Dungeons of Dredmor: Invoked. Guns do exist — but they're kept down by the Bolt Council's monopoly.
• Elden Ring: the setting has a lot of elements of the early modern era such as zweihanders, rapiers, a lot of the clothes, and the knights all wearing full plate armor closely modeled on real 16th century suits (just up-sized), but firearms are not among these elements. Gunpowder clearly exists in the Lands Between and has been weaponized (enemies in the first zone will occasionally throw primitive grenades at you and have Exploding Barrels stockpiled in their bases), but guns and cannons are almost entirely absent. The dominant projectile weapons of all armies are still bows and crossbows, and the primary artillery are still ballistae and catapults. Apparently someone did have the idea since there is a small (but man-portable) cannon in the game, but it's referred to as "experimental" and its description emphasizes how unusual it is (apparently, no one in the army carrying it knew how to use it).
• In The Elder Scrolls series, no matter how much time passes, nobody ever seems to figure out the logistics of firearms. However, there are a few notable cases of close calls and one-offs:
  • An in-game book in Daggerfall titled "Jokes" uses the word "cannon".
  • The extinct Dwemer built Steampunk Humongous Mecha durable enough to function after 3,000 years of neglect and had the power to mess with the laws of the universe, but never invented the musket. They did invent explosive devices (satchel charges, as seen in Morrowind) but never seemed to put together the idea of using them to launch a projectile.
  • As revealed in The Elder Scrolls Online's Morrowind expansion, the Tribunal deity Sotha Sil did build automatons armed with enormous hand-cannons, but as an Inexplicably Awesome, reclusive Physical God and master of Schizo Tech (he was building massive computer systems, cybernetic lifeforms, and outright artificial intelligences at a time when most are stuck stabbing at each other with swords), he wasn't too keen on sharing with the rest of the world... Online is a prequel and this invention is apparently lost by the time of the main series.
  • However its hinted in the lore that Redguards have adopted cannons as standard naval weaponry and The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard even shows signs of barrels and kegs being filled with gunpowder.
• Averted in Elona. You can buy a gun from the blacksmith in the first town, and if for some reason they're out or they don't have the type of gun you want there will definitely be guns in the nearby Cyber Dome. Guns are a perfectly respectable weapon, with good killing power that matches or exceeds bows and crossbows. (The static artifact bows and crossbows feature spell invokes, attribute bonuses, or similar tricks, while guns just focus on increased damage.) In the game's backstory, the rise of the Yerles kingdom is because of their excavation of the ruins of previous civilizations, which let them recover advanced technology such as firearms.
• The Anachronism Stew setting of Enchanted Scepters pits a typical fantasy kingdom of knights and wizards against invaders armed with machine guns.
• Despite all the Endless technology laying around in Endless Legend, no faction on Auriga can acquire firearms. The Vaulters, a faction of humanity that remembers its origins in space and uses some Lost Technology like Powered Armor and Humongous Mecha, makes do with Automatic Crossbows that look suspiciously like assault rifles with crossbow limbs; especially odd considering they can develop space travel before firearms. They apparently learn how to make guns at some point before they return in Endless Space
• Enter the Gungeon gratuitously inverts this trope. Gun- and bullet-related symbolism is everywhere in the ever-shifting keep, the enemies the player encounters are walking bullets and shells, and even typical High Fantasy monsters are packing heat. Additionally, melee weaponry like swords are considered highly taboo and blasphemous, to the point that players who wield items with melee functionalities have a better chance of encountering the Jammed.
• Completely averted in Eternal Card Game, and guns have even progressed to revolvers.
• Etrian Odyssey:
  • Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard introduces Gunners in its series, characters that have above-average attack and technical power, but are slow as rocks.
  • Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City has a the Arbalists, whose weapons of choice are somewhere between a crossbow and a machine gun.
• After being played straight in the first game, this trope was averted in Fable II, where pistols and rifles are used alongside crossbows, swords, axes, and maces. In fact, the invention of firearms seems to have been a deciding factor in the destruction of the Heroes Guild, as the availability of pistols meant that people no longer had to be reliant on arrogant Will-users. This also holds true for Fable III, where the Hero has a variety of pistols and rifles to use as ranged weapons, and cannons are also seen in use: one side-quest involves killing hollow men with a mortar.
• Final Fantasy:
  • The series has an odd relationship with this trope; it's generally played straight in earlier titles, but uses Guns Are Worthless instead for more modern games.
  • Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy X-2, Final Fantasy XII, and Final Fantasy XIII have both party members (one per game, usually) and enemies using guns, but as the exception rather than the rule, and they do no more damage than melee weapons. Although in some games, they are able to ignore armour.
  • Final Fantasy X uses this trope more literally than most; the Corrupt Church running the world declared technology (including firearms) evil, blaming them for causing The End of the World as We Know It a thousand years earlier. Guns do show up eventually, though (and they're worthless). Said church has no qualms about using machina themselves. All of their soldiers wield rifles and are supported by machina even more advanced than those fielded by the Al Bhed. Except in cutscenes, where on occasion, the heroes have guns pointed at their heads in a very threatening manner.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Advance, and Tactics A 2 all have worthless guns as well. They're restricted to a handful of classes, aren't particularly strong (but have good range, at least), and at least in the original Tactics, have no moveset associated with them, meaning characters equipping them sacrifice the ability to use more powerful class abilities. Tactics has some (rather rare) guns that shoot magic. The advance games are better about it, but the jobs using guns are more support classes than strong damage dealers.
  • Crystal Bearers averts this. Magitek is seen all over the place but mechanical carbines are still standard issue for at least part of the Lilty army, and handheld pistols are privately carried and used more than once.
  • Final Fantasy VI seems to have skipped pistols and rifles entirely and gone straight to missile launchers and lasers!
  • In Final Fantasy XIV, Eorzea's mastery over magic made guns widely unpopular, with black powder pistols only found in the pirate city Limsa Lominsa, and even there they are tightly regulated — Limsa's admiral, Merlwyb, is the only non-Garlean character seen to make any real use of firearms before the expansions. But with Garlond Ironworks bringing Garlean magitek to Eorzea, the nation of Ishgard began adopting new weapons technology and more advanced firearms in their Forever War with dragons, leading to the introduction of the Machinist class in Heavensward. Of course, even that takes a while as many Ishgardians would prefer the old ways of swords, shields, and spears with the occasional cannon-fired spear and a part of the Machinist's storyline deals with a noble trying to sabotage the newborn class.
  • In Final Fantasy XV, guns exist all over the place, but the prevalence of magic and magitek giving warriors superhuman abilities in the setting makes them weapons mostly used by Mooks and the inexperienced Prompto.
  • In Final Fantasy IX, despite the prevalant usage of cannons, gunpowder fireworks, and an actual enemy equipped with a rather large gun, the game seems to have completely disregarded guns entirely; Even if the game's setting takes place around the mid 17th century, when muskets would've well been in development. This is probably down to the fact that the game was more of a callback to the first Final Fantasy (which itself also occluded firearms).
• Fire Emblem as a whole tends to play this straight but features a notable aversion in the form of the rarely-appearing Shooter/Ballistician class. Several of its combat animations, going back to the original game, depict its primary weapon as a cannon, and one of its strongest weapons is called "Elephant", likely a reference to an elephant gun. In most games to feature the class, though, it's simply depicted as using a ballista.
• For the King has flintlock pistols and muskets. While they can oneshot most enemies, they have the Necessary Drawback of requiring you to reload after you use them, so keep a friend or two close to your gunner. The musket even has a bayonet, increasing its melee attack (the pistol makes do with a pistol whip.)
• Zig-zagged in Tin Man Games's Gary Chalk's Gun Dogs. Gary Chalk was an artist who worked on a number of Games Workshop games including some Warhammer properties. Gun Dogs reflects that, so your titular Boxed Crook starts off with a deadly Clock Punk-esque three-chambered pistol as part of his arsenal. Though in this fantasy setting only humans with their early Steampunk civilization is advanced enough to have guns, everyone else is still medieval or Dark Age.
• The technology of the Geneforge series is based on biological engineering, so any new inventions would be an application of that. The functional equivalent to guns are projectile-shooting batons that are grown to shoot thorns of varying power and effect.
• Gloria Union, which has more advanced technology than the other games in the Union series, replaces bows with guns in the weapon triangle. Three recruitable characters — Elisha, Yggdra, and the robot Gangr — use firearms as opposed to traditional fantasy melee weapons.
• Golden Sun:
  • You run around with swords and magic for 99% of the game, and there is no such thing as "ranged combat." Right up near the end of the games, though, when you have at least one character with more than 5 Djinn, you get access to the Ninja class. While it may still be magic, the standard Flame line of spells turns into the Firebomb line of spells, each named after a progressively larger explosive. These are slightly more or less powerful depending on who you make the Ninja.
  • It underlies the changes in Weyard when more advanced weapons (fireworks and cannons) show up in Dark Dawn, showing the technological progress since the first two games. The player characters can't use them, though.
• Granado Espada: A considerable part of the game's identity as a fantasy world is the combination of guns with swords and sorcery. It sets the musketeer class apart from the usual archers.
• Averted with Grim Dawn. Guns are not only present, they're also some of the deadliest weapons in the game: bypassing armor, rapid firing, Bottomless Magazines. Some are even enchanted in the same way legendary swords are.
• In Guild of Dungeoneering, the flintlock pistol is treated as a Magic Wand that grants the user a pair of fire spells. They have guns, but not bullets, it seems, using it more like a flamethrower.
• Guild Wars:
  • The first game does not have any handheld guns at all, though does have gunpowder explosives and cannons in a few places.
  • Guild Wars 2 has had 250 years of technological development, giving Tyria flintlock rifles and pistols as fairly common weapons. Cannons are standard for naval warfare, and Charr artillery includes explosive shells, mortars, cannons, and tanks all on a roughly WWI-era level of sophistication. The Engineer player class makes use of guns, flamethrowers, grenades, bombs, mines, and automated turrets. Asura technology takes this trend even further with magical laser cannons.
• Played straight and later averted in .hack series of games. The first four games have a conspicuous lack of guns, but in the second series of games, taking place in a revamped in-universe MMO where the story takes in, there is a new class called Steam Gunners wielding Bayonets. They perform much like a mage would, except dealing physical damage. Later in the third game, Haseo himself gains access to a Job Class exclusive to him, in which he wields dual guns.
• Justified in Hades. The Adamant Rail was a gun used by Hestia in the war between the Gods and the Titans, and once that was settled, they sealed it away, rightfully believing that if it ever was released into the mortal world, warfare would become even more vicious and bloody than it already was. Tellingly, the two Greek Gods who don't outright loathe the damned thing are Zeus, who is neutral at best about it, and Ares, who obviously wants it to be unleashed.
• Averted in Koei Tecmo's early SNES rpg Inindo, yeah it's fantasy but one based on real historical Japanese events including the attempted assasination of Oda Nobunaga by a rifle team. In this game, samurai can use rifles while ninja can pack pistols as an addition to their ninpo magic and Stock Ninja Weaponry.
• The Iron Grip series averts this, being set in a Steampunk Low Fantasy world ravaged by endless wars, undergoing a second or already third industrial revolution in its long history. Then again, the aversion becomes slightly subverted itself — by the presence of a mostly archaic atmosphere and lots of old-fashioned weapons thrown into the mix...
• Jade Empire allows the player to claim a pseudo-European conquistador's musket as a prize for besting him in a duel. It does significantly more damage than most weapons, but has a low rate of fire and doesn't work well against magical creatures. Sir Roderick himself lampshades this in the debate, claiming that one of the Empire's flaws is that they have not invented handheld firearms despite having the means to do so.
• Knights in the Nightmare: No characters wield guns, but guns exist in its world — one knight, an archer, has an early model of a pistol as his Key Item and mentions that it's a new foreign weapon that a blacksmith recommended he try out.
• League of Legends: Zig-Zagged. Guns and other firearms do exist in a notable capacity across certain factions of Runeterra, namely Piltover and Zaun (twin cities serving as the financial/mercantile hub of the world), and to a lesser extent Bilgewater (a lawless Wretched Hive where piracy is rampant), but otherwise, other nations are lacking in modern firepower, including the more outwardly militaristic ones like Noxus. The reason for this discrepancy is fairly simple: guns are really expensive due to monetary value, the scarcity of resources and the level of engineering expertise required to make them, with the reason why they're more common in Piltover and Zaun is that they're rich enough to afford it. Even then, they're not manufactured on a wide scale in part due to the resources still being rarities (namely hextech crystals), as well as the high demand lending itself to impatient construction, in turn to reckless and dangerous technology.
• Legacy of Kain: Averted, though not in the earliest era visited. Soul Reaver 2 has primitive-looking hand cannons and Defiance has demolition charges. The oracle's museum in Blood Omen has a more modern-looking gun which is just there not doing anything, maybe referring to the fact that some of the other items there are Chekhov's Guns.
• Legend Of Grimrock II: Firearms are available as a class of weapon available to players. They're also often employed by the game's ratling enemies, with their bosses wielding hand cannons.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • You got bombs, cannons, and Tatl in Majora's Mask mentions one enemy smelling like gunpowder, but no guns are available. However, a rifle can be seen in the shooting range in Kakariko Village when Link is an adult in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
  • Auru's bazooka in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is not exactly a gun, but still...
  • Then there's all the cannons in Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass. Firing bombs, no less. In the non-canon Hyrule Warriors, Tetra uses a flintlock pistol along with a cutlass. However, the pistol seems to be magic, as it shoots water.
  • There are a few cannons in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild near an old citadel and in Death Mountain, but there is no evidence of personal firearms.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the direct sequel to Breath of the Wild, has a mundane cannon in Gerudo Town that you can help place (alongside Gerudo soldiers and other impediments) in order to hold back a horde of Gibdos.
• Averted in Lunia, an Action-Arcade MMORPG owned by Ijji; Ryan Hunt, a soon-to-be-released playable character, uses guns. He has a rifle and a gatling gun attached to his hand, and seems to based on another of Ijji's games, Gun Z The Duel. Seeing as cannons are widespread in Lunia, it's a surprise that the only guns that appear are owned by Ryan and some of the pirate enemies.
• Might and Magic:
  • The universe goes straight to lasers in Might and Magic VI and VII, although it is Lost Technology. Unsurprising, considering starting from the first game, the series is heavily influenced by Star Trek and contains robots, transporter beams, and computer terminals. For that matter, the antagonist of the first five games, Sheltem/Alamar, is a robot built by Sufficiently Advanced Alien precursors.
  • Heroes of Might and Magic V has the gremlins, who use some kind of hybrid gun powered by magic.
  • Enroth, the setting of Heroes I to III and Might & Magic VI to VIII, was established as having cannons within the technological reach of the inhabitants, from gunpowder barrels and cannonballs being visible on sea battles in Heroes I, through one of the videos in Heroes III plainly showing a cannon, to Might & Magic VIII featuring multiple interactable cannons and even having a plot-point centred around the development of a fleetsinker Magitek super-cannon, even if guns aren't known to have been developed.
  • Completely averted by the Horn of the Abyss Game Mod for Heroes III. Both of the new factions use gunpowder in battle. Cove has the cannon as a stronger but more expensive alternative to the ballista, and has a Sword and Gun unit. For extra points, they represent the nation of Regna, which actually were the faction that had cannons in that aforementioned cutscene. The other faction, Factory, has gun turrets, flamethrowers, and a unit with a rifle and Quick Draw pistol. Justified in their case since they're meant to be a Technologically Advanced Foe using rudimentary versions of that Lost Technology.
• Averted in the Mortal Kombat series; In Mortal Kombat 3, Kano is hired to teach Shao Kahn's soldiers how to use modern weaponry, and in Mortal Kombat 9's story mode, Shang Tsung buys several rocket launchers and machine guns from Kano. In a way, this becomes a plot point: it's often noted that Earthrealm's technology is vastly superior to Outworld's, and as such the weapons supplied by Kano are considered a major contributor to the success of the invasion. Also, a number of characters have used guns in their movesets, including Stryker, Erron Black, Jax, Jaqui Briggs, and Cassie Cage.
• The Mount & Blade expansion With Fire and Sword incorporates firearms. Many other community mods also utilize firearms.
• Bungie's Myth series has dwarves, who toss around Molotov cocktails, plant bombs, and fire mortars (in Myth II), but no guns. There were, however, gun-wielding poachers in one humorous bonus level.
• While NetHack's greatest technological contribution to weaponry is the crossbow (in contrast to innovations in eatery such as the tin and candy bar), its variant Slash'EM includes a panoply of firearms — pistols, shotguns, submachine guns, sniper rifles, auto-shotguns, even rocket launchers. A dwarf or human with a character class capable of Dual Wielding can do so to great effect; the game even allows for simultaneous fire in two directions. Primitive graphics or no, there's nothing quite like having your dwarven warrior decked out in dragonscale armor, shielded by the gods, facing down demons, and firing enchanted machine guns. Of course, that's not mentioning the frag grenades, sticks of dynamite, lightsabers... This makes sense when you realize that the Yendorian Army is composed of brain-washed 20th-century soldiers, the main source of these weapons.
• Ogre Battle: Guns are not available, but are considered a new development in the sequel Tactics Ogre — and can only be used effectively by one special class. If you're not a Gunner, the weapon is merely a bludgeon! Not extremely powerful, but can shoot from any tile to any other, provided that there's no interference from the landscape (or other troops getting in the way!) However, depending on your stats and your level, they become almost realistic in that you can shoot someone and knock out most of their health. It's a good job for opening, though, or providing support when you don't have Archers, though.
• The Onimusha series is set in near the end of Japan's Warring States Period, with you fighting against the Legions of Hell. In that kind of setup, you'd assume that firearms wouldn't show up much and Katanas Are Just Better would be the law of the land, but every game includes at least some firearms, sometimes quite prominently.
  • In the second game of the series, Magoichi wields a high-accuracy rifle. And a gatling-gun. And a flamethrower. All of them are pretty damn effective against the demons and make any period where you play as Magoichi rather easy.
  • The third game features sections playing as Michelle, a French soldier with a variety of guns and other modern weapons including grenades and the like. She also proves pretty effective. Jacques mostly uses oni weapons, but in certain situations, he whips out a pistol as a support weapon and unloads on the demons with that too.
  • Ohatsu from the fourth game was a student of Magoichi's, and she's no slouch when it comes to wiping out demons with firearms.
• Inverted in Paladins. More than half of the characters tote a crystal-powered Magitek firearm of some description, be they a revolver, rocket launcher, or assault rifle.
• In the original Phantasy Star quadrilogy (which is essentially Science Fantasy), guns exist but are rarely used despite the futuristic setting. In I, the only guns available are heavy armor-piercing shotguns used by The Big Guy. II, pistols are essentially useless and only wielded by weaker support party members, while rifles, shotguns, and vulcans are (again) Big Guy weapons. III and IV essentially limit firearms to Cyborgs who are specifically designed to use them. In all cases, the only enemies who use guns are robots. (Perhaps the Algolians never managed to develop effective small arms?)
• Averted in Obsidian Entertainment's Pillars of Eternity. Three standard varieties of firearms are found in the game — pistols, blunderbusses, and arquebuses. They do a lot of damage and can ignore magical protections, but have a very slow firing rate. Gunpowder weapons are strongly, though not exclusively, associated with the church of Magran, the setting's war goddess, and your party member Durance, a Magranite priest, believes Magran gave mortals knowledge of gunpowder to even the odds between Muggle soldiers and mages.^note Which not coincidentally is frequently why other settings do use this trope. The church of Magran also built the Godhammer Bomb used to kill Waidwen (Crystal Dragon Jesus for the god Eothas) and end the Saint's War.
• Pokémon:
  • The franchise uses the Fireball example. While the technology in the Pokémon world is sometimes more advanced than ours, usually it's on par with that of the real world. However, you will notice that, unless it's the early Anime canon, you never see humans fire a gun. You can capture monsters that fight for you, so it makes a bit of sense that people would turn to technology to control these creatures rather than bother with some stuff to do it themselves, especially since a tiny piece of metal wouldn't put a dent in most of them. Ghetsis, the Big Bad of Pokémon Black and White, is unfortunately aware of this.
  • Zig-Zagged in that even though you never see any guns and cannons, they are still implied to have been invented in some form, as evident by structures such as Genesect's added photon cannon, Mimikyu's fake Pikachu tail which is made from what appears to be a wooden rifle stock, and Pokédex entries such as Chesnaught's mentioning vehicles like tanks existing (with the interesting tidbit that said Pokémon can flip one of 70 tonnes: the average modern battle-loaded tank weighs just a couple tons more, likely to prevent giant pangolins from defeating them). Many attacks also have "cannon" and "gun" in their names, with "Bullet Seed" being called "Seed Machinegun" in the original Japanese. At least one, Remoraid, actually resembles a pistol with its fins resembling the handle, trigger and hammer and markings that resemble the barrel. It also learns a number of attacks that involve firing projectiles or beams.
• Downplayed in Quest for Glory II: The Apothecary has invented or discovered gunpowder (or, as he calls it, "powder of burning") and will give it to a Thief to defeat the Earth Elemental. However, he hasn't made very much of it, and no weapons have been invented to make use of it.
• Remember Me is bereft of human-used guns, due to laws of some sort in the backstory. Drones and gunships are able to use guns, but cops only use stun batons on you. The end result is Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting.
• Despite being a Souls-like RPG, Remnant: From the Ashes gives this trope the middle finger - not only are there a plethora of guns for the player to use, but each faction has at least one mook who uses a rifle of some sort. Special attention goes to the Root, who has units wielding equivalents to miniguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, and even grenade launchers. Gameplay wise, players are encouraged to unload their firearms into bosses and reserve melee attacks for fodder enemies.
• Rift has magic vs. technology (or rather, "pure" divine power vs. potentially-reality-breaking magitech) as the crux of the conflict between the two factions. Warriors and Rogues can use both bows and rifles, though due to the way stats are applied, warriors usually end up with guns and rogues with bows. The only real gameplay difference between them is the animation used, and if the sound effect is a "bang" or a "twang".
• Guns were a very popular topic on the Runescape forums, with many people arguing why guns would or would not fit the world. While some people thought that adding very early firearms would be fine, considering that there were already cannons, trains, "gnome-gliders" and hot air balloons present in the game, others were against it (usually claiming that it wouldn't fit the setting, despite the other tech. available, or that they'd be too powerful), and no one expected them to ever be introduced. However, in 2009, they finally introduced dwarven hand cannons, which are as close as you can get to actual guns in the game. Also, there is a bazooka that shoots frogs. Yes, FROGS.
• In Sacred Underworld, the Dwarves use gunpowder and firearms perfectly fine. They have cannons, muskets, and even semiautomatic rifles.
• Also averted in FromSoftware's Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, which takes place in 16th century Japan. The Ashina clan has access to firearms and they make liberal use of them against you, with many of their Ashigaru using tanegashima matchlock muskets. Even Isshin Ashina, the clan patriarch renowned primarily as an unmatched swordsman, has no qualms about pulling out a gun in the middle of a duel. There's also the Sunken Valley clan, whose weapon is a more primitive but no less deadly hand cannon; some of them even carry around full-sized cannons without a sweat. And as if that wasn't enough, there's also gun-toting monkeys, as in literal Japanese macaques trying to shoot you dead with muskets.
• Justified and eventually averted in Shin Megami Tensei IV. The Eastern Kingdom of Mikado, due to its diminutive size and slowed development, really has never needed any weapons more advanced than pole weaponry, and their military force, the Samurai, mostly rely on swords and their Gauntlets. When demons start appearing en masse, they become desperate to even out the advantage and task their Samurai with retrieving various guns and firearms from Tokyo. Two missions have you raid military bases, first to outfit the entire Samurai force with guns and another to supply a resistance movement with bazookas.
• Averted in the first Shinobi where Joe Musashi gets a bolter-like SMG as his weapon upgrade, but played straight in sequels as every other game gets rid of that rocket-propelled machine gun in favour of flaming shurikens. There's also glaring lack of guns for your enemies in many Shinobi sequels.
• The Sims plays with this. The descriptions for the Law Enforcement, Military, and Paramilitary (Bustin' Out only) careers, reveal that firearms exist in the Sims universe, but (unless mods are used) are not normally available to them.
• Skies of Arcadia plays with the trope. Guns aren't nearly as common as swords or other melee weapons, but they do exist, if in primitive forms; one of the most powerful playable characters in the game, as well as the main character's badass father, fight with flintlock pistols. "Dance for me!"
• Soul Series:
  • An egregious case would be SoulCalibur Legends, which ostensibly takes place during the 16th Century. The Ottoman armies are conspicuously lacking in firearms, despite their historical proficiency in them. Indeed, the only gunpowder weapons in the entire game are small mini-cannon which are used against the player, and not against fortifications, as they should.
  • It's also worth a note that Mitsurugi's entire reason for wanting to find Soul Edge is because he was shot by a rifle, and wants to be more powerful than it.
  • Cervantes has had a pistol in the grip of his off-hand dagger since Soul Calibur. He uses it in a few attacks, most notably a command throw in which he jams it into his opponent's stomach and fires it two or three times in rapid succession. The game notes that the "bullets" aren't actually pieces of metal being shot off, it's evil energy in the shape of a bullet, fired by force of will. Normally this would be in Hand Wave territory, but considering the main antagonist practically bleeds "evil energy" it's not that far-fetched comparatively.
• Suikoden:
  • The only group to possess firearms is the cult-like Howling Voice Guild, and even those are only issued to their most trusted (read: indoctrinated) members, apparently those of Knight Class or higher. If a non-Knight-Class-Gunner is found in possession of a gun, the Guild's response is immediate and predictable. They don't do this for the technological advantage, though: their technology seems to be of flintlock quality at best. They do it for the psychological advantage, which is why Gunners are also trained in stealth and infiltration. One character actually points out that compared to a bow guns are slower, shorter ranged, and far more expensive. Despite this the gun users are pretty much some of the coolest characters in the games, all being badasses of varying levels.
  • A Howling Voice Guildmember in the Gaiden games provided one exception, as despite owning what looked like a normal flintlock pistol there seemed to be something wrong with the ammo supply...
  • In Suikoden V, Cathari's rifle looks like a modern sniper rifle. She also has the highest attack power in the game except for 'Deathblow' Georg Prime.
• Sunset Over Imdahl gets off on a technicality — nobody is ever shown using a gun, but it's mentioned in the very beginning that Imdahl's rather backwards compared to the army outside its gates, which has guns in great supply.
• The Surge and The Surge 2 are an interesting twist on this, as they take place in the future but focus largely on melee combat. The cybernetic "Rigs" that all combatants wear are extensively implanted in their bodies, and in the second game it is molecularly bonded to the skeleton so it is hard to tell where the biological parts end and the metal begin. As a result, everyone who has a Rig are Immune to Bullets as a side effect and enemies armed with conventional guns are little more than an annoyance. Firearms are used, but they tend to be enormous single-shot armor-piercing rifles. Most combat tends to be melee with either massive axes, clubs, and swords, or with repurposed industrial tools, as these weapons can hit much harder than firearms when wielded by someone with a Rig.
• The Tales Series Sometimes averted by at least having one character or type of NPC use guns.
  • Tales of Destiny have Oberon employees who use guns
  • Tales of Eternia has Max, who wields a Craymel laser gun
  • Tales of Legendia has Solon, who wields a pistol alongside a katana
  • Tales of the Abyss has Legretta, who dual wields pistols.
  • Tales of Innocence has Iria with her dual pistols and Ricardo with his rifle. There's a skit that takes place after visiting Iria's hometown which, curiously enough, resembles a stereotypical Wild West settlement that discusses this trope. Both Iria and Ricardo arrive to the conclusion that firearms are the future and once their usage becomes commonplace, all other weapons will be rendered obsolete.
  • Tales of Vesperia has Patty Fleur, who occasionally busts out one or two pistols for her normal attacks and artes.
  • Tales of Graces has Hubert, who wields dual pistols for ranged attacks and a double bladed sword for melee.
  • Tales of Xillia has Alvin, who wields a handgun along with his sword (Which is brought up in a skit, where Jude wonders whether or not it's magical in its nature). You also run into the Arknoah group later, who use various firearms and flamethrowers. It turns out both them and Alvin hail from Elenpios, a technologically advanced world that lies beyond the shell surrounding Riese Maxia.
• Tales of Maj'Eyal has no guns...at first. The player character in the DLC Embers of Rage campaign, which is set a year after the main campaign, comes from a faction that has created a variety of steamtech devices, including guns that use steam pressure to fire sling bullets.
• In Terraria, you have enchanted swords, water staffs, and Mario's fire flower, along with a shotgun, the laser rifle from Aliens, fully automatic crossbows, magic star cannons, and a minigun that looks like a shark.
• Touhou:
  • Averted by the series, which includes largely-justified Schizo Tech, though it should be noted that Gensokyo completely separated from the Outside World well after the introduction of primitive firearms to Japan. None of the main characters use them, because the battles are supposed to be non-lethal, and it is suggested that the weaponry would not be as effective against youkai as a blade with a strong history attached to it unless the bullets it was firing had an equally strong history behind them. That said:
  • Rika builds tanks and uses them to fight in Story of Eastern Wonderland. Notably, they have what appears to be seals on them to make them resilient to youkai attack and seem to use mostly energy-based bullets alongside conventional munitions in order to attack. As a result, Rika managed to get closer to beating Reimu anyone else using a combination of danmaku and (seemingly) conventional bullets in her final fight: They're hard to see and move extremely fast, after all.
  • Chiyuri threatens the heroine with "a small but very dangerous weapon" in Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream (and Marisa can win an ICBM from Professor Yumemi)
  • Kawashiro Nitori — Super Youkai Warhead — employs something like rocket launchers and missiles, especially in Subterranean Animism. In this case, it is undeniably Schizo Tech as the Kappa are on the top of the technology-magic hybrid tree in Gensokyo.
  • The Lunarians are on the top of everyone's technology tree. In Silent Sinner in Blue, there is a demonstration of their Defense Corps in action — Moon Rabbits with dress jackets, short skirts, helmets, and advanced projectile weaponry that look like rifles with bayonets but fire a spread of magic(?) bullets. (The mass-produced rifles are still outshined by Watatsuki no Yorihime's named Sword of Gion, not helped at all by the fact that they don't seem to know how to use them well.)
  • It should also be noted that of the characters we've seen in Touhou, most of them have no need for firearms, as they can naturally dish out More Dakka using danmaku than they would be able to with a gun. It would be the equivalent of someone with a minigun deciding to use a flintlock instead. That doesn't even get into the fact that danmaku is already a way for characters to limit their story breaker powers for the sake of fairness.
• Warcraft:
  • II had cannon-armed ships and towers and demolition teams on both sides carrying kegs of gunpowder; Warcraft III had Dwarven riflemen, flying machines armed with machine guns, and goblin demolition teams available to both sides; and a few classes in World of Warcraft can learn to use guns. Note, however, that most of the guns in the Warcraft series fire at rates one would generally associate with cartridge firing repeaters. Hunters in World of Warcraft do not have to carry powder along with their shot, and both they and the Dwarven riflemen in Warcraft III reload really, really fast.
  • The fact that they reload with superhuman speed may be for Competitive Balance, though.
  • Half the "bullets" are magical anyway, so it evens out.
  • Essentially, Guns in World of Warcraft are pretty much interchangeable with Bows and Crossbows, the other types of ranged weapons. Especially after the need for actual ammo was removed.
  • Rogues of the Outlaw specialization carry a concealed pistol resembling a flintlock and use it for some of their abilities.
• Zeno Clash is set in a world with Stone Punk elements (possibly post-apocalyptic?), there are grenades and a few firearms, but they are very ineffective so that most of the time you fight with punches and kicks.

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