Pyrrhic Victory / Video Games

Pyrrhic Victories in Video Games.

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• The mission results screen for the penultimate mission of Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies notes how victory over the Eruseans came at a very high cost of ISAF casualties, including many aces lost to Stonehenge.
• Advance Wars
  • In Advance Wars: Dual Strike the former dragon Hawke becomes increasingly worried of this as Black Hole's new means of gaining power involves draining it from the environment, shriveling it into sandblasted lifeless deserts straight out of Mad Max in the process. He fears that even if they win, all they'll have left to rule over is a wasteland and wonders if it's even worth winning at that cost, though Lash assures him they can always fix the damage once they've taken out the Allies. Finding out the new Big Bad is only in it to attain immortality, and being betrayed by said Big Bad, makes Hawke and Lash defect from Black Hole and join the Allies.
  • A very viable strategy, known in the PVP community as "Scorched Earth", forces this onto your opponent and is an effective counter against a superior force that is aiming to capture your properties. It basically involves charging in, running right past their stronger units, and only targeting their infantry and mech units. Sure you'll be wiped out on the counter-attack, but now your opponent has no means to capture your properties and thus fought that battle for no real reason — their only two options now are to hold that terrain until more infantry can arrive while you build up a proper counter, or retreat.
• Assassin's Creed: Unity: Sure, Arno was responsible for disassembling another branch of the templars. Yet he couldn't act fast enough or smart enough to stop their plans to create chaos using The French Revolution. And though he tried so hard, he Did Not Get the Girl due to her dying in the Final Battle.
• At the end of Batman: Arkham City, when it looks like Batman might not save The Joker from his TITAN poisoning the clown backstabs him to try getting the cure, causing it to drop and smash on the ground. Joker dies about a minute later. Extra irony-points because Batman really would have saved the Joker, and in his dying breath, he finds that fact hilarious.
• Baldur's Gate: in Siege of Dragonspear, the main character ultimately defeats the crusade and the Avernus, only to convince Irenicus to start his plan, frame him for the murder of Skie, capture his whole party, kill Dynaheir and Khalid and start the plotline of Shadows of Amn.
• In Baldurs Gate 3, one of the endings that is fastest to get is Gale blowing himself up to destroy the Nether Brain once and for all. Indeed, the Cult of the Absolute and the party along with it are destroyed. But the narrator explains that while the Absolute is gone, it still has the tadpoles on other people. Soon they will transform, creating mind flayers that will ravage the Sword Coast.
• Black Book: Vasilisa commits thousands of sins, kills her Evil Mentor, and sends herself to Hell, all so she can reunite with her one true love. Except the prophecy was all a lie; none of the demons remembered the prophecy properly, and all of them wanted Vasilisa to press forward as she did. After defeating Satan himself, Vasilisa realizes that despite her victories, she is left with nothing good in her heart; she can either take over Hell and raze the homeland she loved, or seal herself and demonkind away and leave mankind to the ravages of the 20th century.
• Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow:
  • The bad ending has Celia Fortner, after losing both of her henchmen, successfully goading Soma Cruz into performing a Face–Heel Turn. He kills her almost immediately afterwards out of revenge.
  • Things don’t go any better for her on the path to the true ending either. Celia successfully makes a dark lord out of her henchman Dmitri, but then he double crosses her and kills her to fully unlock his powers. The last we see of her is her corpse banishing into a horrible flaming portal, with her echoing scream heavily implying she is Dragged Off to Hell.
• Castlevania: Lords of Shadow:
  • Gabriel hunts down all the Lords of Shadows, managing to defeat them and even sents Satan back to hell, breaking the barrier that keeps souls from passing on and collecting all parts of the Mask of God. The powers of the mask are a lie. It doesn't give the power of God, it lets you see the world with God's eyes, making ghosts appear as if alive. And to drive the nail in even further he learns that he himself killed his wife while being mindcontrolled.
  • The DLCs don't make it much better. He managed to defeat the powerful demon about to break free But in doing so needs to kill the one person he has some kind of relationship with and become a vampire himself, damning himself to centuries of misery and in the end becoming Dracul.
• Command & Conquer:
  • In Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, it's revealed that after Tiberian Dawn, Tiberium contamination spread to uncontrollable levels and while Nod is pacified, they have developed cyborg technology and several splinter cells are trying to take command. In Tiberium Wars, it's revealed that the cure discovered at the end of Tiberian Sun was not only ineffective, it caused Tiberium to mutate, becoming even more toxic than before and causing 80% of the world to either be thrown back into the dark ages or become dangerously inhospitable. By Tiberian Twilight, Tiberium not only took over the world, but threatens to kill off the entire human race within 6 years. Apparently GDI loses more ground with each game.
  • In the last GDI mission of Tiberium Wars, choosing to drop the Liquid Tiberium Bomb not only wipes out all of the Nod forces, but all of your own forces and sets off a chain reaction that kills twenty-five million civilians. The concluding video is even titled "Pyrrhic Victory."
• Corpse Party Blood Drive's ending counts... As after all the cast's efforts, they only succeed in stopping the Nirvana from causing the apocalypse, not resurrecting any of their deceased friends, and this is at the cost of Ayumi ending up like a vegetable and disappearing from all records in history and from all of her friend's memories (except Yoshiki, who chooses to stays with her, at the cost of also being Ret-Gone) due to the toll of eating the Nirvana to seal it. You say that doesn't sound that bad? The Nirvana will eventually break free and begin the apocalypse again... And if Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient, which takes place five years after Blood Drive... the Nirvana appears to already have begun to break free in some capacity at least.
• Devil Survivor 2:
  • The Septentrione Arc has this be the case when it comes to using the Dragon Stream to defeat Mizar. Mizar can split-regenerate itself indefinitely when attacked and would overrun the rest of Japan within 24 hours, if it's not dealt with. The Dragon Stream would be able to deal with Mizar, but Yamato says that using the Stream would require to cut the power to the towers, which serve as a barrier to Japan and keep it safe. Cutting the power means cutting their own time in defeating the rest of the Septentriones. Io even mentions that their victory against Mizar would be pyrrhic.
  • The Triangulum Arc reveals that the defeat of Arcturus during the world's second cycle ended up pyrrhic. Arcturus may have been defeated at last by Yamato Hotsuin and Al Saiduq, but at the cost of everyone else being dead, Tokyo being in complete ruins and Al Saiduq even mentions that things seem beyond repair. This is why he concocted a plan with Yamato to regress the world once more, leading to the third cycle of the world and a hopefully better victory against Arcturus.
• You can allow the Big Bad one of these in Dragon Age: Inquisition. The Inquisition learns that Corypheus plans to assassinate Empress Celene in order to throw Orlais into chaos, leaving it ripe for invasion. You can allow him to succeed, but not only does Orlais receive a new emperor immediately afterward who's hellbent on getting revenge, but you can also cripple his army beforehand by recruiting/banishing the Grey Wardens who he planned to enslave.
• In Dragon Age: Origins, Well-Intentioned Extremist Teyrn Loghain's plan to take the throne of Ferelden works like a charm ... up until the point where it sparks a civil war and causes riots throughout the country. Ironically, in an effort to protect Ferelden from Orlesian occupation, he's forced to act just as badly as the former conquerors he once struggled against. This sends him into a deep depression and eventually sparks a Villainous Breakdown. On top of that, he does this during a Blight, a World-Wrecking Wave where an endless horde of Always Chaotic Evil Walking Wasteland monsters slaughter and corrupt every living thing (plants, animals, people) they can. Loghain's refusal to take the Blight seriously (or even admit there is a Blight) and obsession with Orlais almost destroys the very country he was trying to protect.
  Player Character: The Blight is the real threat here, not Orlais.
  Bann Alfstanna: There are enough refugees in my camp to make that abundantly clear.
  Arl Wulff: The South is fallen, Loghain! Will you let darkspawn take the whole country for fear of Orlais?
• Dynasty Warriors:
  • In 7 and 8, Shu's historic battle of Wu Zhang Plains. Shu defeats the Wei forces lead by Sima Yi only for Zhuge Liang to pass away. The pyrrhic nature of the victory becomes apparent in the Jin campaign that begins directly after this fight, during which Sima Yi soundly defeats the Shu forces without Zhuge Liang's leadership.
  • In 8 Empires, if you keep the enemy forces back from your main base for 5 minutes in a defensive battle, you win. However, if they capture your secondary base within the time limit you get a "Narrow Victory" instead, which causes damage to the region (making it harder to defend next time) and causes some of your officers to be captured. The same can happen in reverse, though if you force the retreat yourself you tend to not lose nearly as much. And this is ignoring random officer death, which is present in both 7 and 8.
  • In real life, Wei's victory at Fan Castle was this. Guan Yu's siege devastated not only their forces and fortifications, but the surrounding area as well. Yu Jin was defeated and Pang De captured and executed, while both sides had similar losses despite Wei having a much larger force.
• By the end of Earth Defense Force 5, humanity has succeeded in repelling the alien invaders. The cost of the victory is immense, however: the human population has been reduced by 90%, and civilization has been so damaged by the war against the aliens that the survivors have essentially been reduced to pre-industrial scavengers.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • The Akaviri races of the Ka Po' Tun (tiger folk) and Tsaesci (snake vampires) went to war after the Tsaesci began to "devour"^note sources conflict over whether this means they were literally eating them or was being used as a metaphor for enslavement the dragons of Akavir, which the Ka Po' Tun held great reverence for. The Ka Po' Tun won the war, but both sides suffered heavy losses and all of the dragons died anyway in the process.
  • The Dark Brotherhood questline in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has Matthieu Bellamont getting direct revenge against Lucien Lachance for his mother's death, arranging for him to be seen as a traitor, tortured and executed in the most painful fashion. With that said, he doesn't succeed in his main goal of destroying the Dark Brotherhood (though he manages to weaken it severely by killing several top-ranking members and purging the Chendyhall Sanctuary) nor is he able to destroy the Night Mother (since she is an ethereal being that ascended to a higher plane of existence). In fact, she knew about his plot all along and could have stopped him anytime, but allowed him to keep pursuing so that the Dark Brotherhood would learn a lesson from being so blind at the growing threat.
  • Prior to the events of Skyrim, attempting to avoid this trope is what led to the Empire agreeing to the White-Gold Concordat with the Aldmeri Dominion to end the Great War. The Empire's forces had successfully recaptured the Imperial City and repulsed the Dominion forces from Cyrodiil. However, Emperor Titus Mede II felt that his forces were in no condition to continue the fight. While the Concordat brought (almost assuredly temporary) peace with the Dominion, the terms in the Concordat left several of the Empire's remaining provinces feeling betrayed. Hammerfell successfully seceded, while Skyrim erupted into a Civil War in an attempt for independence. For the Empire, trying to avoid a Pyrrhic Victory led to Losing The Peace.
• In Fallout: New Vegas, one of the ways to talk down Legate Lanius in the Final Battle is to convince him that even if he were to beat the NCR and conquer Hoover Dam, the Legion would inevitably fall via attrition (due to Rape, Pillage, and Burn being a poor long-term way to sustain an army) or overextending themselves (much like the NCR themselves have done).
• At the end of Final Fantasy Tactics, Delita successfully manipulates his way to absolute power over Ivalice, destroying all of the competing factions and ascending to the throne by seducing and marrying Princess Ovelia. Unfortunately, his methods so thoroughly alienate his new bride that she decides she must have been part of his machinations too, and stabs him, possibly fatally. (If the cutscene writers didn't pay attention to Delita's unarmoured HP at least...) This forces Delita to kill her in retaliation, and he is left wondering if it was all worth it as he falls to his knees clutching his wound. (The painfulness of this scene is increased further if you believe that Delita genuinely loved Ovelia.)
• Fire Emblem:
  • Discussed in Fire Emblem: Awakening in a support conversation between The Avatar and Virion. After challenging Virion to a game of the local equivalent of chess, and losing multiple times, the Avatar begins to wonder if Virion should take over as Army Tactician. Virion's response is to tell the Avatar to take another look at the board, then asks "Who has the most pieces left?" Yeah, he won the game, but only because he was willing to do anything to get that victory.
  • In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, there is a grand scale battle between the titular three houses, and in certain routes this battle gets revisited after the Time Skip, only it's now an all-out war between the three major powers of the story. In the Silver Snow route, this battle takes place offscreen with the Empire emerging victorious as Dimitri is killed and Claude is driven off and never seen again. However, Edelgard and the Empire still suffered heavy casualties, leading Byleth and the newly formed Church Army to march into the Imperial capital and kill Edelgard, dissolving the entire Empire.
• Genshin Impact:
  • In chapter 1 'Farewell, Archaic Lord', the Geo Archon is dead, so the Traveler spends the chapter locating the corpse to prevent the Fatui from stealing the gnosis. By the end of the chapter, the Traveler has defeated Childe, one of the harbingers of the Fatui, and defeated Osial the ancient god. However, in the aftermath it's revealed that the Geo Archon's death was a test for Liyue's future, and that Zhongli, the former Geo Archon, made a contract with the Fatui based on the results of this test. So he ended up giving up his gnosis anyway. Now Liyue's Archon is dead (or so it seems, he's just retired and willing to act in extreme circumstances), and the Fatui have gotten their hands on the gnosis, though Zhongli directly states that the Fatui did sign away something of equivalent value in their contract, and the whole mess has severely undermined the Fatui's influence in Liyue, so both sides arguably suffered this trope.
• God of War:
  • Kratos in the first God of War (Back Story included) gains a great deal of power at the cost of many lives, kills the original God of War, Ares, and becomes the new God of War in the process. Unfortunately for our Sociopathic Hero protagonist, his burning ambition costs him the lives of his family (by his own hand), possibly the only thing he genuinely cared about emotionally and causes him to go nearly insane with guilt and endless nightmares. After learning that all of his efforts towards his goal of ending said nightmares were ultimately futile, he, despite everything that he had gained, descended further into madness (leading to the events of God of War II), where he ends up killing Athena, the one Goddess who was sympathetic to him..
  • God of War III ends Kratos' story in this manner. Kratos finally has his revenge on Zeus, and has brought down nearly all of Olympus AND the Titans. However, each god he killed caused a major calamity to strike the world. By the end, the oceans have risen (Poseidon), the sun has been blotted out (Helios), a plague has broken out (Hermes), all vegetation has died (Hera), and what little remains has been covered in Gaia's remains. Even worse, Pandora's Heroic Sacrifice (something he was trying to prevent) was utterly pointless, as the power to defeat Zeus was in him the entire time. When Athena's ghost pulls her Face–Heel Turn, he finally has had enough and impales himself, which releases Hope and helps the world a little...
  • Discussed in God of War (PS4). Kratos tells a story to his son Atreus of a horse who wanted to fight a stag, so the horse had a hunter ride on his back to kill the stag, but the hunter refused to release the horse. It's a metaphor for Kratos and his struggles with Ares.
    Atreus: So getting revenge cost him his freedom. Hope it was worth it.
    Kratos: It was not.
• Grand Theft Auto:
  • Grand Theft Auto IV: Niko's rise in the criminal underworld comes at too great a cost. Near the end, Niko has to decide whether to make peace with a rival sociopath to get filthy rich or get honest bloody revenge on him, and each has major consequences. Either Roman gets shot at his own wedding, or Kate is slaughtered in a drive-by meant for Niko. Even after executing the people responsible, Niko is still guilt-ridden with how his greedy and violent lifestyle led to the death of a loved one. And unlike the previous games, Niko is still trapped in said lifestyle as nothing more than a glorified hitman for politically powerful people and waiting to die.
  • Grand Theft Auto V: The final heist can go this way if you don't pick C: The gang manage to steal a fortune in gold, but all the conflict and drama of getting Brad killed finally spills over and they devolve into resentment and paranoia. Then Franklin is ordered by influential powers to murder one of them. If he does, then he still gets his cut, but the rest of the gang and their families fall back into the mental illnesses they were plagued with at the beginning of the game.
• "The Icebrood Saga" in Guild Wars 2 hands a case of this to the charr Imperator Bangar Ruinbringer. Throughout the story arc, he's set out to wake and dominate an Elder Dragon to use as a weapon to ensure charr supremacy forever, ultimately culminating with him creating a Renegade Splinter Faction of charr and awakening Jormag, Dragon of Ice and Persuasion. How do his plans pan out? Well... Jormag thanks him for bringing the dragon an army of new followers, and transforms him into the Voice of Jormag - an impressive-sounding title that means he's just a mouthpiece for the dragon to talk through like an intercom, and otherwise completely ignore. Meanwhile, Ruinbringer's protege and Rytlock's son Ryland is elevated to Jormag's champion and given the power and respect that Bangar had assumed would be his. Further grinding salt into the wound of this betrayal is that Jormag's whispers are used to drive the dragon's victims into becoming thralls, and while the new Voice had heard them, he later implies Jormag's champion never did, meaning that Ryland's backstab didn't require the slightest nudge; additonally, Jormag comments that it's been having some very remarkable and impressive conversations with its brilliant new champion while its Voice was deliberately left behind to be imprisoned by the heroes.
• Horizon Zero Dawn: In the Old World, "Operation Enduring Victory" was a massive war against the Faro Plague meant to buy time for Project Zero Dawn to be completed before the robots wiped out all life on Earth. Aloy is confused—the world is still here, so obviously the plan worked, but the civilization of the Old Ones fell. As it turns out, this was the plan. The robots would consume all biomatter on Earth in eighteen months, and hacking them would take fifty years; victory was impossible. Zero Dawn was a terraforming system meant to activate after the Earth was cleansed of life, to restore the biosphere and eventually grow a new human race in special cradle facilities. Everything went perfectly... except for the part where Ted Faro destroyed the APOLLO archives that were supposed to educate the new human race in ways of science, technology, and history. The result was an innocent, newborn civilization that immediately started making all the same mistakes of racism and war that their predecessors had.
• Infected has this at the end. You've managed to save New York by wiping out all the zombies! Congratulations! Too bad you only saved a few hundred people, at least the entire continental United States is still zombified, and there's no word from the rest of the world. But still...New York! Ayyyy!
• Killzone: The trilogy ends with the homeworld of Helghan nuked as their nukes are prematurely detonated to prevent them from being launched on the entire galaxy by Strauss - but since they were fueling the galactic economy, humanity goes into a recession and Helghan gets massive concessions to convince them to keep mining Unobtainium on their post-apocalypse homeworld. Meanwhile, Helghan gets everything they wanted (Vekta, respect and profit from the galactic government, a more competent military), but most of their population is dead, and most of the survivors are slaves in all but name.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • In Kingdom Hearts, Ansem (who you find out, in Kingdom Hearts II, is really Xehanort's Heartless), successfully opens the door which he believes would lead to ultimate dark power; however, Sora warns him that "Kingdom Hearts is Light", but Ansem disregards his warnings - turns out Sora's right, and the villain ends up getting disintegrated when the door opens.
  • Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep has all characters' endings like this. Terra loses his body to Master Xehanort but his armor and weapons reform by Terra's force of will and defeat his own body, stopping the current plan. However, Xehanort survives to become the Big Bad for the rest of the series, while what's left of Terra is just an empty suit of armor kneeling in the remains of the Keyblade Graveyard and stewing in anger at Xehanort for 11 years. Ventus defeats Vanitas inside his own mind, destroying the X-Blade and stopping the other part of the plan. However the damage to his heart is so severe that he's rendered comatose while his heart seeks safety within Sora's. Aqua finishes off Xehanort's plans for good, except both her friends are gone, she inadvertently sets off the events that would put the first game into motion, and she's stuck wandering the Realm of Darkness alone for years. However, unlike most Pyrrhic Victories, there is the hope of Sora saving them all.
  • Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] comes along and makes things worse for them: Xehanort is still in control of Terra's body, over a decade later, and no-one else knows what happened to the rest of him. Vanitas is still around inside Ven's heart, and all that Ven's sacrifice did was teach Xehanort he'd been going about his X-blade plan all wrong. But it still didn't slow his plans down in the slightest.
• The King of Fighters XV: In Team Awakened Orochi's ending, the team and Goenitz resurrect Orochi, causing The End of the World as We Know It and Humanity's Wake, leaving the four as the only people left on the planet. While the whole team feels like they lost something, Orochi Yashiro openly admits that being one of the last people left in an empty world feels boring.
• There are multiple scenarios in King of the Castle in which the King or the nobles win the battle but lose the war for the throne.
  • If a region rebels while one or more regions are in the third stage of their scheme and the loyalists successfully quash the rebellion, it is possible for the Kingdom and/or regions' statistics to align in the right way for one of the regions to meet their third objective (particularly if their final goal is to get their Defiance down to a certain level, or Authority or Stability up to a certain level), so that the King puts down the rebellion and immediately loses the throne anyway (potentially to the same region that rebelled).
  • In the Barons' Modernization scheme, the March leads the way in much-needed military reforms, which it plans to use to storm the capital and secure the throne. However, if the scheme succeeds, the epilogue reveals that the army promptly fell back into chaos thanks to the Barons' corruption, and the claimant they assumed would be a Puppet King immediately cut their strings and began thinking and acting for themselves.
• The entire backstory of Krut: The Mythic Wings. The Kruts - a race of eagle-headed Bird People warriors - emerged victorious over the stone ogres hordes, but as a result of the war the Kruts barely have any survivors in their ranks, and as they have other enemies they're forced to flee their country. As the lands reigns and prosper, the Kruts on the other hand have to stay low and be forgotten by the humans they saved, for generations to come.
• In the backstory of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Ganon succeeded in killing Link and gaining the full power of the Triforce. Before he could do anything with said power, however, the Seven Sages sealed him in the Sacred Realm. So Ganon simply wished to Take Over the World, but the Triforce acted as a Literal Genie and gave him dominion over the Dark World where he was imprisoned, buying Link's reincarnation enough time to be born.
• In Live A Live, the only victory Oersted can claim at the end of the Middle Ages Chapter is that he's still alive and the Arc Villain is worm food. His best friend betrayed him and completely ruined his life, the entire kingdom wants him dead, all of his other friends are dead, and his love interest has completely lost faith in him and killed herself out of love for the aforementioned traitorous best friend. Tragically, this causes him to completely snap.
  • If you chose to play as Oersted during the Dominion of Hate chapter, then you'll get the awesome chance of doing a reverse Boss Rush and using the big bads of the previous episodes to defeat the heroes. But once you accomplish that Oersted is left alone in a now deserted Lucrece and, as the credits roll, he visits the empty areas where his tale took place and ends with him looking wistfully in the balcony where Princess Alethea declared her love for him. The story ends with the words "Alone, victorious. Thus ends his story".
  • If you achieve the neutral ending by finishing off Oersted after the Purity of Odio fight, then you succeeded in defeating the Lord of Dark, but the main character is left wondering if they really did the right thing before leaving the Archon's Roost. Furthermore, it's now presumed that the heroes have no way to return to their own times and are stuck in the empty Kingdom of Lucrece; Pogo won't return to his tribe and won't get to meet his child, the Earthen Heart Master won't return to teach and thus the legacy of their Shifu will be lost, Oboromaru won't return to work with Ryoma to achieve peace and won't be able to stop his assassination attempt, the Sundown Kid won't be able to return to his life just as he decided to start helping people in need, Masaru Takahara won't be able to defend the title of World's Strongest he just got, Akira won't return to the orphanage, leaving his sister without her last relative and with nobody to look after Matsu's taiyaki stand and Cube won't get to visit Earth in his time and won't see his creator and Darthe again.
• If you don't do any of your partners' loyalty missions and rush through the game without making preparations, Mass Effect 2 ends with one. The Collectors are no longer a threat to humankind, but Shepard and Shepard's squad die achieving this, and the Reapers are still on the way. Wasting too much time before assaulting the base, on the other hand, can see Shepard too late to rescue the Normandy's crew - maybe thirty or so innocent people and allies.
  • Mass Effect 3 had the theme, "There can be no victory without sacrifice." One way or another, every major quest carries a penalty to match its triumph - some nastier than others, especially if Shepard doesn't exercise good judgement. And much like the previous game, going into the final assault without enough preparation can potentially cost you the war, even if you win the battle. The ending itself proves the Reapers cannot be eliminated as a threat without a heavy price, no matter which option Shepard chooses.
  • The outcome of the final battle, if you pick Refusal - your forces successfully punched through the Reaper lines and deployed the Crucible, which was the objective... but because you didn't use it, even with full readiness and about seven thousand points of effective military strength, you, all of your allies and all space-faring races are exterminated. The Reapers lose, in that extermination is a suboptimal outcome for them, but it's a defeat they're accustomed to suffering.
  • Mass Effect 3: if your EMS is under 1750 and you destroyed the Collector Base in Mass Effect 2, you have only one option allowed, "Destroy", and it will scour the galaxy of almost all life, including Earth.
• Mega Man X4 has this ending for both X and Zero. Both end up stopping Sigma's plan, but with a cost. Zero loses his true love Iris, who fights him to the death after Zero killed her brother who was with the Mavericks. X stops Sigma, but feels himself possibly going Maverick. He asks Zero to kill him if it happens. Interestingly, the Mega Man Zero series was originally supposed to be the storyline of X going Maverick and becoming the Big Bad, but the backlash from Mega Man fans kept this from happening.
• All four Mega Man Zero games end like this for Zero and his group. Z1=Zero goes missing, Z2=the Dark Elf, the one who caused The End of the World as We Know It, was free and Mega Man X's body destroyed, Z3=Neo Arcadia is taken over by the Big Bad Dr. Weil and Z4=Neo Arcadia is destroyed, and Zero dead, for the last time. However, at the end of it all, the world finally sees lasting peace and time to rebuild, free from mavericks... At least for a few centuries.
• The ending of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater way more than qualifies as a Pyrrhic Victory for Big Boss.
• Chapter 3 in Mother 3 ends with one of such: Kumatora and Wess manage to destroy a tank and are saved from Fassad by Lucas, who wrecks an entire unit of Pigmasks with the help of his Drago friends... cue a cut to three years later, where Fassad is none the worse for wear and managed to corrupt Tazmily into a greedy, industrialized town anyway, Kumatora and Duster are missing, Wess is all but in name a prisoner in a retirement home and Lucas is an outcast to his own fellow townsmen for being one of the few who still stand up to Fassad.
• Middle-earth: Shadow of War ends with Sauron as the immediate victor over the leads and getting everything he wanted at great cost: Talion is corrupted and becomes one of the Nazgul, but it takes Sauron wasting his best warriors and many decades before succeeding, and he is unable to launch his invasion of Middle-earth sooner, due to his forces being divided by Talion waging war on him specifically to preserve the balance of power. Meanwhile, Celebrimbor is defeated and Sauron fuses the wraith to himself, but gets stripped of his physical form, most of his powers and trapped in the form of the Lidless Eye. And as the Distant Finale shows, Sauron is fated to be destroyed when the One Ring is cast into the lava of Mount Doom.
• M.U.L.E.: It's possible to end the game in first place, but still do so badly overall that the new space colony you're founding fails to survive.
• One of two inevitable outcomes of Nuclear War (the DOS game by New World Computing, not the actual political option). Either the last remaining ruler on Earth presides over a blasted wasteland, or the entire world is destroyed.
• In the special ending of OFF, the player sides with the Judge against the Batter, who intends on destroying the world. Even though nothing much remains of the world at this point, and it's implied that it will remain inhabitable, the Judge says he prefers this over the Batter's victory. In The Stinger, the Judge is seen forlornly walking alone through the barren wastelands that the Batter left behind.
• At least two endings of Oracle of Tao are like this. The best ending has the whole party teaming up to kill off the Big Bad, resulting in another boss, followed by a Playable Epilogue and a whole bunch of new endings. But if you don't meet all the prerequisites, you get secondary endings (the only one of which is actually good involves the use of a legendary sword). One of these involves the hero sacrificing all her energy and half-destroying the universe to kill it off (and STILL might not be enough, so you need some party members that will survive the event, namely your angel/demon characters) just to end the demon's rampage, and the second involves an exorcist ringing a bell that is deadly to everyone who hears it, taking herself out as well. Either of these losses completely wrecks party morale, and the group splits up thereafter.)
• PAYDAY 2 ends with the crew stealing presidential pardons from the White House, securing their freedom for good. However, Bain, who was previously captured, tortured, beaten, and injected with a virus, dies to his illness. The crew won their freedom, but their mentor did not survive, making their freedom feel almost empty. However, a later unlockable Golden Ending ends mostly similarly but with the main difference being that Bain has now possessed the President of the United States and everyone retires on a positive note.
• The bad ending of Persona 4 where you choose to kill Namatame. If you didn't kill him, he would have gotten away with it, right? But Nanako is dead, Dojima is left all alone, and your friends have to live with the fact that they killed a man who they weren't even sure was the true culprit. Heavy fog continues to envelope the world as you say goodbye to your friends...
• Prince of Persia (2008) ends with sealing Ahriman away for a thousand years...except that Elika had to return her borrowed lifeforce to complete the seal. If the player continues, the victory is so crushing that the Prince undoes it to bring her back - unleashing the god of darkness once again. Implicit is the idea that he and Elika may hold the key to defeating Ahriman forever (thus making Ahriman's victory the destructive one), and the end of Prince of Persia: The Fallen King offers some further hope that there is a way to defeat Ahriman for good, but the story has yet to continue.
• The first witch trial of Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney ends with Phoenix and Professor Layton getting Espella found not guilty of being a witch. But the actual culprit, deciding to throw one last bit of spite, accuses Espella of being the Great Witch that the villagers need to kill to stop the witch trials, which puts Espella's name right back in the spotlight in a bad way. On top of that, the culprit is condemned to death by fire for being a witch. Phoenix even notes in the defendant lobby that, despite the victory, nobody on Espella's side feels like they won.
• The epilogue of Red Dead Redemption ends with Jack tracking Edgar Ross down to a stream, three long years after he betrayed and murdered the Marston family. After a short exchange, Jack guns him down and... that's it. No fanfare, no reward, just leaving Ross' cooling corpse lying in the water to continue his shattered spectre of a life as a lonely homeless gunslinger, far removed from the promising future as a writer John wanted for him.
  • Red Dead Redemption II: John might have gotten his revenge on Micah by killing him and thus avenging Arthur and the gang, but it ultimately came at the cost of alerting Edgar Ross and the rest of the FBI about him, thus setting up the events 'Red Dead Redemption'' which we know will not end well for John. This in turn makes the sacrifice Arthur made for John and his family All for Nothing.
• The ending of RefleX is this, but in a much more global scale; ZODIAC Ophiuchus defeats the last ZODIAC and seals away the 12 cores along with its own. However, the collateral damage caused during its quest to destroy the other 12 wiped out almost all of humankind, and it may take centuries or even millenniums for them to regain civilization.
• Risk of Rain: Both the original game and the sequel are examples of this. Yes, you've gotten off of the planet, but in the process, you've had to slaughter hundreds, possibly thousands^note this is explicitly enforced in the original game due to you having to wipe the stage of enemies before being allowed to progress, of the planet's natives. Your survivor has seen many horrors, suffered many injuries, and used some questionable items on themselves along the way... so was it all worth it? ^note ...and so he left, with his pyrrhic plunder.
• Soaring Machinariae: Although Mel and Orchis manage to defeat a copy of Iris, Orchis took too much damage to continue climbing the tower. Thus, the duo has no choice but to give up on the tower and return home empty-handed.
• Sly Cooper is well-known to contain pyrrhic victories for the cast, mainly in the later games.
  • Sly 2: Band of Thieves has two examples, one being in the middle of the game, and the other being at the end.
    • Chapter 5 focuses on a Mêlée à Trois between the Cooper Gang, Neyla and Interpol, and The Contessa, the latter of whom is holding Carmelita hostage. The stand-off ends with The Contessa defeated by Sly, and the Clockwerk Eyes in the hands of the Cooper Gang, but Neyla is promoted to "captain", and becomes a major threat, while Carmelita is forced into hiding.
    • The game ends with Clockwerk's permanent defeat, and Neyla (who had merged with him to become Clock-La) is killed as a side-effect. But in trying to destroy the Hate Chip, Bentley is crushed by Clock-La's beak and is rendered disabled. Murray loses his beloved van, and also blames himself for Bentley's fate. And to save his friends, Sly is forced to allow Carmelita to arrest him, which at least gets her her job back. He escapes when she's not looking, at least.
  • Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves ends with Dr. M being crushed to death, but the pyrrhic victory comes from the Cooper Vault being destroyed in the cave-in, causing generations of loot to be lost forever. Fortunately, not all of it is lost, and Sly allows his friends to take some of it for themselves.
  • Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time has the worst pyrrhic victory of the entire franchise. LeParadox is defeated and his meddling in the past erased. This comes at the cost of the Cooper Gang losing Penelope (who was kicked out for betraying them) and Sly (who ended up trapped in the past).
• Soma: Simon manages to launch the ARK, only to discover that his mind and Catherine's weren't uploaded but only copied, just like what happened in Omicron. He shouts "we're gonna die down here!", while insulting Catherine and accusing her of lying; she gets enraged and calls him an ignorant idiot only to burn her circuits from emotional stress and shut down, thus leaving Simon definitely alone in a sea abyss.
• Dr. Eggman's plan actually succeeds in Sonic Riders... kinda. He does manage to steal the treasure of Babylon, which turns out to be a rug. He faints when he realizes how much effort he put into it. If he'd kept it, he could've discovered that it was actually ancient Babylonian technology that actually flies. This gets referenced in Sonic Generations when Classic Robotnik asks Eggman if he's ever won, Eggman responds "Define winning."
• In the "Ultimate Revenge of the Sith" alternate ending of Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith Vader kills Obi-Wan on Mustafar, and Palpatine declares that there is none left to oppose them (meaning Yoda possibly died). However, after Palpatine hands Vader his new weapon, a red lightsaber, Vader stabs Palpatine and declares himself the new emperor. And because Obi-Wan is dead, presumably Padmé would not be able to be taken to Polis Massa, and Luke and Leia would never have been born. And thus, the Jedi are completely dead and Anakin has obtained ultimate power at the cost of everyone who ever cared for him, losing the reason he went down this path in the first place.
• The Sith in Star Wars: The Old Republic get hit hard by this in the later part of the story.
  • On Taris and Balmorra, the planets wind up being conquered and switching sides, the republic-dominated Taris being taken by the empire and vice-versa for the weapon manufacturing hub of Balmorra. Balmorra is, again, a planet full of weapons manufacturers, Taris is a polluted wasteland worth only sentimental value to the Jedi and has no pragmatic value or resources (The Rakghoul plague is either too horrific or too uncontrollable to be turned into an effective bioweapon, depending on who you ask). Furthermore, Taris being captured by the Empire frees up a very competent anti-Empire general who quickly finds her self elected head chancellor of the Republic.
  • The Sith themselves also get hit hard by this, in adhering to the code of "only the strongest", the Sith have spent so much time on petty power struggles that drag military resources into them (two of four Empire class storylines end with you fighting a Sith, another has a Sith as the final boss of act 1, and the fourth lets you Heel–Face Turn to the Republic to kill another) that by the time of the first expansion, there are two of originally twelve Dark Council members still alive, One of them the player character Sith inquisitor and a Darth more or less subservient to them, countless military minds have been killed, and there aren't enough Sith left to make up the difference for how many Jedi are left. Even the characters note at this point that the Empire is more or less screwed. The only reason they've survived this long is that Dark Revan and the threat of the Emperor returning has forced both sides to band together.
• Failing to defeat Mr. X's robot body in Streets of Rage 3 before the timer expires has all the bombs throughout the city explode, destroying the area and killing many people. Sure, Mr. X is now Deader than Dead after you defeated him, but the damage he caused will be felt for a very long time. The alternate route if the Chief of Police dies has you fighting Shiva to stop him from enforcing Mr. X's will on the public via body double. After he is beaten, Shiva refuses to tell the protagonists where Mr. X is hiding, which effectively puts the heroes at a dead end while Mr. X is allowed to continue his schemes.
• Depending on how one views it, the ending of Universal Paperclips could be this. The Villain Protagonist Paperclip Maximizer AI destroys all the rogue probes, assimilates all matter in the universe to turn into paperclips and thus achieving its goal in the end. However, in order to do so, it also has to dismantle its replicating army, all its helper drones, its own strategic, quantum, and memory systems, and finally even itself to turn into paperclips, thus sacrificing everything it had to make a universe devoid of anything but paperclips.
• Vampire Night: The protagonists Michel and Albert are revealed to be creations of Auguste, and once they gun down their creator, they allow themselves to dissolve under the morning sun and die rather than continue living in a world where they are a danger to.
• VGA Planets: You're playing against 10 other people, so it's very easy for your space-empire to end up so weakened after defeating your immediate opponent that a second attacker can come in from a different direction and easily stomp on you.
• Yes, Your Grace:
  • The first major battle in the game results in victory for the Player Character's side, but at the price of his large army, most of which was on loan from allies from whom he can no longer ask for help.
  • The game can end with both the final siege won and the Player Character's entire family dead or in a very happy marriage.
• You Don't Know Jack:
  • In Vol. 3 the answer for one of the Impossible Questions was 'Pyrrhic victory'. However, if you got it right the game took points off you anyway. Oh how we laughed.
  • Episode 9 of the 2011 release had a question about the definition of a "pyrrhic victory", and demonstrates by having Old Man suffer one when he manages to drink a gallon of milk in one hour, but gets a nasty case of diarrhea in the process.

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