"Light becomes darkness, and darkness begets light. This is how the world began, and how it shall one day end."
— Game intro
Ages ago, an ancient, godlike evil named Rukyu terrorized humanity. However, Saint Rhoda and her allies, the six Paladins, stood against him and sealed the demon away, ushering in a new era for humanity. A thousand years later, however, rumors begin circulating that Rukyu would soon return to the world, plunging it into darkness once again. Falco, a young mercenary, travels to the mountain where he is sealed and finds that the rumors are true, the Fallen One declaring his intent to bring the end of humanity as he breaks free from the seal holding him.
The player then takes control of Rukyu as he begins that mission.
Dark Half is a Role-Playing Game for the SNES released exclusively in Japan in 1996. It was developed by Westone and published by Enix.
The game's main feature is that it lets you experience its villain's side of the story — its dark half, in other words — as well as its hero's. Despite him being one of its two protagonists, the game does not shy away from showing Rukyu's cruelty; the first thing he does as a player character is travel to a small town and kill nearly all of its inhabitants to absorb their souls for sustenance, and Falco is later forced to witness the aftermath of his evil acts on multiple occasions. Both protagonists are united in that they each begin each day with a set amount of Soul Power that steadily drains with every move they make, of which running out will cause their deaths.
Has nothing to do with The Dark Half.
This game feature examples of:
- Alas, Poor Villain: Caios, unlike Bahm himself, genuinely believes that their plan for the Barrier Stone is necessary to save humanity, and as such, his death is played for tragedy.
- And I Must Scream: After defeating the Paladins, Rukyu turns them into "living corpses," unable to do anything but writhe in endless pain.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- The protagonists begin each day with a set amount of Soul Power independent of the amount they had before, eliminating the possibility of them starting a day with too little to complete it.
- Unlike in dungeons and the overworld, Soul Power doesn't deplete in towns, allowing you to explore them as much as you want.
- In Robahm Castle, Rukyu can recruit Gold Dragons, who can teach him the Shield spell if he hasn't learned it already. As corrupted Bahm, the boss of the area, can easily tear Rukyu to shreds if he doesn't have the spell, this can potentially be the difference between life and death.
- Casting a spell outside of battle doesn't use any resources if the spell doesn't work; Falco doesn't lose a spellbook, and Rukyu doesn't burn Soul Power.
- Apocalypse Cult: On Day 5, Rukyu comes across a cult dedicated to him who gleefully sacrifice themselves as well as others on his behalf, eager to bring about the end of the world.
- Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Both protagonists are limited to four companions at a time. For Rukyu, some larger monsters like the Golem also require two party slots rather than just one.
- Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: Prince Windham of Robahm's main character trait is his arrogance; Gilbert has to insist that he let him and Falco help him in his search for the barrier stone, and when he agrees to join them, he treats it as them joining his party. According to one of the maids in his bedroom, his stubbornness once led to him nearly dying of alcohol poisoning in a drinking contest.
- Background Music Override: At the start of Day 5 of Resurrection, Rukyu causes an earthquake in a fit of rage, and the overworld music for both him and Falco is replaced by the sound of heaving earth for the rest of Day 5.
- Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad: Rukyu's minions say "may the darkness be with us" on multiple occasions.
- Berserk Button: Rukyu is enraged whenever he hears of the Paladins mucking about with his Armlet.
- Body Horror: Bahm's attempt to become stronger than Rukyu with the Armlet's power winds up backfiring horribly as it makes him mutate into a nightmarish Blob Monster.
- Call a Pegasus a "Hippogriff": Being a Palette Swap of the Weretiger, the "Werewolf" looks nothing like a wolf.
- Chekhov's Gun: Falco can collect "Rays of Hope" from the corpses of Rukyu's victims. In the finale, Rhoda tasks him with using the light he's taken inside him to convince Rukyu to spare humanity, and the amount you've collected determines what ending you get for each character.
- Climax Boss: Day 6 of Resurrection concludes with Rukyu fighting King Bahm, last of the Paladins and the thief of the Armlet he's been searching for the entire game. Bahm serves as the game's only Sequential Boss, mutating into a crushingly powerful monster after he's bested in his human form.
- Cool Chair: Rukyu has a throne adorned with the head of what looks like a cross between a dragon and a goat.
- Cutscene Boss: Rather than fighting Duhamel himself, Rukyu "fights" his four guard dogs, who act first and use their turns to run away in fear before he and his monsters get the chance to do anything.
- Degraded Boss: The monsters Falco fights as bosses start appearing as random encounters later in the game. The Golem notably does this almost immediately after its boss fight in Day 2 of Reckoning.
- Doomed Hometown: Rukyu winds up slaughtering Falco's hometown of Zagato on his way to Sierra Tower on Day 2.
- Dueling Player Characters: Unsurprisingly, given the game's premise, the final battle is a clash between Falco's party and Rukyu and his monsters. You're allowed to play as either one.
- Evil All Along: The King of Robahm, in truth the Paladin Bahm, plans to stop Rukyu by using the Psycho Pump, a machine that kills people en masse by sucking out their souls, to power the Barrier Stone. To this end, he has numerous innocent people placed in prison for crimes they didn't commit, including seniors and small children, as fuel for the machine. While his right hand Caios believes that this is necessary for humanity's survival, Bahm himself has no such justifications, merely doing it to stall for time as part of his plan to overpower Rukyu with the Armlet's might and become omnipotent.
- Evolving Title Screen: The save files are represented by three candles on a candelabra. As you make progress through a save, its candle gradually burns closer to the bottom.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: Rukyu does not kill most of the Paladins (or Rei, for that matter), but he still somehow gets Soul Power from defeating them.
- God Is Evil: It's gradually revealed that Rukyu is actually the creator of the world, seeking to bring about the apocalypse out of a belief that Humans Are Bastards and creating them was a mistake. Falco's good ending reveals that he's actually a Demiurge Archetype / Satanic Archetype hybrid who created the world after being exiled from Heaven for sins he doesn't remember.
- Graceful Loser: If Falco wins the Battle of Judgment, Rukyu congratulates him for his victory before relinquishing the Armlet to him.
- Have You Seen My God?: Saint Rhoda mysteriously disappeared from the world shortly after sealing Rukyu away. As it turns out, this was because Bahm sealed her away so he could take the Armlet Rukyu entrusted her with for himself.
- Helpful Mook: The corpses of Rukyu's victims sometimes turn out to be undead and attack Falco when he inspects them. These enemies are extremely weak, being incredibly fragile and doing pitiful damage if they even get the chance to attack, and they award around 20 Soul Power each when killed.
- I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: The mountain Rukyu has spent the past millennium sealed in is called Devil's Peak.
- I Lied: A man in Elan Cave will tell Rukyu how to gain access to Rainal's room in exchange for him sparing his life. Sure enough, after obtaining the relevant information, Rukyu can then go back on his word and murder him anyway.
- Insistent Terminology: Rukyu does not eat souls, he "[returns] them to their place of origin."
- Karma Houdini: Despite slaughtering numerous people for their souls, including children, as part of a quest to cause the destruction of humanity, as well as destroying Falco's hometown and killing his little brother, Rukyu never receives any comeuppance for his crimes. He obviously doesn't get punished in the endings where he wins the final battle, and Falco winning merely results in him yielding and voluntarily giving him the Armlet rather than dying.
- Killed Offscreen: When Rukyu confronts Bahm on Day 6, Prince Windham is revealed to have been died sometime after his last appearance on Day 4, allowing Bahm to turn him into an undead thrall.
- Maou the Demon King: Rukyu is a playable example. He's an ancient evil hell-bent on exterminating humanity who spent a millennium as Sealed Evil in a Can and whose escape marks the beginning of the game's story, he lives in a flying black castle, and he has the power to hypnotize wild monsters into being his servants. It's also revealed in one ending that he's essentially Satan himself.Rukyu: Hark, ye wretched humans! The time of judgment is close at hand... clear ye from wrong my tarnished memory, and abandon all hope of freedom, in this, my domain! Prostrate thyselves before me, and await my judgment! For I am Rukyu... I am the truth...!
- Monster Allies: Rukyu can use the Dark Gate ability to hypnotize monsters into serving as his minions.
- Multiple Endings: Four in total, with the two determinants being whether Falco or Rukyu wins the final battle and how many Rays of Hope Falco has:
- Both of Rukyu's endings have him going through with his his plan to destroy humanity. If Falco has less than 49 Rays of Hope, Rukyu declares the creation of humanity a mistake, ends the world by causing The Great Flood, and creates a new world of underwater beings. If he has more than 50, Rukyu is impressed by the light he possesses and decides to "start anew," sinking into the void after his apocalypse and dreaming about the day he first created humanity, and Rhoda, on endless repeat.
- Both of Falco's endings involve Rukyu, bested in battle, passing the Armlet onto him and giving him a chance to redeem humanity, with how Falco handles this task left open. If Falco has more than 99 Rays of Hope, the Armlet also causes Rukyu to take his true form: an angel, at which point he reveals that he created the world after being exiled to an empty void by an unnamed higher power for his past sins.
- Non-Lethal K.O.: If Gilbert and Claire are defeated, they revive with one hit point after the battle's end.
- Ominous Pipe Organ: The instrument is associated with Rukyu, most notably in the music that plays inside his castle.
- Ominous Visual Glitch: Should Rukyu be defeated, his body turns into static before disintegrating. This also happens to anything hit with the Death spell.
- Permadeath: If one of Falco's mercenaries dies in battle, there's no bringing them back. The same applies to Rukyu's monsters, although they're much easier to replace.
- Powered by a Forsaken Child: As it turns out, the king's plan to protect Robahm with the Barrier Stone involves strapping people to a machine called the Psycho Pump that sucks out their souls.
- Resistant to Magic: Rukyu cannot be harmed or weakened by magic.
- Revive Kills Zombie: The Heal spell is a One-Hit Kill against undead enemies. The game also features a spell that turns the target undead, allowing the tactic to be used on them as well.
- The Scream: Day 1 of Resurrection ends with Rukyu swearing revenge on Rhoda before letting out a warped, demonic roar that echoes throughout the land. His lieutenants make a slowed, lower-pitched version of the same sound when they die.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Rhoda and the Paladins sealed Rukyu away in the Devil's Eye a thousand years ago. The game opens with him escaping. Played with; when Falco meets Rhoda on Day 6, she reveals that he actually sealed himself off, agreeing to leave humanity be on the condition that Rhoda rid it of the qualities that made him want to destroy it.
- Sealed Good in a Can: Rhoda's fate. After she was granted Rukyu's Armlet, Bahm stole it for himself and imprisoned her in the same nightmarish world that he later sends Falco and his allies to.
- Soundtrack Dissonance:
- When Falco's party enters a town that's been devastated by Rukyu, the music playing is the same relaxed, cheerful song that plays in towns where the inhabitants haven't all been killed.
- Both of the endings where Rukyu wins the Battle of Judgment involve him succeeding at his mission to annihilate humanity. Despite this, they're accompanied by the same triumphant music as the endings where Falco wins both during the endings themselves and the end credits.
- Sorry That I'm Dying: Jose's ghost apologizes for "dying and all" when Falco encounters him in their house.
- Stripped to the Bone: Happens to humans who are killed by Rukyu. This includes Falco, should Rukyu win the Battle of Judgment.
- This Is Unforgivable!: Gilbert's reaction to learning the true nature of the King of Robahm's plan for the Barrier Stone.
- Timed Mission: Both protagonists have a Soul Power meter that drains with every step they take (and, in Rukyu's case, with every spell he casts), and running out results in a Game Over. However, defeating enemies slightly replenishes the meter, so this can be significantly delayed with enough skill and luck. The dungeons capitalize on this with various features (puzzles, mazes, pitfalls that drop you down to a previous floor) designed to make the player expend more Soul Power getting through them.
- The Unfought:
- Duhamel, unlike the other Paladins, makes no attempt to fight Rukyu, believing that the annihilation of humanity by his hand is inevitable.
- Unlike Ava and Vergil, Falco never fights Divizu, as Rukyu orders him to stay in the castle after the deaths of the former two before sending him off at the start of Day 6 of Resurrection.
- Villain Protagonist: The game's main selling point is the ability to play as Maou the Demon King as he ravages the land with a band of beasts and demons by his side, massacring entire towns in order to absorb their souls for power. This culminates in you having the option to make him win the final battle and go through with his plan to destroy humanity.
- We Cannot Go On Without You: The death of either protagonist results in an instant game over.
- Welcome to Corneria: Some of Rukyu's victims, particularly the townspeople in Zagato who serve to give the player advice, have the exact same things to say to him that they can also say to Falco.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: Duhamel laments the immortality Rhoda gave him and begs Rukyu to put an end to it and kill him. Unfortunately for him, the Fallen One has other plans.
- Womb Level: Day 5 of Reckoning ends with Bahm using Rukyu's armlet to send Falco's party to a bizarre dimension made of flesh and pulsating veins which they then have to spend Day 6 escaping.
- Would Hurt a Child:
- Though he does spare a pair of young boys during his first town massacre, after that Rukyu can kill children for their Soul Power with just as little hesitation has he'd give for anyone else.
- A young boy is among the escaped prisoners Bahm intended to be sacrificed to fuel the Barrier Machine.
- Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: Rukyu, having spent a millennium sealed away from the world, speaks in a pseudo-Shakespearean dialect.
