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  • Squaresoft's RPG Bahamut Lagoon has Byuu, who is suggested throughout the whole game to be a very close person to Yoyo who in turn fell for Palpaleos during her captive time. Such a thing ended in Palpaleos' Heel–Face Turn.
  • BlazBlue:
    • In BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger: Present time (past time had Jubei and Nine together, so that doesn't count), Bang Shishigami is all-heels to Litchi Faye-Ling, but she puts him in the "friends" box at best; or thinks he's a disgusting Stalker with a Crush at worst. Litchi herself is completely dedicated to Arakune, who's... in no condition to reciprocate her feelings, and, during the times he was sane, was too absorbed in trying to upstage Kokonoe due to an inferiority complex and ignored Litchi's feelings. On the other side, there's Tsubaki Yayoi, who's taken a liking to Jin Kisaragi since their first meeting as children, but Jin merely sees her as a "good cousin" at best because he's an asshole. And has a questionable attraction for his brother Ragna the Bloodedge, who's got other business to deal with, not even caring for Noel Vermillion's small, growing crush on him.
    • As of BlazBlue: Continuum Shift, everything gets mixed around. Jin's "attraction" to Ragna is revealed to be the result of his desire to free his older brother from his suffering. Unfortunately, Yukianesa drove him insane and his fairly innocent wish to help his sibling ended up as as insane, borderline-incestuous desire to kill him. Ragna also comes to accept Noel more, but only as a sister figure to him (which makes total sense given that she's a clone of his real sister). Finally, Tsubaki and Jin have something of an Unrequited Love Switcheroo: he goes utterly apeshit every time somebody hurts her, whereas she pulls a Face–Heel Turn after crossing the Despair Event Horizon based on the knowledge that Noel basically stole her destiny. It's not until the next game that all of this is sorted out once Jin breaks Tsubaki out of her More than Mind Control at the hands of the villains, though Jin and Tsubaki's reunion (and implied rekindling of their Childhood Friend Romance) is cut short by Jin being hospitalized in the aftermath of the Big Bad forcing Ragna to temporarily undergo a Face–Monster Turn, leading Tsubaki to swear vengeance on Ragna. It's that kind of series.
  • Near the end of Brütal Legend it's implied that Lita has developed feelings for Eddie. But Eddie only has eyes for Ophelia.
  • Cyberpunk 2077:
    • Kerry Eurodyne was in love with his bandmate, Johnny Silverhand. Apparently, Kerry tried to get together with Johnny (though what exactly he did is unclear due to Johnny being an Unreliable Narrator, so it could be anything from coy glances to just openly propositioning), but Johnny refused, though that didn't stop the two from going to male strip clubs together. Word of God confirms that Kerry takes initial romantic interest in male V due to him being essentially a vessel for Johnny's spirit. As the two get to interact more, Kerry sees V more as a seperate person and falls in love with him for himself. If Kerry was romanced and the player went for "The Sun"/"(Don't Fear) The Reaper" ending, Kerry openly states that he's moved on from Johnny and only V matters to him now.
    • It's implied that both romance options available for romance fall in love with V regardless of how V/the player feels about them. Judy and River always fall in love with female V, and Panam and Kerry always fall for male V. The player can romance both, only one, or neither.
  • In Dark Souls II, Queen Mytha had an unrequited love for the Iron King. She tried to use poison to make herself more beautiful and hopefully catch his eye, but this ended up having the opposite effect and instead turned her into a monstrous naga and gave her the title of "The Baneful Queen." Meanwhile, a man had an unrequited love for Mytha, who of course only had eyes for the Iron King and paid him no attention. He turned to eating as a coping mechanism, which transformed him into the Hutt-like Covetous Demon.
  • In Dragon Age:
    • Cullen the Templar has quite the crush on a female Mage Warden, which ultimately ends quite disastrously. In Dragon Age II, as Knight-Captain Cullen, he implies that even by now he's still in love with her. If Cullen is not romanced in Dragon Age: Inquisition, it is implied in one conversation that this is still the case, ten years after Origins, explicitly shown if she is romanced by Leliana, who happens to be Cullen's co-advisors.
    • Carver of the second game holds a rather large crush on Merrill, but his blatant, if weak attempts to flirt with her constantly fall flat due to her distracted nature and crush on his older sibling.
    • This might be implied with Anders: when Hawke finishes up the "Tranquility" quest by talking to him in his clinic, he will flirt with Hawke—male or female. If Hawke doesn't flirt back, he takes it badly and earns a handful of rivalry points. This could be his ego, or the fact that there's no nice way to let him down gently (at least early on), but...
    • Anders also has some rather bitter dialogue if Hawke romances Fenris, taunting him for leaving Hawke in Act 2 and asking what Hawke could possibly see in him during a quest in Act 3 — even asking them why they wouldn't want someone more open-minded.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Final Fantasy IV: Edge is very much interested in Rydia, but Rydia isn't interested in Edge. Also, Kain toward Rosa, but she only has eyes for Cecil. The J2E translation, among its many liberties with the script, takes thing a step further by making it so that Barbariccia of the Four Archfiends in turn has feelings for Kain due to them being "fellow creatures of the sky," an interpretation that is still quite popular in fan circles (and gives Rosa's captivity within the Tower of Zot slight Murder the Hypotenuse vibes from Barbariccia's end).
    • In Final Fantasy VII, teenage Cloud is in love with Tifa, but Tifa barely knows he exists, which prompts him to join SOLDIER (and kicks off the story of Final Fantasy VII in the first place). When they grow up, Tifa loves Cloud, but if he knows she does, he doesn't show it, at least not until the end of the game when he reciprocates. Johnny has the hots for Tifa too, and ends up running 7th Heaven in her absence because of it. Cloud is interested in Aerith, who later in the game seems to become interested in him (at first she thinks his resemblance to Zack is what attracts her to Cloud, but later she reveals she likes the real Cloud and wants to get to know him as himself). Tseng loves Aerith, but while it was an open secret, he never acted on his feelings. Rude has the hots for Tifa, but every time they encounter one another she either kicks his ass or mouths off to him. Elena loves Tseng, but she's too much of a fangirl to do anything about it. Vincent loved Lucrecia to the point of madness, but she was too busy starfucking Hojo to notice him. Hojo in turn didn't care one wet napkin about Lucrecia. And Shera loved Cid so much she (accidentally) sabotaged his dream rather than let him go through with it and die (they eventually get married after Cid learns her side of the story and he names an airship after her, however).
    • Quistis of Final Fantasy VIII makes it quite clear she has more than a passing fancy for our hero Squall... who rebuffs her advances by telling her to go talk to a wall. As the plot unfolds, it turns out the Junction-induced amnesia ailing most of the party made them forget that all of them save for Rinoa grew up at the same orphanage, with Quistis's affection for Squall not being romantic in nature, but more of a Cool Big Sis type of deal. After this revelation, Quistis stops pursuing Squall entirely.
    • Brother, a member of the Al Bhed in Final Fantasy X, has eyes for Yuna. He even learned the Common Tongue of Spira in order to better communicate with her. Of course, by the time we learn of this in X-2, Yuna's already spoken for and on a quest to reunite with Tidus. A hidden cutscene in the same game has Brother come to terms with the fact that she doesn't reciprocate. Keep in mind that, as Rikku's older brother, this makes Brother Yuna's cousin. Rikku herself is not particularly amused by Brother's crush for this very reason (along with how much of a nuisance he can be because of it).
    • Iris Amicitia is the younger sister of Gladiolus, The Big Guy of Noctis's crew in Final Fantasy XV. She's also been smitten with Noct since they first met as children, which Gladio approves of and not-so-subtly tries to clue his liege in on. Sadly for Iris, Noctis is already part of a Childhood Friend Romance-turned-Perfectly Arranged Marriage with Lunafreya. Worse still, Iris knows that she and Noct aren't meant to be and thus never truly makes her feelings known. If that wasn't enough, Noctis enacts a Heroic Sacrifice at the end of the game to rid Eos of the Starscourge and ends up Together in Death with Luna — all while Iris is off-screen and completely unaware. Poor Iris...
    • There's some Love Triangleing going on in Final Fantasy Dimensions. Diana has a crush on Sol, but he's Oblivious to Love. Glaive has a crush on Diana, but he keeps it to himself as much as he can, although Alba tries to push him into confessing. In the end, it's unclear if any of this has been resolved.
  • In Guenevere, the titular character can engineer a situation like this — she's married to King Arthur and (naturally) the object of Sir Lancelot's affection, but the player can choose to specifically cultivate their feelings for her (as well as those of Arthur's sister Morgana) while not actually returning them in any way.
  • Halo 5: Guardians: The Warden Eternal is in love (or deep devotion; whichever is more appropriate to an A.I.) with Cortana who is in love with Master Chief instead. Master Chief cares deeply for Cortana, but is clearly not on the same page because he is not willing to go along with her plan of conquest.
  • The King of Fighters:
    • Though the series mostly doesn't play this one, it does nod to it — in the console version of XI, you can get a special ending screen by playing as the "Unrequited Love Team": Ramon (for Vanessa), Sie Kensou (for Athena Asamiya), and Robert Garcia (for Yuri Sakazaki).
    • The Robert-Yuri example comes off as strange, since their relationship was never depicted as truly one-sided in their home series (Ryo even seems to support it in AOF3 in both his and Robert's endings), and in KOF itself it seems that she may reciprocate... if her father Takuma actually allowed Robert to speak romantically to her. Mai-Andy remains a much more classic example (lovechild jokes and allnote ), and in fact, in their origin series the ultimate fate of their relationship has been left a mystery, though Mai is said to be still in love with Andy but she seems to be out of luck by this point. This made the strong implications present in KOF XIV (both in pre-release story material and in-game interactions) that a Relationship Upgrade finally happened all the more surprising for longtime fans.
    • In regards to Athena and Kensou, they've been friends and partners ever since Psycho Soldier times, and he's very much in love with her. However, while Athena greatly cares for him as her best friend and is all but stated to know of his feelings, she simply doesn't reciprocate them. In other media, it's also implied that Athena has a crush on Kyo Kusanagi... whose canon girlfriend, Yuki, is a pretty close friend of Athena as well. (Besides, the girl seems to be very Married to the Job of being an Idol Singer, and Japanese idol singers tend to have trouble if they ever get boyfriends...)
  • Knights of the Old Republic:
    • KOTOR manages to accomplish the trope backwards with the addition of the second game. Pursue romantic subplots in the first game all you want; Revan still takes off for parts unknown and never returns, leaving their love interest behind to wait indefinitely.
    • Also occurs with the Exile. While it's possible to have certain party members fall for you, you're never really given the option to return their feelings. At best, all your character can do is dancing around the issue. Also a male Exile can make advances on Mira, but she turns you down.
  • Misao: Misao, Saotome, and Yoshino are all in love with Tohma, who ultimately is too self-absorbed to really return any feelings. Ayaka has a massive crush on Mr. Sohta/Kurata, and Kudou is revealed to have kept their feelings for Misao bottled up for too long. "Truth" also reveals that Sohta/Kurata's childhood friend/crush Takano didn't feel the same way, which didn't end well.
  • Monster Hunter 4: The Ace Cadet has the hots for the Guildmarm, but she ignores his advances and sees him as a mild nuisance more than anything. The Guildmarm in turn crushes on the various dangerous monsters you're assigned to hunt, especially the Brachydios, but those... aren't exactly the type to do anything with humans besides attack them on sight.
  • Neverwinter Nights:
    • For male characters in the first game: Of the three reoccurring female characters, one has no interest in the player, one never progresses beyond occasional flirting, and one dies no matter what you do. Averted with Nathyrra in the Hordes of the Underdark expansion.
    • If you pursue the romanceable characters in Neverwinter Nights 2, you still get the Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies ending. Until Mask of the Betrayer, anyway. Though if you mod the game to restore Neeshka's romance, she is one of the characters confirmed to survive the ending...
  • Persona:
    • Persona has Masao Inaba's crush on Maki Sonomura going unrequited, as she is interested in the protagonist, although he's nowhere to be seen by the time Persona 2 rolls around. The Eternal Punishment half of the Persona 2 duology also reveals that Eriko Kirishima had a crush on the protagonist, with one reason her becoming a model being to impress him.
    • Persona 2:
      • In Innocent Sin, Lisa Silverman spends a large chunk of the game clinging all over protagonist Tatsuya Suou. While you can potentially have him reconcile her feelings at the Taurus Temple, the earlier stages of the game hint that he lacks interest in her and generally finds her clinginess annoying. Meanwhile, Maya Amano's coworker (and a playable character from the previous game) Yukino Mayuzumi is very much in love with her photography partner and mentor, Shunsuke Fujii; speak to him in private and he'll reveal that he sees her as a sister figure more than anything else, although he's touched by her feelings.
      • In Eternal Punishment, it's Tatsuya's older brother Katsuya who's crushing on Maya, who, in both EP and IS, heavily favors Tatsuya. As for Tatsuya himself, he does love Maya on a very deep level, although whether it's a romantic love or a more familial love (as Maya babysat both him and his other friends when they were children) remains unclear.
    • The Magician Social Link in Persona 3 features fellow Gekkoukan High student Kenji Tomochika crafting a Zany Scheme to get the attention (and affection) of one of his teachers. As the Social Link progresses, Kenji, after a long bout of denial, reluctantly comes to grips with the reality of the situation: her interest in Kenji was strictly professional. (Never mind that she was already off the market to begin with.) Persona 3 Portable twists the knife further with the introduction of Rio Iwasaki in the female protagonist's route. Childhood friends with Kenji, Rio's been harboring a crush on him for years that he's completely oblivious to because of his infatuation for his teacher.
    • Persona 4:
      • Early in the game, Saki Konishi, the girl that Yosuke Hanamura was crushing on, is killed before anything really comes of it. Later on, however, he learns that Saki actually hated him and his family for putting hers out of business (Yosuke's father is the manager of a MegaCorp supermarket that made things tougher for smaller businesses) and was only cordial to him since he's the boss' kid.
      • It's all but stated that Kanji Tatsumi is crushing hard on detective Naoto Shirogane. While they do get their fair share of teasing, Naoto is mostly disinterested in romance and doesn't notice his feelings. The player can potentially make it worse for Kanji if they actually decide to make Naoto the protagonist's girlfriend, as she falls for him pretty hard. While later canon notes that Yu Narukami didn't seem to romance anybody during his stay in Inaba, he makes several comments in several spin-offs that fluster her, whereas she remains mostly aloof towards Kanji. On the other hand, Persona 4 Golden, released after P4A, has a handful of additional story events that either pile on extra Ship Tease or show Naoto actually getting flustered in reaction to some of Kanji's remarks.
    • Persona 5:
      • As revealed during the mission to find out about Futaba Sakura during the fourth story arc, the protagonist's guardian and (as it turns out) her adopted father, Sojiro Sakura, held romantic feelings towards Wakaba Isshiki, her now-dead mother. It's played around a bit when Futaba, during her Confidant link, shares that while Wakaba claimed to be too invested in her research to pay attention to Sojiro, she did greatly enjoy their time spent together and always seemed happy when she spoke about him, guessing that they could've possibly gotten together had she not been so busy.
      • While the protagonist of this game gets bits of Ship Tease with all four of his female party members, the end of both the aforementioned Futaba's and Haru Okumura's Confidants imply that they were both crushing on him to begin with, as if you opt for friendship instead of romance, they react rather badly. Haru will even confess in their Rank 10 conversation that she spent the night crying over being rejected.
      • Similar to the above, Chihaya Mifune (the Fortune Confidant) shows signs of interest in Joker after he changes the heart of the corrupt chairman she's been strong-armed and gaslighted into working for, outright asking him if he "likes older women"* at Rank 8. If turned down, while somewhat disappointed and playing off her questioning of Joker's motives in frequenting her fortune-telling stand as "feeling a bit self-conscious," Chihaya otherwise maintains her composure.
      • Royal sees the addition of Kasumi Yoshizawa to the Phantom Thieves and, by proxy, Joker's list of possible suitresses. She ends up getting perhaps more Ship Tease with Joker than the other four female Phantom Thieves combined (and in a multitude of ways note ), setting her up as an Implied Love Interest, and actually goes as far as to confess to Joker in her Rank 9 conversation before the player is even given the "I should choose my words carefully" prompt that precedes the Love Confession in every other romantic relationship with a female Confidant. Should the player choose not to reciprocate Kasumi's feelings, she takes rejection rather well, stating she has strong feelings for Joker as a friend/her senpai as well and expressing satisfaction that she was able to get that confession off her chest in the first place.
  • In the first Pretentious Game, you play as a blue square who's in love with a bright pink square, but she doesn't return the sentiment.
  • Saints Row: The Third shows this in, of all people, The Boss, if you give her the Female Eastern European voice/personality. She often flirts with Pierce, ranging from offering to being his dominatrix to wanting to make love to him in front of a live studio audience. Pierce is... slightly creeped by the passes, maybe because he's insecure about having an affair with his boss.
  • Samurai Shodown:
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • Amy Rose will try and try but she'll never get Sonic to return her feelings. However, the titular hero does like her as a friend.
    • A few bios state that Sonic probably doesn't dislike her as much as he appears to, hinting at a facade.
    • Sonic Chronicles, being a typical BioWare game, does actually allow the two to become an item if you play your cards right. Whether or not this will become Canon has yet to be determined.
  • Tales Series:
    • Rather painful yet Played for Laughs example from Tales of Graces. Hubert is in love with Pascal. He even outright spells it out for her. She tells him she'll make sure to take a bath for his rumored Arranged Marriage. Ouch.
    • Tales of Xillia: Leia loves Jude. Elize has a crush on Jude. Jude likes Milla who also likes Jude, but the two of them are too focused on Saving the World.
    • Tales of Symphonia:
      • Due to Developers' Desired Date, canonically this happens to Sheena as both giver and receiver of unreciprocated feelings. It's all but stated that she starts to become attracted to Lloyd for his idealism and heroic tendencies, but he has reciprocated feelings with Colette. On the flip side, it's heavily implied that Zelos has feelings for her, but something happened in their youth that soured her view on him and his sexually forward behavior doesn't help.
      • Genis is more than obviously attracted to Presea who at first doesn't even notice and later ignores it due to actually being a 28-year-old in a 12-year-old's body.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 1: One of the party members, Melia, is in love with Shulk, the main protagonist. Shulk is completely oblivious to her affections (he, himself, is in love with Fiora, who supposedly dies early in the game); Melia attempts to work up the courage to confess throughout the game, though privately admits defeat when Fiora is revealed to have survived. As a matter of fact, Sharla is the only one to ever notice Melia's crush on Shulk, and tells Melia that she will support her, though this also disappears when Fiora joins the party in the Hidden Village. By Future Connected, which takes place a year after the events of the main game, it seems Melia has gotten over her crush as she never makes any notion of still having it.

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