Tear Jerker / Dragon Quest III

• After following in Ortega's footsteps throughout the entire quest, you finally catch up to him in the final castle...just in time to witness The Dragon striking him down. Made all the worse by the realization that he survived in Alefgard for years, and must have been training and preparing all that time for this final assault...only to fail and die in front of his only child.
  • Even worse, in at least the GBC version? He had forgotten his past life, including his wife and child. When he's defeated (after being hit with three firebreath blasts in a row, mind you), he regains his memories, but is blind and deaf, and not even sure someone's speaking to him when the player character talks to him. He talks about his child, apologizing for failing to bring peace to the world and calling himself a wretched person. He asks this person to relay this message to his child as he expires, never realizing he's been addressing said kid the whole time. Sure, one of the wishes Divinegon can grant is reviving him, which in itself can be a tearjerker for some, but that's not even known until you've already beaten the final boss and then fought and defeated Divinegon.
  • Tracing Ortega's path across the world, and then into Alefgard, is a sad affair unto itself: everywhere he went, he won friends, solved problems, and gained renown as an amazing hero just like his child would eventually do. Yet what do we hear about the most? How much he misses his wife and child, back in Aliahan.
• The Hero's poor Mother. Her husband Ortega is presumed dead and she sends her only child to fight evil. The child vanishes just like her husband and then the child is sealed away in Alefgard. Now the mother has lost her husband and will never see her only child again. Made even worse when remembering that the hero's mother awaits their return just outside their house at night.
  • Try talking to the Hero's Mother while the Hero is dead in your party. The woman nearly breaks down completely.
• The dying Dragon Queen gives you the Sphere of Light to defeat Zoma in the hope of creating a peaceful world for her child. And then the child becomes the Dragon Lord, a being that throws the world into chaos.
• Even for the time — the NES era was notorious for being somewhat sensitive on the topic of death due to censorship policies overseas — this game has just an astonishing amount of realistically tragic and upsetting material in it:

  • The orphan child in Reeve whose parents were eaten by monsters.
  • It's inferred that the man in Aliahan who wanted to make his own Magic Ball — which despite its name is in fact a wall-destroying explosive — maimed himself in the process.
  • The fate of the Elf princess, Anne and her human lover.
  • The tragedy of Errol and Olivia, who leapt to her death from the promontory that bears her name.
  • Samanao has plenty when the Hero first arrives:
  • It starts off with a funeral for a man named Baranao, executed by Samanao's false king. His widow is inconsolable, her life obviously ruined by the whole affair.
  • Her son begs to know where his father is.
  • The lives of the cooks and maids in the castle are on constant verge of nervous breakdown because they might be executed next for the smallest mistake.
  • In the dungeon we see multiple victims of the false king's tyranny, some of them also dead.
  • And finally, there is the fate of Simon, exiled by the false king, left to rot in an obscure jail.
  • The sad isolation of the exiles on Luzami.
  • The agony of the parents whose daughters were eaten by the Orochi — and Yayoi, chosen to be next.
  • The damned souls on the Phantom Ship:

  "Death by drowning is excruciating. I don't want to die!"

  • And perhaps most dramatic of all, the ghosts of Tedanki, only one of whom vaguely knows he's really dead.

---