20 Games That Make You Cry | Story RPGs, PS5 & Mobile Ranked
Twenty games that make you cry, ranked by GPA's editorial team. For the full tag breakdown and similar-game comparisons, check each title's detail page.
Twenty games that make you cry, ranked by how hard the story design leans into loss. Story RPGs, PS5 starters, and one mobile title you can actually finish on a phone — filter the table by platform.
Searching for “moving games” is not the same hunt. Triumph and catharsis sit in that bucket too. This list is the other one: farewell, absence, a choice you cannot undo. GPA tags are useful; the ranking numbers are editorial, not the official scores on each game page.
20 games that make you cry — ranked
Ranked by narrative emotional intensity. Tap a title to jump to the write-up. Use the platform buttons to filter by PS5, Switch, mobile, and more.
Ranking by editorial emotional intensity. Tap a title to jump to its write-up. Filter by PS5, Switch, mobile, and more.
| # | Title | Emotional Intensity | 3-Axis Type | Platform |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | NieR:Automata | 97% | ② Existential / Loss | Nintendo SwitchPS5PS4steamXbox |
| 2 | Red Dead Redemption 2 | 95% | ① Character Empathy | PS5PS4steamXbox |
| 3 | The Last of Us Part I | 95% | ① Character Empathy | PS5PS4steam |
| 4 | The Last Guardian | 92% | ① Character Empathy | PS4 |
| 5 | Persona 3 Reload | 91% | ② Existential / Loss | PS5PS4steamXbox |
| 6 | Outer Wilds | 90% | ② Existential / Loss | PS5PS4steamXbox |
| 7 | Heaven Burns Red | 88% | ② Existential / Loss | steam |
| 8 | Final Fantasy X | 88% | ① Character Empathy | PS5steam |
| 9 | Spiritfarer | 87% | ① Character Empathy | Nintendo SwitchPS5PS4steamXbox |
| 10 | 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim | 85% | ③ Weight of Choice | Nintendo SwitchPS5PS4 |
| 11 | Shadow of the Colossus | 85% | ① Character Empathy | PS5PS4 |
| 12 | Detroit: Become Human | 85% | ③ Weight of Choice | PS5steam |
| 13 | UNDERTALE | 83% | ② Existential / Loss | Nintendo SwitchPS5PS4steam |
| 14 | Death Stranding | 82% | ② Existential / Loss | PS5PS4steamXbox |
| 15 | Persona 5 Royal | 80% | ① Character Empathy | PS5PS4steam |
| 16 | Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 | 79% | ② Existential / Loss | PS5steamXbox |
| 17 | Celeste | 78% | ① Character Empathy | Nintendo SwitchPS5PS4steamXbox |
| 18 | Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth | 75% | ① Character Empathy | PS5steam |
| 19 | The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt | 75% | ③ Weight of Choice | Nintendo SwitchPS5PS4steamXbox |
| 20 | AI: The Somnium Files | 72% | ③ Weight of Choice | Nintendo SwitchPS4steamXbox |
* Emotional intensity is an article-exclusive rating (not official GPA scores).
Games that make you cry vs games that move you
“Moving” is a wide word. Clearing a mountain, saving a city, walking into the light — that can all count. Games that make you cry usually hinge on something you lose. If you wanted the uplifting kind, the top of this ranking will still miss.
Tears in games sit on time you spent pressing buttons. Same “cry” label, three different machines.
Three patterns
① Character Empathy Type
Deep attachment built over a long playtime is suddenly released through loss or farewell. Examples: Red Dead 2, The Last Guardian, Spiritfarer. GPA tendency: Emotional Narrative 85%+, Story Depth 80%+.
② Existential / Loss Theme Type
Philosophical narratives that question the meaning of existence. The story ends before the player has found their answer, and that unresolved feeling becomes tears. Examples: NieR:Automata, Outer Wilds, Death Stranding.
③ Weight-of-Choice Type
Your choices create irreversible consequences. The story closes with regret, and that feeling lingers inside the player. Examples: Detroit, The Witcher 3, 13 Sentinels. GPA tendency: Multiple Endings 75%+.
* This matrix is the editorial team's own assessment and does not represent GPA official scores. Vertical axis shows Narrative Intensity (65–100%).
Story RPG picks
Longer does not mean more tears. What matters is whether loss is tied to combat, looping, or time with the party. That is why FF10, Persona 3 Reload, and NieR sit high here.
| Type | Title | Why it lands |
|---|---|---|
| Classic JRPG | Final Fantasy X | Tidus and Yuna. The ending still gets talked about |
| Classic JRPG | Persona 3 Reload | Youth story about death. Easy to start on current hardware |
| Classic JRPG | Persona 5 Royal | A year with the crew, then a heavy close |
| Classic JRPG | NieR:Automata | Each loop rewrites what you just did |
| Classic JRPG | Heaven Burns Red | Jun Maeda scenario. Playable on phone too |
| Classic JRPG | Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 | Command RPG feel. Death comes every year |
| Open-world leaning | The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt | Choices stack until Ciri's ending shifts |
| Open-world leaning | Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth | Heart-on-sleeve drama while you walk the city |
| Short indie | UNDERTALE | The pacifist route hits even in a short run |
PS5 games that make you cry
A short PS5 starter list. The ranking table’s PS5 button keeps only the featured titles that run there. The Last Guardian is PS4 on GPA; Heaven Burns Red is mobile and Steam first.
| Type | Title | Why it lands |
|---|---|---|
| Console | Red Dead Redemption 2 | The longer you live as Arthur, the harder the close |
| Console | The Last of Us Part I | The relationship changes on the road |
| Console | NieR:Automata | Meaning collapses as you loop |
| Console | Persona 3 Reload | Daily life, then a story about death |
| Console | Detroit: Become Human | Choices can kill a lead |
Mobile games with stories that hit
This 20 is console and PC first. The one you can finish on a phone is Heaven Burns Red. GPA lists Steam, but it started as a smartphone RPG with novel-game amounts of text.
UNDERTALE has a mobile port too. GPA still lists Switch / PlayStation / Steam as the main platforms, so the table’s Mobile button is really there to surface Heaven Burns Red — not a full gacha roundup.
20 write-ups — why each one lands
All titles below are recorded in GPA's game database. Visit each game's detail page to check tag scores and similar game rankings.
1. NieR:Automata
NieR:Automata
Genre: Action RPG
Androids fight a proxy war for humanity while quietly developing consciousness of their own. NieR: Automata asks its existential questions across multiple playthroughs, each one revealing a layer the last one withheld. GPA scores it at 95% for Existential Themes — the highest in the database — alongside strong marks for Emotional Story and Dark World.
Gameplay Profile
Key tags: Existential Themes / Anime Characters / Emotional Story / Story Depth / Action
Set in 5012 AD, Earth has been overrun by Aliens and their weapons — the machine lifeforms. Humanity retreats to the moon, launching android soldiers to reclaim the planet. Multiple playthroughs gradually reveal a truth that retroactively rewrites the meaning of everything the player has done — a multi-ending structure unlike anything in gaming.
A Post-Apocalyptic Soundtrack That Deepens Immersion
The music accompanying your journey through ruined amusement parks and submerged cities isolates a hidden beauty within devastation. The desolate world occasionally offers glimpses of hope through humanity's remnants — crumbling structures, fragments of literature, traces of a lost civilisation — creating an emotional depth that never settles into simple despair.
A HUD Design Linked to the Story
The HUD (the status and information overlay always visible on screen) is customisable — and this design choice ties directly into the game's fiction. Androids filter and display only the information they choose to show, and the UI reflects that worldbuilding with remarkable coherence.
Machine Lifeforms That Feel Alive
Even the enemies are designed to feel strangely endearing. The machine lifeforms carry subtle hints of will and emotion, making them feel less like targets and more like something to grieve. As you play, the question of “who is really the enemy?” becomes unavoidable — and that ambiguity is the pillar of this game's emotional depth.
2. Red Dead Redemption 2
Red Dead Redemption
Genre: オープンワールドアクションアドベンチャー
Red Dead Redemption follows John Marston across the dying American frontier in 1911, forced by government agents to hunt down his former gang in exchange for his family's freedom. The open world covers the American Southwest and Mexico, with horse travel as the primary pacing mechanism. The Undead Nightmare expansion reframes the same map as a zombie survival scenario. Originally released in 2010, the game reached Switch and PS4 in 2023 and Switch 2, PS5, and Xbox Series in December 2025. GPA scores it high on Emotional Story and Dark World — the prequel to RDR2 that established the series' identity.
Gameplay Profile
Key tags: Emotional Story / Story Depth / Open World / Dystopian Setting / Action
1899. The age of outlaws is ending. Arthur Morgan, a member of the Van der Linde gang, carries tuberculosis and increasingly questions the only life he has ever known. The farewell to a protagonist you spent 70+ hours building a life with is weighted by every minute of that investment.
Slow Pacing That Builds Genuine Attachment
The game is uncommonly generous with the mundane — doing laundry, grooming a beard, chatting around the camp fire. This “living Arthur's life” accumulation multiplies the impact of the inevitable ending. The longer you play, the harder it hits.
The Honour System Changes Everything
Your accumulated Honour score changes how Arthur's story closes. Whether you played as a good man or a ruthless one, the same ending feels completely different. The game forces a reckoning with how you chose to live his life.
Music and Landscape as Emotional Amplifiers
Riding across sunset plains while Woody Jackson's score swells is consistently cited as one of gaming's great emotional experiences. The historical context of a dying era and Arthur's personal story become one.
3. The Last Guardian
The Last Guardian
Genre: Action-Adventure
The Last Guardian follows a boy and an enormous creature named Trico through a crumbling ruin, building a relationship through care rather than command. Trico's AI creates unpredictable behavior that makes each interaction feel earned. GPA scores it at the top for Emotional Story — the highest in its genre category — with Dark World reflecting the melancholy that runs through the environmental design.
Gameplay Profile
Key tags: Emotional Story / Story Depth / Graphics / Dystopian Setting / Existential Themes
Fumito Ueda's 10-year labour of love. A boy trapped in a ruined tower must escape with Trico, a giant feathered beast. Trico's AI doesn't always follow commands — it gets scared, distracted, stubborn — and that imperfection is what makes it feel genuinely alive.
An AI That Doesn't Obey
You don't control Trico; you earn its trust. That distinction creates a bond unlike anything else in gaming. The relationship is built not through cutscenes but through the accumulated experience of being patient with something that doesn't always cooperate.
Storytelling Without Words
The game barely explains itself. The bond between boy and beast is expressed entirely through action, and the player accumulates that bond as lived experience rather than observed narrative.
The Aesthetics of Loss — Ueda's Trilogy
The conclusion to the tradition begun by ICO and Shadow of the Colossus. Playing all three together as a trilogy deepens the experience of each — and the specific kind of loss at the heart of each story reveals itself as a deliberate, lifelong artistic obsession.
4. Detroit: Become Human
Near-future Detroit. Androids have become sentient, and you follow three of them — Kara, Markus, Connor — as they navigate freedom, survival, and identity. The question “can androids have feelings?” is posed directly to the player through choice, resonating sharply in an age of rapidly advancing AI.
A Theme That Resonates With the AI Era
The game's central question — do artificial beings deserve rights? — is no longer purely fictional. Playing in 2026 means engaging with the moral dilemmas of sentient AI not as science fiction but as near-future ethical reality. That proximity makes the emotional stakes unusually sharp.
A Unique Design: See How Other Players Chose
After each scene, the game shows a flowchart of what percentage of global players made each choice. Knowing whether you were in the majority or minority creates a strange combination of solidarity and isolation that few games replicate.
Controls Are Secondary — Story Is Everything
The action controls ask for some unusual inputs and can occasionally frustrate. But Detroit is fundamentally a game about watching a story unfold through your decisions. Treat it like an interactive film and the controls become irrelevant against the narrative density.
5. Outer Wilds
Outer Wilds
Genre: Adventure
Outer Wilds gives players a solar system frozen in a 22-minute time loop and asks them to figure out what happened. No objectives are tracked. The entire mystery is assembled from observation and inference. GPA scores it at 90% for Existential Themes — second only to NieR:Automata — alongside high marks for Puzzle and Emotional Story.
Gameplay Profile
Key tags: Existential Themes / Story Depth / Emotional Story / Logic / Open World
A 22-minute time-loop solar system where you carry nothing forward except knowledge. No levels, no items — only understanding. This design transforms the game from something you “beat” into something you “comprehend.”
Knowledge as the Only Currency
Every loop begins fresh, but every discovery is permanent. The game rewards curiosity, not skill. As the solar system's secrets become clear, the universe expands not in space but in meaning.
The Emotion of “Understanding”
The game's emotional peak isn't a cutscene — it's the moment you understand. When the Ash Twin's purpose becomes clear, when you finally grasp what the eye of the universe represents, you experience something rarer than sadness: a quiet awe at the scale of what you've been inside.
The Campfire at the End
The ending doesn't announce itself with a grand cutscene. It sits you by a campfire as the universe ends, and the choice of who to sit with becomes the most meaningful decision you'll make. This kind of ending can only work in a game.
6. Spiritfarer
A cosy management game about ferrying spirits to the afterlife. The contrast between its gentle visual style and the weight of “ageing, illness, and farewell” is the structural core of everything Spiritfarer accomplishes.
Care as Emotional Architecture
You cook their favourite meals, build them rooms, fish and farm together. By the time a character is ready to leave, the attachment you've accumulated through these small acts makes their departure feel like something that's actually happening to you.
Characters That Echo Real Loss
Each character represents a specific kind of grief — an ageing parent, a beloved mentor, a childhood friend who changed. Their words and behaviours feel real enough that players frequently find themselves projecting real people onto them.
When the Cosy Aesthetic Makes the Loss Worse
The bright, gentle art style means the goodbye hits harder than you expect. “Why am I crying at what looks like a children's game?” is a common reaction — and the answer is that the contrast is entirely intentional.
7. Heaven Burns Red
Heaven Burns Red
Genre: Turn-Based RPG
Heaven Burns Red's writing density per scene is the highest in the mobile category, following Seraphina and her unit through a war against unidentified organisms with the ambition of a full visual novel embedded in gacha delivery. GPA scores it at the top for Story Depth and Emotional Story — the combination that drove its reputation beyond the gacha audience.
Gameplay Profile
Key tags: Emotional Story / Story Depth / Anime Characters / Turn-Based / Existential Themes
Jun Maeda's (CLANNAD, Angel Beats!) first major work in 15 years — a mobile RPG that completely transcends the genre. The scenario density is comparable to visual novels, and the emotional impact rivals anything on console.
A Mobile Game With Visual Novel Depth
The text volume, voice acting quality, BGM precision, and narrative rhythm combine into an immersive experience that has no business existing on a phone. If you dismiss it because of the platform, you will regret it.
Daily Life as Fuel for the Finale
Maeda builds slow, careful relationships between characters. The mundane warmth of everyday scenes isn't filler — it's the fuel for the climax. When the finale hits, everything you invested in those quiet moments is returned with interest.
Unusually Long Emotional Residue
The feeling of being unable to do anything for hours after finishing a key chapter is a known phenomenon among Maeda's works. Heaven Burns Red delivers this on schedule, in a mobile RPG wrapper, which makes it both surprising and unforgettable.
8. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Genre: Turn-Based RPG
Set in a world where the Paintress condemns entire age groups to death each year, Expedition 33 sends a doomed party into a dying world to break the curse. The turn-based combat integrates real-time parry mechanics that shift the rhythm of every encounter. GPA scores it highest in Emotional Story and Story Depth — the French aesthetic and existential weight make it one of the most distinctive RPGs of 2025.
Gameplay Profile
Key tags: Turn-Based / Story Depth / Existential Themes / Dystopian Setting / Emotional Story
A French turn-based RPG where Death arrives as an annual event. The world's unique setup — each year, the Paintress erases another year of life from humanity — accelerates emotional investment in every character from the very beginning.
Death and Rebirth as Narrative Engine
The mystery unfolds gradually as you progress, with the true nature of the Paintress and the world's history revealed in careful increments. The ending remains genuinely unpredictable until the final moments, keeping engagement and dread running in parallel throughout.
Artistic French Aesthetics
The French setting is rendered with an artistic quality that elevates the world into something genuinely beautiful. The music, character animations, and environmental design all serve the melancholy tone with unusual precision.
JRPG Systems Without the Confusion
Command selection, real-time parries, and character progression are all designed with enough clarity that the systems never interrupt immersion. If turn-based RPGs are your comfort zone, this is the most emotionally powerful entry point into the parry-action genre.
9. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Genre: Action RPG
The Witcher 3 builds its open world around the quality of its writing rather than the size of its map. Side quests carry the same narrative investment as the main story. GPA scores it at the top for Story Depth and Emotional Story among open-world RPGs — a positioning shared with very few titles of comparable scale.
Gameplay Profile
Key tags: Story Depth / Emotional Story / Open World / Graphics / Multiple Endings
Geralt searches for his adopted daughter Ciri across a massive open world. The game's emotional design is built on a key insight: the ending is determined not by a final dialogue option but by the accumulated weight of every choice you've made throughout the entire journey.
Choices That Accumulate Into Consequence
You can do everything “right” and still reach a tragic conclusion — because the game remembers your behaviour over 100 hours, not just the last twenty minutes. The sense that your actions throughout the entire game determined Ciri's fate is what gives the ending its weight.
The Bloody Baron — A Side Quest That Rivals the Main Story
Frequently cited as one of the greatest quests in RPG history. A broken man trying to hold his family together in impossible circumstances — its emotional complexity runs on a completely different track from the main narrative, and the conclusion stays with you.
Geralt's Awkward Paternity
Geralt expresses emotion through action rather than words. His relationship with Ciri is defined by what he does for her, not by what he says — and that taciturn protectiveness gives the father-daughter bond a specific emotional register that RPG protagonists rarely achieve.
10. Death Stranding
Death Stranding
Genre: Action
Death Stranding asks players to reconnect a post-apocalyptic America by carrying cargo across difficult terrain. Other players' structures appear in your world. GPA scores it high on Existential Themes and Open World, with the lowest Action score among open-world titles — a combination that accurately identifies who this game is and isn't for.
Gameplay Profile
Key tags: Graphics / Existential Themes / Story Depth / Emotional Story / Dystopian Setting
A lone delivery man, Sam Porter Bridges, reconnects a fractured post-apocalyptic America on foot. The game asks one question, persistently and philosophically: what does it mean to connect? The answer arrives only after 60+ hours of lonely walking.
Walking as Storytelling
Most of Death Stranding is you, alone, crossing mountains with cargo strapped to your back. That accumulated solitude is not padding — it is the emotional preparation for what connection eventually means in this world. The silence makes the ending louder.
Invisible Players, Indirect Connection
Abandoned ladders, care packages left by strangers, roads built by no one you can name — the online systems create a form of companionship that is specifically about absence. “Someone was here” is a feeling that no other game generates quite this way.
The Convergence at the End
Every thread of the story converges in the finale. The meaning of the long, solitary journey is finally explained, and the emotional payoff is proportional to the investment. It earns its ending.
11. 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
Thirteen characters, thirteen perspectives, all converging into a single story. The separation of visual novel (narrative) and real-time strategy (battle) modes keeps your emotional focus on the story without interruption.
The moment when all thirteen fragmented viewpoints align and the full picture becomes clear delivers a simultaneous hit of intellectual satisfaction and genuine emotional release. Vanillaware's ensemble storytelling at its peak.
12. Celeste
A precision platformer about a young woman climbing a mountain while battling anxiety and self-doubt. The game's design insight: dying hundreds of times and getting back up IS the story, not just the mechanics.
Madeline's journey of self-acceptance and the player's own perseverance run in perfect parallel. When the summit is reached, the player has earned the emotion — not watched it happen.
13. UNDERTALE
Toby Fox's solo-developed RPG where save files, load screens, and the very act of killing enemies are woven into the narrative as meaningful events. The Pacifist Route ending is one of the most emotionally effective sequences in gaming history.
The game ultimately asks you what you have been doing — and in doing so, creates a kind of moral weight that only a medium where the audience makes choices can generate. You can't experience this in a film. It requires a player.
14. AI: The Somnium Files
Kotaro Uchikoshi's (Zero Escape series) mystery adventure swings between absurd comedy and devastating revelation with unusual range. You will laugh loudly and then feel the floor drop out from under you within the same hour.
Multiple interlocking perspectives gradually converge, and the moment the truth becomes clear delivers intellectual satisfaction and genuine emotion simultaneously. Playing the sequel “nirvanA Initiative” alongside this one deepens both.
15. Persona 5 Royal
A full school year spent building relationships through the Social Link system means by the time the ending arrives, you have invested in these friendships for 80+ hours. The finale releases all of that accumulated feeling at once.
Royal's added third-semester content pushes the emotional stakes even higher after the original ending. Among Persona titles, this is the most emotionally dense — and the most rewarding for players willing to invest the time.
16. Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth
The series' most ambitious entry. Dual protagonists Ichiban Kasuga and Kiryu Kazuma share the spotlight in a sprawling story about loyalty, legacy, and what it means to die with dignity. Long-time fans will find beloved returning characters throughout.
Each chapter's emotional arc is scored with a memorable song — a tradition the series has always used well, here deployed at its most effective. The music hits harder because the relationships underneath it have been built over 100+ hours.
The yakuza setting puts some players off, but for anyone who has followed this series, this feels like the culmination of everything that came before it — and delivers on that promise.
17. Final Fantasy X
The 2001 JRPG that set the template for emotional storytelling in the genre. Tidus and Yuna's journey around Spira is built around the theme of dreams — and the ending, underscored by “Zanarkand,” is still cited as one of the most moving sequences in gaming over two decades later.
The structure is designed so that the player and Tidus discover the truth about his existence at exactly the same moment. That synchronisation of revelation — player and protagonist equally blindsided — is the mechanism of its emotional impact.
Available now via HD Remaster on modern platforms. That it continues to reliably move players 25 years after release is testimony to a design that transcends the era it was made in.
18. Persona 3 Reload
The Persona entry that confronts death most directly. The entire game is organised around a memento mori — a meditation on mortality that deepens with every relationship built with the SEES team members.
Reload's additions — full voice acting, new bonding events, expanded scenes — make it the definitive version for both newcomers and returning players. Heavier and more philosophical than Persona 5, this is the series at its most emotionally serious.
19. The Last of Us Part I
Joel and Ellie's journey across a post-pandemic America is one of the great slow-build relationships in narrative fiction. A shared ordeal creates a bond that neither character expected — and the player experiences its formation in real time.
The ending doesn't resolve cleanly. Joel's final choice is left morally ambiguous, and “was he right?” is a question the game deliberately refuses to answer — because the player has to carry that alongside everything else.
20. Shadow of the Colossus
Fumito Ueda's 2005 masterpiece. Sixteen colossi stand between Wander and his wish. The game is almost entirely action — no dialogue, no explanation — and yet with each colossus defeated, something accumulates that feels unmistakably like loss.
The ending resolves everything in a way the stripped-back design has been quietly preparing the entire time. Playing ICO and The Last Guardian alongside this completes a trilogy of loss-based emotional design that remains unmatched in the medium.
Which One to Start With
Sort by setting (sci-fi, historical), your playtime budget, and the specific theme or experience you're after.
If you want Character Empathy Type
Prioritise: Red Dead 2 · The Last Guardian · Spiritfarer · Final Fantasy X · The Last of Us · Shadow of the Colossus
These get better the longer you play. Dedicate the time and the payoff scales accordingly.
If you want Existential / Philosophical Themes
Prioritise: NieR:Automata · Outer Wilds · Heaven Burns Red · Persona 3 Reload
Games that make you think as well as feel. GPA's Existential Theme score is 75%+ across this group.
If you want the Weight of Choice
Prioritise: Detroit · The Witcher 3 · 13 Sentinels
The emotion here comes from your own decisions coming back to haunt you — regret and achievement arriving together.
FAQ about games that make you cry
Which games that make you cry should I start with?
This ranking puts NieR:Automata, Red Dead Redemption 2, and The Last of Us at the top of emotional narrative intensity. The best pick depends on whether you want attachment-and-loss, existential themes, or the weight of your own choices. Jump from the ranking table into each write-up.
What's the difference between moving games and games that make you cry?
“Moving” can include triumph and catharsis. Games that make you cry usually hinge on loss or farewell. This list leans toward the latter — if you want an uplifting payoff, the distinction section will steer you better.
Which story RPGs actually make you cry?
Classic JRPG route: Final Fantasy X, Persona 3 Reload, NieR:Automata. Open-world leaning: The Witcher 3 and Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. Short indie: UNDERTALE. Length is not the point — loss has to be tied to play.
Which PS5 games make you cry?
Strong console starting points: Red Dead Redemption 2, The Last of Us Part I, NieR:Automata, Persona 3 Reload, and Detroit: Become Human. The ranking table’s PS5 filter shows every featured title that runs there.
Are there mobile games with stories that hit this hard?
On this list, Heaven Burns Red is the main title you can finish on a phone. GPA lists Steam, but it started as a smartphone RPG. This ranking is console-and-PC first — it is not a full mobile-gacha roundup.
How is this crying-game ranking scored?
The intensity column is an editorial rating for this article, not the official GPA tag score on each game page. Use the table to compare how hard these 20 lean into tear-jerking design; use GPA pages for the official tags.
Which crying-story games are on Nintendo Switch?
From this 20: Spiritfarer, UNDERTALE, Celeste, 13 Sentinels, NieR:Automata, and The Witcher 3. Use the Nintendo Switch filter on the ranking table. The Last Guardian is listed as PS4 on GPA.
Any shorter games that still hit hard emotionally?
UNDERTALE, Outer Wilds, and AI: The Somnium Files finish in roughly 10–20 hours with strong closure. Red Dead Redemption 2 and Persona 3 Reload need long investment — pick by type and available play time.
How is GPA's Emotional Narrative score different from this article's intensity table?
GPA's Emotional Narrative score is the official tag score on each game page. The intensity chart and filter table in this article are editorial ratings — not official GPA scores. Use both for objective data and curated emotional intensity at time of writing.
Find Your Game Using GPA's Emotional Narrative Score
Every title in this list scores 75% or higher on GPA's Emotional Narrative metric. But whether a game will actually move youdepends on the fit between your sensibility and the game's design.
Each game's detail page on GPA shows not only the Emotional Narrative score but also Target Player scores and Similar Game rankings — giving you a structural way to find your next title from a game you already loved.