5 RPGs Where Companion Approval Matters

The major component that decides how much of a story players will love is the characters. Whether they be in-depth and three-dimensional or comedic and bizarre, compelling characters to help define the stakes, setting, and story of a video game are essential to how much players will get out of it.

And what characters are around the player more than their companions? Companions are essential to adding life and vibrancy to a game setting, as characters constantly interact with the same things the player can. Some of the best RPGs of the last year have recognized how to use companions, but in some titles, companions go beyond simple followers. If players don’t win these companions over, there could be trouble down the line.

5 Marvel’s Midnight Suns

Forge A Close-Knit Team Of Heroes

Marvel’s Midnight Suns was an unexpected surprise for many, as the XCOM-inspired gameplay and style made a fantastic splash in the strategy game genre. The game’s customizable protagonist, and the mechanical and narrative implications for choosing to walk a more ruthless or benevolent path, are just the first things that grip players in this title. As things move on, the player learns about the various iconic heroes divided roughly into two groups – the old-school Avengers and the new-school Midnight Suns.

Forming a bond with any of these superheroes, from Spiderman to Magik to Deadpool (with DLC) is beneficial for gameplay. As players move through the first tiers of friendship with these heroes, powerful passive abilities and color palettes are unlocked. At the highest tier, a special mission is unlocked that, when completed, gives an incredible legendary ability for heroes to use. Heroes not invested with the protagonist will not perform nearly as well as the ones that respect or like the player.

4 Wasteland 3

Companions Have Their Own Views To Reconcile With

Wasteland 3 continues many of the traditions that have defined each title. The emphasis on classic RPG elements, the expansive story, and perhaps most of all, the extreme challenge at higher gameplay settings. This is a brutal and frozen-over world, an aesthetic that’s become quite popular of late, where the rangers and their companions need to stick together if they want to survive. Within the player’s party of six, only 4 characters can be the custom-made voiceless rangers. The other 2 must be NPC companions.

NPCs in this title have their own faction alignments and agendas to stick to, and if players go against that, the companions will leave their characters out in the cold. The game becomes that much harder once these NPC companions players have put time into building decide to leave over moral or ideological disagreements.

3 Persona 5 Royal

Bonding With The Phantom Thieves Is A Must For Joker

Persona 5 is one of the most popular RPGs to date, in no small part due to the iconic and unparalleled level of freedom it affords its players during the slower patches of downtime in-game. The slice-of-life style of gameplay makes players manage their time and balance socializing with typical RPG elements or studying to create the kind of Joker they feel is ready to lead the Phantom Thieves.

Socializing isn’t all about flirting one’s way into their chosen companion’s heart, however. With each level of affection built between Joker and a Confidant, both characters get a boost to their stats and overall power. Thus, companion approval determines whether a player will make it into the harder dungeons toward the game’s end.

2 Dragon Age 2

Companions Need To Feel Strongly About Hawke

The heavily underrated Dragon Age 2 is a title with a plethora of strong features. Among them is the robust system for companions’ affection, which measures precisely how strongly they feel towards the player, instead of a more static measurement of how much they like the player. In practice, what this means is that companions can feel as though they are close friends or close rivals to Hawke, and the difference this brings in dialogue and quests is startling.

Companion approval in Dragon Age 2 matters in a variety of ways. If Varric doesn’t like the player, it will greatly affect how he retells Hawke’s story later on. If Isabela doesn’t like the player enough to open up about her past, she leaves with a key item in Act 2 and does not return with it, altering how the rest of this act turns out. There are narrative and mechanical benefits to having companions that like Hawke, or at the very least, dislike Hawke enough to declare themselves a rival.

1 Triangle Strategy

The Majority Decides The Way In This JRPG

Triangle Strategy is one of those fantastic gems of a title on the Switch, among the greatest JRPGs with branching storylines. Companion approval is not measured with a static rating the way it is in other titles, but instead, companions approving of the player’s decisions is vital if the player wants the story to go in the direction of said decisions. Sometimes a companion will already be implicitly aligned with the player’s decision during the many junctions when a decision needs to be made, but other times it will take some convincing on Serenoa’s part.

A companion might come around to approve of Serenoa’s suggested path before a quest if the conviction tied to that path is strong with Serenoa. A Utility-focused Serenoa trying to convince someone of a Liberty-focused quest path will have a hard time. Similarly, key pieces of evidence unlock more persuasion options that can further push Serenoa’s companions one way or the other.