It Was Better When (Final Fantasy X / Grandia II)

Final Fantasy X was better when it was called "Grandia II".

The story follows an egotistical hipster douchebag with spiky hair...

Who becomes bodyguard to a priestess...

Who possesses a monstrous power within, collecting parts of which comprises a majority of the events of the story...

and they begin a journey to find an ultimate weapon...

in order to combat a nearly omnipotent evil force plaguing their world.

Over the course of their adventure they befriend a cute blonde ostracized from society at large for their clan's beliefs...

and a quiet yet kind beast-man...

and fight several of the big bad evil power's minions.

Along the way there is much talk of the hero's rotten family member.

He is eventually revealed to be corrupted by the big bad, and the hero eventually confronts and defeats him to settle a long-standing grudge.

Eventually one of the church's agents is revealed to be an insane zealot...

which soon unfolds into the entire church being corrupt at its core...

and enacting a nihilistic plan to bring about the end of all life...

...which the priestess was an unwitting pawn in, as their "dark powers" are key to sustaining/restoring the big bad's existence.

The plot twists again when another character is revealed to be privy to the ultimate truth behind the nature of the game's events...

and reveals that the "big bad" and the "ultimate good" are one and the same, and the product of ancient man's hubris to boot.

The hero then finds the power to confront the big bad on equal terms through a particularly corny anime trope...

the group enters his body...

Inside, they confront the corrupted clergymen with delusions of godhood...

...and bring salvation, peace and eternal happiness to the world in a matter of months with no lingering conflicts or hard feelings whatsoever.  An extremely unbiased and realistic depiction of what would occur if an entire world's belief system and governmental body were completely and inexorably shattered, I'm sure.  Every atheist bigbrain I've ever spoken to says that's exactly how it'll go down one day, and they must be right because the braindead lapdogs they've bullied trained into mindlessly parroting it back to them on command all say so too!  And if they're in the "majority" in a vicious hate-fueled dogpile on anyone who ever questions them argument, that means they're never wrong!  So you'd best lie down, roll over and start kissing their assholes from here until doomsday, because it's only a matter of time before all their armchair warfare finally radicalizes hundreds of millions of highly trained soldiers willing to die in their name and the revolution finally gets underway. Then, once all the fallout from the theist-clearing warheads and death squads settles and they're finally recognized and crowned as the one true ubermensch for all to obey forever and without question, the first undesirables quietly "disappearing" from their new utopia will be every single person still alive who ever told them they were wrong about anything, followed by anyone who doesn't immediately comply with their new humanity-saving eugenics program, followed by an extremely modest 99.97% of people who do!  But don't you dare imply this is the exact same kind of depraved wishcasting employed by sanctimonious right-wingers who think the Rapture is coming soon and that once it does they'll instantly be welcomed into eternal paradise and completely exonerated of all the acts of malice, avarice and vice they wantonly enable and/or commit themselves, this is completely different damn it! Boy, who would ever guess that the one true path to enlightenment was graduating high school with a 1.4 GPA, dropping out of college after two semesters of majoring in partying, working the same thankless minimum wage retail job for fifteen years while attending the church of Fight Club On DVD twice a day and never getting that promotion you "deserve" because your NPD and the Dunning-Kruger effect prevent you from realizing you're a mediocre narcissistic asshole who treats everyone as a commodity?

Oh, and the priestess character arbitrarily decides to become a musician at the end.

...though to Elena's credit, she at least spares us the indignity of an unbelievably shitty sequel with herself in the starring role where she is strongly implied to be in an incestuous relationship with her cousin.

So there you have it.