Anyway, @Louis_Cypher I’m curious if there are any JRPGs you yourself have enjoyed particularly as a story of metaphysical good vs evil?
I'm not sure if I can name one that is as satisfying as Tolkien in that regard, although I've tried hard for many years to find fantasy equal to that. He was an unequalled master of describing mythic degrees of good vs. evil metaphysical contention on paper. Maybe because he had a strong grounding in metaphysics via Thomist theology, and was a scholar of Europe's ancient epics. (Or maybe he was just a once-a-milennia epochal genius).
Sauron was become now a sorcerer of dreadful power, master of shadows and of phantoms, foul in wisdom, cruel in strength, misshaping what he touched, twisting what he ruled, lord of werewolves; his dominion was torment.
But Sauron was not of mortal flesh, and though he was robbed now of that shape in which had wrought so great an evil, so that he could never again appear fair to the eyes of Men, yet his spirit arose out of the deep and passed as a shadow and a black wind over the sea, and came back to Middle-earth and to Mordor that was his home. There he took up again his great Ring in Barad-dur, and dwelt there, dark and silent, until he wrought himself a new guise, an image of malice and hatred made visible; and the Eye of Sauron the Terrible few could endure.
I love the above passage. Just the sheer beauty of his writing. It demonstrates many layers of his thought. It could equally be medieval Christian, Shinto or Hindu, because it's perennial applicability to all cultures. A Platonic notion that only 'good' can truly create in any real sense; that a maligant will misshapes what it touches, that worship directed at the wrong transcendant principle emboldens some eternal Luciferian principle.
I look for that in fantasy games, and am usually disappointed to find they echo it less well, if at all. There was a thread a while back where it became clear that Western games hadn't played a chivalric-hero straight, without 'clowning' them, or portraying them as a characature, in living memory. Yet many gamers are convinced it has been "done to death" when it has in fact barely ever been tried. Japanese RPGs tend to be earnest, display love of the world, love of genuine friendship, love of beauty, etc, which puts them ahead of the pack in terms of depictions of 'goodness' and 'right order'. The antagonistic force however seldom approaches the purely Satanic in scope and will as Sauron or say Emperor Palpatine. Entities I remember fighting in some JRPGs were scorned mortal sorcerers, who sometimes acquire an immortal capacity for power along the way, not knowing that it will banish that last of their humanity, and capacity for change. In Sauron's case he is literally in possession of Angelic degrees of will, beyond mortal competence.
In my story Sauron represents as near an approach to the wholly evil will as is possible. He had gone the way of all tyrants: beginning well, at least on the level that while desiring to order all things according to his own wisdom he still at first considered the (economic) well-being of other inhabitants of the Earth. But he went further than human tyrants in pride and the lust for domination, being in origin an immortal (angelic) spirit.
On different track, my favorite JRPG of all time is probably "Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey", which has a really interesting three way choice between different metaphysical standpoints about the universe. The demonic, represented by chaos-worshipping Asuras, wanting to rise on a scaffold of the corpses of the weak. The lawful forces, condemning life to mechanistic submissive bondage, represented by the extremes of Angelic intent, unassailable in organised might. The transcendant human, finding some Neitzschean principle beyond order and chaos. It doesn't however try to go for what a good vs. evil story is about in my mind; habitable order vs. pure nihilistic entropy.
Another series I enjoy, more for it's simple good nature, is Ys, which in real life was the name of a lost island in ancient Breton Celtic mythology. The protagonist is an adventurer, on an unapologetic quest to travel the world for no-nonsence curiosity, and defeat evil because it is right. No regrets about his life, he loves the world, loves travel, loves to vanquish anything that corrodes it. It's full of joy, and beauty/joy is the mark of life-giving spirituality.