I'm Not Counting The Goddess For The Age Question.
A couple of people responded to my question about male love interests in videogames by saying they were having trouble thinking of games they'd played with female protagonists. So, in case anyone's interested, here's the list of games I've played in which the main playable character is female!
In cases where control is split between two or more characters, I've taken who's presented as the protagonist into account. Final Fantasy XIII, for example, has you controlling different characters at different times, but the protagonist is definitely Lightning, whereas, although you could argue that Sam is the main playable character of Until Dawn or that Mizuki is the main playable character of AI: The Somnium Files: nirvanA Initiative, those cases aren't clear-cut enough for it to be listed here. I haven't counted games in which you can choose the protagonist's gender; these are games that were specifically designed around a female main character.
I've listed these games in alphabetical order and included some brief notes about each one, in case anyone's wondering whether to pick any of these games up. I've put asterisks next to games I particularly enjoyed. (Which isn't to say I didn't enjoy the others; there's only one game on this list I'd actively advise against playing (spoiler: it's Beyond: Two Souls).)
I've also only included games I've played myself, not games I've experienced through Let's Plays or watching friends play them, which is why I've omitted Danganronpa Another Episode, Life Is Strange: Before the Storm, We Know the Devil and The Zodiac Trial. But then I changed my mind and included We Know the Devil anyway. You can't tell me what to do.
Beyond: Two Souls: An adventure game about a young woman who has a ghost attached to her. A David Cage game told out of order, which means it lacks the one thing David Cage games actually do well: intricate branching storylines. It's crucial to note that this is just a list of videogames I've played with female protagonists, and not necessarily a list of recommendations, but this is the only game on the list I'd actively recommend against playing. I found it a bit of a bleak slog, and it seriously mishandled a sensitive topic I have strong feelings about. Also, you don't get to smooch the ghost, which is frankly a waste of a ghost that's permanently tethered to you.
*Celeste: A challenging 2D platformer about a young woman who decides to tackle her anxiety and depression by climbing a mountain. One of my absolute favourite games. The characters are charming; the music and pixel art are lovely. The gameplay is difficult to get to grips with at first, but it's rarely frustrating - the frequent checkpoints mean you don't feel like you're losing progress - and I found the way you improve with practice really satisfying; it's a bit like playing the piano. I go back to replay this every few months.
Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble: Another challenging 2D platformer! This one has rarer checkpoints and limited lives, and therefore has a lot more potential to frustrate than Celeste. Perhaps fortunately, I played this on Switch Online's SNES emulator, which has save state and rewind options. I think I'd have given up on the Donkey Kong Country series long before reaching the third without those. The Donkey Kong Country games are very gameplay-focused - there's not much dialogue or story - but Dixie has a lot of personality in her animations.
*Final Fantasy VI: I'd say this game has dual protagonists in Terra and Celes, but they're both women, so it definitely qualifies for this list! A 2D steampunk RPG with a wide-ranging story; I'm not sure how to describe the concept, so I'll just say it's about trying to save the world. There are elements of this game that frustrate me a little - it has too many characters to feel focused, and I think the encounter rate is too high - but it's a classic for a reason; it has a lot of charm and personality, and the pixel art still looks great to this day.
Final Fantasy X-2: A direct sequel to Final Fantasy X, in which Yuna searches for Tidus and navigates the way the events of the first game have changed the world. It's a fun diversion with some memorable scenes, but it feels aimed at straight men in a way that occasionally veers into the uncomfortable.
*Final Fantasy XIII: An RPG about a group of strangers who, having been given a death sentence by a god, find themselves forced to work together and grapple with the sudden loss of their futures. There's not a lot of variety in this game - it's pretty much all battles and cutscenes - but I love everything it does. The music and visuals are gorgeous, I find the concept really interesting, I adore the characters, and I enjoy the battle system a lot.
Final Fantasy XIII-2: A direct sequel to Final Fantasy XIII. Serah teams up with time-traveller Noel, and the two of them go bouncing all over the timeline, looking for Lightning. I think this game suffered from only having a two-person party, and its non-linear nature made it difficult to develop the characters or their relationships, but I found it fun enough.
Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII: The final game in the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy. It's the last few days before the end of the world, and Lightning spends them doing a bunch of sidequests. I wasn't a huge fan of this game, but, if you enjoyed the rest of the Final Fantasy XIII series, I think it's worth playing at least once to see how everything resolves. I'd recommend playing on easy mode, which makes it a lot easier to pause the constant countdown timer and therefore makes the game less stressful to play.
Forgotton Anne: A 2D puzzle platformer about a young woman in a world of forgotten objects that have come to life. It's hand-animated and looks lovely. I found the gameplay a bit frustrating - the platforming feels imprecise, and it's not always clear what you're supposed to be doing - but I was engaged by the story and enjoyed the character interactions.
Forspoken: An action RPG about a woman who travels from present-day New York to a fantasy world. I haven't finished this game yet, so I can't speak with much authority, but from what I've played I think it's underrated. It came in for a lot of criticism, but I think it's fun enough, even if it's not life-changing. Anyone who thinks the dialogue is 'cringe' is a coward who has not played enough Life Is Strange to inoculate themselves against cringe-inducing dialogue.
Freddi Fish series: A series of 2D children's adventure games about a little yellow fish solving mysteries with her sidekick, a little green fish. They're very much aimed at kids and aren't as engaging when you're an adult, but I loved them when I was younger, so I think they're a solid choice if you have any young relatives who want to play a game with a female protagonist! (Although I didn't actually realise Freddi was a girl until halfway through the second game.)
Gone Home: A short game about a young woman who comes home from university, finds a cryptic note from her sister on the front door, and explores the empty house in an attempt to work out what's happened and where everyone is. While the main playable character is still female (and that's technically the reason this game qualifies for this list), you don't actually learn much about her; I'd say that the true protagonist is the sister, whose life and personality you slowly uncover by looking through the house.
*Gris: A short 2D platformer about coming to terms with grief. Hand-animated and absolutely gorgeous. No dialogue, but the story comes through. I come back to replay this one every couple of years.
Hiveswap: A 2D adventure game about a girl who discovers an alien world; I've only played Act 1 so far. It's a Homestuck spinoff, although I don't think you need to have read Homestuck to play it. The writing is fun and the hand-drawn art is lovely, but Act 2 came out three years ago and there's been absolutely no word on Act 3, which is a bit discouraging.
*Horizon Zero Dawn: An action game about a young woman in the far future, in which the world is filled with hostile mechanical animals. One of my absolute favourite games. Visually gorgeous, fascinating worldbuilding, and I found the story really interesting. If, like me, you're terrible at aiming, I'd recommend playing this on easy mode.
*Horizon Forbidden West: The excellent sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn! I slightly prefer the plot in the first game and slightly prefer the character interaction in the second, but both games are extremely strong in just about every department.
Kingdom Hearts 0.2 Birth by Sleep - A fragmentary passage -: A short action RPG about a depressed young woman trapped in a world of darkness, and then Mickey Mouse comes out of nowhere and takes his shirt off. As is traditional with Kingdom Hearts games, it will make no sense if you haven't played the previous games in the series and will quite possibly make less sense if you have.
*The Last of Us: Left Behind: This was originally DLC for The Last of Us; it can also be bought separately but is best played after The Last of Us. It's an action/stealth game about Ellie, a girl in her early teens who was raised in a zombie apocalypse, exploring an abandoned shopping centre with her best friend. It's both extremely charming and, on account of said zombie apocalypse, extremely distressing.
*The Last of Us, Part II: The sequel to The Last of Us, also action/stealth. Ellie, now in her late teens, goes on a revenge quest to post-apocalyptic Seattle. I didn't love this as much as I loved the first game, largely because I preferred the first game's theme of destructive love to this game's theme of destructive hatred, but I still enjoyed Part II; it's very well-made and I really like the characters. It's nice to see a game that's all about messy, flawed women making bad decisions.
*Life Is Strange: Speaking of messy, flawed women making bad decisions! Life Is Strange is an adventure game about a young woman named Max returning to her hometown and reconnecting with her childhood friend, Chloe, a whirlwind of resentment and recklessness. Oh, and also Max has the power to rewind time. It's an odd game; the attempts at teenage dialogue are frequently bizarre, and the story deals with a lot of dark topics with varying levels of success. But it's stuck with me; it's very atmospheric and nostalgic, and the character dynamics are beautifully drawn. The first episode is available for free.
*Life Is Strange: True Colors: An adventure game following a young woman who can sense other people's emotions, as she moves to a small town and struggles to come to terms with a terrible event. I thought this played things a little safe in comparison to Life Is Strange and Life Is Strange 2, but it still had a strong atmosphere and enjoyable characters.
NieR: Automata: An action RPG about androids fighting machines in an Earth abandoned by humanity. Very strange, very dark. I have complicated feelings about this one; I think it's a good game, but I can't say for certain whether I liked it.
*Night in the Woods: A 2D adventure game about a drifting, directionless young woman who, having dropped out of university, returns to her dying hometown. It's about depression, and things ending, and finding something to hold on to when it feels like nothing matters. It's - it's more fun than that description makes it sound, I promise.
*Okami: An action RPG in which the sun goddess Amaterasu, in the form of a wolf, works to bring life back to a cursed land. One of my absolute favourite games. The game is animated in the style of a brushpainting, and it's extremely pretty; it holds up better visually than any other PS2 game I've ever played. Gorgeous soundtrack, too. I'm actually not that into the story or characters, even though I adore Okami as a whole; I just love this game's style. I like running around as a wolf and feeding animals and bringing greenery back to the world, and sometimes that's all you need!
*Oxenfree: An adventure game with mild horror elements; I'd say it's more a spooky game than a horror game. A group of teenagers go to an abandoned island and wake up something they probably shouldn't have. The characters and their dynamics are well drawn, and I really like the dialogue in this game; it feels much more natural to me than a lot of videogame dialogue.
*Portal/Portal 2: These are both first-person puzzle games about a woman who's trapped in a testing facility and being endlessly forced to perform tests by a malevolent AI. The Portal games are notable for both how well-designed and how funny they are. I very rarely play first-person games, because they tend to give me motion sickness, but I have to make an exception for Portal.
*A Short Hike: A short and delightful exploration game. The concept is just 'you're trying to reach the top of a mountain to get reception on a small island', but the game itself is much more about exploring the island and seeing what you can discover. I found it very charming and relaxing.
Silent Hill 3: A survival horror game about a young woman who ends up in Silent Hill, which Silent Hills her. Even if Silent Hill 2 is very much where my heart lies in this series, I really enjoyed Heather as a protagonist; there's a lot of personality in her observations!
Tomb Raider (2013): An action game telling the 'origin story' of Lara Croft as an adventurer. Gameplay-wise, it's similar to the Uncharted series; I like the gameplay of Tomb Raider slightly more, but I preferred the story and characters of the Uncharted games. I never actually finished this game because it gave me such bad motion sickness.
Transistor: I'm not sure how to describe this one. A... sci-fi action/strategy RPG? Anyway, it's about a singer and her talking sword trying to escape hostile forces, and also the sword is her boyfriend. Stylistically, I thought this was a pretty cool game, although I was tragically bad at it.
*Uncharted: The Lost Legacy: An excellent spinoff of the excellent Uncharted series. Like other games in the series, this is a plot-driven action game with shooting and stealth elements. Treasure hunter Chloe teams up with mercenary Nadine, and the two of them reluctantly bond while searching for a legendary treasure in India.
We Know the Devil: A short, weird and atmospheric visual novel about three kids at a religious summer camp, who are sent to meet the devil. It's about being excluded, about growing up queer in an oppressive environment, about being convinced that there's something wrong with you. I got very invested in these poor kids.
Your Turn to Die: I think I'd call this a visual novel, but it has some minigames, puzzles and mystery-solving elements. It's about a young woman who finds herself abducted and thrown into a deadly game with a group of strangers. Unfortunately, it's unfinished, but I've really enjoyed it so far.
I noticed while writing this how often I used the phrase 'young woman' in the game descriptions, so I took a moment to work out who the oldest protagonist in this list actually was. The results were slightly discouraging. By a long way, the oldest of these female protagonists is Chloe of Uncharted: Lost Legacy; I'm having trouble establishing her exact age, but I think she's around forty when the game takes place. I think second place goes to Red of Transistor, at the grand old age of twenty-seven.
In cases where control is split between two or more characters, I've taken who's presented as the protagonist into account. Final Fantasy XIII, for example, has you controlling different characters at different times, but the protagonist is definitely Lightning, whereas, although you could argue that Sam is the main playable character of Until Dawn or that Mizuki is the main playable character of AI: The Somnium Files: nirvanA Initiative, those cases aren't clear-cut enough for it to be listed here. I haven't counted games in which you can choose the protagonist's gender; these are games that were specifically designed around a female main character.
I've listed these games in alphabetical order and included some brief notes about each one, in case anyone's wondering whether to pick any of these games up. I've put asterisks next to games I particularly enjoyed. (Which isn't to say I didn't enjoy the others; there's only one game on this list I'd actively advise against playing (spoiler: it's Beyond: Two Souls).)
I've also only included games I've played myself, not games I've experienced through Let's Plays or watching friends play them, which is why I've omitted Danganronpa Another Episode, Life Is Strange: Before the Storm, We Know the Devil and The Zodiac Trial. But then I changed my mind and included We Know the Devil anyway. You can't tell me what to do.
Beyond: Two Souls: An adventure game about a young woman who has a ghost attached to her. A David Cage game told out of order, which means it lacks the one thing David Cage games actually do well: intricate branching storylines. It's crucial to note that this is just a list of videogames I've played with female protagonists, and not necessarily a list of recommendations, but this is the only game on the list I'd actively recommend against playing. I found it a bit of a bleak slog, and it seriously mishandled a sensitive topic I have strong feelings about. Also, you don't get to smooch the ghost, which is frankly a waste of a ghost that's permanently tethered to you.
*Celeste: A challenging 2D platformer about a young woman who decides to tackle her anxiety and depression by climbing a mountain. One of my absolute favourite games. The characters are charming; the music and pixel art are lovely. The gameplay is difficult to get to grips with at first, but it's rarely frustrating - the frequent checkpoints mean you don't feel like you're losing progress - and I found the way you improve with practice really satisfying; it's a bit like playing the piano. I go back to replay this every few months.
Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble: Another challenging 2D platformer! This one has rarer checkpoints and limited lives, and therefore has a lot more potential to frustrate than Celeste. Perhaps fortunately, I played this on Switch Online's SNES emulator, which has save state and rewind options. I think I'd have given up on the Donkey Kong Country series long before reaching the third without those. The Donkey Kong Country games are very gameplay-focused - there's not much dialogue or story - but Dixie has a lot of personality in her animations.
*Final Fantasy VI: I'd say this game has dual protagonists in Terra and Celes, but they're both women, so it definitely qualifies for this list! A 2D steampunk RPG with a wide-ranging story; I'm not sure how to describe the concept, so I'll just say it's about trying to save the world. There are elements of this game that frustrate me a little - it has too many characters to feel focused, and I think the encounter rate is too high - but it's a classic for a reason; it has a lot of charm and personality, and the pixel art still looks great to this day.
Final Fantasy X-2: A direct sequel to Final Fantasy X, in which Yuna searches for Tidus and navigates the way the events of the first game have changed the world. It's a fun diversion with some memorable scenes, but it feels aimed at straight men in a way that occasionally veers into the uncomfortable.
*Final Fantasy XIII: An RPG about a group of strangers who, having been given a death sentence by a god, find themselves forced to work together and grapple with the sudden loss of their futures. There's not a lot of variety in this game - it's pretty much all battles and cutscenes - but I love everything it does. The music and visuals are gorgeous, I find the concept really interesting, I adore the characters, and I enjoy the battle system a lot.
Final Fantasy XIII-2: A direct sequel to Final Fantasy XIII. Serah teams up with time-traveller Noel, and the two of them go bouncing all over the timeline, looking for Lightning. I think this game suffered from only having a two-person party, and its non-linear nature made it difficult to develop the characters or their relationships, but I found it fun enough.
Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII: The final game in the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy. It's the last few days before the end of the world, and Lightning spends them doing a bunch of sidequests. I wasn't a huge fan of this game, but, if you enjoyed the rest of the Final Fantasy XIII series, I think it's worth playing at least once to see how everything resolves. I'd recommend playing on easy mode, which makes it a lot easier to pause the constant countdown timer and therefore makes the game less stressful to play.
Forgotton Anne: A 2D puzzle platformer about a young woman in a world of forgotten objects that have come to life. It's hand-animated and looks lovely. I found the gameplay a bit frustrating - the platforming feels imprecise, and it's not always clear what you're supposed to be doing - but I was engaged by the story and enjoyed the character interactions.
Forspoken: An action RPG about a woman who travels from present-day New York to a fantasy world. I haven't finished this game yet, so I can't speak with much authority, but from what I've played I think it's underrated. It came in for a lot of criticism, but I think it's fun enough, even if it's not life-changing. Anyone who thinks the dialogue is 'cringe' is a coward who has not played enough Life Is Strange to inoculate themselves against cringe-inducing dialogue.
Freddi Fish series: A series of 2D children's adventure games about a little yellow fish solving mysteries with her sidekick, a little green fish. They're very much aimed at kids and aren't as engaging when you're an adult, but I loved them when I was younger, so I think they're a solid choice if you have any young relatives who want to play a game with a female protagonist! (Although I didn't actually realise Freddi was a girl until halfway through the second game.)
Gone Home: A short game about a young woman who comes home from university, finds a cryptic note from her sister on the front door, and explores the empty house in an attempt to work out what's happened and where everyone is. While the main playable character is still female (and that's technically the reason this game qualifies for this list), you don't actually learn much about her; I'd say that the true protagonist is the sister, whose life and personality you slowly uncover by looking through the house.
*Gris: A short 2D platformer about coming to terms with grief. Hand-animated and absolutely gorgeous. No dialogue, but the story comes through. I come back to replay this one every couple of years.
Hiveswap: A 2D adventure game about a girl who discovers an alien world; I've only played Act 1 so far. It's a Homestuck spinoff, although I don't think you need to have read Homestuck to play it. The writing is fun and the hand-drawn art is lovely, but Act 2 came out three years ago and there's been absolutely no word on Act 3, which is a bit discouraging.
*Horizon Zero Dawn: An action game about a young woman in the far future, in which the world is filled with hostile mechanical animals. One of my absolute favourite games. Visually gorgeous, fascinating worldbuilding, and I found the story really interesting. If, like me, you're terrible at aiming, I'd recommend playing this on easy mode.
*Horizon Forbidden West: The excellent sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn! I slightly prefer the plot in the first game and slightly prefer the character interaction in the second, but both games are extremely strong in just about every department.
Kingdom Hearts 0.2 Birth by Sleep - A fragmentary passage -: A short action RPG about a depressed young woman trapped in a world of darkness, and then Mickey Mouse comes out of nowhere and takes his shirt off. As is traditional with Kingdom Hearts games, it will make no sense if you haven't played the previous games in the series and will quite possibly make less sense if you have.
*The Last of Us: Left Behind: This was originally DLC for The Last of Us; it can also be bought separately but is best played after The Last of Us. It's an action/stealth game about Ellie, a girl in her early teens who was raised in a zombie apocalypse, exploring an abandoned shopping centre with her best friend. It's both extremely charming and, on account of said zombie apocalypse, extremely distressing.
*The Last of Us, Part II: The sequel to The Last of Us, also action/stealth. Ellie, now in her late teens, goes on a revenge quest to post-apocalyptic Seattle. I didn't love this as much as I loved the first game, largely because I preferred the first game's theme of destructive love to this game's theme of destructive hatred, but I still enjoyed Part II; it's very well-made and I really like the characters. It's nice to see a game that's all about messy, flawed women making bad decisions.
*Life Is Strange: Speaking of messy, flawed women making bad decisions! Life Is Strange is an adventure game about a young woman named Max returning to her hometown and reconnecting with her childhood friend, Chloe, a whirlwind of resentment and recklessness. Oh, and also Max has the power to rewind time. It's an odd game; the attempts at teenage dialogue are frequently bizarre, and the story deals with a lot of dark topics with varying levels of success. But it's stuck with me; it's very atmospheric and nostalgic, and the character dynamics are beautifully drawn. The first episode is available for free.
*Life Is Strange: True Colors: An adventure game following a young woman who can sense other people's emotions, as she moves to a small town and struggles to come to terms with a terrible event. I thought this played things a little safe in comparison to Life Is Strange and Life Is Strange 2, but it still had a strong atmosphere and enjoyable characters.
NieR: Automata: An action RPG about androids fighting machines in an Earth abandoned by humanity. Very strange, very dark. I have complicated feelings about this one; I think it's a good game, but I can't say for certain whether I liked it.
*Night in the Woods: A 2D adventure game about a drifting, directionless young woman who, having dropped out of university, returns to her dying hometown. It's about depression, and things ending, and finding something to hold on to when it feels like nothing matters. It's - it's more fun than that description makes it sound, I promise.
*Okami: An action RPG in which the sun goddess Amaterasu, in the form of a wolf, works to bring life back to a cursed land. One of my absolute favourite games. The game is animated in the style of a brushpainting, and it's extremely pretty; it holds up better visually than any other PS2 game I've ever played. Gorgeous soundtrack, too. I'm actually not that into the story or characters, even though I adore Okami as a whole; I just love this game's style. I like running around as a wolf and feeding animals and bringing greenery back to the world, and sometimes that's all you need!
*Oxenfree: An adventure game with mild horror elements; I'd say it's more a spooky game than a horror game. A group of teenagers go to an abandoned island and wake up something they probably shouldn't have. The characters and their dynamics are well drawn, and I really like the dialogue in this game; it feels much more natural to me than a lot of videogame dialogue.
*Portal/Portal 2: These are both first-person puzzle games about a woman who's trapped in a testing facility and being endlessly forced to perform tests by a malevolent AI. The Portal games are notable for both how well-designed and how funny they are. I very rarely play first-person games, because they tend to give me motion sickness, but I have to make an exception for Portal.
*A Short Hike: A short and delightful exploration game. The concept is just 'you're trying to reach the top of a mountain to get reception on a small island', but the game itself is much more about exploring the island and seeing what you can discover. I found it very charming and relaxing.
Silent Hill 3: A survival horror game about a young woman who ends up in Silent Hill, which Silent Hills her. Even if Silent Hill 2 is very much where my heart lies in this series, I really enjoyed Heather as a protagonist; there's a lot of personality in her observations!
Tomb Raider (2013): An action game telling the 'origin story' of Lara Croft as an adventurer. Gameplay-wise, it's similar to the Uncharted series; I like the gameplay of Tomb Raider slightly more, but I preferred the story and characters of the Uncharted games. I never actually finished this game because it gave me such bad motion sickness.
Transistor: I'm not sure how to describe this one. A... sci-fi action/strategy RPG? Anyway, it's about a singer and her talking sword trying to escape hostile forces, and also the sword is her boyfriend. Stylistically, I thought this was a pretty cool game, although I was tragically bad at it.
*Uncharted: The Lost Legacy: An excellent spinoff of the excellent Uncharted series. Like other games in the series, this is a plot-driven action game with shooting and stealth elements. Treasure hunter Chloe teams up with mercenary Nadine, and the two of them reluctantly bond while searching for a legendary treasure in India.
We Know the Devil: A short, weird and atmospheric visual novel about three kids at a religious summer camp, who are sent to meet the devil. It's about being excluded, about growing up queer in an oppressive environment, about being convinced that there's something wrong with you. I got very invested in these poor kids.
Your Turn to Die: I think I'd call this a visual novel, but it has some minigames, puzzles and mystery-solving elements. It's about a young woman who finds herself abducted and thrown into a deadly game with a group of strangers. Unfortunately, it's unfinished, but I've really enjoyed it so far.
I noticed while writing this how often I used the phrase 'young woman' in the game descriptions, so I took a moment to work out who the oldest protagonist in this list actually was. The results were slightly discouraging. By a long way, the oldest of these female protagonists is Chloe of Uncharted: Lost Legacy; I'm having trouble establishing her exact age, but I think she's around forty when the game takes place. I think second place goes to Red of Transistor, at the grand old age of twenty-seven.