Memory loss in games can hit a character in different ways: an injury, brainwashing, having been created using two different souls - you get it. The difference between a protagonist who has all their memories and one who doesn't is that not only do they have to save the world and everyone in it, they have to do it with the limited knowledge of both the world and themselves in the process.
Some may get their memories back, others might not. Others may not even want them back, scared of the person they were before they lost their memories. While it's not the freshest trope to exist in storytelling, it can make an interesting mystery to unravel.
10 Dust - Dust: An Elysian Tale
It's the classic case of waking up in the middle of a forest and being told that you have to save inhabitants in the area with your martial arts prowess and a magical sword that talks. Okay, maybe not so much a classic case, but that's exactly what happens to the eponymous character in Dust: An Elysian Tail.
So, off he sets into hell or high water to find the missing pieces of himself and to defeat the big bad, only to find that he was once the big bad's right hand... sort of. It's a lot to unravel, and we recommend that you seek this game and play it to find out more. It'll all make sense in the end.
9 Kat - Gravity Rush
Nothing gets Kat down, not even memory loss. She wakes up in the city of Hekesville, a broken city built around a giant tree, and quickly springs into action and inadvertently becomes the superhero of Hekesville (if only for a time).
By the end of the first game, she doesn't have all the answers to who she is, but she does find out that she's been around a lot longer than initially thought. She sees herself in a flashback from 100 years ago, possibly as a queen. Kat finds more answers in Gravity Rush 2, but along with that, she discovers yet more questions.
8 Heather - Silent Hill 3
Heather's 'memory loss' technically is due to occult activity and reincarnation shenanigans, and for all intents and purposes, she isn't the same person who would have those memories. She is, unfortunately, destined to be the vessel to bring forth the new god to Silent Hill. Heather is the child Harry adopted at the end of the first Silent Hill, making this game a direct sequel.
The game's main antagonist, Claudia, wants to bring Heather to town to not only bring forth the god but to reconnect to her childhood friend, Alessa, even if she is not the same person anymore. It's kind of sad because all Claudia sees when she looks at Heather is Alessa, the girl she loved as a friend so long ago.
7 Neku Sakuraba - The World Ends With You
So, what do you do when you find out you're dead? Not only that, but you have to clue how you died, and you are forced to play a weekly game of life and death. Well, that's what happens to poor Neku Sakuraba in The World Ends With You. He's been thrust into an alternate version of the Shibuya district and tasked to defeat the noise in each area, vicious creatures that spawn out of thin air.
The upside is that he gets his memories back earlier than you'd think. You see, they were his entrance fee into week one of the games, which indicates he possibly knew the price and paid it willingly. It doesn't take long for him to get them back.
6 Kaname Date - AI: The Somnium Files
This guy has gotten the short end of the stick all around. In AI: The Somnium Files, not only did he lose all his memories, but he lost his left eye as well. Despite losing every memory he's ever made, he still carries out his detective work admirably. Though that might be giving him a little too much credit since his AI partner, Aiba, does a lot of the heavy lifting.
Without giving away too much, the reason why he doesn't have any memories is due to an accident with the prototype of the current AI system he's using, not to mention that he may not actually be the person he thinks he is.
5 Fei - Xenogears
Fei from Xenogears not only has memory loss, but some serious problems that go beyond some missing information. He's had several lifetimes, each one of them lost with every time he's been reincarnated. Does reincarnation count toward the memory loss trope? For Fei Fong Wong, it sure does. He seems like a regular hero protagonist at first, but once you uncover the layers, there's a lot more to, well, everything.
As mentioned above, he's been reincarnated countless times, giving him eons of lost memories. Due to some experimentation trauma early on, however, he's managed to develop multiple personas, each representing specific Freudian ideas: the id, ego, and superego. Fei is one interesting dude.
4 Luke Fon Fabre - Tales Of The Abyss
At the beginning of Tales of the Abyss, Luke was not really a likable guy. Outside of his naivety toward anything around him, he had a selfish streak that challenged a lot of his companions. This wasn't always the case; it came about once he was returned after getting kidnapped. After a traumatic incident like that, things change right?
Well, for Luke, things changed far too much. Luke isn't Luke at all, he's actually replica of the prince he thought he was. Once he 'returned' from being kidnapped, he had to learn everything from scratch, down to bodily functions. It's hard to argue which person got the raw end of the deal in this case.
3 The Tenno - Warframe
Children of the Void, some would call them. Others would say that they are remnants of an ancient warrior race that finally awakened. For the longest time, it was debated whether the Tenno were in the Warframes themselves, but in the Second Dream expansion, it is discovered that not only are they real and piloting the suits, but they resembled humanity.
The Tenno have been referred to as "more than human," and eventually, they get to see themselves as human-like as well. Once you finish the second dream expansion, you have an opportunity to use Transcendence, a technique that allows you to free roam temporarily and play as a Tenno instead of a warframe. It's pretty cool.
2 Hawk - Shin Megami Tensei 2
If you were found in a back alley and told you were to fight for glory and be prepared to become the messiah and lead the people into a new age, would you buy it? It sounds like a lot to put on someone who has no sense of who they are.
Take Hawk from Shin Megami Tensei 2, for example. His name wasn't chosen by him, it was given to him by the guy that saved him from the brink of death. So at his will, you adventure into Valhalla (which turns out to be in Japan, of course) and dungeon crawl your way to eternal glory.
1 Bayonetta - Bayonetta
How long would you look for the missing piece of yourself before you give up? A couple of years? Ten? Bayonetta had been searching for twenty years and having a hard time doing so until the events of the game.
For Bayonetta, she has been waiting in slumber for approximately 500 years to awaken. Yet this isn't a world that she would remember after so much time and art has passed and become unfamiliar. None of that matters to her, the only thing that's more important than her memories is her relationship with Jeanne.
It's unclear why someone would go after witches personally. With the way they're able to stop time and open dimensions with a flick of the wrist, she was bound to find the origin and truth about her past.