Role-playing games are an interesting genre, as they often contain a mix of other genres within them such as adventure, fantasy, and horror. There’s often something for everyone, but what can be welcomed by some players and not others though is the horror aspects that can appear in these titles. Even the most seemingly innocent games like The Legend of Zelda franchise can have a disturbing moment or scary character. Indeed, RPGs can have terrifying moments! A lot of these moments are often in the form of enemies, monsters, and/or characters that you meet.
Let’s be honest, though; RPG monsters take many forms and can be terrifying for many different reasons. An accompanying score, or lack thereof, can make an incredible impact on the players’ anxiety. There is also the lead-up to meeting the monster that builds up tension and draws out our fears. With all these elements, some RPG monsters just aren’t for the faint of heart.
10 Mt. Nomad (Sunless Sea)
Sunless Sea is full of terrifying sea monsters and also just carriers an ominous and eerie aesthetic throughout the whole game. It is not necessarily a horror game, and that is quite a mercy for its players, who will still be at unease despite that.
The scariest of the monster in the game is a living mountain. It hangs out by the Chapel of Lights with has the largest health bar of anything in the game. Its attacks pack a horrifying punch, with 45 damage at ranged and 80 when close. On top of that, it will increase your Terror stat with each attack.
9 Splicers (Bioshock)
Bioshock is known as a horror shooter with light RPG elements, and it’s packed with a ton of scary moments, but its most common enemy, splicers, are actually the scariest. They are what remains of Rapture’s human population. They used too much ADAM and basically have lost their minds.
These enemies often jumpscare the player either by their sudden appearance or their terrifying screams as they make their quick attacks. On top of that, ADAM has given them a lot of horrifying conditions that range from tooth loss to spider veins, rashes, and tumors. So, they also can look pretty terrifying on top of their unpredictable behavior.
8 The Gaping Dragon (Dark Souls)
The Dark Souls series is known for its many horrifying bosses and creatures. The Gaping Dragon struck more fear into players than most though. Its entire upper body is a giant mouth of sharp and disgusting teeth.
While it is not known to be more difficult than other bosses, it does show up a little early on and before the player really settles into how scary Dark Souls creatures can actually get—it comes right before most players will experience the horror that is Blighttown. Later on, players can get pretty jaded to the creature designs.
7 The Crones (The Witcher 3)
The Witcher series is all about monsters. After all, its protagonist literally is a monster-hunting mercenary for hire. With all that in mind, players can get pretty comfortable with werewolves, lichens, and drowners. Sometimes, though, there are unforgettable meetings with monsters that you know are special.
In the third game, the crones are just such monsters. They are three witches, and their designs are amazingly creepy. One literally has a bag full of child limbs, and another has a beehive for an eye. They can also shapeshift into beautiful women, but that’s easy to forget once you see their true forms.
6 The Blood-Starved Beast (Bloodborne)
Bloodborne is the sibling game of Dark Souls, and also has many monsters with terrifying designs. One of its optional bosses is a beast that has its skin peeled back. It’s as gruesome to look at as it is to fight, and it makes trekking through Old Yarnham feel like a completely futile quest. It has a creepy combination of looking malnourished but still having an ungodly amount of primal energy.
5 The Shambler (Darkest Dungeon)
This Eldritch miniboss is one of the most difficult monsters to fight in Darkest Dungeon. Once it reaches the player, the party’s torchlight drops to zero, and the Lovecraftian awe of the spiraling cosmos can be seen. Not only is that terrifying, but it makes fighting the boss all the more arduous.
4 Museum of Witchcraft Deathclaw (Fallout 4)
It is a no-brainer that Deathclaws are frightening foes in the Fallout series. They are known to be the fastest and the strongest, and their designs are like if a werewolf and a dragon had a baby.
InFallout 4, there is a hidden quest in the Museum of Witchcraft in which the player meets a huge Deathclaw unlike others they’ve met before. The main component that makes this Deathclaw more frightening than usual is the location. The museum is incredibly dark, full of Deathclaw victims, and the build-up to meeting the actual monster is full of little creepy ambient sounds.
3 Edda Pureheart (Final Fantasy XIV)
No one things an MMORPG can have well-done horror moments, but here we are. Final Fantasy XIV’s white mage NPC character, Edda Pureheart, is a character with a tragic background that turns her into a monster. She was bullied by her teammates for not being a good enough healer, and she failed to save the life of her loved one.
She loses her mind with grief and does horrible experiments to try to bring her loved one back from the dead. In the end, she cannot be reasoned with, and players have to fight her. Once dead, her ghost is a new enemy for another dungeon. What makes her so terrifying is that her mind is so lost that she is happy to see you even though you are fighting her.
2 Banshee (Mass Effect 3)
Mass Effect is a science fiction RPG with all kinds of elements. By its third title, though, the horror elements really ramp up. Reapers are on the offensive and are corrupting various races in the galaxy, and various races have become twisted and mindless monsters.
The scariest of these are the Banshees, which are created by corrupted Asari. They are one of the more difficult foes of the Reaper armies to defeat, and their screeches are haunting warnings of their coming. The most frightening moments with these creatures take place in the Ardat-Yakshi Monastery, where there is a power outage.
1 The Broodmother (Dragon Age Origins)
In Dragon Age Origins, a Blight is happening. That means darkspawn are coming out from underground, and it’s up to the Wardens to stop them and kill their leader: the Archdemon. At a certain point, the player goes to where the darkspawn come from in search of Paragon Branka for aid, and they get way more than they bargained for.
There, they meet a broodmother for the first time. The build-up is incredibly well done, as one of the few survivors of Branka’s group slowly utters a creepy poem about the lore of this broodmother as the player slowly and unknowingly approaches where the monster lies in wait. Anticipation aside, the tentacled beast itself is utterly horrifying. It’s even more disgusting when players learn that broodmother used to be a dwarf who was herself a victim, and now she acts as an insect queen for darkspawn and breeds for them.
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