Highlights

• RPG monsters come in various forms and can be truly terrifying, adding an extra level of anxiety to gameplay.
• Ghastly creatures like Ghouls, the Gaping Dragon, and The Blood-Starved Beast lurk in RPGs, ready to strike fear into players.
• From unsettling sea monsters to deceptively creepy witches, RPGs introduce terrifying monsters that haunt players' nightmares.

Role-playing games often contain a mixture of other genres within them, such as adventure, fantasy, and horror, meaning there is an RPG for every taste. But aspects of them can be welcomed by some and a nightmare for others, like the various horror aspects in these titles. Even the most seemingly innocent games, like The Legend of Zelda franchise, can have some terrifying moments, a lot of which come in the form of enemies, monsters, and characters that players meet.

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. It just goes to show that some RPG monsters aren't for the faint of heart.

Updated on March 13, 2024, by Mark Ward: RPGs are often associated with whimsical magic users and turn-based combat. But in reality, they vary wildly in gameplay style and tone, with horror being one of the most interesting ideas that get explored. However, it's not always the game's main wheelhouse, with RPGs simply incorporating different frightening aspects varying in subtlety. One of the most effective ways it's done is by featuring some incredibly terrifying monsters, with some horrific designs and gameplay quirks, that often affect the way players enjoy these games from moment to moment.

13 Ghouls

Diablo 4

What Makes This Monster Terrifying

• Hunt in packs.
• Fast and feral creatures.

Despite being one of the most common mobs in Diablo 4, Ghouls prove themselves to be a deceptively terrifying nuisance. This is especially true when they attack in a group, which they mostly do.

These nasty nuisances are usually just that. However, in Diablo 4, major encounters can lead to some deadly consequences. But when under-equipped players encounter a particularly huge swarm of various monsters, with a few dozen ghastly ghouls at the center, it can spell the end for them.

12 Mt. Nomad

Sunless Sea

What Makes This Monster Terrifying

• It shouldn't be able to move, and yet it does.
• It's an unsettling aspect of an otherwise sort of tame game.

Sunless Sea is full of terrifying sea monsters and also just carries 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, but it's still incredibly uneasy.

The scariest of the monsters in the game is a living mountain. It hangs out by the Chapel of Lights and has the largest health bar of anything in the game. Its attacks pack a horrifying punch, with 45 damage at range and 80 when up close. On top of that, it will increase your Terror stat with each attack.

11 Splicers

Bioshock

What Makes This Monster Terrifying

• Splicers are unpredictable.
• They're remnants of a once bustling city.

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 have basically 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.

10 The Gaping Dragon

Dark Souls

What Makes This Monster Terrifying

• Gross, toothy design.
• One of the game's first true horrors.

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. Plus, it comes right before most players will experience the horror that is Blighttown.

9 The Crones

The Witcher 3

What Makes This Monster Terrifying

• Deceptive in their appearance.
• Each is grotesque in its own way.

With The Witcher 3's protagonist being a monster-hunting mercenary for hire, players can get pretty comfortable with werewolves, lichens, and drowners. Sometimes, though, there are unforgettable meetings with some truly special monsters.

The crones are an example of such monsters. They're three genuinely creepy witches with some skin-crawlingly nasty designs. 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.

8 The Blood-Starved Beast

Bloodborne

What Makes This Monster Terrifying

• Has long, unnatural limbs.
• Flaps of skin hang from its back.

Bloodborne is the sibling game of Dark Souls and also has many monsters with terrifying designs. One of its optional bosses is a beast with long limbs, peeled-back skin, and an awfully frightening, blood-curdling scream.

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.

7 Reaper

Persona 5

What Makes This Monster Terrifying

• The sound of its chains causes intense stress.
• Defeat leads to an extremely undesirable outcome.

Persona 5 is a massive game, incorporating a procedural dungeon crawl dubbed Mementos to accompany the main palaces. It's easy to get lost in these dark railways, and taking too long on a floor will invoke The Reaper's presence, made known by the sounds of chains rattling in the distance.

If The Reaper catches the player early on in their playthrough, it's a guaranteed game over, as his attacks are often insta-kills. Like all of the game's challenges, though, victory isn't out of reach and will even earn the player a trophy or achievement for their trouble.

6 The Shambler

Darkest Dungeon

What Makes This Monster Terrifying

• Has a number of tricks that put players at a huge disadvantage.
• Ridiculously hard to best.

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.

Fights with this beast are both terrifying and, at times, absolutely disheartening. Especially because there are strategies that can be leveraged to make the fight doable, but they vary wildly in their effectiveness.

5 Museum of Witchcraft Deathclaw

Fallout 4

What Makes This Monster Terrifying

• Fallout 4 gives an already scary enemy a scary hideout.
• Environmental storytelling makes meeting the monster even less appealing.

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 messed up, like if a werewolf and a dragon had a baby.

In Fallout 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.

4 Mimics

Dark Souls Series

What Makes This Monster Terrifying

• Deviously plays on the excitement of looting.
• Has made many players distrustful of chests in other games.

Players who have spent their lives opening chests in Zelda or The Elder Scrolls know the absolute joy of finding that super important key item to allow them to progress or get the edge in battle. Then Dark Souls popularized the Mimic, developing a deep distrust inside future treasure hunters.

It's a simple, albeit infuriating enemy that masquerades as an innocent chest, but when opened, its long arms grab the player and pull them into its gaping mouth. Of course, there is a way of recognizing a mimic chest before opening it, but just like everything else in the game, it's not explained in the slightest.

3 Edda Pureheart

Final Fantasy 14

What Makes This Monster Terrifying

• Hell hath no fury like a scorned party member.
• The grandeur of Final Fantasy 14 is shown in Edda's horrible nature.

No one thinks an MMORPG can have well-done horror moments, but here we are. Final Fantasy 14'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 in 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

What Makes This Monster Terrifying

• A personification of the Reaper's brutality.
• Are heard before they are seen.

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 arrival.

1 Broodmother

Dragon Age Origins

What Makes This Monster Terrifying

• Combination of form and function leads to terrible results.
• How they're made is really off-putting.

In Dragon Age Origins, darkspawn are emerging, 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. Upon the player's arrival to its lair, a creepy poem is read aloud, as tension builds to an utterly horrifying reveal of a massive humanoid blob with tentacles. It gets a little sad, though, when players learn that this broodmother used to be a dwarf who was herself a victim and now acts as an insect queen for darkspawn.