TheRetroArcade
Veteran
Posts: 12,970
Joined: Feb 2026
Joined: Feb 2026
Number 6 will SPOOK you (for 1d6 psychic damage).
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'Tis the season, spooky season, and I am also one of PCG's RPG guys. Thus, scary RPGs to celebrate the Halloween spirit must be organized and expounded upon. In a genre that often delivers numbers-based power fantasies in no particular rush, it can be difficult to elicit fear from the player. So when that does happen, I am listening, learning, and taking notes.
I've organized the entries in escalating order of scariness, culminating in a game I want to try some day, but freaks me the hell out just by reputation alone.
This article is brought to you by No More Room in Hell 2.
Kotor 2 is one of my favorite games, and it delivers this overall grim, grimy, hopeless atmosphere like nothing else in Star Wars. Many RPGs consolidate their horror into one or two super-freaky parts, and The Sith Lords boasts a few memorable set pieces in this regard.
The academy on Korriban is particularly affecting for me: This ruined, haunted school where untold suffering took place in the relatively recent past. Seeing it in its gruesome prime in Kotor 1 only adds to the effect. You've seen what the beast can do, and now you're poking its corpse.
Shout out as well to the opening bit on Peragus, specifically the part where ghost ship Harbinger docks with the station. The whole sequence is a very fun and loving riff on System Shock, and I'll always remember this gnarly audio log that introduces one of the game's main antagonists.
Fallout is a series that has reinvented itself over and over again, but no other entry has quite matched the sense of desolation in the 1997 original. Even the most gore-slick, in-your-face edgy portions of Fallout 3 don't quite do it for me in the same way.
More than anything, I just think of the ethering, "nothing is scarier" sight of the Vault Dweller standing alone amid tiles of empty desert, the drone of Mark Morgan's ominous soundtrack your only company—assuming you're not just left in utter silence.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
The incongruity of jolly old radio bops used to be a far smaller portion of the Fallout soundscape, with the music more dominated by stuff like "Vat of Goo" and "City of Lost Angels." As far as the visual experience goes, the yawning crater of The Glow remains one of the most quietly disturbing images I've ever seen in a game.
That's to say nothing of The Master. New Vegas' lineup of morally questionable faction leaders are some all-time great videogame antagonists, but they're not as unnerving as The Master. This twisted, gestalt creature gives me pause no matter how many times I two-shot it with a Turbo Plasma Rifle (or talk it into killing itself), and the simultaneous tragedy and inhumanity of its vision creeps me the hell out. And that unique FEV mummy death screen? Fuhgeddaboudit.
Lunacid's lonely, forgotten world calls to mind FromSoftware's best, but it's somehow even more cryptic and offputting than the work of that legendarily cryptic, offputting studio. There are plenty of particularly scary levels, for a start: The Accursed Tomb is an early winner, a pitch-dark labyrinth inhabited by faceless zombies, the top halves of their heads removed in a voluntary procedure meant to deliver enlightenment.
But the real freak shit lives in The Mausoleum, a semi-hidden zone patrolled by Death itself. The Grim Reaper will spawn and chase you down whenever you enter this area, lending a frantic urgency to any exploration. Things only get worse if you craft a turbo-hidden sword to kill this otherwise-unkillable foe.
Killing Death messes up your game. In exchange for its powerful scythe, nearly all friendly NPCs disappear, and you'll constantly be chased down by spectre enemies unique to this mode. The Death state can be reversed, but only with a ton of grinding.
Th...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.
'Tis the season, spooky season, and I am also one of PCG's RPG guys. Thus, scary RPGs to celebrate the Halloween spirit must be organized and expounded upon. In a genre that often delivers numbers-based power fantasies in no particular rush, it can be difficult to elicit fear from the player. So when that does happen, I am listening, learning, and taking notes.
I've organized the entries in escalating order of scariness, culminating in a game I want to try some day, but freaks me the hell out just by reputation alone.
This article is brought to you by No More Room in Hell 2.
Kotor 2 is one of my favorite games, and it delivers this overall grim, grimy, hopeless atmosphere like nothing else in Star Wars. Many RPGs consolidate their horror into one or two super-freaky parts, and The Sith Lords boasts a few memorable set pieces in this regard.
The academy on Korriban is particularly affecting for me: This ruined, haunted school where untold suffering took place in the relatively recent past. Seeing it in its gruesome prime in Kotor 1 only adds to the effect. You've seen what the beast can do, and now you're poking its corpse.
Shout out as well to the opening bit on Peragus, specifically the part where ghost ship Harbinger docks with the station. The whole sequence is a very fun and loving riff on System Shock, and I'll always remember this gnarly audio log that introduces one of the game's main antagonists.
Fallout is a series that has reinvented itself over and over again, but no other entry has quite matched the sense of desolation in the 1997 original. Even the most gore-slick, in-your-face edgy portions of Fallout 3 don't quite do it for me in the same way.
More than anything, I just think of the ethering, "nothing is scarier" sight of the Vault Dweller standing alone amid tiles of empty desert, the drone of Mark Morgan's ominous soundtrack your only company—assuming you're not just left in utter silence.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
The incongruity of jolly old radio bops used to be a far smaller portion of the Fallout soundscape, with the music more dominated by stuff like "Vat of Goo" and "City of Lost Angels." As far as the visual experience goes, the yawning crater of The Glow remains one of the most quietly disturbing images I've ever seen in a game.
That's to say nothing of The Master. New Vegas' lineup of morally questionable faction leaders are some all-time great videogame antagonists, but they're not as unnerving as The Master. This twisted, gestalt creature gives me pause no matter how many times I two-shot it with a Turbo Plasma Rifle (or talk it into killing itself), and the simultaneous tragedy and inhumanity of its vision creeps me the hell out. And that unique FEV mummy death screen? Fuhgeddaboudit.
Lunacid's lonely, forgotten world calls to mind FromSoftware's best, but it's somehow even more cryptic and offputting than the work of that legendarily cryptic, offputting studio. There are plenty of particularly scary levels, for a start: The Accursed Tomb is an early winner, a pitch-dark labyrinth inhabited by faceless zombies, the top halves of their heads removed in a voluntary procedure meant to deliver enlightenment.
But the real freak shit lives in The Mausoleum, a semi-hidden zone patrolled by Death itself. The Grim Reaper will spawn and chase you down whenever you enter this area, lending a frantic urgency to any exploration. Things only get worse if you craft a turbo-hidden sword to kill this otherwise-unkillable foe.
Killing Death messes up your game. In exchange for its powerful scythe, nearly all friendly NPCs disappear, and you'll constantly be chased down by spectre enemies unique to this mode. The Death state can be reversed, but only with a ton of grinding.
Th...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?