Great horror RPGs are harder to find than you think. Despite clever innovations like the sanity stat, RPG developers still prefer swords and sorcery over anything else (just ask science fiction fans). That’s not to say there aren’t some truly awesome RPGs out there. Whether it’s raw psychological horror or traditional werewolves and vampires, there’s plenty of horror in this RPG genre. On this scariest day of the year, here are five great role-playing games to play on Halloween
Vampire: The Masquerade – Blutlinien
Troika was an aptly named RPG studio. Led by Fallout developers Tim Kaine and Leonard Bowersky, who later worked on The Outer Worlds, Troika created a trilogy of classic role-playing games – Arcanum: Of Steamworks, Magic Obscura, The Temple of Elemental Evil and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. .
Bloodline was only half a game at launch and full of bugs and hidden content. But what he lacked in polish he made up for in ambition, vampiric leanings into politics or taking on the role of Nosferatu roaming the sewers beneath Los Angeles. Fans did the rest, rolling out a series of extensive patches that fixed many pressing issues.
Perhaps the scariest mission in Bloodline is “The Ghost Hunts at Midnight,” which sees players explore the eerie Ocean House – a hotel haunted by a very active ghost. I won’t tell you anything, but you have to play this level without the lights on.
Parasitenbend
The first five minutes of “Parasite Eve” is an operatic performance that will captivate everyone. It’s a mood that pretty much sums up the field of this era: dramatic, a bit turbulent and mostly experimental. The game itself answers the question: “What if Resident Evil was a role-playing game?” A sequel to the novel of the same name, it stars young police officer Aya Priya as she battles mutant monsters across New York and features a variant of the active one-time system that Square was famous for at the time.
To be clear: Parasite Eve is a product of its time. It’s an awkward, awkward game that often struggles to combine survival horror and RPG, but it’s worth playing because it almost evokes the spirit of late-’90s Square Enix, and there aren’t many games like it in existence. The old drawings also belie some very creepy artwork. Nobody had a better “cinematic RPG” at the time than Squaresoft, and Parasite Eve’s twisted mutation made for a true nightmare on Halloween.
Aomori
Omori is a role-playing game where horror lies in memories, emotions, and a photo album that looks cheerful but is darker than it seems. Based on the webcomic, Omori is similar to Earthbound, but with themes of guilt, isolation, and depression. Let’s put it this way: the world is dark, but so is Aomori the darkness. It oscillates between crayon art and real life, with many pun-based enemies as enemies. It seems innocent, but even moments of joy are laced with feelings of dread. If you want, you can let the main character completely immerse himself in his thoughts. Omori isn’t the first game to follow in the tradition of Yume Nikki, the original surreal horror RPG, but it’s certainly one of the best.
Shin Megami Tensei: Seltsem Reis
Most Shin Megami Tensei games contain at least some horror, but Strange Journey is probably the most disturbing of them all. He embodies the existential dread and paranoia of John Carpenter’s The Thing as an international team of scientists delve deep into a monstrous phenomenon known as the Schwartzwelt. As you would expect in an SMT game, Schwartzwelt is plagued by all kinds of monsters, but the real monster is a man. The original Strange Journey is hard to find these days – and far from a decent replacement for Redux on the 3DS due to its poor graphics and simple mechanics – but it’s worth tracking down. With its stunning graphics and excellent dungeon crawling, it’s quietly one of the best – and most annoying – games in the series.
Another black pokemon
Long before the official release of Pokemon Black, there was Pokemon Black – a horror story about a disturbing version of the popular monster-collecting RPG that was discovered at a flea market. It is memorable because it feels very real and describes a version of the game that can be created using real game mechanics. If you haven’t read the story You should check it out here. He concluded:
I am not sure what is the motivation behind the creator of this hack. It was not widely distributed, so it was probably not for financial gain. It was a very good job for smuggling.
It seems he was trying to convey a message; Although I seem to be the only recipient of this message. I’m not entirely sure what it was – the inevitability of death? Its meaninglessness? Maybe he’s just trying to introduce death and darkness into a children’s game. Anyway, this children’s game made me think and cry.
With the release of the original Pokemon Black, this version became known as Pokemon Spooky Black and was faithfully recreated by fans as a real hack tweak. It’s a great ghost story to chill your bones on the spookiest day of the year, and a testament to the creativity of Pokemon fans.
Kat Bailey is IGN’s news director and co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat Do you have any advice? Send him a direct message at @the_katbot.
