One thing I've noted is that scary monsters designs don't really have any effect anymore (did they really ever?). If a spoopy monster's head splits in half and

One thing I've noted is that scary monsters designs don't really have any effect anymore (did they really ever?). If a spoopy monster's head splits in half and two more fleshier ones spawn out with visceral scream... well whatever, I guess it will have a different attack pattern now. What's really scary is enemies you don't understand, with unexpected or undefined behaviors, weird dynamic animations, or norm breaking behaviors that don't feel scripted. Mr. X of the RE2 remake was very good at this (for the first playthrough at least). The original amnesia monsters were pretty good for a bit too. Both grew kind of tiresome after you were familiar with their mechanics.