Challenging NPC's

user ,you just have to block the running atack and then two hand your glorious claymore/weapon of choice until he dies

Sword of the Stars had a ton of "random encounters" that would come along if the game was getting too peaceful.
Now most of them where fairly harmless, asteroids on a collision course with one of your colonies, automated, aggressive, self replicating resource gathering robots moving into your planets asteroid belt and randomly attacking ships that approach the planet until you remove them. That kind of shit.
Some of those encounters where kind of nasty in the early game or if you don't have a fleet at the planet though, like the giant life force devouring clouds known as Specters that come out of hyperspace and will depopulate even your homeworld if you can't kill in time. And they are also invulnerable to nearly all starter weapons except for the shittiest one and can arrive from turn 12 onward without warning.
And they aren't even the really nasty shit. That's the Grand Menaces, who at least give you a warning and the option to attack them before they can hit your planets, and include a star eating rogue autonomous weapon that also carries enough guns to take on an endgame level fleet. Then there's the Puppet Master that will instantly and permanently mindcontrol any ship that gets too close regardless of said ships defences, though its main form of attack is taking over one of your colonies and leaving a hostile superfaction who wants your blood in its place. There's the planet stripping moon sized swarm of doom, that will start multiplying if it eats too many planets, the space cop with guns so far beyond the endgame level its ridiculous, who actively hunts down any fleets attacking anything. In short, any of these things could give a large endgame level empire a run for its money all on its own, and they usually arrive well before endgame times.
Now the REALLY nasty thing the devs made was the one that started out the most innocuous, the Von Neumanns. Robots that show up at one of your planets and steal some resources, then leave. But if you shoot the fuckers instead of letting them plunder your worlds, a few turns latter a group of Berserkers show up. Carriers that spew a swarm of ufo's that each have endgame weapons and are immune to most weapons in the game. They will try to destroy the whole colony rather than just steal some resources. And if you survive that, then they break out their copy of that first Grand Menace I mentioned. The one the eats whole stars. They make them. Several, if you give them time. All can visit you even before grand menaces can show up. And those will still show up as well…

A fair few games in that 4x star empire builder have been abruptly terminated when the players homeworld got flattened on turn 25 by something that an empire of 30-40 worlds couldn't hope to fight off at turn 200.

And best of all, they are random encounters. So you never know when the entire game is about to fuck you over with the RNG.

It just wants to live a peaceful life, but you have to kill it, to continue.

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"BUT TUMBLRTALE A SHIT THAT INNOVATES NOTHING!"

"IT'S AN ALRIGHT GAME WITH A GIMMICK THAT TUMBLR FAGGOTS NOW LIKE SO Holla Forums HATES IT!

"FUCK YOU TUMBLRTALE etc".

Undertale is pretty hammy, sure, but let's not be petty.

Big point of the Souls games is the apocalyptic atmosphere, but that doesn't mean everything has to be irrevocably shit..

I was mostly referring to the, live and let live decisions that those anons would like.

I never did understood why is everything trying to kill you in DS games. What's the reason?

Fuck me, forgot to sage

and maybe almost any game where its pve with good npc programming

I was under the impression that most enemies in the souls games, especially humans, are hollowed and are therefore starving for souls. They attack you because they have hunger for your souls.

Why they don't attack eachother, who knows?

murlocs in vanilla wow were pretty tough

Ribcages don't work like that
Is the original art like that too?

Challenging NPCs you say?
I've got over 500 hours in MH3U, and although now regular jho and regular brachydios are easy, Raging Jho and Raging Brachydios are still the hardest hunts in-game.
Besides Alatreon but that doesn't count since it's bullshit

Is taking not in the game?

uhn…

Rajang*

Nope, no Rajang in 3U.

The bosses in tales of xillia 2 come to mind

So the "raging trio" first appears in 4u

Actually I just checked and raging brachy isn't in 3U, only raging Jho.
I really don't know what the fuck was I thinking, I could've sworn that I fought raging brachy on 3u

Ys. I mean, the enemies are average, but the bosses are pretty fucking fun to figure out. I mean, the very first battle in Oath in Felghana, holy fuck, so good.

Also, consider old platformers. Castlevania, Megaman, Ninja Gaiden stuff like that. From the more recent stuff you might also give Odallus a try, shit's good.

monster hunter
the NPCs are monsters, but they're still technically NPCs so there you go

Because it's a fucking video game.

How? I find it even easier than the normal version

I'd say Dragons in Dragon's Dogma.
They're not that hard but if you're not careful they can kill you anytime, they can turn your pawns against you and they fight both on land and mid-air.
Plus they shit-talk to you during the whole fight.

In 4u he's super bullshit, because he turns a lot of attacks into pins and he gives you the status every time .
Also the g version does that weird stand up charged fire breath which is super scary and distracts people.

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How is Alatreon bullshit?

It's got its patterns and attack warnings and everything can be avoided. Great raid boss.