User blog:Lord Loss/Discussion of the Week: Generation 1

Welcome to Discussion of the Week: 1st Generation!

Sorry it's late, but I'm sure you'll cope. This week we'll be going completely mad at looking at Gen 1 as a whole.



(This image will do to represent Gen 1.)

Monsters
Not going to go through them all because that'd be really boring. Just going to have a look at the highlights. Suggest your own in the comments.

Yian Kut-Ku


Aww, the original chicken monster. Still gave most Hunters a good thrashing on their first attempt, though! A nice, unusual design as well.

Plesioth


Obviously made a triumphant(?) return in Tri Ultimate, but remember, back in the day you couldn't fight him in the water. Which meant buying lots of Frogs and Sonic Bombs, I'm afraid. Nice design, though.

Rathalos
How could one forget Rathalos? Flagship monster of the first game, but might as well be the main monster of the entire series. An absolute classic monster, even if the fight isn't quite perfect at this stage (stop doing the world tour!)

Gravios


I'm not going to lie; I don't enjoy the Gravios fight very much. But back in the context of Gen 1, he's certainly very unique (not so much now, looking at Uragaan) and he does epitomise the Volcano pretty well.

Lao-Shan Lung
A huge, towering monster was a good idea, but it seems they didn't think to think of a way to make it a good fight as well. Lao is little more than a giant pondering punching bag

Fatalis
The final boss still doesn't do much for me. Maybe it was more thrilling at the time? Uninspired design and a tedious fight made only a bit better by getting use the Castle Weapons on him.

Areas

 * Forest and Hills: So peaceful and tranquil... but Area 9 (and to a lesser extent, 6) should be purged from the face of the Earth.
 * Old Desert: (though obviously it wasn't called that at the time). Not bad as Deserts go, a mix of Sandy Plains and cooler rocky regions, setting a template basically copied by every desert area since. So at least it was a trendsetter.
 * Old Swamp: I don't like ANY of the Swamp areas, but this is probably my favourite of the bunch. The caves are great, and it's clear that things from here were basically stolen for MH2 (cold caves, looking like a radioactive wasteland, murk, a completely random wheat field, etc).
 * Old Volcano: Ehh... it's alright I guess. The interior bits are too damn big and too damn empty (as well as too bland) but some of the outside areas with lava flows are at least fairly scenic. Probably my least favourite Volcano area of them all though.


 * Fort/Castle Scharade: Both nice ideas, let down by some uninspired visual designing. Much like the monsters fought in them.

Weapons
I have specific blogs for all these weapons (except Duals?) so I'll just list them to remind you:


 * Greatsword!
 * Sword and Shield!
 * Dual Swords
 * Lance!
 * Hammer!
 * Bowgun/s!

Soundtrack
This is still brilliant.

And so is this.

Give all your thoughts on anything to do with Generation 1 in the comments below.