User blog comment:Mckrongs/Monster Hunter 4 for the Nintendo 3DS/@comment-1668522-20131006114312/@comment-11112316-20131007023324

@Arcearth

On the subject of Dire Miralis, I think again we're coming at it from two different viewpoints. For me, what made Fatalis so special was that he WAS a monster that took a hell of a long time to kill, and would screw you over if slipped up once. Was the execution perfect? Hell no: Fatalis aren't exciting to fight, but the concept was awesome. Taking on the quintessential classic dragon in a destroyed castle or corner of hell or tower to heaven in a long, draged out battle where one mistake can end you just excites me to no end! It just doesn't feel right for a mighty dragon to be slain in a measly 30 minutes. If MH4 continued the trend of Dragons fleeing, I would have love to have seen a mission system similar to MHFO, where each stage of the dragon battle is different and varied. Ah well, can't get everyhting you want.

Anyways, my problem with Dire Miralis is...again, his concept just doesn't click with me like the Fatalis trio's did. He's just a semi-aquatic living volcano: cool, but compared to a mysterious crimson dragon whose a more adult form of the dragon who destroyed an entire region, it just isn't interesting to me. I'm almost shocked you're trying to say Crimson Fatalis ripped off Dire Miralis's movelist! From what I've seen, the only move Crimson Fatalis 'ripped off' is the nuclear fire ball; everything else--from the meteors to the snake crawl to the body stance--originally belonged to the Fatalis trio and was blatantly copy-pasted to Miralis. Hell, even Miralis's name is a sort of reference to Fatalis--both Japanese and English! I'll give Miralis points for the underwater/ground combat and the weakpoint gimmick, but other than that, I just can't think of him as anything other than Psudeo-Crimson Fatalis.

In a perfect world, MH4 would be just like MHFO. Sadly, we can't have everything we want.