User blog:Lord Loss/Discussion of the Week: Big Monsters

Hello, and welcome to Discussion of the Week: Big monsters!

So again, apologies for the awful title, but it's been a pretty mental week and my creativity is not at its peak. So I thought I'd make things a bit more casual and talk briefly about some monsters that I have mixed thoughts on - all united simply by the fact that they're, um, quite big.

Akantor
I like Akantor, but Akantor doesn't seem to like me very much. The problem is I've only ever fought him in the Battleground, which is an absolutely terrible area and way too small for giant like Akantor. But he is quite an appealingly cool monster - a lot of spikes going on perhaps, but those tusks are awesome, and the overall build sells its fierceness and power.

Ukanlos


In the song of ice and fire, this is definitely the icy one. Despite it all I kinda like Ukanlos - I mean, if you can get past the annoyingly high health, the strong similarities to Ukanlos, the fact he doesn't really deserve to be the last unlocked monster in Unite - the fact remains he does have a pretty cool design, and he is fun to fight. I suppose. Grudgingly.

Odibatorasu


Ah. Well, I congratulate the Frontier team for resisting the urge they sometimes get when designing powerful monsters - have it fire lazers from every orifice and call it a day - because Odibatorasu has a surprisingly realistic fighting style. The use of sand and rock is very clever and well implemented for the desert (I'm not entirely convinced by the shell rising up from the back and shooting giants rocks, but I'm pretty sure main-series games have weirder moments than that). But then there's that face. Maybe I'm being shallow, but I find Odibatorasu to have a really odd-looking face.

Yama Tsukami
Absolutely fantastic design and concept, in my opinion - a gigantic octopus-cum-jellyfish floating through the sky, covered in mossy growths. It's a shame the fight is just slightly disappointing - Yama doesn't have an amazingly wide repertoire of attacks beyond slamming tentacles at you, spinning around really fast, or spewing Great Thunderbugs (lovely touch by the way). This is one of the monsters I most want to see revamped (properly) in future games.

Ashen Lao-Shan Lung
...Nope, the passage of time has not been kind to the absolute worst fight in the entire series. Good design though.

Shen Gaoren
Again, really cool design, let down by just about every single other aspect. In fact it's somehow annoying in a different way to Lao, because of the constant quake effects. Would be interested to see if Shen could be revamped into something fun in a future game though...

Questions
Oh you know the drill. Favourites, least favourites, any you want to see return, any strong overriding thoughts?