User blog comment:BannedLagiacrus/Monster Appreciation Week: Gravios(4th Gen)/@comment-5020152-20150725174055

GRAVIOS

Concept: Chances are, you’ve already fought Basarios, and you’re feeling pretty confident about your skills as a hunter. Enter the angry papa of all Basarioses, Gravios! He’ll leave you second-guessing yourself in no time flat. Part of the reason I love the idea of fighting a juvenile monster (Basarios) is because you’ll have to fight the big bad version (Gravios) afterwards. 9/10

Design: Whereas Basarios is a clunky-looking pile of boulders, Gravios has a much smoother design overall. Its armor has grown all over its body and resembles bone more than rock, giving Gravios a very skeletal look. Instead of two horns like Basarios, he has one nose horn and several spikes sticking out of his back plates. The most dramatic difference between Gravios and his kiddies is the tail – rather than a short, useless tail, Gravios has a gigantic spiked mace that he swings around like no tomorrow. He’s not the coolest monster out there, but his bone-like armor definitely gives him the horrific looks to match his hellish environment. 8/10

Sound: Kind of the same as Basarios, only a bit deeper. Again, very appropriate for the monster that daddy Gravios is. The Volcanic Hollow soundtrack fits him to a tee, being a slow and menacing tune rather than an action-packed one, like most volcano-based music. 7/10

Gameplay: Again, mostly the same as Basarios, only on a much bigger scale. This makes Gravios supremely annoying, since his large size gives his attacks a lot of range – and in some of the smaller Volcanic Hollow areas, it also means there isn’t a lot of room to spare. In particular, his barrel roll and tail whip attacks are near impossible to avoid, as is his fire gas if you’re busy stabbing at his weak underbelly. To make matters worse, he tends to spray a painful burst of fire gas after he’s finished with a laser beam, which is usually a good opportunity to attack him. The sole redeeming factor is that it’s really easy to mount Gravios and get some extra hits in – good thing, too, because Gravios has a crapton of health. Overall, Gravios is too annoying for me to consider him a good monster to hunt, but not terrible at all. 5/10

New Stuff: Gravios now has a ton of breakable parts – both wings, both legs, the head, back, stomach, and tail. Breaking these parts takes away his armor, even though he has a lot less armor than he did in Freedom Unite. In G-Rank, whenever he takes a stroll across the area, he now shoots a few lava blasts at whatever happens to catch his eye. And, of course, he can’t shoot at all when he gets tired. I’m in favor of everything above except for the “less armor”. Seriously. Gravios is covered in stone. You’d think your weapon would be bouncing all over the place, but nooooo. 6/10

Equipment: Finally, some improvement! Gravios weapons are much better than Basarios’s by far. They’re also more diverse, adding a Gunlance, S+S, and Dual Blades to the roster, among others. But some of them use Poison, which is weird considering that Gravios himself can’t use Poison. The armor is… okay. Only Defense Up and Guard +2 to brag about, and not very many slots. 7/10

Cutscene: The hunter walks into the area, only for a geyser of lava to erupt from the lake and almost incinerate him/her. Then, the Gravios emerges in all his glory, wading through the molten rock and onto the shore to stare the hunter down. It begins to gather fire in its mouth, preparing to launch its lava blast. Pretty dramatic, almost reminiscent of a Kaiju movie, but it barely gives you any time to avoid the incoming attack… 7/10

Summary: Gravios is a great monster. Sure, the fight can be tedious and frustrating, but he’s still great. I love the music, and the environment is really good, but Gravios is far too big to be fun. You can easily get pinned into a corner, and that fire gas is just obnoxious. All the same, though, Gravios is pretty… groovios. Overall 7/10