User blog comment:BannedLagiacrus/Monster Appreciation Week: Nergigante/@comment-4969421-20180731181602



Nergigante very dutifully continues the trend of each flagship being in the opposite side of the quality spectrum. Valstrax was very good so now it's time to have the opposite. First off, Nergigante is the generic Elder Dragon, something we've seen many times before. This, however, wouldn't necessarily be a problem if Nerg did a good job at differentiating itself like other EDs do - It doesn't have a sleek, shining suit of armor like Kushala does, it doesn't mix feline features on a reptilian body type like Teostra, and it certainly isn't cute like Chameleos - Instead, Nerg learns from the "What not to Do" Frontier Books and fully covers its body in spikes. This makes its entire design very boringly plain, since the monster doesn't have any other remarkable features. Actually it does, but it would be better if it didn't: The horns. They're completely discordant with the rest of the design and they stick out like a sore thumb. Not to mention just how hilariously oversized they are (Seriously, how does it even hold its head up?). If Nerg's design was bad, those two tumours horns make it unsalvageable. Nergigante is by far the most hideous Elder Dragon, which is impressive because there are many, many ugly EDs.

So aside from the fact that it is nauseatingly ugly, it still doesn't have anything that makes it stand out among its Elder Dragon peers. But, since it is the flagship and that comes with a free shilling coupon, Nergigante learns from Seregios and the E4 before it and fully embraces the Worf effect. It gives up diferentiating itself from Elder Dragons, and instead decides to go beat them up. Making what are basically the gods of MH your main prey is not only incredibly dumb from an ecological point of view (I'll spare the details about this, I'm sure we all know already), but it's also rabbit hole you don't want to go down into. First we had monsters making short work of flagships. Now we have monsters scrubbing the floor with Elder Dragons. What's next? How are they going to shill the next flagship? Are they going to make it eat Fatalis for breakfast? When you're getting powercreep on fucking Monster Hunter out of all things, you know something is going wrong. What is even worse, is there even a reason to be doing this? Going back to Valstrax for the last time here, it preys on a measly Ludroth out of all things in its ecology cutscene. And it's a much better flagship than Nerg will ever hope to be. A monster killing everything doesn't make it interesting. It honestly sounds like a 12 year old came up with this concept.

However, Nergigante does in fact have something to make it stand out, its gameplay mechanic of regeneration. This is actually the thing that hurts me the most. I could disregard everything I said above if the gameplay was well done and enjoyable. Unfortunately however, this is not the case. Its regeneration is the Capcom's special of "great concept, bad execution". Because if you manage its spikes, which is not really hard to do since they break very easily, the monster becomes a joke. It is basically a walking weakpoint. Breaking the spikes on its legs also means a guaranteed trip, meaning you can triplock it without even really trying. There are other glasscanons in the series, Rajang being the most infamous, but Nergigante is a glass canon in all the bad ways. It is a monster that could have had a truly amazing fight, however you don't get to witness that at all as it its life expires in less than five minutes.

There's something off as a whole with MHW's soundtrack. There are a couple good themes here and there, and also bad ones. The problem is those bad ones are really fucking terrible. Nergigante's is one of them. It's a serious contender for worst flagship theme in the series. It also has sfx problems, with sounds not really blending to the animations and some really jarring sounding roars. World's sound design honestly feels amateurish at times, to the point where exceptions are worth mentioning. I don't know if if it's because of the new engine, and it's not a problem exclusive to Nergigante (nor its fault really) but it's bad enough in this case I might as well include it.

Terrible, terrible, terrible flagship. No wonder Rathalos cucked it out of the boxart.