User blog comment:BannedLagiacrus/Monster Appreciation Week: Coral Pukei-Pukei/@comment-24734669-20200202060013

Last week, we covered the worst out of the MR2 subspecies. This week, we're covering the best.

I really, really like Coral Pukei-Pukei. Its red-and-yellow color scheme is perfect for the Coral Highlands, and I really like how Capcom went "hey, Coral Pukei-Pukei has a squirting tube for a tail, so let's give it a subspecies that has its tail act like some weird hose"; in addition to this, the fact that we finally got another Water-element monster in World was a big win by itself.

Gameplay-wise, Coral Pukei-Pukei is a blast (durr hurr hurr!). I love how most of its water attacks are so unique; its basic water spit attack has it stand tall and shoot a gob of water much like a Bird Wyvern, rather than the copy-pasted Rathian fireball move that was regular Pukei-Pukei's poison spit. However, the real stars of the show here are all of its attacks that involve it shooting out jets of water; most of them come from its tail, but it can shoot them from its mouth as well. In fact, Coral Pukei-Pukei loves spamming its water spray moves, but that's all fine, because they're all really fun and not overly frustrating (unlike the previous two subspecies, which were only hard because of overreliance on cancerous status effects); the funniest part is that it can even spray water from its tail while drinking from the coral pads in Area 4 of the Highlands.

The attack where it shoots a jet of water while doing a backflip into the air before spraying water in a spiraling motion all over the place while flying back down to the ground is absurdly funny to watch, and is perhaps the best attack it has. I also like how, when it sprays water out of its mouth, it can occasionally fake you out by splitting the jet of water it shoots into 2 smaller streams. In all, Coral Pukei-Pukei is a great improvement over regular Pukei-Pukei (which itself was pretty good for an early-game World monster), and perhaps the best subspecies in Iceborne (aside from Fulgur Anjanath).

I'm speaking on behalf of the community rather than myself when I say this, but the next 6 weeks are probably looking to be pretty miserable...