User blog comment:BannedLagiacrus/Discussion of the Week: Frontier's End - Part 2/@comment-28847569-20191117165736

1) Rukodiora surprisingly took more ques from the 2nd Gen Elders then I expected, with its magnetic aura and how breaking its wings disable it, while being more fun then all four of them (Teo/Luna's charge spam could be pretty annoying pre-5th Gen, and 5th Gen made one of them way too easy and the other way too frustrating, Chameleos kind of suffered from HP sponge syndrome until 4th Gen, and Kushala has made it its life mission to be consistently terrible).

2) Rukodiora. Besides it having very little competition among the other Elder Dragons as mentioned above, Ruko's magnetic abilities were pretty fun to see, and the fight itself has a really nice pace. Honorable mention to Taikun Zamuza, who is probably one of the most unique and distinct monsters in the series. Kind of funny that Iceborne basically made a dragon version of him.

3) Probably either Odibatorasu or Gurenzeburu. Odi has a tendency of spamming it's unconditional OHKO AoE, so depending on your weapon and luck there's a chance that you're going to spend most of the fight just watching him from a distance. Guren on the other hand suffers massively from 2nd Gen hitboxes, which makes him annoying to fight. MHO fixed that, but that game also took away many of his unique abilities like the trap and weather interactions, so he's not really an enjoyable fight in either games. Plus, his diet is nonsensical considering his dental structure. Those teeth are not chewing on ores. Dishonorable mention to Abiorugu, who basically was a Deviljho clone with fire and OHKOs.

4) Rukodiora, since mechanically, it really does feel similar to the other 2nd Gen Elder Dragons while managing to be its own monster.

5) I haven't really gotten around to fighting any of them yet, but conceptually, they seem like an extension of HC, which is nice.

6) I'm not a big fan of Unknown either, since it's basically a mis-mash of other Flying Wyvern's moves (Standard Rath stuff, Gravios farts and lasers, Gurenzeburu's body slams, Espinath Rare's tornado flames), with no real lore or ecology besides being "super duper strong." I would had mentioned it in Question #4, but I felt like I already gave a pretty bloated response to that.

7&8&9) I like both the Interceptor's Base (for being 4th Gen Town before 4U came out) and Tide Island (it's a small map, but I like the tropical beach & cave system aesthetic), although I'm not really interested in seeing either in the mainseries.

10) From a game-development standpoint, I think having the closed-off zones was pretty smart. It implies that there's other sections of the area where monsters can live, but it avoids having to actually model an entire cave system.

11) Big sea serpent; that's about it. Sadly, it's unlikely that I'll get a chance to fight Lavi, but visually, the monster never really interested me. It's just... a sea serpent. Idunno, I guess I'm just more of a Bigsnek fan.