User blog comment:BannedLagiacrus/Monster Appreciation Week: Alatreon (4th Gen)/@comment-16331478-20170304120641

I want to premise by saying Alatreon is a lot like Diablos to me: it's a monster I like, but it's also a monster I like to hate. Having said that, man they somehow managed to make its fight exponentially worse in Generations. I like Alatreon because of the concept, design and challenge it provides, and while I had a fun time working on the hammer solo in 3U, in Generations the fight is lots more unbearable. First off, let's begin by talking about the change that causes all the cancer: ever since P3rd, breaking Ala's horns doesn't prevent it from going into flight mode anymore, which means it can start flying at any moment. While in P3rd and 3U they also gave you the bonus of having a ballista binder to pretty much knock it out every time it left the ground, that's been removed in Gens while still keeping the perma-flight mode rule. And that really shows how shit Ala's AI really is. Every single hunt, there will be moments when it lands, does A SINGULAR (1) attack on the ground, and then starts flying again, with no way to stop it. The devs also thought it would be a good idea to literally triple all of its status resistances, meaning it takes forever to KO/paralyze/poison/etc... on some hammer runs, I even got zero KOs, absolutely none. The area you fight it in is also what I consider my absolute least favorite area in the entrie series. I think I'd rather take Verdant Hills 9 over Ingle Isle. Leaving personal issues aside, like the comntrast of red and blue that hurts my precious eyes, the sheer amount of hot ground that damages you, moving platforms that interrupt your combos no matter what, and open space means Ala can just fuck around zooming from one side of the area to the other in flight mode, stop you from getting a hit on the head on the one openeing it has while doing the flying shock pounces because the ground moved, and just generally being a spaz while it spends about 80% of the fight in the sky.

Bottom line, Generations' Alatreon is a horrid "revamp" (calling it it that might be an exaggeration), because they copy-pasted the 3U version onto Gens without thinking of the consequences that bringing it to the Ingle Isle might have had. At least you get equiment that's worth the colossal fuckfest, with natural white, great element and decent raw, making its weapons the definitive dragon weapons. Armor is kind of meh, it has all the element related skills, but you really need to gem in Critical Eye just so Crit Element isn't completely useless. There are better sets for sure. This goes for both the regular and R versions, but at least the R set has a wapping 4 one-slot pieces, which I know is pathetic, but you have to remember it's Generations we're talking about.