User blog comment:BannedLagiacrus/Monster Appreciation Week: Nergigante/@comment-26421638-20180728115819

"Frontier Monsters are just a bunch of spiky monsters with tons of AoE Attacks..." -- Classic Frontier's hater

About time to talk about of the first flagship Monster of the 5th Generation, Nergigante! I was curious about its potential since the beginning and, while I've totally hated Nergi during the last MHW Beta, this Monster grown on me hunt after hunt and nowadays Nergigante is my second favorite 5th Gen Monster (Odogaron is 1st) and my 3rd favorite Monster in MHW (Teo and Odogaron surpass it). During the beta I taught that Nergi was impossible for reasons that I'll explain rather, my first hunts against it lasted roughly 15~20 Minutes but after I've learned how to deal with this behemoth isn't capable to last more than 5 Minutes (unless if I'm distracted, bad AI etc), roughly than 5 minutes? Well, these 5 minutes are really intense!

Aesthetically is amazing, a spiked black dragon with massive horns. Its has hedgehog-like spikes but Nergi reminds me both a demon (Balrog) but also a barbarian/viking due to a combination of its horns, wings, its muscled body shape, its way to fight and its equipment. The whole regeneration and growing spikes mechanics are a nice touch. After the Fated Fours in MHGen and Valstrax in MHGU, we really needed a Non-elemental Flagship Monster! And Nergigante is just a pure melee Monster (of course have some AoE Attacks but in an unusual way), for this reason I think that Nergigante is somehow "a Diablos among Elder Dragons" since is non elemental and 100% Melee.

While I do like its roars, I think that its BGM could be better.

Despite being elementless and a melee Monster, its fight is intense due to its aggressiveness and for its wide movepool, he's capable to use the whole body as a weapon: headbutts, goring, claw swipes, stomps, tail slams, jumps and even shield-like bashes with its wings. Due ti its spike growing ability, Nergigante may enhance damage and range of its moves (spikes are scattered with most of its attacks) and after a while its spikes turns black, hardening its body parts preparing for the deadly dive bomb, a noob-slayer technique. Nergigante is one of a few monsters that is not a final boss (or a Frontier Monster) who has a second phase, where it becomes even more aggressive and shows more moves (double claw swipes, quick stomp, flying stomp, tail swipe etc.) and is where Nergigante shows its true nature... But it doesn't last really long... The extinction dragon is indeed aggressive, but is brittle making it a true Glass Cannon, if you're a good player, focus your attacks on its head or alternatively on its arms and you can shatter that glass cannon... But do it at your own risk ;P... Just like glass shards huh?

But not everything on Nergigante is perfect, Nergigante suffers of a bad hitbox problem, a lot of its attacks has ugly hitboxes but most of them can still be i-framed (even without Evasion) or blocked... The same goes for its Dive Bomb where everyone here knows what is capable to do. Oh, almost forgot ... I really Enjoy Tempered Nergigante, this guy along with Tempered Teostra is the challenge rate who I really like and there's a small and sadistic part of me who wants an Arch-Tempered Nergigante in a far future.

Nergigante weapons are good Dragon element weapons with good raw and blue sharpness. Nergigante armor (while I have to admit that mixed sets are better) is just my favorite Armor in MHW. Pretty neat design (serious, who doesn't like a barbarian/viking/demon armor or alternatively a spiked bikini?) and interesting Skills. But I don't understand why its weapons have a terrible design when fully upgraded (most of them, turn more original but are just terrible) and, speaking of equipment, which means farming. Why Nergigante horns or tail are more common of its Carapace?

Overall: Nergigante is a Good Flagship Monster (maybe a little step back compared with Valstrax) and one of the few 5th Gen Monsters who I really like. This glass cannon has a badass design, is a well-done hunt (except for some hitboxes) and yields a valuable equipment. Horray for the Elder Dragon who its name is more italian than mine! ... W-wait, a-am I in a good mood and we're talking about MHW? W-well... T-t-thats weird aaaandd looks at next week... Oh sh*t...