User blog comment:BannedLagiacrus/Monster Appreciation Week: Barioth (5th Gen)/@comment-24734669-20200209045955

I know this post is going to get a lot of salty comments, so let me be one of the first to leave a positive comment.

Honestly, I think Barioth is pretty nice in this game. Unlike most returning monsters, which got, like, 1 or 2 changes, it seems to have gotten a massive revamp; the devs said it can go from sitting completely still to just zooming all over the place, and it really shows.

Barioth loves leaping all over the place (to the point where it does it more frequently than other pseudowyverns), but it can also use other moves like its tornado spit or hipcheck to balance it out; as well as this, it has a giant pounce move that ends in it taunting for a short while, allowing you to get some hits in. If you thought Barioth's penchant for leaping was still too much, the good news is that breaking its wings and/or its tail still causes it to drunkenly flounder around whenever it tries leaping, making the fight easier to handle.

As well as this, it makes better use of its environment this time around, as it interacts with walls more often; there is the classic "leap onto a wall before pouncing off" as well as an attack where it spits a tornado while latched onto a wall, but my favorite interaction out of them all is the one where it runs up a wall before jumping off and doing a flip onto the ground. In terms of attacks, I also noticed it has a World-ified version of the "do a whirlwind jump into the air before spitting a tornado" attack from Frontier, which is pretty nice.

When I fought Barioth, it was really intense at first; it was really hard to keep up with it constantly jumping around and diving into me, and I could not reliably get it to fall for all the environmental traps. However, out of the blue, someone joined me to help fight it, and the experience, while still tough, was a bit easier; since my teammate captured it, I will be facing against it soon in an arena quest...

Barioth's new roar is one of the only revised roars I can tolerate (the other being Yian Garuga's and Rajang's), but mainly because it actually sounds intimidating and fitting of a predator that lives in cold environments (as well as this, under that new deep, resonating bellow, you can still faintly hear the old roar if you listen closely); besides, it keeps a few of its older growls and snarls, meaning that it's nowhere near as egregious as the Raths or Zinogre. As well as this, during the night, its eyes widen from a squint to the spookiest and most piercing gaze you could ever get from a monster (rivaled only by Rajang's visage). due to this, I've started to occasionally refer to Barioth as "Sans Cat".

In all, while I didn't enjoy it as much as Tigrex, I still hold Barioth in relatively high regard, and wouldn't be opposed to seeing it next game.

Next week comes something a bit less fun than Barioth, but still relatively good in terms of where it stands...