User blog comment:BannedLagiacrus/Monster Appreciation Week: Rathian (5th Gen)/@comment-4969421-20180325174000

Rathian is the one redesign I genuinely dislike in World, and it pains me because she has always been one of my favorite monsters. Compared to previous generations, she looks so washed out and dull. Like, in previous generations she looked great: You had a myriad tones on her carapace, the mossy greens and earthly brows blending perfectly, then the creamy scaly underside, the bright orange eyes. In World she has the same dirty green all around, you can barely discern the shelling from her scales. Worst part is they got rid of her patterned wings. Or Capcom fucked up so much you can't even tell it's there anymore. Pre-World Rathian had distinct, three-toned ocelli that were my favorite part of her design pretty much. World Rathian looks like someone has smeared shit on her wings. It looks terrible. What gives? What's even more baffling is that Rathalos looks perfectly fine. Sure, he might look a little duller, but that's in line with most of World's designs. Everything that makes Rathalos Rathalos is still there: The stark contrast between the red and black on its shell, the flame-patterned wings, the striped underside. It's almost like they were scared of making Rathian look good. They nailed the whole "vividly colored monster" with Pukei, so I don't understand the reason for that fear. Instead, half of Rathian's design traits are now simply gone. And that is catastrophic for a monster like her. The Raths are the series' posterboys. That means, everyone has seen and fought them a million times now. Moreover, their movesets aren't all that good (specially if you also remove attacks for no fucking reason). Basically, all Rathian (and Rathalos for that matter) has going for her is her design. Screw that up, and Rathian is a worthless monster. That's what she is in World. It saddens me I am hating on one of my all-time favorite monsters, but that's unfortunately how things are now. She looks boring. I could have a reason to be hopeful and look forward the next MH game where they might fix her design, but let's be realistic, they won't. We're stuck with the worst version of Rathian until MH6 at absolute minimum, probably more if they reuse models like they did from 3rd gen to 4th gen. And that is something that breaks my heart. I want the Rathian I loved back.