User blog comment:BannedLagiacrus/Monster Appreciation Week: Amatsu (4th Gen)/@comment-3298463-20170224095126

I remember before Gen how there was this huge hype for Amatsu because it was supposedly the best and most fun final boss in the series, yet the people who had actually fought it were like "yeah it's not that great". I am glad I didn't buy into the hype because boy does the fight suck ass.

The horrendous camera and mountains of HP coupled with a repetitive moveset and robotic animations really bring me back to some of the worst battles in 2nd and 3rd gen. Just see how much of the fight consists on Amatsu simply moving around and trying to get in position to hurt you, or how many of its attacks (mostly in phase 1) are functionally almost identical and just hit a small area in front of him (like the slap, tail swipe, barrel roll or somersault). And when it starts charging all over the place it becomes a tedious game of tag made exponentially worse by how large both the arena and the boss are. And then there's the tornado and the triple water cannon which look cool but whose main function is to aggresively waste your time. But really, the main problem is the camera. Amatsu really likes to get in the way at all times and not let you see shit. And when making a huge monster that's so visually busy, they shouldn't give it animations from monsters several times smaller than it without changing their speed at all, because it results in stuff like Amatsu wildly flailing its head out ouf your reach over and over or going to the other side of the area in the blink of an eye.

It really makes me realize that, although the biggest forward jump in monster behaviour and animation happened in 3rd gen, 4th gen also improved a lot in those departments. And when you port a monster straight from a 3rd gen game without changing anything, it tends to stick out negatively.

Some positive things: it's pretty, sounds nice, area is cool, music is good.