User blog comment:BannedLagiacrus/Monster Appreciation Week: Leshen and Ancient Leshen/@comment-26421638-20190825083138

First of all, MAW/DoTW are back! I'm really glad about it!

I would like to say that both Leshen were kinda unexpected for The Witcher collab, i was part of people who expected a griffon as Collab monster.

Design and concept wise are interesting but since they come from another game, we cannot really praise/blame Capcom for that.

Normal Leshen is ok, after some multiplayer-forced monsters like Kulve Taroth and Behemoth we really needed a monster purposely built for single player (just like The Witcher game itself) and that's cool. The quest itself is something of unique and special, they perfectly blended The Witcher mechanics with MHW (unlike FF collab) and we have to search tracks, explore the map and having some, surprisingly interesting, dialogues before finding and fighting Leshen. ... aaand we shouldn't forget the two side quests of Pukei-Pukei and King Gajalaka in order to get a Gajalaka upgrade and AN ATTACK JEWEL!

In this quest, we are Geralt which means that we have a fixed equipment, however, unlike arena quests we can choose all weapons (SnS would be the only good weapon available but i suggest anyways to use your main weapon) and the whole set is more than acceptable (if compared with arena quests).

And here we go with Leshen itself, you can say whatever want, however you cannot deny that is the most original hunt of MHW regardless if like it or hate it. Regular Leshen is fine for me to battle despite a few bad hitboxes with claw swipes.

Leshen quest is unique and all but gets a little tedious pretty fast if you've to repeat it for any reason.

Ancient Leshen is just BS. They literally wasted all the positive stuff about The Witcher collab, making another multiplayer exclusive monster for no reason, AoE everywhere, cheap damage by "Revolture Aura", teleport spam and, worst of all, a pin attack where YOU MUST BE SAVED BY OTHER PLAYERS, due to this pin move you shouldn't be surprised if you rarely find solo runs videos online. To beat this monster online you just need to find people who spam any kind of heals. Ancient Leshen is just Trash, i did it four times in order to get enough materials to update Geralt SnS, Ciri DB, Ciri armor and both Layereds in order to not face anymore this s...

Equipment is ok, we only have two weapons and they are good, Geralt armor is a good alternative from Vaal Hazak armor due of life regen and Ciri armor IIRC was good for bows unless if I'm wrong.

So what's wrong with both Leshen? They suffer of the same problem of Behemoth: they don't belong to MH and they're kinda odd to see them in a Main Series MH game. And despite regular Leshen is way better than Behemoth, i don't want to see collab monster anymore in a Main Series MH game, especially the idea or portals in a MH who focuses on realisms and plot.

Random thought: i wonder if one of Ahtal-ka scrapped concept (a Fanged Beast capable to grow trees) would be similar to Leshen in terms of gameplay.

Next week? Can't really tell if is a MAW of Arch-Tempered Nergigante or a generic DoTW about Arch-Tempereds in general. I would like to suggest a DoTW about Frontier's end of the line.