User blog comment:BannedLagiacrus/Monster Appreciation Week: Bazelgeuse/@comment-4969421-20180727115101

Bazelgeuse is a monster that has grown on me after being initially skeptical when seeing it for the first time.

The design I'm gonna say it's alright, at least it gets the whole looking like a plane thing right with the snout, wings, etc. I do think it's undermined by just how much it looks like Seregios, which is unfortunate because I don't even think said resemblance was intentional it just that they ended up looking very similar for some reason. There's no reason for them to be related when nothing about the matter has been mentioned yet and frankly the two monsters have vastly different design themes after all. And honestly I still find it quite ugly.

What I think this monster does right however is its fighting style, which is nothing we had seen until now. Despite its somewhat meager moveset, Bazel manages to differentiate itself from the countless other Flying Wyvern of the series, using its explosive scales in a variety of ways, and even carpet bombing the entire battlefield in its most memorable attack.

Another thing this monster does right and is in my opinion the best aspect of the monster is its sound design. I know people have already mentioned its theme is cool but I would like to elaborate on this. Theme starts with a bunch of soft, tense sounding notes, what you'd hear in a horror movie scene. It's basically the Psychosis shower scene, and it immediately makes you go "oh fuck" and tells you this monster is going serious. These few introductory notes usually last until the monster roars, itself being an unusually loud roar that silences most SFX + the theme itself, with it finally goes into its main instruments/verse as a very war-sounding theme. It's a great way to circunvent the fact MHW has no Spotted/Warning theme, and basically the way of introducing the monster is pure kino.

That said however I have one more thing to say, and it's not a good thing to say. However it's not really Bazel's fault (entirely) so I left it for last. They really have to drop the invanding monster gimmick. What Bazel does when invading is call a fucking airstrike on your position and that is fucking awesome, so I will let it pass this time. However this whole shtick has gotten old. This gimmick was first introduced with Deviljho, who himself is a relatively recent monster. Then came Seregios, Apex Jang, and now Bazel. This mechanic has been overdone to death in a very short period of time, and basically no one is impressed anymore. No one cares about the big bad mon crashing the party, they just wish it would go and let them hunt the target monster in peace. What was a major suprise and potential brick-shitting moment then is now nothing more than an annoyance. The surprise factor is completely gone. You're just expecting it at this point, which is completely the opposite of what the mechanic aimed for in the first place. So for future powerhouse monsters, or whatever you want to call them, I really wish they actually think of a new, interesting mechanic, instead of "this monster can invade at any time, in any area". Stop with this shit old meme already please.