User blog comment:BannedLagiacrus/Monster Appreciation Week: Deviljho (5th Gen)/@comment-15446856-20181130171757

After waiting two months after launch, the great devourer arrived in World! And... I don't really know how to think of it.

In the best of situations the Deviljho of the New World is an upgrade, truly destroying the wildlife there by tearing chunks out of them or simply smacking them about as living clubs. In the worst situations, it displays the old problems the previous games had with not just it, but other monsters.

Lets talk about the good things first, beginning with the revamped design. Undoubted the most drastic change so far, the Deviljho's entire appearance has been modified. The spikes are bigger, its body has been made slightly slimmer in the underbelly, and the head has been pretty much redesigned completely with a bigger skull, more teeth on its front mouth and some on its lips, and yellow eyes. It makes Jho look much more realistic to fit in with the games theme, as well as looking more threatening than before.

Without question, the best update to Jho is its interactions with the monsters around it. Deviljho wastes no time in relentlessly attacking anything else in the same area as it, and once knocked down, it does its brand new ultimate attack that does 500 damage to every single monster hit by it no matter what. As well as doing huge damage, Jho can easily break monster parts with this attack, especially in the case of Flying Wyverns. For smaller monsters, Jho doesn't even fight them. In a series first, Deviljho can pick up smaller monsters in its jaws and smack them about, even wielding them as weapons! I was even surprised to discover that they can even be killed by this mechanic when they are eventually thrown aside. And just like classic Jho but better, when a large monster dies, it will always stop whatever it is doing and go the way to the corpse and eat it.

And lets not forget the Turf Wars it has, because they are truly awesome. Deviljho trashes the food chain by destroying their apexes. In the cases of Rathalos and Legiana, they both attempt to attack from the air, but Jho simply bites them by the neck and slams them to the ground. Odogaron doesn't even get a Turf War, it gets treated like the low tier monsters, being grabbed and smacked despite being the locales semi-apex behind Vaal Hazak. Diablos gets an epic one. The Diablos attempts to do the same thing with Jho as Barroth, but is instantly stopped and completely immobilised as Jho bites onto its horns. Then, the Deviljho lifts Diablos up, drags it into the air, and fucking suplexes it with so much force one of its horns shatter! That Turf War cannot be forgotten once seen. Of course, there is a major rivalry with Bazelgeuze, and that involves a dramatic Turf War and the only one yet far where it takes damage in the process.

The interactions with other monsters is amazing, but I really cannot say this for the battle with the Jho itself.

It still retains some of the same attacks it always had, and they are good and all, but there's a big problem. Its hitboxes are worse than they were in previous games! The signature lunging bite now includes the entire body as a hitbox, not as bad as Anjanath as it doesn't do full damage but still bad. It learned to stomp with its left foot now, and that is the only hitbox that is completely perfect, you now have to be hit directly to be damaged. One thing I hate is how Jho can now turn its revamped sweeping bites right around and give very little time to react.

Deviljho now acts a lot more like the Anjanath due to it sharing the base skeleton in World. It even uses several of the same attacks as Anjanath now. Do I care much about it? No, the added attacks aren't really a negative to the Deviljho.

One thing I cannot understand is despite Jho being made more realistic in appearance and somewhat in interactions, it is now able to leap comically 50 metres across an area to get to you. And its pin attack, which was originally a simple hop as it should have remained, is now a dramatic high jump on the spot with a still wonky hitbox and a drawn out quake effect. Plus, now its pins, both the one caused by its stomp and the new one that is now just an altered version of the Anjanath one, has it do its mega chomp on you with pretty much a certain cart without pods. But the worst thing about Jho is its broken fucking tail spins. They revamped every monster with the tail spin move in World, making it have a build up and only did once most of the time, but somehow Jho didn't only get exempt from this, it's much worse due to an absolutely shit hitbox that now has the side of its foot counted as part of the actual attack! And of course Jho always does this twice and can chain this from its walk just like the old games. It just gives you more of a reason to sever the tail to help stop it. Tempered Deviljho for some reason only does it once, as it should be.

And the Dragon Breath, oh boy what did they do to it. What the hell is that noise it makes when it readies it up, a broken whistle? Why not the perfect noise it had for it before? And when Jho does the breath, it is entirely different both in appearance and function. The smokin' dragon breath will move in several individual clouds giving the attack a range it really didn't need. But it now also easily telegraphs when its about to do it, allowing an easy dash towards its belly and attack to trigger the counterattack, then attack again to knock it out of dragon mode. Also it somehow gets to use it in a quick burst when biting enraged, don't know why.

And despite my praise for the Turf Wars, I find it very strange how the subspecies of Rathalos and Diablos cannot engage in Turf Wars with it despite being done before with Black Diablos having the same Turf Wars with Barroth, Rathian and its subspecies the Pink Rathian. And I do feel disappointment that they didn't give it a Turf War with Anjanath, it would have been great to see it get karma and ended up being treated like Great Jagras.

A another big failure was making Tempered Deviljho exclusive to event quests and also not adding it as a monster that can appear in Tempered Investigations. Like, why? 80% of non-Elder Dragon tempered investigations have Bazelgeuse appear as a side monster and it gets extremely annoying to have to deal with it in almost every tempered investigation you do. Just adding Deviljho would give much needed variety in invading monsters, but it was, for probably a very dumb reason not included in.

There are also the two counterattacks it does that can end badly for it and leave it defenceless for a few seconds, something actually good for it. And the woundable stomach too, which it should have had from the start.

Regardless of these issues, Deviljho still manages to retain the same feel and most of the enjoyment like before, it may be just because I've fought the old Jho so many times any changes feel strange.

Deviljho is either a just good monster or a big meh in World, there are many good things added to it, and retains the classic attacks from before and can at times feel enjoyable, but there definitely are things that have been made worse and some bad things about the fight still remain. At least Deviljho has a nostalgia factor to it to help it from becoming bad, and a Tempered version that was my first real challenge and a good challenge at that!

Next week, the beginning of the hype derailment and hatred.