I'm a big fan of Subspecies compared to Deviants/Apex/Risen or whatever. Subspecies feels more natural and I like the lore reasons of why they have the changes in color and behaviour.
I'm finding out different tid bits lore wise of subspecies and why they change through this comment section. It really seems quite interesting compared to "local virus gives bird superpowers" angle.
I'm always surprised at how much I learn from each of your videos. Please continue taking the extra time needed to make them this informative. It really shows in the quality of your content (in a good way)
Thank you greatly, I appreciate this greatly. I'll continue with my usual format until I can safely create videos in less time with the same quality. Maybe I'll get to weekly uploads eventually
I enjoy monster variations for the main reason because they can act as revisions for a monster. New variations can have gimmicks that cover the monster's old weaknesses. For example, Violet Mizutsune is much less flinch-able than its original monster in its normal state, but when it is gas'd up, hitting its head/dorsal fins/tail can still cause downs similar to the original fight. The bubbles now deal significant damage, and also have homing qualities, making them much more consequential to the fight. If mizutsune returns in a future game, I really hope the down only during a powered state returns, and possibly making the bubbles matter more to.
Big facts, giving coverage so its not technically the same fight is often really great and refreshing. They did Violet Mizu very well, especially compared to subspecies and variants in previous games.
Another great video! I think subspecies generally do a lot more to differentiate themselves from their base species than most would give them credit for - even if there aren’t many immediate differences, be it visually or during combat, one may find their gear to be more useful to their build than that of the base monsters’. They’re a staple feature of this series, adding to the replay value of the games, and it sucks to see them omitted from a base roster.
I find it amazing how the Metal raths were base game content for MH4, Portable 3rd, and Dos, yet Rise didn't have a single subspecies until Sunbreak. I personally think that regardless of how complex and different a Subspecies is from the base species including it is always better than not doing so. Generations and GU have enormous amounts of Monsters, yet you fight the same monsters every single rank with very little visual variety. Also GU coulf have been the first game since Freedom Unite to include every single Flagship up until that point, but since they excluded Azure Rathalos they didn't, there hasn't been one since 2nd gen. I personally enjoy subspecies as having differently colored versions of the same monster is perfectly okay. It happens all the time in nature to have different color morphs of the same animal, so I could see it happening in MH.
Exactly. I'm all for their inclusion especially since the models for both the monsters and equipment are already made. It was super confusing to me not seeing Black Diablos or Azure/Pink Raths in Rise
@@MahnsterHunter the MH portable team likes doing things differently, azure/pink raths haven't been in a portable series game since freedom unite with the having sorta their own replacement with dreadqueen/king. They still created a large amount of subspecies, green narga, sand barioth, brute tigrex among others, i think with rise they mainly wanted to bring back as many monsters as they could with subspecies varients being left for later. Especially in the newer games they try to make subspecies as different as possible, lucent narga is nothing like narga at some point and brute tigrex is almost completely different from regular, so i think it'd cost extra extra to include them since they don't like making monsters with smaller differences anymore.
@@BaronSterling It is the flagship of MHG for both Wii and PS2. The 15th anniversary video even shows it as Azure Rathalos does his pose from MHG ruclips.net/video/YsUbeLTMT6c/видео.htmlsi=m5WbAVxSKV5i9XvN.
@@BaronSterling What are you talking about? Rathalos is on the US box art for MH World, yet it isn't the flagship. Despite that it is still the Flagship monster of the original game and Portable. Same is true of Azure Rathalos. He is on the Box art of the US version of MH3U, but he isn't the flagship of that game. He is the flagship though of MHG. Where he, Pink Rathain, and White Monoblos are the only Subspecies you can fight offline.
On the topic of Subspecies and Variants, I really hate Deviants. Not the Deviant monsters, they're all really cool. I hate the classification "Deviant" because lorewise nothing actually separates them from Subspecies and Variants but an arbitrary marketing gimmick that in the end only really solidifies that they're permanently stuck in GenU forever at the only hope they have of returning are weird half assed bootlegs like the Rise Apexs. An entire swath of really cool Subspecies and Variants just arbitrarily can't come back in new games because they carry a bunch of frivolous baggage
Definitely. Some of these things could be considered rare species like Dreadqueen or Hellblade while others could have been variants like Deadeye or Bloodbath. It'd probably be a miracle if we got them in another game.
I'm generally far less of a fan of subspecies in the older games as they barely felt different from regular a lot of the time, in some cases i think it made the monster worse (looking at you pink rathian with your old ridiculously oversized fire bite hitbox) but starting with P3rd and 3U there was a step on making each of them feel more distinct which culminated in world and rise, like i imagine subspecies in older games were done to save resourses but with newer ones they have so many differences to the point where you can tell a lot of effort went on them, they are prolly still more economic than new monsters but there's less of a gap now i imagine. Also a funny thing in some of the older games(by old i mean like FU and below even) is how some subspecies were a surprise to get you, rathalos and azure used to share the same icon, you didn't know you'd even face azure unless it was mentioned in the quest description about it being a different color or something like that. Some "lesser" variants like scarred garuga and one horned diablos worked the same way.
The older games certainly didn't do them any justice. I recently fought Ashen Lao in MHF and I couldn't help but feel like it was unnecessary. Even worse fun fact, subspecies are given titles in English, but are different in Japanese(Rathalos Ashu/Kinoshu). So if you're playing MHF1, you could see two quests of identical names for the same target , but one of them is a subspecies. And that is how I got my first triple faint to an Azure Rath
@@MahnsterHunter ashen lao was just an excuse to put lao in higher ranks, as meme worthy as steel uragaan is for being dead last in the popularity pool, he's still more distinct and has some significant differences vs regular uragaan, while most gen 1 subspecies are green plesioth tier.
@@zander2758 nah fr tho, in 3U I was lowkey upset that we got “green nargacuga” and “green Plesioth” but no subspecies for Gobul or Nibelsnarf 😭 (Crimson Qurupeco was ok, only cause it was pretty imo)
@@NerscyllaMH at least green nargacuga has some good differences, its significantly more aggressive than regular with it having some faster attacks like his double charge attack, while green plesioth gains a sweep beam attack in the ground/underwater, both of which don't change how you position on him.
Oh gog there is so much to unpack here with this topic. I apologize for the wall of text but this is how I am. So the recolours,the remixes and the mistakes that were made along the way. From a purely storytelling standpoint I want to be able to believe this subspecies is possible. pink rath being a rathian which got (un)lucky in the gene pool and has colouration closer to its male counterpart which leads it to be attacked and chased away by said males because they believe it to be a competitor leading to it being found in usually less lush places and more aggressive? sure can buy that. Green nargacuga being green and hunting during the day? sure why the heck not. Ivory lagi being albino and having trouble hunting underwater because its so reflective so it stick to land a lot more? and abyssal just being OLD? Sure can believe that. The rare species can get away with a bit more because they are supposed to be rare though lucent and its invisibility is kind of a crime. Variants can get away with a lot more and typically double down on the gimmick of the base monsters instead so they probably function the best as a way to "up the ante" so to speak. Also subspecies IMO just function at their best storywise when they are clearly seperated from their normal counterparts map wise as to show that yes these are different species. Variants meanwhile I would say function best as either rare capstone individuals amongst a crowd of normals or as a disruptor of ongoings. Also as for appearance wise I would say that HR is the best place to start putting them since they are iterations of allready existing monsters and typically have more gimmicks then their base. though It would be fun to see them do a khezu again where the first fight is the actual subspecies and the subspecies is most likely the actual "base" form. Now fight wise I would squarely say that a subspecies should have a clear distinction from their well "main" species. Glacial agnaktor having both water and ice blight, having basically the reverse armour gimmick where the longer it stays out the softer its armour gets and the slower dig speed make it feel definetly a lot different with its armour being perhaps the best lance set to ever exist (both guard and guard up and fencing on the HR set what the actual F). It has a different fight flow since you want above the ground rather then below and the changes to which attacks it prefers do make it a rather challenging fight though the tundra is a bit small for it. other subspecies genuinely just seem to fall into the "why isnt this just a variant" hole, like the colour wraths. yes pink and azure are harder fights but their biggest itteration is that they make you bounce more and that they get more obnoxious hitboxes sometimes with their fire, or pinks breakdance. the fact that the colour raths are routinely left out of the portable games for stuff like dreadqueen or the apex raths in rise makes me believe the portable team at least somewhat agrees that they are some of the weaker subspecies. And yes this does include black diablos but honestly black diablos is also kinda just perfection itself because it is in lore only a subspecies becuase apparently hunters dont respect the term variant and think they are easier then the regular monster? Green nargacuga btw has the big changes of being hunted during the day, having a double tail slam and I think doing a lot more stun damage with the spikes and tailslam if he do hits you which is certainly interesting but also just not enough? Certainly its a limitation of the older games but my Idea of a subspecies is that they are actually and entirely different you know SPECIES. Give them weird shit like sand barioth being a bargain bin kushala with tornadoes that it uses to fcking slingshot itself. baleful gigginox which turns gigginox from a pretty hard poison monster into actually better khezu. the egg carrying of the G rank version makes aggression actually meaningful its so good. The metal raths obnoxious as they are, do serve the purpose as final skill checks rather well by reversing their dragon defense fully completing the hardening that the colour raths allready start and instead having extreme elemental weaknesses to lightning and water on their wings as well as stronger fire. they would basically be variants nowadays but they were made early so rare species it is. Doesnt mean they are fun to fight but their fights do have pretty substantial mechanical differences. Oroshi kirin is just a better kirin hunt then oldworld kirin and nobody can convince me otherwise, genuinely its a horse that stands still and doesnt inflict thunderblight and paralysis like a bargain bin khezu it is so good. As for rare species those are just a bunch of weirdos. It would probably make sense for them to stay in the "very old or otherwise extremely priviliged/niche" bucket basically as a halfway point between variants and subspecies. No I dont care that either of those dont count as a "species" because honestly neither does MH and I do not believe even for a second that the metal raths or the colour raths are actually different species. They are supposed to be rare and typically are set post story at the tail end of the difficulty curve, so having something more out there either mechanics wise (metal raths with their elemental and sharpness requirements) or having a 1 shot that needs to be dodged or straight up invisibility taht has a worse handwave then chameleos. Other end of the stick is of course the variants. Honestly they do feel like the better way to have more differing versions of the same monster since they can actually just reuse the exact same monster but harder (shrieking legiana/frostfang) but the flopside of that is that a lot of variants have armoursets that are straight up better then their base counterparts. Sometimes making a "harder" version just makes the base version seem pointless. It does make somewhat more sense for the G rank/Master rank to have the base versions be somewhat underpowered but that is a powerscaling discussion. would be interesting to go with a route similar to 4 which just cut some monsters in higher ranks exclusively for their subspecies which is certainly 1 way to prevent roster bloat, especially with variants that are more mechanically indepth then their probably lackluster baseform. to summarize. Subspecies should change the main dynamic of the fight, also probably element or status if there and be a proper fit for the enviroment where the baseform wouldnt fit. Variants can both serve as a proper story capstone or disrupter, throw one in at the start of a new rank or if the story needs to go off track. They can be both a good way to show off a new locale by having a variation of an allready fought monster as well as a good way to disrupt allready existing knowledge of an area. Rare species should be treated as such. They are a rarity there is a lack of knowledge around them and most importantly they are most certaintly the most difficult to hunt of their contemporaries. These arent your average joes or even variants these are your full blown endgame challenges and they should have proper measures to prevent anyone without proper preparations to throw them back to camp 3 times over. I do believe subspecies should be HR and upwards whilst variants can honestly be thrown in anywhere depending on the depth of their fight, whilst rare species should be only for whatever is going to be post story, though I can also see a way to have a singular bird or raptor large monster with multiple subspecies all showing up in LR similar to how the old dromes and greats functioned.
Are those actual in lore reasons as to why they changed cuz if so that goes hard. Though, I do agree with subspecies appearing in high rank. Unless its like Blue Yian or Purple Gyp or something weaker of that nature then they could maybe serve as end of low rank type hunts to ease you into high rank. I believe Azure/Pink Rath are probably difficult due to their tougher parts causing issues during a player's progression through the game. You're less likely to have blue sharpness or higher armor so getting waxed by them if you don't place your hits properly or position safely is expected. The metals just take that aspect and fine tune it to high hell with the wings/legs and sometimes back being weakest. Yeah, combat wise some variants are different, but armor wise you're right. There's been a pattern of them being a tad better with the exception of seething. Regular and Seething Baz both have lackluster armor skills despite being late game together. Seeing the difference between Barioth and Frostfang seems like a big leap, but Barioth being a middle of the road monster with critical and stamina skills while Frostfang leans into the draw attack and elemental side seems a bit fair considering their distance on the totem pole.
@@MahnsterHunter seething bazel has a good armor set for gunlance thanks to load shells + guard up + guard + artillery, not the best armor set in the world by any means but its good for a decent bit before you get to later anomaly stuff. The real outlier is lucent nargacuga whose armorset is straight terrible, sees very minor use on some gunlance shelling sets since sneak attack does boost shelling, but you're better off just getting it through qurio armor crafting.
Some of them like the colour raths and black diablos specifically I believe are from the world artbook whilst green narga and I believe ivory both have brief excerpts of ecology in their hunters notes. Pretty sure black diablos has always had the thing that they are just females in heat in the hunters notes which makes it even funnier that they have kept the subspecies title for so long but I guess that is the power of being one of the most teritorial monsters in the franchise. A lot of the older subspecies were basically just variants before variants were a thing with some minor ecology thrown in to justify them, red khezu being the funniest one since whilst I dont think the games ever pose the question it is very likely taht since they are virtually the same monster it could simply be that khezu are the actual subspecies suffering from a defect that prevents pigmentation whilst red khezu are the actual base and its a case of encountering the subspecies first. and yes you can definetly throw in some of the early game monster subspecies in LR but IMO that would either cause roster bloat again since you would need to encounter them in HR then anyway and where do you put them there, or get rid of the hard difficulty spikes that appear between ranks. you know the ones the big spike from LR to HR which is designated with like a 30 raw increase on hte weapons + blue sharpness and the gigantic defense jump once you do hit High rank armour. Am not against it especially if you want to have a new map to bridge the gap between LR and HR but a lot of the colour variants are basically just difficulty spikes to tell the player that they cant just coast by now. The colour raths both require more setup and just in general a lot of monsters in highrank have less gimmicks to exploit and more gimmicks to work around, the subspecies I guess just being the way they could remix a monster they allready had without making a new one (didnt stop them from making like 5 dromesthough). The sum of that being that the older titles had them to meaningfully tell the players that they are in the big boy leagues now and have to actually start upgrading and building more more stuff, maybe even having specific sets for certain monsters, whilst newer games can simply fill that with either new monsters better or throw in returning monsters to better space out the new additions.
Yeah, Black Diablos is called a subspecies but I guess they had to differentiate it. Would it even be considered a variant though, since its natural to Diablos or would it be like Shrieking Legi? Also, that's exactly how they should use subspecies. A comfortable knowledge and gear check moving through different parts of the game.
Could be? Sure. Should be? Starting at High rank would be okay. Rise was definitely the odd ball in this way even considering Generations. Same thing happened in Tri.
Great video as usual. I'm still watching but I'm just gonna add here that Glacial Agnaktor (and the regular one) lets you use fire damage in order to soften the armor in it's bodyparts. Fire damage such as gunlance shells, fire elemental weapons, cluster shots and crag shots. For some reason in 3U they also let blast status explosions to soften the armor as well.
The bombs and Blast let you soften? When I was trying that on base Agnaktor and Glacial I wasn't getting results. Maybe I wasn't using enough I'll have to run that back and see
From what I've heard, and I feel? like experience has agreed?, and possibly changing between games, I think Gunlance shells, despite being fire damage, don't soften Agnaktor's armour. I think that's the case, at least.
@@therighttrousers343 they do at the very least in P3rd and 3U. I'm a main GL in 3U and used these all the time in order to soften it's armour. At 02:10 of this video I showcase this real quick with Glacial Agnaktor in P3rd: ruclips.net/video/i3Y0cqHGTeA/видео.htmlsi=5q-gRZ5iNAgdcOIM
@@therighttrousers343 also got footage of 3U to back it up. At the first 20 seconds of this compilation video, you can see the GL shells softening the regular Agnaktor's armor: ruclips.net/video/0q5qfznHJig/видео.htmlsi=qMzRbx88zNmy1YxX
Y'know, that sounds like a great idea, but would it be a fire Goss burns the sand onto the hands or would it be like Chatacabra where it just dusts its arms?
@@MahnsterHunter i actually did a video on it a long time ago lol. But it wouldn’t be a fire subspecies necessarily at all, but DOES use heat in its organs to melt the sand on its arm after coating them, turning them into the glass blade/fist. So the Goss species would inhale the desert heat, heating his “bodily fluids” then spitting them on his sand coated fist will they then transmit into glass. It’s been a while since I wrote the whole script and video lol but I made it really interesting. Just executed the video really poorly, might remake it sometime.
@@MahnsterHunter I know rise didnt have them, but this is made by the world team (until both mh teams merged after rise) and they know most people that will play wilds expect it to have similar content to world, so I think we will get subs 85% sure, and if not I hope we get at least 45 big monsters, between new and returning (not counting DLC monsters)
@@MahnsterHunter yes there was the main team that made world, mh4u, mh3u, then there's the portable team that made the psp games like mh3rd or games like generations, they have been working splitted untill after sunbreak (they are now fused as just 1 big team) so yeah, we are probably getting a lot of monsters and the game may be bigger than we even thought, or maybe they got lazy, we will see
Daaaaaaamn I knew the difference in teams but I didnt know they merged. Hopefully we can still get portable style games, I prefer those ocer the spectacle and story driven nature of Tokuda's titles
@@MahnsterHunter it's actually really easy to read. When he does his spray, if the claws are down he's staying in place, if the claws are up he's gonna be walking, in which you can E0 it barely much easier with E1, or just guard it in which it's hitbox is disabled for you for the rest of the beam
Bruh I've been fighting the same Lv 140 Yian Garuga/Plum Daimyo trying to get a good switch axe and Freedom series A helma but they're stiffing me. I auto delete Ruby Bas cuz nah I'm good
i really wish third gen subspecies would come back can green narga replace narga juuust for one game Capcom? is it too much to ask? 😢 mah green stun boi
LOL Nah I need both of them! I just hope they give Green new options. Like a new tail slam variation now that base Narg uses it. Not the double tail slam or the tail slam into spin but something new new
i ok so i had a dumb idea what if we put in som monsters subspecies witthout its original species like lets say we have a daymo hermitaur in rise and in wilds instaead of putting normal daymo capcom puts plum daymo hermitaur beacuse hermitaurs appear with am monoblos skull in games where monoblos isnt and seeing that the desert already has an apex we probably wont get diablos so we can have plum daymo wearing a diablos skull to show how diablos wont be in wilds
If Diablos isn't in Wilds, I'm probably going to backflip on my neck, but it would be funny to just see a diablos skull carried around if we crabs. No Ice place? Permanent Sand Barioth
@@MahnsterHunter i mean it wouldnt make sense for diablos to appear i mean we already got ray dau as deserts apex having 2 apexs feels kinda weird i mean i never heard of a moment where in one place there were 2 apex pretadors co existing
The problem I have with the "Apex of the region" title is that its a new concept pretty much spotlighted under Tokuda's direction(World & Wilds.) Are they the apex of any place they reside or simply that locale and if so how can they be an apex but overwhelmed by something that lives in the same domain. Rathalos is the apex of the Ancient Forest, but monsters stronger than it live there too and not just migratory monsters like Deviljho and Rajang. Astalos is seen killing a Rathalos in its ecology video in the Forest & Hills. They never had to make this distinction in older games or Rise to hype up a monster's prowess, simply expressing their capabilities and their effect on the story/environment was enough. Rey Dau being the "Apex of the windward plains" shouldn't prevent Diablos from showing up. If there's another Tokuda lead game, an "Apex" of another desert shouldnt prevent Diablos or Rey Dau from making it on the roster unless it geographically makes sense for them not to.
@@MahnsterHunter well i think that it doesn mean the strongest hunter but the best hunter like deviljhos are so hungry that whatever food they get can barelly satiate their hunger yes they are stronger than rathaloses but their hunting tactiks are mover effective in feeding them ergo rathalos is a better hunter than deviljho ergo the superior one and apex's are the top of the food chain ergo superior than the rest meaning that apex's dont have to be just an unstopable force i mean irl crocodyles they are apex predators but they arent the strongest water animal they use tactics like stay still until its prey is too close or messes up and gets noticed then crocodyle kills thier pray thats how i see them doing apex monsters they dont have to overpower everything it would be usefull yes but being an apex doesnt mean just beating everyone like a mindless beast its using your intelect and force together to be the best predator
The word “apex” in this case is used in its ecological sense. It is not just some novel game gimmick. An apex _predator_ is basically a predator that is placed in the highest trophic level of the ecosystem it is a part of. They may eat from any trophic level below them, though they are obligate carnivores more often than not and so producers tend to be excluded from their options. However, a sufficiently large and powerful animal relative to other organisms in the same ecosystem can still be considered an apex of their ecosystem, though they may not eat from trophic levels any higher than producers or primary consumers. Take catfish, for example. They can grow to frankly alarming sizes if they manage to survive long enough. These behemoths still eat detritus and small bottom-dwelling creatures for the most part (though they can certainly eat something bigger if they feel like it), but I guarantee you that nothing else in the water wants to fuck with that. Therefore, these large catfish have basically no predators and have achieved the status of apex in their rivers or lakes. This logic is why Diablos is considered an apex despite cactus making up the majority of its diet. On that note, I’m pretty sure Rey Dau and Diablos occupy entirely different niches, with Diablos being a cactus-eating herbivore and Rey Dau being likely an obligate carnivore. They also occupy different territories, Diablos preferring to dwell underground in caverns it has dug out, and Rey Dau seeming to like rocky cliffs and generally places where it would be out of Diablos’s way. It is far from impossible for them to coexist. As for the thing with Rathalos and the Ancient Forest: the things as strong as or stronger than Rathalos that appear there are anomalies. Kushala and Blackveil Vaal Hazak are both Elder Dragons, and Elder Dragons present a massive upset to any ecosystem they decide to hunker down in. They are best viewed as living natural disasters, not a regular part of the ecosystem. The other apex status monsters that appear there in Iceborne are there because of Shara Ishvalda’s shenanigans driving them out of their previous habitats. They are competitors to Rathalos where previously there were none. Under normal circumstances, without an Elder Dragon making a wreck of the place or other apexes invading the ecosystem, Rathalos is the strongest thing in the Ancient Forest and in the highest trophic level.
@@MahnsterHunter Crimson Fatalis belly is a 20 HZ for both cutting and impact so you need white sharpness to not bounce, until you hit armour mode from 50% health to 20% health were you will bounce against every hitzone.
I'm a big fan of Subspecies compared to Deviants/Apex/Risen or whatever.
Subspecies feels more natural and I like the lore reasons of why they have the changes in color and behaviour.
I'm finding out different tid bits lore wise of subspecies and why they change through this comment section. It really seems quite interesting compared to "local virus gives bird superpowers" angle.
I'm always surprised at how much I learn from each of your videos. Please continue taking the extra time needed to make them this informative. It really shows in the quality of your content (in a good way)
Thank you greatly, I appreciate this greatly. I'll continue with my usual format until I can safely create videos in less time with the same quality. Maybe I'll get to weekly uploads eventually
I enjoy monster variations for the main reason because they can act as revisions for a monster. New variations can have gimmicks that cover the monster's old weaknesses. For example, Violet Mizutsune is much less flinch-able than its original monster in its normal state, but when it is gas'd up, hitting its head/dorsal fins/tail can still cause downs similar to the original fight. The bubbles now deal significant damage, and also have homing qualities, making them much more consequential to the fight. If mizutsune returns in a future game, I really hope the down only during a powered state returns, and possibly making the bubbles matter more to.
Big facts, giving coverage so its not technically the same fight is often really great and refreshing. They did Violet Mizu very well, especially compared to subspecies and variants in previous games.
Another great video! I think subspecies generally do a lot more to differentiate themselves from their base species than most would give them credit for - even if there aren’t many immediate differences, be it visually or during combat, one may find their gear to be more useful to their build than that of the base monsters’. They’re a staple feature of this series, adding to the replay value of the games, and it sucks to see them omitted from a base roster.
Especially now that they're adding extra mechanics or real differences in their movesets
My first wall was pink rathian in 4u to break hunter rank.. taught me alot of the game. I enjoy sub species
She caught me off guard with the angled tail flip and the flaming side bite. Was definitely an xperience
I find it amazing how the Metal raths were base game content for MH4, Portable 3rd, and Dos, yet Rise didn't have a single subspecies until Sunbreak.
I personally think that regardless of how complex and different a Subspecies is from the base species including it is always better than not doing so. Generations and GU have enormous amounts of Monsters, yet you fight the same monsters every single rank with very little visual variety. Also GU coulf have been the first game since Freedom Unite to include every single Flagship up until that point, but since they excluded Azure Rathalos they didn't, there hasn't been one since 2nd gen.
I personally enjoy subspecies as having differently colored versions of the same monster is perfectly okay. It happens all the time in nature to have different color morphs of the same animal, so I could see it happening in MH.
Exactly. I'm all for their inclusion especially since the models for both the monsters and equipment are already made. It was super confusing to me not seeing Black Diablos or Azure/Pink Raths in Rise
@@MahnsterHunter the MH portable team likes doing things differently, azure/pink raths haven't been in a portable series game since freedom unite with the having sorta their own replacement with dreadqueen/king.
They still created a large amount of subspecies, green narga, sand barioth, brute tigrex among others, i think with rise they mainly wanted to bring back as many monsters as they could with subspecies varients being left for later.
Especially in the newer games they try to make subspecies as different as possible, lucent narga is nothing like narga at some point and brute tigrex is almost completely different from regular, so i think it'd cost extra extra to include them since they don't like making monsters with smaller differences anymore.
Thats a good way to look at it. Maybe they're making the models now so they can have the skeleton for later. Thats a new perspective for me
@@BaronSterling It is the flagship of MHG for both Wii and PS2. The 15th anniversary video even shows it as Azure Rathalos does his pose from MHG ruclips.net/video/YsUbeLTMT6c/видео.htmlsi=m5WbAVxSKV5i9XvN.
@@BaronSterling What are you talking about? Rathalos is on the US box art for MH World, yet it isn't the flagship. Despite that it is still the Flagship monster of the original game and Portable. Same is true of Azure Rathalos. He is on the Box art of the US version of MH3U, but he isn't the flagship of that game. He is the flagship though of MHG. Where he, Pink Rathain, and White Monoblos are the only Subspecies you can fight offline.
On the topic of Subspecies and Variants, I really hate Deviants.
Not the Deviant monsters, they're all really cool. I hate the classification "Deviant" because lorewise nothing actually separates them from Subspecies and Variants but an arbitrary marketing gimmick that in the end only really solidifies that they're permanently stuck in GenU forever at the only hope they have of returning are weird half assed bootlegs like the Rise Apexs.
An entire swath of really cool Subspecies and Variants just arbitrarily can't come back in new games because they carry a bunch of frivolous baggage
Definitely. Some of these things could be considered rare species like Dreadqueen or Hellblade while others could have been variants like Deadeye or Bloodbath. It'd probably be a miracle if we got them in another game.
I'm generally far less of a fan of subspecies in the older games as they barely felt different from regular a lot of the time, in some cases i think it made the monster worse (looking at you pink rathian with your old ridiculously oversized fire bite hitbox) but starting with P3rd and 3U there was a step on making each of them feel more distinct which culminated in world and rise, like i imagine subspecies in older games were done to save resourses but with newer ones they have so many differences to the point where you can tell a lot of effort went on them, they are prolly still more economic than new monsters but there's less of a gap now i imagine.
Also a funny thing in some of the older games(by old i mean like FU and below even) is how some subspecies were a surprise to get you, rathalos and azure used to share the same icon, you didn't know you'd even face azure unless it was mentioned in the quest description about it being a different color or something like that.
Some "lesser" variants like scarred garuga and one horned diablos worked the same way.
The older games certainly didn't do them any justice. I recently fought Ashen Lao in MHF and I couldn't help but feel like it was unnecessary.
Even worse fun fact, subspecies are given titles in English, but are different in Japanese(Rathalos Ashu/Kinoshu). So if you're playing MHF1, you could see two quests of identical names for the same target , but one of them is a subspecies. And that is how I got my first triple faint to an Azure Rath
@@MahnsterHunter ashen lao was just an excuse to put lao in higher ranks, as meme worthy as steel uragaan is for being dead last in the popularity pool, he's still more distinct and has some significant differences vs regular uragaan, while most gen 1 subspecies are green plesioth tier.
@@zander2758 nah fr tho, in 3U I was lowkey upset that we got “green nargacuga” and “green Plesioth” but no subspecies for Gobul or Nibelsnarf 😭
(Crimson Qurupeco was ok, only cause it was pretty imo)
@@NerscyllaMH at least green nargacuga has some good differences, its significantly more aggressive than regular with it having some faster attacks like his double charge attack, while green plesioth gains a sweep beam attack in the ground/underwater, both of which don't change how you position on him.
Oh gog there is so much to unpack here with this topic. I apologize for the wall of text but this is how I am.
So the recolours,the remixes and the mistakes that were made along the way.
From a purely storytelling standpoint I want to be able to believe this subspecies is possible. pink rath being a rathian which got (un)lucky in the gene pool and has colouration closer to its male counterpart which leads it to be attacked and chased away by said males because they believe it to be a competitor leading to it being found in usually less lush places and more aggressive?
sure can buy that.
Green nargacuga being green and hunting during the day? sure why the heck not.
Ivory lagi being albino and having trouble hunting underwater because its so reflective so it stick to land a lot more? and abyssal just being OLD? Sure can believe that.
The rare species can get away with a bit more because they are supposed to be rare though lucent and its invisibility is kind of a crime.
Variants can get away with a lot more and typically double down on the gimmick of the base monsters instead so they probably function the best as a way to "up the ante" so to speak.
Also subspecies IMO just function at their best storywise when they are clearly seperated from their normal counterparts map wise as to show that yes these are different species.
Variants meanwhile I would say function best as either rare capstone individuals amongst a crowd of normals or as a disruptor of ongoings.
Also as for appearance wise I would say that HR is the best place to start putting them since they are iterations of allready existing monsters and typically have more gimmicks then their base.
though It would be fun to see them do a khezu again where the first fight is the actual subspecies and the subspecies is most likely the actual "base" form.
Now fight wise I would squarely say that a subspecies should have a clear distinction from their well "main" species.
Glacial agnaktor having both water and ice blight, having basically the reverse armour gimmick where the longer it stays out the softer its armour gets and the slower dig speed make it feel definetly a lot different with its armour being perhaps the best lance set to ever exist (both guard and guard up and fencing on the HR set what the actual F).
It has a different fight flow since you want above the ground rather then below and the changes to which attacks it prefers do make it a rather challenging fight though the tundra is a bit small for it.
other subspecies genuinely just seem to fall into the "why isnt this just a variant" hole, like the colour wraths.
yes pink and azure are harder fights but their biggest itteration is that they make you bounce more and that they get more obnoxious hitboxes sometimes with their fire, or pinks breakdance.
the fact that the colour raths are routinely left out of the portable games for stuff like dreadqueen or the apex raths in rise makes me believe the portable team at least somewhat agrees that they are some of the weaker subspecies.
And yes this does include black diablos but honestly black diablos is also kinda just perfection itself because it is in lore only a subspecies becuase apparently hunters dont respect the term variant and think they are easier then the regular monster?
Green nargacuga btw has the big changes of being hunted during the day, having a double tail slam and I think doing a lot more stun damage with the spikes and tailslam if he do hits you which is certainly interesting but also just not enough?
Certainly its a limitation of the older games but my Idea of a subspecies is that they are actually and entirely different you know SPECIES.
Give them weird shit like sand barioth being a bargain bin kushala with tornadoes that it uses to fcking slingshot itself.
baleful gigginox which turns gigginox from a pretty hard poison monster into actually better khezu. the egg carrying of the G rank version makes aggression actually meaningful its so good.
The metal raths obnoxious as they are, do serve the purpose as final skill checks rather well by reversing their dragon defense fully completing the hardening that the colour raths allready start and instead having extreme elemental weaknesses to lightning and water on their wings as well as stronger fire. they would basically be variants nowadays but they were made early so rare species it is.
Doesnt mean they are fun to fight but their fights do have pretty substantial mechanical differences.
Oroshi kirin is just a better kirin hunt then oldworld kirin and nobody can convince me otherwise, genuinely its a horse that stands still and doesnt inflict thunderblight and paralysis like a bargain bin khezu it is so good.
As for rare species those are just a bunch of weirdos.
It would probably make sense for them to stay in the "very old or otherwise extremely priviliged/niche" bucket basically as a halfway point between variants and subspecies.
No I dont care that either of those dont count as a "species" because honestly neither does MH and I do not believe even for a second that the metal raths or the colour raths are actually different species.
They are supposed to be rare and typically are set post story at the tail end of the difficulty curve,
so having something more out there either mechanics wise (metal raths with their elemental and sharpness requirements) or having a 1 shot that needs to be dodged or straight up invisibility taht has a worse handwave then chameleos.
Other end of the stick is of course the variants.
Honestly they do feel like the better way to have more differing versions of the same monster since they can actually just reuse the exact same monster but harder (shrieking legiana/frostfang)
but the flopside of that is that a lot of variants have armoursets that are straight up better then their base counterparts.
Sometimes making a "harder" version just makes the base version seem pointless.
It does make somewhat more sense for the G rank/Master rank to have the base versions be somewhat underpowered but that is a powerscaling discussion.
would be interesting to go with a route similar to 4 which just cut some monsters in higher ranks exclusively for their subspecies which is certainly 1 way to prevent roster bloat, especially with variants that are more mechanically indepth then their probably lackluster baseform.
to summarize.
Subspecies should change the main dynamic of the fight, also probably element or status if there and be a proper fit for the enviroment where the baseform wouldnt fit.
Variants can both serve as a proper story capstone or disrupter, throw one in at the start of a new rank or if the story needs to go off track.
They can be both a good way to show off a new locale by having a variation of an allready fought monster as well as a good way to disrupt allready existing knowledge of an area.
Rare species should be treated as such.
They are a rarity there is a lack of knowledge around them and most importantly they are most certaintly the most difficult to hunt of their contemporaries.
These arent your average joes or even variants these are your full blown endgame challenges and they should have proper measures to prevent anyone without proper preparations to throw them back to camp 3 times over.
I do believe subspecies should be HR and upwards whilst variants can honestly be thrown in anywhere depending on the depth of their fight, whilst rare species should be only for whatever is going to be post story, though I can also see a way to have a singular bird or raptor large monster with multiple subspecies all showing up in LR similar to how the old dromes and greats functioned.
Are those actual in lore reasons as to why they changed cuz if so that goes hard.
Though, I do agree with subspecies appearing in high rank. Unless its like Blue Yian or Purple Gyp or something weaker of that nature then they could maybe serve as end of low rank type hunts to ease you into high rank. I believe Azure/Pink Rath are probably difficult due to their tougher parts causing issues during a player's progression through the game. You're less likely to have blue sharpness or higher armor so getting waxed by them if you don't place your hits properly or position safely is expected. The metals just take that aspect and fine tune it to high hell with the wings/legs and sometimes back being weakest.
Yeah, combat wise some variants are different, but armor wise you're right. There's been a pattern of them being a tad better with the exception of seething. Regular and Seething Baz both have lackluster armor skills despite being late game together. Seeing the difference between Barioth and Frostfang seems like a big leap, but Barioth being a middle of the road monster with critical and stamina skills while Frostfang leans into the draw attack and elemental side seems a bit fair considering their distance on the totem pole.
@@MahnsterHunter seething bazel has a good armor set for gunlance thanks to load shells + guard up + guard + artillery, not the best armor set in the world by any means but its good for a decent bit before you get to later anomaly stuff.
The real outlier is lucent nargacuga whose armorset is straight terrible, sees very minor use on some gunlance shelling sets since sneak attack does boost shelling, but you're better off just getting it through qurio armor crafting.
True, and Lucent's sneak attack got turned into a deco too so it just rules out the armors usefulness
Some of them like the colour raths and black diablos specifically I believe are from the world artbook whilst green narga and I believe ivory both have brief excerpts of ecology in their hunters notes. Pretty sure black diablos has always had the thing that they are just females in heat in the hunters notes which makes it even funnier that they have kept the subspecies title for so long but I guess that is the power of being one of the most teritorial monsters in the franchise.
A lot of the older subspecies were basically just variants before variants were a thing with some minor ecology thrown in to justify them, red khezu being the funniest one since whilst I dont think the games ever pose the question it is very likely taht since they are virtually the same monster it could simply be that khezu are the actual subspecies suffering from a defect that prevents pigmentation whilst red khezu are the actual base and its a case of encountering the subspecies first.
and yes you can definetly throw in some of the early game monster subspecies in LR but IMO that would either cause roster bloat again since you would need to encounter them in HR then anyway and where do you put them there, or get rid of the hard difficulty spikes that appear between ranks.
you know the ones the big spike from LR to HR which is designated with like a 30 raw increase on hte weapons + blue sharpness and the gigantic defense jump once you do hit High rank armour.
Am not against it especially if you want to have a new map to bridge the gap between LR and HR but a lot of the colour variants are basically just difficulty spikes to tell the player that they cant just coast by now.
The colour raths both require more setup and just in general a lot of monsters in highrank have less gimmicks to exploit and more gimmicks to work around, the subspecies I guess just being the way they could remix a monster they allready had without making a new one (didnt stop them from making like 5 dromesthough).
The sum of that being that the older titles had them to meaningfully tell the players that they are in the big boy leagues now and have to actually start upgrading and building more more stuff, maybe even having specific sets for certain monsters, whilst newer games can simply fill that with either new monsters better or throw in returning monsters to better space out the new additions.
Yeah, Black Diablos is called a subspecies but I guess they had to differentiate it. Would it even be considered a variant though, since its natural to Diablos or would it be like Shrieking Legi? Also, that's exactly how they should use subspecies. A comfortable knowledge and gear check moving through different parts of the game.
Could be? Sure.
Should be? Starting at High rank would be okay. Rise was definitely the odd ball in this way even considering Generations. Same thing happened in Tri.
Yeah high rank is a good starting point. MHFreedom has them off rip in the village and that stuff there is brutal. But base Tri roster was wretched
What's the song that starts at 5:54? Totally digging your channel btw!
Beyond the Endless Deep Blue, from MHR Sunbreak. And thank you!
Great video as usual. I'm still watching but I'm just gonna add here that Glacial Agnaktor (and the regular one) lets you use fire damage in order to soften the armor in it's bodyparts. Fire damage such as gunlance shells, fire elemental weapons, cluster shots and crag shots. For some reason in 3U they also let blast status explosions to soften the armor as well.
The bombs and Blast let you soften? When I was trying that on base Agnaktor and Glacial I wasn't getting results. Maybe I wasn't using enough I'll have to run that back and see
@@MahnsterHunter don't remember right now if the bombs work, but I'm pretty sure blast procs work too.
From what I've heard, and I feel? like experience has agreed?, and possibly changing between games, I think Gunlance shells, despite being fire damage, don't soften Agnaktor's armour. I think that's the case, at least.
@@therighttrousers343 they do at the very least in P3rd and 3U. I'm a main GL in 3U and used these all the time in order to soften it's armour.
At 02:10 of this video I showcase this real quick with Glacial Agnaktor in P3rd: ruclips.net/video/i3Y0cqHGTeA/видео.htmlsi=5q-gRZ5iNAgdcOIM
@@therighttrousers343 also got footage of 3U to back it up. At the first 20 seconds of this compilation video, you can see the GL shells softening the regular Agnaktor's armor: ruclips.net/video/0q5qfznHJig/видео.htmlsi=qMzRbx88zNmy1YxX
3 subspecies in world and none in rise they need to bring back the subs like in mh4u it adds good content to the game
4U is such a peak roster even on base release
Great video! Thank you for the work you put into it!
I appreciate it greatly~
Wondering if we'll ever get back subspecies in high rank and not just in G.
Right? I do hope so, I'd rather not see tyem be title updates or expansions honestly
I’m still so mad Goss harag didn’t get a subspecies bro, we shoulda got a sand version with glass fists instead of ice and did bleed blight
Y'know, that sounds like a great idea, but would it be a fire Goss burns the sand onto the hands or would it be like Chatacabra where it just dusts its arms?
@@MahnsterHunter i actually did a video on it a long time ago lol. But it wouldn’t be a fire subspecies necessarily at all, but DOES use heat in its organs to melt the sand on its arm after coating them, turning them into the glass blade/fist.
So the Goss species would inhale the desert heat, heating his “bodily fluids” then spitting them on his sand coated fist will they then transmit into glass. It’s been a while since I wrote the whole script and video lol but I made it really interesting. Just executed the video really poorly, might remake it sometime.
like always we will get subespecies of returning monsters but not from original wilds monsters
Im skeptical we'll even get subs of returning monsters
@@MahnsterHunter I know rise didnt have them, but this is made by the world team (until both mh teams merged after rise) and they know most people that will play wilds expect it to have similar content to world, so I think we will get subs 85% sure, and if not I hope we get at least 45 big monsters, between new and returning (not counting DLC monsters)
Definitely, I'd love to see a fleshed out roster. And whats this about the teams merging?
@@MahnsterHunter yes there was the main team that made world, mh4u, mh3u, then there's the portable team that made the psp games like mh3rd or games like generations, they have been working splitted untill after sunbreak (they are now fused as just 1 big team) so yeah, we are probably getting a lot of monsters and the game may be bigger than we even thought, or maybe they got lazy, we will see
Daaaaaaamn I knew the difference in teams but I didnt know they merged. Hopefully we can still get portable style games, I prefer those ocer the spectacle and story driven nature of Tokuda's titles
Plum is still one of my hated loves of sub species, Crab decided that land was stupid so now jumps to hunt birds.
That damn water spray 45 degree walk is the bane of my existence
@@MahnsterHunter it's actually really easy to read. When he does his spray, if the claws are down he's staying in place, if the claws are up he's gonna be walking, in which you can E0 it barely much easier with E1, or just guard it in which it's hitbox is disabled for you for the rest of the beam
I know how it works but its one of those things that touches me once and I immediately wanna abandon out of spite
@@MahnsterHunter True. I've been grinding the 140 for a while. pure pain xD. that and Ruby. also painful.
Bruh I've been fighting the same Lv 140 Yian Garuga/Plum Daimyo trying to get a good switch axe and Freedom series A helma but they're stiffing me. I auto delete Ruby Bas cuz nah I'm good
i really wish third gen subspecies would come back
can green narga replace narga juuust for one game Capcom? is it too much to ask? 😢
mah green stun boi
LOL Nah I need both of them! I just hope they give Green new options. Like a new tail slam variation now that base Narg uses it. Not the double tail slam or the tail slam into spin but something new new
i ok so i had a dumb idea what if we put in som monsters subspecies witthout its original species
like lets say we have a daymo hermitaur in rise and in wilds instaead of putting normal daymo capcom puts plum daymo hermitaur
beacuse hermitaurs appear with am monoblos skull in games where monoblos isnt and seeing that the desert already has an apex we probably wont get diablos so we can have plum daymo wearing a diablos skull to show how diablos wont be in wilds
If Diablos isn't in Wilds, I'm probably going to backflip on my neck, but it would be funny to just see a diablos skull carried around if we crabs. No Ice place? Permanent Sand Barioth
@@MahnsterHunter i mean it wouldnt make sense for diablos to appear
i mean we already got ray dau as deserts apex
having 2 apexs feels kinda weird i mean i never heard of a moment where in one place there were 2 apex pretadors co existing
The problem I have with the "Apex of the region" title is that its a new concept pretty much spotlighted under Tokuda's direction(World & Wilds.) Are they the apex of any place they reside or simply that locale and if so how can they be an apex but overwhelmed by something that lives in the same domain. Rathalos is the apex of the Ancient Forest, but monsters stronger than it live there too and not just migratory monsters like Deviljho and Rajang. Astalos is seen killing a Rathalos in its ecology video in the Forest & Hills.
They never had to make this distinction in older games or Rise to hype up a monster's prowess, simply expressing their capabilities and their effect on the story/environment was enough. Rey Dau being the "Apex of the windward plains" shouldn't prevent Diablos from showing up. If there's another Tokuda lead game, an "Apex" of another desert shouldnt prevent Diablos or Rey Dau from making it on the roster unless it geographically makes sense for them not to.
@@MahnsterHunter well i think that it doesn mean the strongest hunter but the best hunter
like deviljhos are so hungry that whatever food they get can barelly satiate their hunger
yes they are stronger than rathaloses but their hunting tactiks are mover effective in feeding them ergo rathalos is a better hunter than deviljho
ergo the superior one
and apex's are the top of the food chain ergo superior than the rest
meaning that apex's dont have to be just an unstopable force
i mean irl crocodyles they are apex predators but they arent the strongest water animal they use tactics like stay still until its prey is too close or messes up and gets noticed then crocodyle kills thier pray
thats how i see them doing apex monsters
they dont have to overpower everything it would be usefull yes but being an apex doesnt mean just beating everyone like a mindless beast
its using your intelect and force together to be the best predator
The word “apex” in this case is used in its ecological sense. It is not just some novel game gimmick. An apex _predator_ is basically a predator that is placed in the highest trophic level of the ecosystem it is a part of. They may eat from any trophic level below them, though they are obligate carnivores more often than not and so producers tend to be excluded from their options. However, a sufficiently large and powerful animal relative to other organisms in the same ecosystem can still be considered an apex of their ecosystem, though they may not eat from trophic levels any higher than producers or primary consumers. Take catfish, for example. They can grow to frankly alarming sizes if they manage to survive long enough. These behemoths still eat detritus and small bottom-dwelling creatures for the most part (though they can certainly eat something bigger if they feel like it), but I guarantee you that nothing else in the water wants to fuck with that. Therefore, these large catfish have basically no predators and have achieved the status of apex in their rivers or lakes. This logic is why Diablos is considered an apex despite cactus making up the majority of its diet.
On that note, I’m pretty sure Rey Dau and Diablos occupy entirely different niches, with Diablos being a cactus-eating herbivore and Rey Dau being likely an obligate carnivore. They also occupy different territories, Diablos preferring to dwell underground in caverns it has dug out, and Rey Dau seeming to like rocky cliffs and generally places where it would be out of Diablos’s way. It is far from impossible for them to coexist.
As for the thing with Rathalos and the Ancient Forest: the things as strong as or stronger than Rathalos that appear there are anomalies. Kushala and Blackveil Vaal Hazak are both Elder Dragons, and Elder Dragons present a massive upset to any ecosystem they decide to hunker down in. They are best viewed as living natural disasters, not a regular part of the ecosystem. The other apex status monsters that appear there in Iceborne are there because of Shara Ishvalda’s shenanigans driving them out of their previous habitats. They are competitors to Rathalos where previously there were none. Under normal circumstances, without an Elder Dragon making a wreck of the place or other apexes invading the ecosystem, Rathalos is the strongest thing in the Ancient Forest and in the highest trophic level.
Fun fact about Monster Hunter G ESP does literally nothing. In MHF1 they changed it to prevent the bounce animation.
Now thats a big yikes and an insult to injury to put it on a set made from a monster that causes hella bounce
@@MahnsterHunter He aint to bad in G, they changed metal rath weak points from the head to the wings. The wings are a whopping 80 cutting HZ.
@@MahnsterHunter It's also a real shame that ESP doesn't work as Silver Rathalos would be the strongest set for fighting Crimson Fatalis.
Lord Christ Almighty 80?! Maybe they did that cuz they were a tad difficult to hit back then. Also, is C. Fat's belly a tough part?
@@MahnsterHunter Crimson Fatalis belly is a 20 HZ for both cutting and impact so you need white sharpness to not bounce, until you hit armour mode from 50% health to 20% health were you will bounce against every hitzone.
Fun fact monoblos is a confirmed subspecies of diablos as stated in diablos bio from mh 1 - mh freedom
Wait, really? Where's that located? I'm not a big lore guy unfortunately
@@MahnsterHunter in the bio for diablos in monster hunter 1 and freedom
Well would you look at that. I dont ever be reading lore tidbits, thanks for that