#let's be honest: it's probably gonna be another dromaeosaur

[plural-bees]

GREAT NEWS: loss of all progress gives us a great excuse to choose a new mascot, as dakotaraptor is likely invalid!

we'd been holding onto it anyway, since it was the first model we'd made and we were very attached to it, but now that it's all gone we can choose a New Boy!

[zaph1337]

Monster Hunter Rating 24: Velocidrome, the Alpha Raptor

If you weren’t paying attention to the anon asks I’ve recently gotten, then you probably didn’t see that I’m no longer going off of the Monster List for Main Monsters anymore, since it places monsters in alphabetical order rather than in the order you meet them in. Instead, I’ll be going off the Quest Lists for the games to see the order, which means that we’re talking about Velocidrome now!

(How it appears in Monster Hunter 1)

(How it appears in Monster Hunter 4)

Appearance: The Velocidrome looks just like a big Velociprey, but its crest is bigger and fancier, and unlike with Iodrome, the crest actually looks like a natural progression from how it used to be. There are two other things that have changed from the Velociprey: the hook-like toe claw is bigger and red, as is the Velocidrome’s middle finger claw...and boy, does the latter looks stupid. Why did they make only one claw bigger? If all of the claws were bigger, then it would look natural, but making only one claw bigger just makes it look out of place. The Velocidrome also has the main problem I had with the Velociprey’s design, which is the fact that its hands look like they were drawn for a stick figure, but they couldn’t really change that here. Overall, I would like this design about as much as I do the Velociprey’s, but the middle finger claw looks so bad that I can’t give it the same score. 5/10.

Behavior: I mentioned during the Velociprey review that Velocidromes only give orders “when they’re around.” That’s because Velocidromes don’t always stay with their pack; because Velociprey are so smart, Velocidromes can afford to split away from them to patrol their territories and check up on other members of the pack. Making this easier is the fact that a pack can have two Velocidromes leading it, allowing them to split up responsibilities, cover more ground, and make hunting and fighting easier. Speaking of which, Velocidromes never fight alone; they always let out a call to summon their pack to their aid when they get into a fight. Other than that, there’s not much to them, but I liked how efficient Velociprey were, and I like how these guys operate just a little more. Being the only pack leaders I’ve talked about so far to share a pack with another member of their species is also a cool touch. 7/10.

Abilities: They literally have the same capabilities as Velociprey, though obviously they use those different to make fighting them more interesting. Something the wiki mentions is how Velocidromes “leap around in order to kill prey in a single slash of their hook-like toe claw,” which is likely how real dromaeosaurs fought, so that’s cool, but that’s not enough to make them stand out here. 4/10.

Equipment: As I’ve said before, since Velocidromes are the first raptors in the game, all previous raptor equipment was based off of their own, so even though they share many weapons and armor with the Gendrome and Iodrome, I’ll be judging these as the originals. Here’s the Great Sword, the Vile Serpentblade:

Here, the giant spikes actually make sense; they’re the large toe claws Velocidromes have. And the color looks good, too, but that’s because it’s a shade of blue I really like and I’m biased. As for the next weapon, it’s a Bowgun from MHO:

The earlier games had a Bowgun, and this is clearly based off of those, but those Bowguns had much smaller barrels. Seriously, this thing looks like it could blow your head clean off. Now for the armor, if you remember the Gendrome review, you know what it’s gonna look like. It’s the Gunner armor from MHO:

Good thing they didn’t do what MHGU did and make the blue really dull for the men’s armor like that game did to the Velociprey. Yes, they did that for the Gunner armor, too, even though I didn’t show it. Anyways, this looks...pretty boring, to be honest. I much prefer the Blademaster version of the raptor armor, but I wanted to mix things up a bit when I covered the Gendrome. The equipment as a whole does its job; it looks decent for the stuff you use the first Main Monster you ever fight (at least in MH and MHF1) to make, but it also sets a standard that makes the equipment from later monsters look cooler. 6/10.

Final Thoughts and Tally: I stand by the Veloci-raptors (*ba-dum-tsh*) being my favorites design-wise, but without any special abilities of their own, they’re...well, they’re the perfect Main Monster to start you off. If they were fancy and crazy, they’d probably be too difficult for new players to get a hang of fighting them in a reasonable amount of time. Still, they have interesting behavior and their equipment looks decent, so I think they strike a good balance. 5/10.