Monstrous Reviews

Welcome to the Bestiary. I write reviews of video game monsters every day. If you like what I do, please consider buying me a ko-fi.  Feel free to suggest monsters and games for me to review, or submit your own homemade monsters for the Friday Monster Roundup!

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#2 - SUNKERN

Behold, the worst Grass type of all time, and the second-worst Pokémon of all time! Before generation 7, Sunkern literally had the lowest base stats of every Pokémon in the game, before Wishiwashi (solo form) beat it out by 5 points. It's a dubious honor to lose, but when your BST is that low, it's kind of all you have. Still, Sunkern has lower HP and Speed than Wishiwashi... and doesn't have an ability that makes it on par with legendaries. Sunkern is just a baby. A perfectly charming, smiley baby that sprouts love in my heart. 

In researching Sunkern for this article, I discovered a completely hilarious fact. If you don't evolve it into a Sunflora and just power-level this literal infant to level 40 (you find it at level 13), your tenacity is rewarded with... Sunny Day. Yes, Sunkern learns Sunny Day by levelup at level 40. For contrast, the equally-likely-to-encounter Nidoran learns the powerful damage/utility move Poison Jab at level 37. While it's true that Sunny Day can interact favorably with Sunkern's possible Solar Power or Chlorophyll abilities, I don't think "the special attack of a Drifloon" or "the speed of a Wailmer" are things worth devoting an entire turn and move slot on. It does learn Solar Beam and Seed Bomb around those levels as well, but it just feels like a cruel joke for Sunkern to get a build-enabling status move so criminally late. Someone at Nintendo really hates Sun teams, I guess. For Arceus's sake, as much as I love Sunkern, I could spend several more paragraphs describing how bad it is. As fun as that sounds, that's not why I'm here - I'm here to talk about why it's my second favorite Grass type!

Even though it might sound like a cop-out, but... just look at it. Sunkern has the face of a toddler that just discovered ice cream. It’s straight up just a seed with a tiny sprout and no other features. It sleeps literally as often as it can and drinks the dew from underneath flower petals. I don't think they can create a more saccharine Pokémon without making it at least part Fairy type. This little seed dreams of someday becoming a Sunflora after it saves up enough nutrients, and honestly? Pokémon Company, you can catch these hands for not making Sunflora on par with Gyarados and Milotic. If you burn an entire Leaf Stone on making the dreams of a hopeless seed come true, you should be rewarded for your generosity (not to mention Sunkern's hopes and dreams). I can't believe someone looked at Sunkern and said "not only are you going to have the worst stats in the game, but you won't even evolve into anything relevant." My love for Sunkern is half paternal affection, half righteous fury. Sunflora (and by extension Sunkern) deserves a mega that jacks its Sp.Atk up to 150 and gives its Grass moves priority in sunlight. Do I care if that makes Sunny Day teams broken? No! Give this seed its time in the sun! Literally!!

SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF: 9/10 DESIGN COHESION: 10/10 INJUSTICES AGAINST SEEDKIND: 0/10 PERSONAL RATING: 10/10

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#3 - MARACTUS

YOU FACE MARACTUS, SUCCULENT LORD OF THE CACTUS LEGION!! 

Do I enjoy leading these reviews with outdated internet references? Of course I do! Whether they're appreciated or not is immaterial. What's important, however, is my love for this cactus. Maractus is a completely adorable succulent with a whole lot of character that comes through with relatively little clutter. The obvious question is why I chose Maractus as my representative of the family Cactaceae instead of Cacnea. I could attempt to defend my choice with design lingo, or I could be honest: kitty face. I have a big soft spot for these tiny, traditionally cute monsters, and while Cacnea is a great design, the hollow eyes and :3 face get me in an unfair way. 

Maractus is more than just a cute cactus, though. Visually, it's one of the less complex entries to generation 5, which is a common complaint a lot of long-time fans have as the series progresses. Many Pokémon feel like "toys" or "plastic", instead of the soft organic curves of earlier generations. There are some designs that definitely commit this sin (Emboar, most megas, and every legendary after gen 2) but plenty of others retain the simple look that generations 1 and 2 exemplified. Maractus without its jagged dark green patterns would be sort of plain; even Bulbasaur had patches of discoloration to add visual interest. This isn't to say that complex Pokémon are inherently bad. I love designs like Escavalier, which have a lot of tiny details but manage to present a cohesive whole. Maractus uses its complex spots to give off the cactus aura of pointiness without being laden with spikes. Instead, it has a handful of them on its flower stalks and a big one on its forehead, which your eye carries through the rest of its body without cluttering up the rest of the space. It has a number of aspects that work together instead of fighting for space to give you the real Cactus Experience (TM). 

That's a lot of words to say "Maractus is complicated looking but it's okay." So why is it okay? Because all of the things that go into its design add character. Instead of just being another pointy obstacle Pokémon that retreads Cacnea's territory, it has this excited expression on its face, coupled with splashes of pink and yellow. Its default pose in art is dynamic and wiggly. In game, its idle animation is a bouncy dance with both its arms and flower stalks swaying back and forth. This is an excited plant! The Pokédex mentions that this is a method of defense to scare off flying types by rattling the dry seeds inside its arms, which means it's a *battle* dancer, too! Just based on the descriptions alone, it's easy to get a feel for how playful and cheery this Pokémon is. There's no part of its design that doesn't contribute to this feeling while still rooting it into its ecological niche as a cactus.

SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF: 8/10 DESIGN COHESION: 10/10 STABS YOU WITH A KITTY FACE: 10/10 PERSONAL RATING: 10/10

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#4 - LILEEP

Crinoids! Fossil crinoids! Hell yes!! ...What, you want more than that? Alright, fine. Lileep is part of the second wave of "fossil" Pokémon, following in Omanyte and Kabuto's footsteps with its buddy Anorith to represent criminally neglected ancient creatures. Later generations would go on to give us much less obscure animals, but for two glorious sets, we received a trilobite, an ammonite, an anomalocaris, and a crinoid. Given the widespread coverage and duration of these animals, it makes sense that those four were discovered before the relatively short-lived dinosaur ones. Even anomalocaris, the shortest-lived of the four, still had a stint thousands of years longer than most dinosaurs. And for our friend Lileep here, crinoids have persisted to this very day in the form of sea lilies. Clearly they're doing something right!

Like all fossil Pokémon, Lileep is part Rock type. There's two interesting angles to this that I like a lot. From the lore angle, the Rock typing is supposed to represent the parts of it that were permineralized when it became a fossil, and that makes fossil Pokémon tough and ponderous opponents. Lileep is uniquely positioned to take advantage of this, even compared to its shelled siblings, because of its entirely sedentary nature. One of its most important moves is the status move Ingrain, which prevents it from being switched out and heals it for 1/16th of its HP every turn. On top of that, its normal ability is Suction Cups, which also prevents switching out. Lileep stays put no matter what! From a competitive standpoint, this holds true as well. (Everything here applies to Cradily more than Lileep, but I think Lileep is cuter.) On Grass Monotype teams, it's a precious resource that isn't slam-dunked by Fire types - the only other option is the Lotad line, and Earthquake is a much more potent attack than anything Ludicolo brings to the table. Lileep walls as best it can against most of Grass's weaknesses, shrugging off Fire, Poison, and Bug type attacks, while sporting a decent set of Def and Sp.Def stats to back up Stealth Rocks and STAB Stone Edges. No matter how you cut it, Lileep is a patient and persistent Pokémon, which is exactly what I like to see from a stone flower.

One design element that we see from time to time is the "eyes in a void" face. From what I can tell, the gene that makes people review monsters is 100% correlated to the "likes eyes in a void" gene, because I am not alone in having a massive preference for this shy visage. It manages to look both cute and a little spooky at the same time. Two little dots is all it takes to suggest a hidden creature inside some sort of shell - in this case, Lileep's "mouth" - but we don't know everything about it. I touched on this with Tangela, but Lileep goes into more detail that makes it all that much more interesting. Lileep is described as swallowing its prey whole. The obvious question is "with what?" We can't see its mouth, or its mouth truly is the dark opening on top of it, and both prospects are equally as unsettling. Real-world crinoids are passive filter feeders, so we don't even have something to base it off of. Is there a maw of teeth somewhere in that cup? If you stick your hand in, do you not get it back? Or does it close around prey like an undersea pitcher plant and digest them inside its bell? I'm inclined towards that last one. Included in Lileep's moveset are conspicuously low-pH moves like Sludge Bomb, Acid, and Gastro Acid. Those are by no means ubiquitous moves. Only Pokémon like Swalot, Guzzlord, Pukumuku, and other sludgy Poison types get it. This, of course, means that Lileep's eyes are either protected by some form of thin keratin, or just straight-up acid proof, and that's hilarious and upsetting to think about. Does it... watch its prey dissolve for the whole time? Lileep may be Rock type, but that's pretty metal.

SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF: 9/10 DESIGN COHESION: 8/10 MY ATTEMPT TO NOT BE ELITIST ABOUT PEOPLE LIKING DINOSAURS: 4/10 PERSONAL RATING: 10/10

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#5 - CARNIVINE

It took until generation FOUR to get a Venus fly trap?! As implausible as that sounds, Japan is a little slow on the chompy plant train. Rafflesia and pitcher plants are much higher on the list of carnivorous plant cultural touchstones. After all, the Bellsprout line, Venusaur, and Vileplume were both generation 1, and Dragon Warrior Monsters had Amberweed, MadPlant, and Maneater, with only an oblique reference in the Snapper. Even Yo-Kai Watch took a full five years to introduce Pakkun. Admittedly, the rafflesia flower is one of the most visually striking plants in the world, and pitcher plants are a sort of genius construction that passively rakes in hundreds of flies at a time. By comparison, Venus fly traps are inefficient and not all that striking. But it's a PLANT WITH TEETH! How can you pass that up for ten years?! I guess holding back on low hanging fruit can keep you going for a lot longer than using it all right away. 

The thing that sticks out about Carnivine to me is the fact that it canonically floats. That's not artistic license to show its vines dangling - it has the ability Levitate. Why? Because, uh... well, I don't really know the thematic connection. All of the Pokédex entries talk about how it walks on its vines, climbs trees, and hangs from them like a dangling bear trap. There's not a single mention of its ability to float aside from looking at it. It can’t even have been a late addition for competitive play; Grass is already both strong against and resistant to Ground types, so adding Levitate is like adding Heatproof to a Corsola. Granted, slow floating is a pretty terrible way to put force behind a snapping jaw, so it makes a lot more physical sense for it to cling to trees and push off of them to surprise prey. Is levitation just something Cool (TM) that Carnivine is allowed to do? Is it like the Stegosaurus's beautiful singing voice, where it's just neat and doesn't detract from the design? I seriously have no idea. It's definitely a neat twist on a traditionally stationary monster, even if it doesn't make any sense. 

A lot of Carnivine doesn't make sense, actually. It has a round little torso, multicolored vines, and eyes that seem more effective at checking the weather than watching for prey. And you know what? That works here. So much of its design is taken up by the business end of its jaws that all other elements sort of fall by the wayside in visual importance. Unlike the Bellsprout line, the visual weight goes all the way into the carnivorous opening, really reinforcing that this creature chomps. In another twist, those jaws aren't made to be scary - they're curved in to a big goofy grin. There's no angle where it doesn't look like Carnivine isn't giving you a Muppets-tier smile, and I love that. It would have been so easy to just jam some scary teeth in there and call it a day, but the smile gives it so much personality. This ties nicely into James's propensity for man-eating Grass types, where it fills the role of Victreebell for the Sinnoh anime arc. Carnivine gleefully chomps down on him whenever it gets the chance, and that goofy smile makes it impossible to see it as anything other than pure friendship. Carnivine is a creature of living contradictions, and it's one of my favorites because it pulls them all together into one package that defies logic and wants to be your friend. If it doesn't eat you, of course.

SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF: 4/10 DESIGN COHESION: 4/10 FRIEND SHAPED DEATH PLANT: 10/10 PERSONAL RATING: 10/10

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#6 - TANGELA

Sorting Tangela into the Grass type could be seen as a little bit of a stretch. Blue tentacles and red boots don't exactly scream "plant" to me. When I was little, I always assumed it was a Water type because it looked like a sort of cartoonish anemone. Since then, I've come around on the idea of Tangela being a pure Grass type; it's so easy for every Grass type to just be a variation on a green animal with some tree bits, or just a plant with legs. Having a mystery creature that veils itself in its rapidly growing vines and wanders around on cute little booties is so cute and unique that it adds a much needed splash of intrigue to what could have been an uninspired type. 

For obvious reasons, the Vine Pokémon's Pokédex entries talk almost exclusively about its vines. They're described as being bouncy, ticklish, and having a texture similar to seaweed, which honestly makes Tangela sound like a great playmate for a child. Between those descriptions and their appearance, I can imagine its vines being cool and supple to the touch without being all that heavy. Culturally, I doubt that their vines are particularly useful for anything; that same lightness is also detrimental to the sturdiness of clothes or baskets woven from them. Dried Tangela vines could be stronger in the same way that dry straw is, and if so, there could be people that keep Tangela for its rapidly growing weaving materials. One thing that they would surely be useful for, however, is pigmentation. Dried and powdered Tangela vines would have a rich blue color that would only be available to early Pokécultures from Oran berries, which would be too useful and scarce to waste on dyeing clothes before widespread agriculture. Tangela vines are both widely available and (I'm guessing) either low in nutrition or unpleasant to eat. 

That brings me to a point that many fan artists have explored, but the official works neglect to mention: species and cultivars. In the games and anime, Pokémon of a species are all fairly identical, with naturally-occurring variants (East/West Gastrodon, seasonal Sawsbuck, Castform, etc) being caused by environmental influences and nothing else. In game, the offspring of two different Pokémon takes on the species of the mother because it would be completely insane to expect the artists to create a fusion web for 800 factorial fusions. (For reference, there are 10^86 atoms in the known universe; 800 factorial is approximately 10^1976.) However, many artists have taken on the challenge of making cultivars of Bulbasaur, Cacturne, Torterra, etc. that exhibit traits of other Pokémon. All of this is a long way of saying that I would love to see Tangela bred with other Grass type Pokémon to create visually distinct and possibly edible variations. Tangela and Cherrim, for example, would probably resemble something like a nest of Twizzlers, while Tangela and Tropius might produce a species that looks and feels like spaghetti but tastes like bananas. That was unpleasant to write! Hopefully an actual botanist can take over this section and come up with something better than banana spaghetti. 

I got so swept up in the idea of edible Tangelas that I forgot to say what I like about it! The long and short of it is that Tangela is the weirdest Grass type. It has a cutesy eyes-in-a-void face, no discernable body, and it shakes its vines to annoy people. There's just a plant gremlin that wiggles around in Pokémon jungles that we know almost nothing about. In a world where the more "beautiful" Grass types are well-researched and lovingly cared for by trainers, it's a nice change on the roster to just see something so bizarre that it's almost like an in-lore cryptid. Tangela's been working since day 1 to ensure Grass types can be more than just green lizards.

SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF: 7/10 DESIGN COHESION: 9/10 I MISS VINE: 6/6 SECONDS PERSONAL RATING: 10/10

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#7 - FERROTHORN

Metal and nature are often seen as inimical to each other. Mankind uses metal tools to destroy nature, and nature fights back by corroding and dulling metal. Many pieces of media have a distinctly anti-industrial message that casts nature as the good guy and metal as the bad guy (FernGully comes to mind). The question not often asked, however, is "what can they accomplish *together*?" Well, the answer is dying to a single Flamethrower, but Ferrothorn is such a cool idea that even a 4x Fire weakness can't keep it down. The concept of a plant that takes its thorns to the next level is so extra but in a way that makes sense - instead of making them huge and scary and ultimately breakable, just make them sharper and more durable! It's easy to get so lost in the fantasy of making something cool and spiky that you forget spines are hella breakable.

When you look at Ferrothorn, it's easy to just see the metal shell and assume it's some sort of robot with plants in it, but I would argue the opposite. The "real" Ferrothorn is a plant with naturally-occurring armor that grows along with it, like some sort of arthropod. It's thus entirely possible that it molts, which can only be utterly terrifying due to its habitat. Ferrothorn lives in caves and hangs from the ceiling using its sharp pods. I'm imagining its discarded husk hitting the ground with an earsplitting clank, scaring the bejeezus out of any nearby Zubats and Roggenrolas. Its habitat is also the reason I take no issue with the presence of metal deposits in its body. Pokémon are capable of absorbing a wide variety of things via unusual delivery methods. Most Grass types can learn the Absorb family of moves, which drain a vague "life force" from the enemy. Life Leech, the Bug equivalent, pretty obviously just drains blood. It wouldn't be too far out of the realm of possibility for Ferrothorn to dig up and absorb iron and internally alloy it with its own carbon through a pseudo-scientific process that I won't bother trying to guess at. Then, as it grows, it produces a shell interwoven with steel, allowing it to shape the shell into sharp protrusions while it protects its soft plant body. 

Why is Ferrothorn one of my favorite Grass types? Well, look at it. It's a huge heavy tank with metal flails that walks around like a War of the Worlds tripod. I have a serious slant for the heavily armored units in games, so when it comes to 'mons, there's often a fair few that appeal to my taste specifically. One of my all-time favorite Pokémon from generation 2 was Forretress, so it's no surprise that a riff on the same idea of a tree-based metal orb hits all the right notes. It's so rare for a Grass type to really get to be badass, and doubly so for the actual plant nature of the 'mon to get to shine through if it is. Sceptile is cool as hell, but it's just a lizard with a tree on its tail. Ferrothorn is a straight-up sentient plant with a bad attitude and some serious weaponry. All of its Pokédex entries just describe it "destroying" and "obliterating" things. If a Poké-botanist wanted to raise one of these, they'd better come with more than a trowel and a sun hat, and that's why Ferrothorn cracks my top 10.

SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF: 6/10 DESIGN COHESION: 8/10 HIGHEST DEF STAT OF ALL GRASS TYPES: 10/10 PERSONAL RATING: 10/10

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#8 - DHELMISE

Dhelmise is a weird one - it may be our very first "triple type" Pokémon. The monster itself is Grass/Ghost, but its ability Steelworker gives it the STAB bonus that Steel types get from using their associated moves. The justification for this setup is that the 'mon is actually the algae attached to the anchor, not the anchor itself, which is WAY cooler than the alternative in my opinion. If it had been another yokai in the form of a ghostly floating anchor, cool, sure. That's bread and butter Pokémon stuff. But having a sort of poltergeist that's also dead algae is the kind of lateral theme that raises a select few of them from good to great. I love its compass eye and the way that the algae forms a jagged tooth-like pattern to make the whole thing look like a face. That communicates the Ghost typing really well without having to go full Hex Maniac on it.

There's a lot to be said for having a Pokémon subvert your expectations without having that be the entire focus of its design. For example, Sudowoodo's ENTIRE existence revolves around the "gotcha" of Rock and Grass having inverted resistances. It looks like a plant, it's the "Imitation Pokémon", its name is LITERALLY "pseudo-wood-o". Dhelmise does none of that while still retaining the chance of that gotcha moment. If you encounter a wild Dhelmise and it busts out Anchor Shot to drop your Fairy type, your impulse to come back with a Fire type to blow out its alleged Steel typing is rewarded - but not how you're expecting. If you try to hit it with a Ground type attack, you "get got" by its mimicry because Grass resists it. If you try to hit it with a Fighting type attack, Arceus help you - it's Ghost type, so you won't do any damage at all.

The specific interaction Grass/Ghost has with Steel's weaknesses is really fun from a design perspective, but it also makes sense from a natural one. Steel type Pokémon are some of the hardiest bunch out there. Only Fire types reliably predate them (see Heatmor vs Durant) and Steel resists more than half of all types in the game. If you want to suggest to predators that you're hard to take down, it's a great choice to imitate. Since Dhelmise lives in the ocean, there's a distinct lack of Steel's natural predators (Fire and Ground) in its environment, meaning nothing is going to attempt to attack it. I wonder if Pokémon are naturally aware of typings and consider them when hunting, or if they just remember a case-by-case basis? It's fun to imagine a Pidgeotto looking at a Caterpie and thinking "Oh yeah. Double damage, baybee."

As a side note: I'm no competitive battler by any stretch of the imagination, but I do like what Dhelmise does in the NU tier. It has a lot of offensive options not available to the other Grass/Ghost types, offering Ice coverage for Grass Monotype teams and Rapid Spin if your Ferrothorn is overloaded with other attacks. Anchor Shot isn't going to fix your problems with Incineroar, but it does offer you a tanky solution to powerful Fairy types and a strong resistance to entry hazards. I feel like Dhelmise (and Steelworker specifically) might have been an experiment to broaden the toolbox of Monotype teams in the future that I'd love to see more of.

SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF: 6/10 DESIGN COHESION: 10/10 MY SMOGON EVALUATION SKILL: 3/10 PERSONAL RATING: 10/10

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#9 - BELLSPROUT

Some Grass-type Pokémon are deeply in tune with nature, or cultivate flowers, or allow plants to grow on them in return for magic powers. Some are just plants with eyes on them, and that's all you really need. Bellsprout is no-frills plant thrills from start to finish. Its legs are roots, its arms are leaves, and its head is a pitcher plant on a road trip. There's so much to love about this little floral stick figure that it's easy to forget how few elements there are in its design.

Bellsprout is a master-class on "less is more". When you're establishing a franchise with a number of disparate types of monsters, it's important to have very clear displays of those types. Bellsprout, along with its version-exclusive partner Oddish, basically has a billboard on its forehead that screams "GRASS TYPE". (The fact that it was also Poison type was an issue with Poison being tacked on to all but five Grass types in gen 1, but that's another story.) If you're riding your starter to victory, like so many first-time players did, it's almost impossible to not get a sense of Grass's interaction with the core rock-paper-scissors of water-grass-fire. Paras, encountered earlier in the game than Bellsprout, has the distinction of being more Bug than Grass, so Bellsprout is a much clearer sign of what works and what doesn't against Grass types. From a lore perspective, it's also a great way to show how far Grass type can foray outside of the kingdom Animalia. There isn't a single animal trait on Bellsprout outside of its eyes, and even then they're beady little deals with no corneas or pupils. The rest of its body is straight foliage in a vaguely humanoid shape. It's always so nice to see a monster game pull from every angle, instead of just making a hundred weird dogs. 

The simplicity and uniqueness of Bellsprout is its strength. If it had even one extraneous detail, it would be much less effective. When you need a plant monster, you don't need a plant monster with marketable points or a human face or whatever. You need a plant. Like I mentioned before, Oddish and Bellsprout are considered to be counterparts to one another, but Bellsprout takes the favorite spot for me because it really does go all-in on the plant aspect. Oddish is a spherical creature with some grass parts; without the leaves on its head, it would just be a generic monster. There's nothing you can remove from Bellsprout to remove its plant-ness. It even lacks the animal-like intelligence that could be argued to be behind Oddish's eyes. This thing is the ideal plant fantasy (plantasy): the ability to get up and go after food instead of having to wait around for it to come to you. Good on Bellsprout for living its dream. 

We won't talk about what happens to this perfect creature after it evolves, though. I like to believe it keeps its legs forever.

SUSPENSION OF DISBELEAF: 7/10 DESIGN COHESION: 10/10 :O : :0/0: PERSONAL RATING: 10/10

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#10 - BULBASAUR

I'm pretty sure it's a federal crime to talk about Pokémon without talking about Bulbasaur, even more so than Pikachu, and there's a very clear explanation for why: it will be sad. Do you want to be the person responsible for making Bulbasaur sad? You monster. There's also the fact that Bulbasaur is an excellent encapsulation of Pokémon as a whole. It's an indistinct animal shape (vaguely frog-like), with a cutesy face, interesting colors, and a highly identifiable Thing that makes it unique (the plant bulb). That describes the template for a wide swath of Pokémon designs - and it works. Bulbasaur and all the others like it are excellent. I will literally never not be down for a weird frog. Along with its siblings Charmander and Squirtle, Bulbasaur shaped the face of gaming forever, and that alone helps cement its place in history. Presenting a trio of non-mammilian creatures as every player's introduction to the game (or, realistically, the genre) is a *bold* choice. I cannot overstate how gutsy it is to not only open up with a reptile and two amphibians, but also not even OFFER a mammal. If there had been a dog or a cat or a wolf or something "safe" in the opening trio, that would have been the crowd favorite without fail, but we were gifted with some slimy, scaly cuties from the get-go of one of the world's most successful gaming franchises. Look at later generations: we see countless attempts at "furry bait" with Lucario, Zoroark, Zeraora, Delphox, and a slew of other mammals. Even with the runaway success of the first generation of Pokémon, the 'mons in that list still command more recognition than others in their generation. Mind you, I don't begrudge wolves their popularity, but it was crucial that our furless friends got in when they did, otherwise we would never have seen the widespread acceptance of amphibian Pokémon on the scale we do now. Bulbasaur was one of the founders of a revolution. As a creature in its own right, Bulbasaur is hard to improve on (and given that it's only my 10th favorite, it was some tight competition). Its squat legs and chubby body call forward to how Venusaur is an absolute unit while still looking adorable in its baby form. The bulb on its back is interesting as-is while promising to become something greater as it evolves. Using the bulb as a symbiotic source of energy gives it that touch of sci-fantasy that Pokémon would go on to perfect; the mystical appearance of a flower-creature being explained with pseudoscientific ideas is a pattern we see many times in the Pokédex, especially with Steel and Electric types. The classic Sugimori triangle eyes add a sense of battle-readiness without clashing with its cutesy appearance. Adding anything else to Bulbasaur's design would ruin the simplicity of a frog with a plant on it, and removing anything would drop it below the line of interest. It looks like a real, extant, physical creature that you could spot sipping from a river or dozing in a meadow, and that's important when you ask players to choose a creature to form a game-long bond with in a game where the creature can't speak. Bulbasaur's overall appearance is a great choice for something that will stay with players for decades to come.

SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF: 9/10 DESIGN COHESION: 10/10 #001 IN MY HEART: 10/10 PERSONAL RATING: 10/10

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Just curious, have you ever considered doing reviews of creatures from the Pikmin games? They may seem a little cutesy compared to the stuff you usually do, but there’s a lot of really neat stuff there and I think you’d find it interesting. The protagonist of the 1st and 2nd games is even an amateur biologist himself, and provides a cool little note for each of the things he runs into.

I haven’t played the Pikmin games (RTS games are really hard for me) but I’ll see what I can do. I have no problem with cutesier games, though! You’ll definitely see that with my favorite Pokemon.

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BASALT

Few monsters "cross the aisle" of sci-fi and fantasy like giant arthropods do. Giant spiders are a staple of fantasy games, while giant ants and cockroaches have been popular tropes since the dawn of B-movies. Any entomologists out there are probably cringing that I've lumped spiders in with insects, but they share an emotional core that fiction writers love to use in their stories. People are already uneasy looking at bugs too closely, so it's an intuitive leap to give a creature that's already unsettling an actual danger rating by making it larger. A spider's bite becomes deadly; a wasp's sting becomes a lance; an ant's, uh... they're B-movies for a reason, okay? In any case, all of this danger inherent to the trope of a giant arthropod is why Basalt is so wonderful. 

Basalt hails from the volcanic peak of a tropical island, where she spends her time eating chili fruit and giving tours of her molten home to tourists. Right off the bat, you already get a strong impression of her personality - namely, that she has one. It's so easy to dismiss a bug as being "lesser" than vertebrates that a lot of giant insects tend to turn out like lifeless replicas of their real counterparts. That's not so here. Between the dynamic art and her hobbies, you can really infer the golden retriever-esque enthusiasm under Basalt's exoskeleton. I don't think I've ever seen any kind of bug tear into its food with the same kind of excitement that she's unabashedly displaying here. I have a soft spot for goofy, excitable creatures, since that's an accurate description of myself, so seeing it in a member of my favorite phylum is great (what, you don't have a favorite phylum?). There's a lot of expressiveness in things like her body language and ever-so-slightly-humanoid mouth that allow us non-arthropods to see what she's feeling, which is a great design choice to inspire empathy for an otherwise hard to read kind of creature. 

Basalt is obviously a fire-type Pokémon fire-aligned creature. According to her creator, she is able to swallow and spit up lava, and her elytra (the wing covers) are used to keep a layer of magma warm. I like that it sort of implicitly acknowledges that a beetle the size of a car made of molten rock isn't going to be the most adept at flying, so instead, let's just keep some defensive measures here. The smokestack tail is an equally delightful quirk that drives home the fire elemental alignment while still looking on-theme. Perhaps most interesting of all to me is her color scheme. Generally, when making a fire monster, most people go for a glowing palette of neon reds and oranges. Basalt has those, but in strict moderation - only her sensory organs and claws get brighter colors, which makes a certain kind of sense. The rest of her is a solid, dull maroon and black, which feels appropriate for a creature so tied to the stone aspect of lava. It might just be that I play a lot of Magic: the Gathering, but fire and earth are a natural pair to me. Seeing them together is already satisfying, and having a color scheme that complements that is even better. 

One final note: that mouth. There's just a lot of eating action going on for such an invertebrate mouth. Basalt sports not only jagged tooth-like protrusions but also pedipalps AND a whole-ass tongue. It's a good thing she's (allegedly) an herbivore, because she would be VERY GOOD at eating other things that come into her lair. Say, tourists that are looking for a guide?

SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF: 8/10  DESIGN COHESION: 9/10 BUG DOG ENERGY: 10/10 PERSONAL RATING: 10/10 

Thank you so much to the wonderful Xeobug for letting me review her OC. Go follow her on tumblr and furaffinity (fair warning: nsfw), and go check out her twitch channel! I always love seeing the creative things that people get up to, so if you want me to review your own OC, I'd be more than happy to check them out. Until next time, I'm Professor Shields, signing off.

[endless-bestiary]

- 100 -

Wow. A hundred reviews. That's over three months of constant exploration of the mapped and unmapped parts of the wildest monsters video games have to offer. It may not sound like much, but I'm honored that so many of you have decided to join me on this adventure. At the time of this writing, two hundred and twelve of you have joined my research team. That's like a hundred times the number of people I know in real life! (Yes, I know 2.12 people in real life. I'm only passing acquaintances with Jeremy.) I can't thank all of you enough for supporting my endeavors. I'll keep giving each and every review my all so you can get that hyperbolic, conjectural, and pseudoscientific content you're here for. 

Now for the part you've all (probably) been waiting for. I figured it was time to address the Donphan in the room. Yes, any monster reviewer worth their salt has to think about Pokémon sooner or later, and I figured now was the time. The next two weeks are going to be dedicated to my top ten GRASS types in ranked order! I figured going through the Pokédex from 1-816 would turn into a slog due to the in-depth and once-daily nature of my blog, so just talking about the ones I have strong feelings about makes for better content. I don't think I'd have a lot to say about Cascoon after talking about Silcoon, for example, but I also didn't want to wrap the evolutionary lines together because certain members would steal the spotlight from their siblings. Like most games with expansive bestiaries, I'll return to this segment when the mood strikes me for another top ten of a type. 

Most exciting for me, however, is the hundredth review itself is going to finally be a Friday Monster Roundup!!! The kind and benevolent Xeobug has submitted their lovely critter Basalt for you all to see. That review will go up tomorrow and I'm so hyped about it. I encourage any and all of you to submit your own OCs of even the faintest inhuman leanings. Hell, one of my first reviews was just a naked dude with a globby hood on his head.

As always, to all my fellow researchers: thank you so much from the bottom of my heart, and stay horrifying, bestial, wild, and feral... but most of all, monstrous. -Prof. Shields

[endless-bestiary]

GREAT BEAR

I'll get the obvious out of the way first: yes, this is a regular bear but larger. The addition of moss to its chin does not a monster make. Why discuss a creature that one could go outside and see in the real world, then? There are two reasons. One, just like how there's merit to including realistic fantasy fauna in your game, there's also merit to including entirely real animals to hold your new ones next to; and two, the sheer hilarity of how the Dragon Age: Inquisition devs included a setting that just makes bears incredibly deadly. That alone warrants an inclusion with the rest of the monster roster. 

I'm not going to talk about the conjectural history of the evolution of bears, or even rate what I think of them. Nature has me covered on both fronts there - bears are the terrestrial apex predator to end all apex predators. (It turns out that putting a bunch of sharp objects on an unstoppable wall of muscle works pretty well.) Instead, I want to talk about why you'd put real animals in a game next to things like dracolisks, fearlings, and the dwarves from DA:O.

When you're crafting a fantasy bestiary, the first (and often best) place to start is with the real world. See which shapes work and which don't. Which adaptations beget entire new branches of evolution and which are immediate dead ends. Certain things never show up in particular biomes because they're just impractical or worthless. Wolves don't grow fins because they have no need for them. Snakes don't develop cubic sections because that would just make them terrible snakes. Using nature as a guideline allows you to modulate your game on the scale of realism to fantasy, and more importantly, serious to silly. That cube snake could show up in a game with a sense of humor, since watching a terrible snake clunk around as it tries to get up some stairs is grade-A funny. On the other end of the scale, a tonally serious game like Warframe could never include it without breaking immersion. Instead, serious games take cues from nature to streamline the player's visual understanding of the enemy and help keep them immersed in the world. Dragon Age is one of those more serious games, and so its fauna is closer to the realistic side of the spectrum. When you want a realistic, tough, scary apex predator, sometimes it's best to just go with what works. DA's animals keep familiar shapes to make the world feel more grounded and allow the magical elements to stand out, even when you're expecting a fantasy romp. 

On the subject of grounding your setting, the second benefit of using real-world animals is to help pull the more outlandish animals into line. Say I'm running through the woods, having just finished a battle with two magic wolves, a flaming slug, and a cloud of flesh-eating winged rats. Those are all suitably weird for a fantasy setting. If I then run into a Regular Vanilla Bear With No Extra Parts, my brain connects the dots and says "Hey, wait a minute. If this place has bears, which are normal to me, maybe clouds of flesh-eating rats are normal too!" Allowing your players to recognize things on an instinctual level does a ton for your world's cohesion. The designers of DA:I clearly wanted their world to feel just a little more fantastic than our own, with twists on existing animals rather than a totally new web of life, so they opted to make mostly new animals and include a few classic hits like the family Ursidae to make things feel more comfortable. That's not to say DA has trouble making interesting monsters - Envy Demon, I'm looking at you - but they chose to concentrate their weird where it counts.

SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF: LITERALLY JUST A BEAR/10 DESIGN COHESION: AGAIN, JUST A BEAR/10 BEAR: BEAR/BEAR PERSONAL RATING: BEAR

[endless-bestiary]

DRACOLISK

Oh, you're still riding horses? Get a load of this chump, using mammals for transportation like it's still the Dark Ages. All the cool kids are using miniaturized dragons nowadays. The Dracolisk is just about the craziest horse substitute I've ever seen, and that's high praise from me. It's only vaguely horse-shaped, drawing more inspiration from H. R. Geiger than nature, and even the most benign breeds scare the living daylights out of me. There isn't an ounce of kindness on this thing. That's probably by design; it's used as an intimidating steed by humans, and I can only imagine that it's pretty effective in combat. Moreso than a fragile horse, anyways. 

Every inch of the Dracolisk is intensely alien compared to most animals we know. It has the proportions of a horse (I'm pretty sure this review is going to be mostly the word "horse" by percentage), but the similarities stop there. The Dracolisk has adapted to its harsh desert home by developing a tough leathery hide and stripping anything that wouldn't weather a sandstorm. Instead of fur, it sports rocky spines on its skin, some blunt and some sharp. Even its very bone structure is angular and pointy. Remind me again why the Imperium decided that the horses they were using were too comfortable to ride? It's a fair compromise, though. With the sharp bones comes the Dracolisk's maw of needles. Judging by the narrow angle of its jawbones, I'd say it subsists on a diet of lizards, rodents, or anything else small and skittery that happens to cross its path. A hidden bonus of keeping Dracolisks instead of horses is that you never have to worry about pests in your barn. A more practical bonus, of course, is the fact that whatever works on lizards also works on human heads, and the approaching maw of a Dracolisk is likely the last sight of a large number of soldiers. That's why I'm glad they're fantasy creatures; the last thing horses need is bloodlust.

Dragon Age offers us a wide selection of designer Dracolisk styles to choose from. There are more than half a dozen different species, but all of them reinforce to me that the genus is a creature of the desert at heart. The most telling is the Mountain Dracolisk. Since they're all basically palette swaps, this supposedly mountain-dwelling creature sports a white hide with stony markings for camouflage, while critical cold-weather adaptations like a fur coat and, uh... any body fat whatsoever, are notably absent. Seriously, it looks like one of those erroneous dinosaur reconstructions that puts the skin directly against the skull without factoring in muscle or fat. I understand that it's a lot of work to adapt each Dracolisk "skin" to the related environment, but even a flat fuzzy texture would have went a long way towards believability. My favorite, of course, is the Sharp-Tail, but it's even more outlandish looking. Unless that thing is packing some intense venom or poison, I can't come up with an environment where that coloration helps at all. Oh, wait, this is a fantasy game. Rule of Cool is in full effect. Sharp death horses? Carry on.

SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF: 4/10 DESIGN COHESION: 8/10 STILL BETTER THAN REGULAR HORSES: 10/10 PERSONAL RATING: 8/10

[endless-bestiary]

BRONTO

The idea of "a cow, but underground" sounds so simple, but the Bronto ends up being surprisingly interesting. Dwarves creating their own subterranean beast of burden implies a lot of wild things about the setting of Thedas that the aboveground creatures don't touch on. The biggest thing is that dwarves understand genetics and selective breeding to such an extent that they can make and entirely new animal. How long did this take? Centuries? Millenia? How did dwarven society organize for long enough to create this? It's such a minute world detail that we'll probably never know, but man do I want to. 

Visually, the Bronto is the average shape of a working beast with some fantasy elements applied liberally to the head and back. It has the typical ungulate body plan (despite having discrete toes) and a pronounced bony crest above its eyes, which both serve to drive home the feeling of this being a dumb lump of pack-hauling muscle. The focal point, if it has one, is the haphazard set of horns that protrude at once symmetrically and at random from its face. These take inspiration from the real-life rhinoceros and their namesake family brontotheriidae, both creatures known mostly for their weighty bodies and nasal horn. The Bronto takes these elements not up to 11, but up to a solid 8.5, applying more weight and horns without changing anything fundamental about the base idea. One key difference bewteen rhinoceroses and brontotheres, however, is that rhinos have a keratinous horn, whereas brontotheres have a bony skull protrusion. I elect to believe the Bronto takes after rhinos here with disconnected keratin horns, because otherwise those spikes are just bone stabbing through its flesh and that sounds hellish. 

The economic, lifestyle and social pressures required for a society to forego existing animals and create a new one must be incredible. The Shaperate, a collection of librarians and historians widely respected in dwarven culture, were responsible for this task. The assignment of a curated group of elite dwarves means that this wasn't a seized opportunity but a forced one. We know the dwarven kingdoms fell due to the darkspawn invading their critical trade roads, so it's likely that the Bronto was a project that sought to combine the effective hauling of oxen with a more battle-ready creature that could safely navigate hostile tunnels. We see that the wild Brontos are legitimate threats while traversing the deep roads, so this initiative was at least partially successful. Just making a more powerful transport animal was too little, too late, however; as it's never actually been said, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." Replace "faster horses" with "heavier oxen", and that was the dwarven solution to darkspawn. What may have saved them would have been the industrialization of transport, using reinforced railways and jointly maintaining the deep roads with a centralized government. Of course, all sentient races greatly prefer tribalism and infighting to a functioning society, so Brontos it is.

SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF: 8/10 DESIGN COHESION: 8/10 DWARVEN GENETIC ENGINEERING: 10/10 PERSONAL RATING: 5/10

[endless-bestiary]

BOGFISHER

It's uncommon for a monster to be ugly as sin and retain its cute factor. That's not to say it's impossible - look at the entire line of UglyDolls - but it requires a tightrope walk along the center of the uncanny valley of human affection. Too far to the cute side, and it reads as being an attempt at cuteness with something capital-W Wrong with it. Too far to the ugly side, and you just lose sight of the cute altogether. Fortunately for the Bogfisher, it straddles the line perfectly. This squishy little critter has all the personality of a seriously-loved teddy bear. I can't pinpoint any one thing that makes me like it, but my gut reaction is "chubby baby". 

Unlike the demons and "true" monsters that inhabit Thedas, the wildlife has a surprising amount of realism to it, feeling less like fantasy monsters and more like a different set of possible creatures. The Bogfisher has a sort of boar-like body that's adapted to trudging through muck instead of solid land. Its thick, stocky legs end in broad paws that seem to be perfect for digging through mud in search of its preferred prey, frogs and pond-eels. Even its snout is narrowed and bulbous to better snuffle through the muck. You just KNOW that that upturned pig-like nose is flattened to help it sniff out and dig up prey. Although its teeth look cruel and twisted, this is no savage predator; it just turns out that more and sharper teeth are kind of good for carnivores regardless of what they're doing with them. This, too, follows in the hoofprints of what boars do, wielding impressive teeth for self-defense against larger predators in its habitats. Even the eye and ear placements show thought was put into them. The ears are recessed to just pinprick holes far back on the head, kept clear of getting blocked up while the Bogfisher digs or swims in muck, while its eyes are small and beady, sort of secondary to its ears due to the poor lighting conditions of its preferred habitat. 

I've touched on this before, but the Bogfisher is the sort of animal that doesn't *need* to be in a video game. However, it enriches the experience if it's included. The presence of discrete bad guys like demons and bandits is mandatory - there's no game without them. Atmospheric animals that serve no gameplay purpose (outside of the occasional hide or tusk) on the other hand are critical to expansive, immersive RPGs that hinge on player investment. You can't just throw anything in, though; you have to really stop and think about what kind of animals live in your fantasy world and how they've adapted to your landscapes. The Bogfisher, for example, is mud-colored so it can just settle in and look like a great lump of sludge while dragons and demons stalk through its home. Your animals better not be flashy and ornate unless they're able to go toe to toe with those dragons or at least get the hell out of Dodge when they show up. Just look at the poor Bogfisher's legs. It couldn't even get to Dodge city limits if you gave it a head start.

SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF: 10/10 DESIGN COHESION: 9/10 GRUMPY SQUISH: 10/10 PERSONAL RATING: 8/10

[endless-bestiary]

We've crossed the Estersand and the Giza Plains, and the nomads are kind enough to offer us a place to rest for now. According to my books, we're on the cusp of one hundred entire reviews! I have something special planned for that big milestone. I'll have much more to say about it when we get there. In the interim, however, we're going to cross back through the wilds of Thedas and check out a few interesting wild animals from Dragon Age!

As always, to all my fellow researchers: thank you, and stay monstrous. -Prof. Shields