Why Aku is Amazing but Behemoth is Bad: A Battle Cats Trait Analysis

I'm actually mad now that I forgot Behemoths were Monster Hunter references. It was like their whole design and I somehow missed it lol

Aliens did have a signature ability - they had abilities! It's easy to forget that enemies with procs were not always a thing, and while nowadays all traits have them, the aliens were the frontrunners.

Extremely good and complete analysis, very very well done. It's insane how badly behemoths were implemented and basically singlehandedly begun the trend of enemies with obscene amount of health for no good reason and extremely monotonous gameplay. When people ask help in behemoth stages, you could suggest using 5 slots of research combo (or 3 slots for research and 2 for attack), 1 or 2 meatshield, cancan, maglev, and courier, and it would unironically work 90% of the time. Sleep as hell. Also I would say I disagree on 2 things, 1 being behemoth visual design and 2 being zombie reception. Definitely personal but I genuinely really like Behemoth designs as they reflect Monster Hunter creatures, and imo they did a great job replicating these monsters into battle cats style. Darkjo and Ahirujo are similar because they're based off of monsters of the same family, Yian Garuga and Yian Kutku, while Magamojoe is a bit different since its based off Kuluyaku. And regards of Zombies, I don't think they're necessarily badly received by the community. Outbreaks was badly implemented but I don't think that really makes people not like the trait. From my experience, people disliked zombie simply because it shakes the meta massively due to burrow destroying a lot of uber spammers. Which, in my opinion, is a good thing. Zombie is one of my favorite trait due to how insanely different they play, but unfortunately they made Holy Blast and then its downhill from there... but thats a different story. Overall, extremely well written and well edited video. I think some of the things you talk about here are too off-topic and could be made more concise or even unnecessary to be in the video, but otherwise it's a very good analysis!

Regarding about design choice of Behemoth enemy. This is actually problem with PONOS translation. In JP version, Behemoth is called "超獣" that roughly means "Superbeast". If we want to make it as accurate as possible, the best possible translation would be "Monster" or "Beast". This translation would fit more because all Behemoth enemy is pictured as fierce variant of pre-existing enemy and also a direct homage to Monster Hunter game. In this context, Behemoth translation choice doesn't make sense. Especially when we already have Colossus/Baron for big-enemy arch-type.

Amazing analysis of the two traits. Aku enemies were definitely a fun addition to the game that made some rather bland enemy variants actually interesting to fight, such as Fallen Bear and Le'Behemoth but man Behemoths could have been executed so much better. I love that most of the Behemoth enemies are based on Monster Hunter enemies (even if I never played any of the games) can lead to some very cool designs like Scissorex. The issue with Behemoth enemies imo is like how you said it leads to over centralization of the Behemoth meta to the point where only a couple of Behemoth Slayers are even worth using, like Courier and Mushroom. Courier definitely played a big part to messing up how PONOS treated Behemoth afterwards. Hazuku is the biggest example, as a backliner with that much damage AND surge can sometimes make him straight up unfair to fight. For those who have played Birth of True Man, you would know. Behemoth Stones I feel wouldn't be as much of an issue if some units didn't have such a high cost. Cactus Cat is probably one of the worst offenders of the amount of stones needed. While on the topic of stone evolutions, the issue with them could be solved by allowing you play the stages multiple times a day so it doesn't take ages to get any of the true forms. I have been grinding out the Behemoth Stone stages almost daily on two of the 3 map available and currently only have Courier, Catarzan, Mushroom, Radical, Haniwa, Supercar, Armored Firefly, and all of the UL true forms outside of Luza. When 12.0 first came out in Japan, I grinded stones to get all of the UL true forms outside of Luza and even when the update was released to the other versions, I only just got all of the stones needed for the 4 other UL true forms. I got to say well done on this analysis!

"Surge immunity? What unit does this counter?" Dark Kasli, obviously. That's the whole reason they were given that ability.

I absolutely hate the behemoth trait because of how hilariously inflated the stats become thanks to the existence of Courier Cat.

31:56 NOOOO THE DRAGON STACK

PONOS on the office like: "Yeah bro let's make a FARMING stage that you can only clear ONCE per day but requires up to 20 fucking clears for a single true form to make it so that players aproaching the end of UL or returning players that stopped playing for a bit are time gated for a fucking MONTH (if not more) to be able to get to experience the end game content" On a more serious note my biggest problem with behemoth is the fact that PONOS is just giving it so much focus and spotlight in the recent updates, like I didn't really hate behemoth stuff on release (other than behemoth stone farming), I knew it wasn't a super interesting addition but I just thought "it's just a sub trait like colossus, it's not gonna be super relevant aside from it's dedicated stages", but now we are into 9 months of behemoth focused updates and SPECIALLY, Legends Zero seems that it's going to be heavily focused on behemoth, I'm really worried about how good and fun end game content and Legends Zero as a whole is going to be in the future

Here's an idea: what if the cat army found an uncharted area with the behemoths in them, and had to defend their base from behemoths instead of attacking other bases? In order to win you would have to maybe to things like "kill x amount of wild doges" or something like that? Awesome video and great analysis, keep up the good work!

THE FOLIVOREAN: I'm playing both sides, so that i always come out on top.

Everything about this video is facts, i really hope behemoths get a blanket fix before ponos goes too deep with them. RNG and busted stats based enemies make for some of the most boring and unfair stages I’ve played in a long time

I also think that not enough time was given between traits. Whereas when zombie was implemented we did not get relics until after SoL was over, we got aku and a couple of updates behemoth, which was not handled as a real trait and thus led to the balance issues noted on the video

33:16 ponos: *adds an aku behemoth*

Me find something to listen while editing video btw pretty good analysis by far I'm somewhat ok with Behemoth concept because it gives us Courier which make everything easier... a lot easier that make me worried. Courier ended up being one of the most used units for every player which is the exact same as Dasli case when it came out (except that it's free unit). This absolute broke the balance of early to mid-game which I'm not impress about. As you said, it makes the memorable stage that I love when I play 5-6 years ago become unmemorable. I only hype on Behemoth update only because of the design because it's MonHun reference and it's the franchise the I play the most in my entire life. I'll not going to give my opinion on Behemoth power scaling because my unit is uncomparable to others. In the perspective perspective of grinder, Behemoth Stone is nightmare for us since it's limited farmable resource. Even though, I can still farm all of them whenever I want (with a power of Dark Magik) but it still annoying to do.

Absolutely loved this video, extremely good commentary, I really enjoyed listening to this, please keep making more content and I will keep supporting you!

If I remember correctly, the original translation for behemoth enemies were beast enemies, and I don't know why they didn't keep that. It fits the designs so much better, and we already have colossal enemies, so why make another subtype referencing size?

Awesome video, good job I feel kinda bad because this is the BC content that's worth watching, but it ends up getting overshadowed by BCU bullshit Hopefully this and your other videos eventually get more attention

"Aku and behemoth are the newest enemies" Me with a colossal enemy on my bag: 🍷🗿

Thank you sir. This was a very informative video that explains things I never even ask before. Plus makes me want to go back and play battle cats.