Khezu: An Exercise in Bad Game Design

No, this article isn't only for those into Monster Hunter, don't let that scare you away. I'm not here to tear into my personal issues with this game I can't stop playing, though that would be supremely satisfying. No, we're talking game design, ladies and gentlemen.

Now, for the uninitiated, here's a quick rundown. In Monster Hunter, you fight various monsters of various shapes and sizes to get their parts and then make equipment out of them. Generally, the way of getting better is learning the monster “tells”, or how they move before taking certain actions, so you know what's coming. That's what's really important here. The general loop is that you need to fight monsters over and over for certain parts, and in doing so you learn the tells and get very good at fighting them (Ingenious game design, I might add).

And if you want an example of a game going totally off the rails and producing a substandard gameplay scenario, the Khezu is it. This monster has everything. Bland design. Terrible tells. God awful design choices around it.

And I also might be angry because it came back AGAIN in Generations dear god why

Let us start with the design, and already everything is so, so wrong. See, most monsters have an immediately enlightening design. If you look at the Rathian, for example, she has a big, spiky tail, huge wings, and looks like a stereotypical dragon in a lot of ways. Unsurprisingly, she has many tail attacks, flies around a lot, and breaths fire. The design gives you a hint of what it can do right out of the gate, playing into learning the moveset. That's great design.

The Khezu does not do that. Let's just take a quick look at some of its more unique features:

1. It has a head that can extend very far for some medium ranged attacks.
2. It can generate electricity from its body and mouth.
3. It can climb on walls to escape.
4. It has a very hard tail that you can't really attack for the most part.
5. One of the louder roars in the game.

I ask you, where is any of this communicated on this monster's design? The head doesn't have anything that looks extendable. Nothing about it looks even remotely related to electricity. You're not going to see the bottom of its feet, which do look like they could climb on walls. Moot point if you can't see them, though. The tail looks exactly like the rest of the body. And how am I supposed to guess that the roar is going to be crazy loud?

None of this really matters after the initial encounter, yes. Once you know the attacks, the design communicating potential attacks isn't needed. But it shows sloppiness and a lack of caring, stuff that really does carry over to the rest of this monster.

See, my issues with Khezu are mainly in the fight itself, AKA the “Screw you, blademasters” fight. Let us start with a seemingly innocuous thing, the fact that the Khezu climbs on walls. Seems harmless, right? Yeah, no. What this actually does is make it impossible to attack if you're using a melee weapon (May I remind you, 11 out of the 14 weapons are melee). Waiting is not fun in games. Think we can all agree on that. What this does if force most hunters to run around dodging slow electricity balls for a minute, with no chance to counterattack or do anything of substance. It is boring, unfun, and just not well thought out.

Second on my list of grievances is the Khezu's favourite attack, surrounding itself in electricity. The issue here is the tell. Khezu sparks with electricity for about a second then surrounds itself in electricity, which does sound like a reasonable windup. The issue is that this, again, screws any and all melee weapon users. For many weapons, if you're currently right beside Khezu, there's simply not enough time to actually get away once the tell begins. Sheathing your weapon in this game to run faster takes a full second, which means you're very likely to get hit.

And when it comes to gameplay, making about 3 quarters of your weapons a bad choice against one monster is simply not good design. Making one or two univiable is actually a good idea in many circumstances. It can force people away from their comfort picks so they actually try something new, therefore seeing more of the game. But you limit, rather than expand, if you make most of your weapons a subpar choice. Even in the intention was to get people to try out gunner weapons, it's still a bad choice because you need a whole new set of armour to use gunner weapons. You're making people decide between a terrible hunt or grinding for a whole new set of armour, not an attractive one to be sure.

And yes, there are ways to get around this monster in more recent games. Using adept style in Generations lets you dodge through the electricity, and does mitigate a lot of my issues. It's still bad design if you're pigeonholed into a very specific gameplay style just because you use blademaster weapons.

There's also just a lot of baffling design choices made for seemingly no good reason. Why does the Khezu have no battle music? Is it supposed to be for immersion, since it can't “see” you, only “smell” you? Immersion here comes at the cost of a lifeless and silent fight. I thought my game was glitched when I first fought it, a player shouldn't think that!

In the same vein of bad design, what parts am I supposed to break? If you don't know, you can attack and break certain parts of a monster to get more crafting materials. But the Khezu is all a grey blob, with no standout parts. Using the Rathian from before, the tail and wings are very prominent, and look breakable. Lo and behold, the tail can be cut off, and the wings cracked. Can the back of the Khezu be broken? The head? The tail? There are no stand out indicators here. 

So it is with bafflement that I look at Khezu. Look at the monsters in this series, and they have varied designs, fun fights, and all show evidence of thought and effort put into them. Then there's Khezu, who looks so out of place with the sloppy design, lopsided fight, and baffling design choices. Regardless, I will continue to use this monster as a great example of bad design in a good game, and how even the best developers aren't foolproof.