Anyway, Fontaine is a region based on industrial-era France, with a huge dash of steampunk-ness thrown in, and with any new region we always have a lot of new monsters which is what we're talking about here! Fontaine comes with a gigantic city, several underground areas, three islands... but most importantly, a gigantic stretch of ocean (actually a super-large lake with marine life, sustained with special water) that our characters can dive into and explore.
Anyway, on with the monsters!
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The Clockwork Meka:
Most of the enemies introduced in this initial batch in Fontaine are divided into two, and I'll go with the more thematically-boring but far more well-executed enemies first... the Clockwork Meka. Not mecha, meka. That's going to be distractingly hard to get right in my head. Genshin already has a phletora of robots of various shapes and sizes, but instead of the clunky ruin-machines or the almost-uniform 'origami' cube robots in Inazuma or the triangular ones in Sumeru's deserts, the Meka in Fontaine are just so... stylish.
And I was initially prepared to just handwave all of them in one go, but I really do enjoy just how much personality and care put into the designs of even the more bland humanoid robots. A fair amount of the world quests also give a fair amount of backstory to how the ancient innovators and scientists of Fontaine managed to create these Meka, using a particularly unique energy source called Arkhe that's only found in the region, allowing the robots to utilize elemental energy.
Annihilation Specialist Mek
We'll start of with the most humanoid-looking ones first, with the Annihilation Specialist Mek here. Again, on paper, this is a very basic robot enemy. Humanoid, vaguely female-like silhouette, giant blade for a hand, and some blades on her legs. But everything about the design of this Mek really does make it clear that she's designed by a bunch of people who absolutely care for the appearance, hence making even her robotic eye-face look angular and moulding like a fancy hat on her. Her lower legs being giant blades means that she dose some funky dancing moves to slash at you, and while in-game it just translates to yet another physical attack, it really does help to make these Meks feel a lot more specifial and sophisticated. I certainly appreciate how so many of these meks look unique after complaining about how 'samey' all the fungi and pyramid-robots in Sumeru are.
The Annihilation Specialist Meks, and many of the humanoid meks, actually patrol the cities of Fontaine, and seem to 'recharge' in the equivalent of police booths. The flavour text of the Annihilation Specialist Mek note that only the very rich are capable of contrlling these super-powerful weapon, and it's either considered 'a tool to uphold municipal security'... or, by the cynics, 'state apparatus enforcing the monopoly on violence'. I mean, it literally is called the Annihilation Specialist. A literal army of these purchased and abused by a rich antagonist actually do menace our heroes in the main story, which I thought was cool!
Suppression Specialist Mek
Oh, I really like this one, too! The giant cannon on one hand and the four-barreled gatling gun on the other hand really do make this guy look very impressive and intimidating, while also both simultaneously fitting in and contrasting with the Annihilation Specialist above. This one is more masculine-looking, and the breastplate looks like a uniform with multiple buttons. I always enjoy fighting this one with its repeating firepower animations.
Oh, I really like this one, too! The giant cannon on one hand and the four-barreled gatling gun on the other hand really do make this guy look very impressive and intimidating, while also both simultaneously fitting in and contrasting with the Annihilation Specialist above. This one is more masculine-looking, and the breastplate looks like a uniform with multiple buttons. I always enjoy fighting this one with its repeating firepower animations.
There's even a little lore in the description about how these 'annihilation' meka all produce their energy by using 'repeaters' utilizing special pneuma and ousia crystals. I think it's worth noting that these Meks actually have different attacks depending on whether they have pneuma or ousia activated, with the pneuma-empowered Suppression Specialist Mek launching Dendro grenades, but an ousia-empowered one will rapid-fire Pyro missiles from its other arm.
Assault Specialist Mek
Probably the most 'basic' of the three humanoid Meks to me, although the other two win out by having much cooler-looking weapons. The Assault Specialist has a funky hat and a 'face' that looks like he has... a visor for an eye? He reminds me of a slimmer version of Jazz from Transformers. With a cap. He's got a shield on one hand, and a gigantic baton replacing the other hand, and the image that this one is meant to convey seem to be that of a policeman. I really do think that the names for 'Assault' and 'Suppression' probably need to be switched!
And now we go to some 'lesser' Mek, with the one that I really have the least to talk about being the Area Alert Mek, which is... well, it's just a turret with spider legs. The animation for this one is surprisingly fun -- it doesn't just shoot beams from the top, but the entire cylindrical piece actually rotates on a hinge, almost like a microscope or telescope, and the gear-wing things spread open before they shoot lasers. That adds just a nice bit of oomph to make this design less static, as seen in that piece of concept art.
I do like the little description that the Area Alert Mek is actually a prototype and a test device, and while it's mass-produced as a sentinel device, many engineers don't consider it to be a 'true' clockwork meka. Really reminds you of a lot of snotty purists and 'true fans' in the real world, huh?
Also worth noting that each of these mek have a clear-white gear design somewhere on their body. In battle, these light up with either yellow (pneuma) or purple (ousia), and you can use the opposing arkhe to cause an explosino that stuns the Mek and locks them out of their elemental attacks. That's neat.
Recon Log Mek
My favourite! The Recon Log Mek is a robot dog with a fancy old-school recording device in place of a head. The general look of this thing just looks so damn classy, and I think it's that decorated breastplate that this wonderful doggo has that makes him look so spiffy. One of the game's quest chains has you interact a lot with a sentient (and ancient) Recon Log Mek named 'Seymour', and it basically confirms that these things were at least originally intended to truly just be reconnaissance devices that record information.
Of course, 'wild' Recon Log Meks use their camera-heads as cannons, to shoot missiles or these funky little lightning landmines. It's not something that I feel is particularly noticeable until you fight a lot of these in succession, but I really do like the idea that the pneuma and ousia infusions give these robot enemies different attack patterns.
Geological Survey Mek
Any self-respecting steampunk fantasy robot enemy needs one that's based on a crab or a spider, and while we already had a Ruin Sentinel based on a crab before, this one is in the steampunk style so it's completely different! The Geological Survey Mek has the intended purpose of surveying underground resources and minerals, which is why its legs look like some kind of fancy drill or piledriver or something.
And in a nice bit of lore/gameplay nod, the Geological Survey Meks are extremely popular to be used by Treasure Hoarders and Fatui goons, who utilize these Geological Survey Meks to run around and dig up precious gemstones and minerals for them -- and the enemy camps that contain humans and Geological Survey Meks are actually often found near mineral deposits.
Arithmetic Enhancer Mek
This one looks like a bug with a giant abdomen, or specifically it reminds me of a honeypot ant, who have impressively large gasters where they keep nectar and other nutrients before delivering it to their colony members. And the Arithmetic Enhancer does something similar -- if there are allied Meks with the same corresponding arkhe energy as it, the Arithmetic Enhancer will spread open its 'honeypot' and buff them or restore their arkhe if you annihilate them. The lore notes that this particular Meka is originally designed to transmit and enhance signals.
Nimble Harvester Mek
This is an interesting one, mostly because it's got an adorable set of 'eyes' made out of torches, and what looks like a giant, comical Mario-esque 'mustache'. This creature seems to resemble some kind of permanently-rolled-up millipede or pillbug, but that's only really if we're trying to force an animal for each and every one of these mekas to mimic.
Really, the Nimble Harvester, I think, is just meant to be one of those excavator bucket-wheels that can run around on its own, since it's meant to dig up and transport soil. I do like that its attack pattern alternates between spinning around like a demonic wheel and ramming your characters, or to try and dig up dirt and lob it at you as Geo damage.
Construction Specialist Mek
And I really like this one! Obviously a mass of steampunk clockwork mechas would also be used for heavy construction. We've had those that mine or to dig up dirt, but the Construction Specialist would take over all the other hard work at actually building the structures. I really do like how it's just moving around on a little ball-point wheel, and it has two giant jointed 'arms' that alternates between pulling out a buzzsaw or a giant chunky robot arm. Or sometimes they 'store' both appendages and just try to bludgeon you with the blunt instruments seen here.
Probably my favourite robot on this page, you really do have to see the animations to get a nice appreciation of this one. Apparently, the Construction Specialist is a much scaled-down version of a particularly huge one that hollowed out one of the underground tunnels in Fontaine. Again, I really do like that the mekas in Fontaine are all given proper functions like construction, survey, photography, and it's not just an endless sequence of being 'security' and 'combat' types. In practice, yes, they're all enemies, but I do like that there's an in-universe reason for there being so many different kinds of Mekas.
Underwater Survey Mek
We move from the land-bound enemies to those living in the new underwater region of Fontaine, which has its own combat mechanic, which... it's way more simplified compared to the overworld battle but it's at least an attempt to make the diving segments immersive and not 'cut away' to a traditional battle. The Underwater Survey Mek is meant to resemble a manta ray (and the game also has biological manta rays, which we'll cover below) and I do like that there's a little blurb on its lore page talking about how they really didn't manage to find any breakthroughs in clockwork meka design and ended up going back to the old standby of 'biomimesis'.
Underwater Patrol Mek
While the Survey Mek looks like a manta ray, the Patrol Mek is basically a very simplified steampunk-y submarine, although it's obviously not intended to have a pilot at all. This one looks like a sentient missile, and it shoots gloriously chunky depth-charge submarine missiles. Where the Survey Mek is technically meant to just survey the oceans, the Patrol Mek is supposed to 'search out, repel and, if need be, exterminate aquatic life forms' that threaten any underwater equipment. Of course, in game, both the Underwater Patrol and Survey Meks more or less do the same thing.
Interestingly, it is described by the lore that the Underwater Meks were intended by a group of scientists that were trying to recover and 'retake' the submerged ruins of the ancient Fontaine civilizations, but the reclamation projects never really went anywhere.
Icewind Suite (Dirge of Coppelia / Nemesis of Coppelius)
One of the two world bosses introduced in the original Fontaine update is the Icewind Suite, which is a duo of clockwork meka meant to resemble a couple doing an elaborate ball-dance... which is a very French thing to do, yeah? Interestingly, unlike most bosses, the two robots Coppelia and Coppelius aren't immediately hostile and are content to just... dance around their arena until you 'request' to join the fight, and you can pick either Coppelia or Coppelius to be the 'primary' dancer. This changes some of the mechanics and the loot drop you get, though I have to be honest in not really seeing the difference in the dances until it's shown side-by-side... both robots have so many effects going on!
I really do like how elegant they are, and I'm particularly a big fan of just how... fancy they look. Coppelia (the girl one) has a pretty fun giant needle-top for a lower body and four bladed skirt-things, but you really can't look at Coppelius, his handsome one-sided cape, his featureless mask-face, his dapper hat and those swanky ice-skating wheel-feet of his and not tell me that he looks like the most gentlemanly gentleman of all the gentleman robots that ever did gentleman.
I normally don't really have much to say about humanoid enemies, yes, but the Fontaine Mekas do end up leaving me with a fair amount to talk about, huh?
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The Marine Life ("Fontemer Aberrants):
The second huge category of enemies are called the "Fontemer Aberrants" (Fontemer being a rough portmanteau of Fontaine and mer or sea), and these are much more fun to talk about! They're marine life! I love my marine life. That said, not all of them do anything super-duper interesting with their base animal, but I'm still intent on talking about all of them regardless.
Interestingly, not all of the aberrants are hostile, and like many sea life, they're just hanging out and willing to let you pass... unless, of course, if you're like me and you just murder them without a care in the world because your characters won't ascend themselves without the materials you farm from them.
Hunter's Ray
And we start off with the Hunter's Ray, which obviously shares the movement patterns of the ray-robot above. The biological equivalent is much, much cooler, though, with the two variations having such an alien feel to him. I can't decide whether I like the glow-in-the-dark Avatar-style blue one better, or the almost mushroom-looking green one better.
The Hunter's Ray basically just attacks you with water-blades, because of course those mean-looking fins are able to create pressurized jets of water. Why wouldn't they? In addition to the underwater beasts, there are 'xenochromatic' variants that are completely coloured and textured like Oceanids, which basically just function as 'power-ups' for gameplay purposes. The ray, crab and blubberbeast all have xenochromatic versions, and they each grant different powers.
Blubberbeast
These seals are adorable, aren't they? Pretty fun-looking cartoon seals, with some horns. You could almost see this as a Pokemon or Digimon design. The Blubberbeasts can be found both underwater or sunbathing aboveground, although the underwater variants adorably beat their own bellies to send shockwaves at you. The Blubberbeasts, much like dolphins and whales in real life, use soundwaves underwater to communicate with each other. Interestingly, this ends up inspiring some primitive image-into-data technology in Fontaine!
Some Aberrants have 'Local Legend' giant variants which are larger, have unique colourations and have unique names. Like elite enemies in World of Warcraft! I included the Blubberbeast variant here, but almost all the different Aberrant types have a purple/lavender-coloured Local Legend boss.
Ball Octopus
A fun cartoon octopus! Actually, it's just Clobbopus from Pokemon without the punching gloves, huh? Shame that they only have four tentacles, though I do hope that subsequent updates would give us a proper eight-legged Kraken-style boss. A very pleasant-looking octopus enemy, though it fights rather generically by shooting water bubbles. I get that not all the underwater enemies have a particularly elaborate fighting mechanism due to how simple the underwater combat is, though, and I just appreciate that we're getting a lot of different wacky marine life as enemies.
Hat Jellyfish
I think the Hat Jellyfish use the same base movement of the octopus, though obviously octopi and jellyfishes are extremely different in real-life, in a video game you could get away with reusing skeletons for them since they're all 'heads with tentacles'. Pretty nice jellyfish models, too, with the ribbon-like tentacles and the 'head' segments reminding me of those dumbo octopi.
Love the description for this one, acknowledging that while they look like heads, their mouths are on the underside of the 'hat' and trying to wear one as a hat is very disadvised.
Bubbly Seahorse
AHHHHH adorable baby seahorses! Now real seahorses don't have those nice little cloak-skirt things that these Bubbly Seahorses have, but man, all these sea life are just so goddamned adorable, huh? A perfecctly adorable model, and I'm particularly a fan of the very pastel-coloured variant on the right here.
These just shoot bubbles at you, but, again, unless you hit them first they're non-hostile and can be observed throwing bubbles and playing with each other.
Bubbler Seahorse
The Bubbler Seahorse, on the other hand, looks much more regal and feels more like what a 'Genshin seahorse enemy' would look like. There are perhaps one or two details too much here, but I do like the fins that taper off into bright blue glowing things and the regal crest and 'chestpiece' on this one, which is apparently the source of its Electro powers... though you can tear off this regal 'mantle' with elemental reactions, robbing it of its Electro abilities.
Interestingly, the Bubbler Seahorse is much more dangerous above the ground, since it can just hover in the land like a goddamn Pokemon, and on land it's much more prone to shoot out lightning blasts at you.
Angelic Sea Hare
I find that this thing is a bit more rare, but sooooo pretty! Particularly the bubblegum pink one, though the blue-and-yellow variant also looks pretty great. It combines the adorable 'bunny horns' of the sea hare type of sea slug with the beautiful, flowing 'fins' of other sea slugs like the Spanish Dancer, and the end result is a wondrously pretty design. Concept art actually has much more variants, some with adorable button eyes, and I really wished we had more of these guys!
In combat they do nothing but shoot bubbles, which is honestly basically most of the aberrants, but they're so dang adorable! Real-life sea slugs are so damn pretty, and if you've never seen sea slugs before, do yourself a favour and google the glorious colours of these things.
Cherubic Sea Hare
Identified as the adult form of the Angelic Sea Hares, the Cherubic Sea Hares look a bit less cute, with more pronounced fins and its sea slug anatomy being turned into something akin to 'wings'. I think turning it into something more akin to an adorable slug-dragon. I think it's inspired by sea slugs with more elaborate anatomy like the glaucus -- which does resemble a central body with wings; except that we already have the glaucus represented in Stormterror Dvalin. My sea slug knowledge is woefully lacking, and I honestly can guarantee that this thing is based on a specific organism.
As the lore notes, the 'wings' of the Cherubic Sea Hare are organs used to store elemental energy, and are constantly stockpiling energy in its body in preparing for inhospitable environment. The Cherubic Sea Hare is already able to exist outside the water, though, and when its wings glow purple it can summon shields and attacks of Cryo. I don't find this one as memorable as the Angelic Sea Hare, but I give this game plus points for having sea slug enemies at all.
Armored Crab
LOOKIT THE ADORABLE WUBBLY-BUBBLY CRABS. Look at those adorable stalky eyes and the tiny little crab hands and those little eyestalks and those eyes those eyes are so cute! The crabs in this game all seem to draw inspiration from a combination of fiddler crabs, with one claw having a 'shield'-like growth around it, but also hermit crabs. The Armored Crab is explicitly noted to make its home in borrowed shells, and while the enemy crabs come in bright red or neon green variations, we are able to find rocky versions of these shells all over the seafloor.
There's a nice little dialogue in their lore, too, where the Armored Crab doesn't have any aggressiveness -- and is in fact completely incapable of attacking you! "Perhaps it is because animals who attack for purposes other than obtaining food possess some degree of territoriality, yet the territory of the Armored Crab is naught but the small home upon its back." That's adorable, that's so sweet, but that doesn't stop me from killing them all to gather those glowing transoceanic pearls.
Sternshield Crab
The bigger brothers of the Armored Crabs, however, are always instantly hostile, and I do love how in the wild these Sternshield Crabs lead their tiny brethren in little marching lines across the seabed. The Sternshield Crab's shells have grown a bit more intricate, with the 'found' shell on its back being far more elaborate, and so is the little 'shield' it is holding.
Interestingly, the shell on the Sternshield Crab's back is actually themed after a mini-volcano that launches fireballs, which makes a bit more sense when you see the final form of this 'evolutionary line' below. You can actually break the crab shell with elemental reactions, destroying the poor crab's shell and preventing it from using fire attacks.
Emperor of Fire and Iron
Oh yeah, and the second boss and one of the 'two sovereigns that stood at the apex of the aberrant species of the Fontemer' is the Emperor of Fire and Iron. It's still a crab, but its texture is now mottled with lava-rock and its 'shell' is less of a shell and a gigantic rock formation, with two inner red horns that spew fire and a bunch of gray-white carapace around it. Until it starts moving, it's actually a bit easy to mistake this giant crustacean as a spiky, rocky dragon like Azhdaha!
Apparently, this is a state that can be reached by any Armored Crab that sufficiently eats and continues to grow, finding suitable shells and growing bigger and bigger. The description of this giant crab describes a bleak future where a crab so big would put the giant palace of Fontaine itself as its shell, and in the past a particularly giant, ship-sized one battled against Fontaine's ships. The in-game Emperor of Fire and Iron isn't quite that big yet, though, and you can still strip its rocky shield and force it to dig underground to regenerate its shell.
Not my favourite boss design, to be honest, but I do have to give kudos to the creativity of combining a volcano and a hermit crab together.
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Other Enemies:
And while most of the enemies that are introduced in version 4.0 of Fontaine are either Mekas or marine life, there are a couple that fall into different groups.
Tainted Water-Splitting Phantasm
And it's really interesting that the first type of enemy is a creature that kind of showed up as a non-hostile NPC race called the 'Hydro Eidolons' or 'Water Droplets', pictured on the left here. They're meant to be adorable, shapeshifting sentient water blobs similar to Oceanid Mimics, and it's revealed that they are either parts or servants of the Oceanid that created a mirage realm. All of this boils back to the fact that the water-spirit race called the Oceanids originate from Fontaine...
...except that the Oceanids have almost all been extirpated from Fontaine. We do meet a couple of exceptions in some world quests, but some of these Eidolon-looking creatures still remain in Fontaine. Unlike the buddies that you play hide-and-seek with in the Veluriyam Mirage, however, these Tained Water Phantasms are extremely hostile.
There really isn't much explanation about what they are (yet, at least), but the lore notes that 'strange elemental life forms have appeared in the waters' after the Oceanids left, lacking the elegance and beauty of the Oceanids and are considered to be 'tainted'. We never really learn what the proper story is as of the time of writing, but the lore cryptically hints at some kind of 'toxin' that dissolved in the water, which, while it appears to have been cleansed and diluted, Fontaine's waters will 'never give birth to pure Oceanids.
There are two variants, though before engaging in combat they remain in a state similar to a Hydro Eidolon, only assuming their 'true' forms. The Water-Spitting ones sprouts two giant helicopter ear-hands to beat you up with...
Tainted Water-Spouting Phantasm
While the Water-Spouting variant creates a whole muscular body with the angry Eidolon head on top of it to beat the shit out of you. There has always been lore drip-fed through the Liyue and Sumeru storylines about how the Oceanids once lived among humans and were an integral part of the Fontaine culture during the time of the previous Hydro Archon, Egeria, and it remains to be seen just what was the huge event that caused these new born Water Phantasms to be so 'tainted'.
Overgrown Breacher Primus / Large Overgrown Breacher Primus
And the final enemy type are the Breacher Primuses, which you'll meet a lot of before you eventually complete the quest that surprisingly gives an explanation as to what they are. They're a pretty simple video-game-y enemy, being a spiky rock-creature with a bunch of floating... rock-things or shell-things around it. There are two types of Breacher Primuses, the 'Overgrown' one that uses Dendro and the 'Shatterstone' ones that uses Geo; and both exist in regular and 'Large' sizes. Their respective cores are different and they have different attack patterns when they activate their respective elemental shields, but they're otherwise the same thing.
The Breacher Primuses are noted to have first appeared shortly after the cataclysm, and every single one of the four variants have the same lore of being 'the nature defies known categories: they are not animals, plants, shroom-kin nor elementals', with many actual debates on what their true nature is. Further muddling the mystery among them are records of them attacking and protecting humans, and the debate of what the Primuses are -- particularly since they're not even elementals -- ended up being so bad that even Sumeru banned discussion into what they are.
Shatterstone Breacher Primus / Large Shatterstone Breacher Primus
You can see the Shatterstone Primus's core is more like a marble, whereas the Overgrown Primus has something that resembles like a mutant coral. The Large Shatterstone Breacher Primus's description note that the Melusines -- a race of sea-slug-mermaid people that live underwater, which we'll probably review in a future Fontaine segment -- find the Breacher Primuses adorable, which the humans are confused about.
And as we later find out... Breacher Primuses are actually the sentient cells of the fallen dead dragon Elynas, reanimated by the powers of the abyss. Elynas also birthed the Melusine race, and sometimes has humans that she favours, which is why the Breacher Primus has such contradictory behaviours. Sentient abyss-powered cells of a dead dragon isn't my first answer when seeing this bizarre, alien thing. And honestly, I've never been the biggest fan of 'sentient geometry' types of enemies in a video game, but at least this one had a pretty okay origin story that's tied to the setting.
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