All's been rather quiet on the Genshin front, mostly because there aren't much new monsters after the end of the Fontaine patches. We got two new sub-areas -- whimsical, idyllic Chenyu Vale in Liyue and the ancient, time-trapped kingdom of Remuria in Fontaine.
And... well, I actually really did enjoy exploring these locations, and figuring out both of the 'world quests' that go through the ancient histories of both Chenyu and Remuria. It's just that as a monster reviewing series standpoint, there really isn't much, but I figure I should get through whatever new content we have before Natlan comes out.
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Xuanwen Beast
The Xuanwen Beasts here are the new enemies in Chenyu Vale, which was originally a rivaling territory of Liyue ruled by a group of Adepti (who, if you forget, are Genshin's equivalent of the xian immortals/enlightened ones from Chinese legends) until some of them decided they didn't want to see their humans suffer and switched sides to the god of Liyue. Which is a very simplified version of the story of the region, and... frankly I'm a bit disappointed that for how beautiful the region was, there really isn't much context to the Xuanwen Beasts. We assume that they are the servants of the Suanni race (which we'll talk about below) but there really isn't much context about these 'lesser' beasts beyond vague theories on whether they are lesser, inbred versions of the Suanni (below) or just a bunch of beasts that follow them around.
With a name that roughly translates to 'mysterious arts', the Xuanwen Beasts are basically just kind of generic servants of one of the mighty Adepti, and just like many mythological creatures in Chinese lore, they take a combination of various different real-life animals... but the end result ends up just looking pretty underwhelming to me, just like a panther with several extra feathers. If we hadn't had so many different variations of a normal 'wild animal' in Sumeru, I probably wouldn't have complained, but... I don't know. I felt like they could've done a lot more.
Solitary Suanni
The Suanni, named after the fifth of the Nine Sons of the Dragon in Chinese mythology, has a fairly more interesting design. The mythological Suanni is a lion/dragon hybrid, and they kind of try and do it here, but I also appreciate that they went for an extra twist by making the 'dragon' part be a lot more fish-like. The end result is an almost uncanny fusion of features, where the face isn't quite leonine but not quite reptilian either. It's not something I particularly like, but I get where they are trying to go for here and I appreciate it. The Suanni also ends up kind of looking a bit like a Vaporeon with this silhouette, which... I don't mind, really.
Just like a lot of otherworldly creatures in Chinese mythology -- doubly so for dragons -- the Suanni is of course associated with weather, and when you fight him he'll utilize wind and water specifically; with a mechanic that rewards you if you freeze him. The Suanni is also mentioned to be the source of the lion dance equivalent in the setting, where the people of Chenyu pattern the dance patterns on the movements of the Suanni.
The Solitary Suanni here is the 'overworld boss' of the region, and there's just one that hangs out in some random cave that gets pissed off when you enter and fights you. We actually meet two more Suanni throughout the journey -- the primary one is Lingyuan, the titular Adeptus that used to rule over Chenyu Vale, which is just a slightly recoloured version of this Suanni model. But more interestingly, we also have Man Chai the companion of a minor playable character... who looks nothing like either the Solitary Suanni or the Xuanwen Beasts, instead having a design based on the iconic lion dances of Chinese culture. It's a bit bizarre, but there's so little that they explain about the Suanni species in general that I don't really have much to say here.
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Praetorian Golem
We jump from the idyllic Chenyu Vale to the ancient, ruined, sunken and time-trapped city of Petrichor. It's like Atlantis, but with a healthy dose of Cthulhu, music hive-minds and timey-wimey business shoved into it, which I thought was initially a bit messy but I ended up rather liking the story of Petrichor.
Without really spoiling too much, these Praetorian Golems -- who we thought were just golems -- actually house the souls of the ancient warriors of the people in Petrichor. A simple enough concept and honestly not much to talk about, but, again, there's the whole time-travel/memory/dreams thing that goes on, but a as far as gameplay is concerned, it's a fun take on what's otherwise a pretty basic 'golem' enemy.
Statue of Marble and Brass
And the 'normal boss' of the Remuria region, which is... a centaur golem. Which, again, isn't the most exciting thing out there. Being a centaur does give it a bit more of a fantasy 'oomph' compared to, say, just another big golem, but I really find this guy's musical theme and its two very musical-instrument inspired weaponry to be more interesting than the general design of the Statue of Marble and Brass. The picture here doesn't really show it, but the Statue's shield actually has magical violin strings running through it, making it look like the Statue is fighting you with music... and since music powers a lot of what's going on in Remuria, it fits the theme! The sword itself either functions like a conductor's baton or a violinist's bow.
The title of the Statue is the "Legatus of Legion Athanatoi", which basically roughly translates to "Lieutenant of the Legion Undying". Over the course of the Remuria storyline, we also get to meet the true main villain that has cursed both the present-day humans and the trapped souls of the ancient civilization, and it inhabits the form of this centaur statue.
Again, not a whole ton to say here, it's a pretty simple enemy. I do really like how it just... breaks apart halfway across the horse side when you defeat it, though. The crumbling animation is just so abrupt!
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Arlecchino, The Knave "Cinder of Two Worlds' Flames"
Probably my favourite character and favourite antagonist in terms of writing, design and storytelling, Arlecchino is the fourth of the Fatui Harbingers we get to fight after Childe, Signora and Scaramouche... and we jump all the way to the upper echelons since Arlecchino here is ranked fourth among the Espada-esque Harbinger heirarchy. We get a whole lot of story about Arlecchino given to us over multiple patches, where we slowly deconstruct her reputation of a psychopath that takes in orphans and brainwashes them into child soldiers and spies... and turns out she's actually... still all that, but she's also a good Father to her men. There's a lot to go through and I don't want to talk about how I feel about the character... but Arlecchino's a pretty great design. She's also explicitly not quite human either, and if you play around with her in her playable form there are moments where she kind of glitches in and out of existence and there's some still (at the moment of writing) unexplained phenomena where she can briefly teleport you to a weird plane with a giant balemoon behind her.
And then of course, just like Childe and Signora, Arlecchino has a second form... and it's a badass one. Her primarily white outfit swaps colours and becomes black and gets a lot more accents to it, she shows a bit more skin (which, considering the genre, is actually done quite classily) and the tail end of her coat kind of explodes to resemble a bit of like, insectoid wings or something. That's in addition to her actual insect-themed wings, where her angelic wings split apart into six very explicitly spider-based claw-appendages. She even spends part of her second phase sitting on random thin red strings that's strewn all over the battlefield! The character herself is also compared many times to a spider (and had a spider pet as a child). It really is pretty cool.
Again, I don't have a whole ton to say more about her since I tend to not have too much to say about humanoid bosses without going too much into character analysis, but I really did think the fantastic backstory (and marketing, don't forget marketing) behind Arlecchino's release was pretty damn well-done.
Mystifying Megachurl
And one final little buddy here is a 'special' enemy in the vein of Beisht from a couple years ago, an event-exclusive boss... and it's a Samachurl variant. A 'Mystifying Megachurl', who has a giant wacky stick topped with a half-skinned dead fish and a leek for some reason. It just looks goofy and unlike most of Genshin's other events, there inexplicably is no lore or story for this guy beyond 'mumble-mumble something domain power infusion'. He's also very big, like standing twice the tall of the player. Again, no real reason. His powers involve really wacky meme-y nonsense like summoning cabbages from the sky, and I'm honestly slightly disappointed that he's not included in a more permanent or at least repeatable fashion.
I do want to include him because I think he's kinda goofy, and we've actually not had any variants for Hilichurls that... really could've been added by now. I know we had the elite 'Rogues', but I kind of wished we also had some goofier minions in the vein of Megachurl here.
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