Day 3: Armored Mawdad
The Pikmin series is known to have some pretty interesting creatures, to put it crudly. This notion can mainly be seen in the series' boss battles. Some examples include a mechanized spider with a machine gun (Man-at-Legs), a water phantom on rollers that causes more anxiety than this whole global pandemic (Waterwraith), and a living mass of mud with a rainbow tongue (Quagled Mireclops) just to name a few.
For today, I want to talk about a first boss who, while his design is definitely more tame than the examples I've given you, is no less awesome when it comes to the fight itself. That boss is the first boss of Pikmin 3: The Armored Mawdad.
Like I said, the design is tamer than some of the other bosses, but it's still interesting to look at. A centipede looking creature covered in glass armor with some rather dangerous looking mandibles? Sounds like a concept for a good Pikmin boss to me.
Now onto the fight itself. The Armored Mawdad will try and follow you around in order to prove how dangerous a creature it can be, by charging at your Pikmin squad and potentially trapping them with his mandibles. You need to get your Pikmin out of there fast as this thing can eat five Pikmin at a time. Fortunately for you, he has glass armor, and you just got the Rock Pikmin. Use your Rock Pikmin to crack its armor and release the captured Pikmin.
Eventually, some of the Mawdad's armor will break off completely, allowing you and your Pikmin to attack its exposed body. As you throw your Pikmin and deal damage to the boss, the Mawdad will actually get smart and climb on the walls of the arena and go to the other side of it to avoid your attacks. Anyway, just attack the exposed parts until the Mawdad's health reaches zero and you win. Simple but very fun boss fight.
One thing I really like about the Armored Mawdad fight is the variety of ways you can defeat it. You can have it trap some of your Pikmin and break its armor while its busy with them. You can break its mandibles making it harder for it to eat Pikmin. You can even throw some Pikmin at its eyes to distract it and make him vulnerable for a while.
In this regard, the Armored Mawdad is almost like a 'Choose Your Own Adventure' boss battle. The adventure here is just about how you want to kill this thing: Do you want to go guns blazing and fight the boss head on, do you want to strip the Mawdad of his offense making it so he can barely fight back, or do you want to be that one guy in a fight who fights dirty and tries to blind you by throwing sand (or in this case Pikmin) in the other guys' eyes. The choice is yours, my friend, but no matter what choice you choose you're going to have a good time beating this down.