(Logged as a shoe-in for both the base Monster Hunter: World game, and the Iceborne expansion.)
Lavish & deathly exciting at practically all times - varied and expressive social MMO tissue connecting its numerous multi-layered terrariums of gorgeous arenas and silly monsties.

I do have some background with the series, with much history on Freedom Unite, and far less with the fantranslation of Portable 3rd + 3Ultimate at various points through highschool, and hit the credits of Rise. Freedom Unite came packed with FMV cutscenes that demonstrate how the monsters lived in their downtime - characterising the monsters to assure the player that they weren't merely thoughtless models with movesets to memorise, but individual links in the food chain with roles that keep the world biodiverse & strong.
It was always my favourite part of the game, and what felt like the series' missing hook to really sell me on the core conceit was in how this aspect is somewhat downplayed or unexplored.

By God's grace this was the kind of ecological focus MH:W absolutely relishes in. An interlinking tapestry of ecosystems ticking away, living & interacting in countless ways to make the New World feel so gd raw. And it's not just pageantry either, it plays into behaviours and environment interactions from traps to turf wars. So so so good to head out for a simple hunt to watch it blossom into a scrappy mess of tooth & claw, so so so good to go on aimless expedition to a zone and notice a new handful of behaviours from their endemic life. I’d not be able to sleep at night if I didn’t compliment the chefs on all of this, every monster in every zone is given so much purpose it’s inspiring.

One thing this series has always been great at is its environment design - the world of Monster Hunter is a land of plenty, and everything is blown out of proportion to match. You're eating sirloin steaks the size of your head, oyster side dishes that can feed an army. The tooth you built your hammer out of can sink a ship. Zones and skyboxes that coil across different unique biomes rich in visual stimuli, adding heaps of context for the world and how things are as they are. Pan the camera up at any point and you can assuredly see a spire of choral, ice or crystal towering over you from what appears to be a mile away. Hoarfrost Reach is gorgeous I need to live there NOW.

Moment to moment combat is of course good as hell. I love that it’s slow and weighty enough to separate it from a more typical Capcom character action affair. Even with the amassing layers of QoL the series has glazed itself with, World still focuses on hefty player move commitment and punishment. Every weapon here feels great and each individually recontextualises your approach to any fight, but I found a home with the Dual Blades I’m afraid. I love these stupid ale blades man!!! Basically adored the progression right up until the Furious Rajang, where the game takes a very steep swerve into grind and Raid-like Design territory I find catatonic & diagnostic. The Fatalis fight is so much fun I wish I could solo it 😢

Even being Capcom's best-selling game ever, even with the widespread critical acclaim and obscene popularity, I still truly believe that Monster Hunter: World & Iceborne comprise an incredibly underrated and underappreciated game. Skill Up, a YouTube critic whose opinion I respect a lot called it "one of the best games ever made" and it's incredibly refreshing to see that because I don't think enough people are willing to make such a statement about Monster Hunter: World, I am another of those who is.

I think when you have a franchise that has a new game coming out every 3 or 4 years it's hard to really bask in the quality of any individual release. You often talk about the games in relation to eachother and think about how good they are compared to others in the series and don't hold them up against other games as a whole. A similar thing I think happens to Pokemon, for example. Generations 2-5 of Pokemon consist of some of the most popular and enjoyable JRPGs ever released, yet no one's ever willing to talk about how Pokemon Emerald or Pokemon Black/White 2 are some of the best games of all time because they're too swept up in the discourse of whatever else new is happening in the series, and comparing them to that.

But no, man. Even with Rise having released since, the more I think about it since the dust has settled the more I truly believe that Monster Hunter World & Iceborne deserve to be held up in even higher regard than they are. We need to really step back and look at not just how good this game is in the context of the series, but when held up against other games of its time. This game came out in 2018, over 4 years ago as I'm writing this review. Isn't that insane? It feels like you could release it today in 2022 and it would still be absolutely astounding in terms of presentation, in terms of quality-of-life changes and in terms of sheer memorability.

Context is important, so for a second I am gonna quickly compare this to another game in the series, ironically. Look at Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate from 2014, and look at just how dramatically this game improves upon that (already fantastic game) in less than 4 years. Gorgeous and sprawling interconnected maps with no loading screens, scoutflies eliminating the need to throw paintballs at monsters to track them, moving whilst using items, being able to physically see a monster you've just captured back at base camp after you've done so. There are countless quality-of-life changes and gorgeous little touches of artistry that make this game so fundamentally immersive and enchanting to play. World's maps truly are alive and so dense, you could get lost in them for hours just exploring and taking in all the endemic life and visual setpieces in all their little nooks and crannies.

And no, those maps may not always be perfectly suited for combat as a result (here's looking at you, Ancient Forest) and the game may be too RNG-heavy in its endgame, but these trade-offs are absolutely palatable in my opinion when you consider just how many things this game does right. Combat is still fundamentally so much fun, armour design is consistently incredible even if weapon design is lacking (which is markedly improved in Iceborne anyway) and the game perfectly paces its feedback loop by giving the player the most resplendent and relaxing (and customisable!) player home yet.

This game has given me so many memorable moments. Even with 4 years and a whole new game after it, I still think about my first time encountering Namielle and that unbelievable final boss fight of Iceborne all the time. A modern fucking classic, old school elitists be damned.

Not only is this expansion objectively bad in every single aspect but it also made me re-evaluate my opinion on the game as a whole which is overall quite negative. If you don't want to read paragraphs after paragraphs of me going over all the flaws and the bafflingly stupid design choices Capcom took with this one just know that
𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐡𝐨𝐭 𝐦𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝟏𝟎% 𝐨𝐟 𝐢𝐭 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐡 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐚 𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐢𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮'𝐫𝐞 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮'𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐥𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐲 𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐠𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚 𝐝𝐢𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐟 𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝟏 𝐨𝐫 𝟐 𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐬/𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐢𝐧 + 𝐚𝐧 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐲 𝐠𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐲 𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐬 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐚 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞

I usually go into games with a negative preconceived notion but this time around it was the exact opposite. In fact, I was excited for all the additional content which is somehow even longer than base game only to be hammered with disappointment after disappointment after the end of every single co-op session with a friend. My distaste stems from the accumulation of plethora of different reasons and I'll try to go somewhat in depth as to why I think MHW+Iceborne was the worst gaming experience I've had in recent times

-Recycled Fights/Content-
Right off the bat after hunting like 2 new monsters you're back to fighting the same things you've already killed a gazillion times in base game but now its their "subspecies" variant, which is really just a glorified word for reskins with little to no new addition to their movesets. This game has a serious reskin problem, to the point it can downright kill the motivation required to actually make progress. This is one of the main contributing factor as to why I called the game artificially bloated since even the newer monsters get recycled at one point or another. Also for a massive expansion all we got was only one new area which didn't even get properly utilized with another area which is just so bafflingly lazy to me, it's literally all the previous areas you fought the monsters in but now mashed into one. Like it's so obvious that Capcom became complacent to the point they can just reuse not just the monsters but even the areas and the troglodyte fandom will just eat it all up and praise it like it's a masterpiece which I can assure you it's not

-Weapon Tree System-
The way the weapon tree system works is straight up incompetent, like there's no justifying as to why I should have to go and farm base game monsters again for materials to get the specific weapon I want. Doesn't that like defeat the whole purpose of the defender weapons the base game introduced to get most people to speed up their progress? At least in the base game you could stick to one tree and progressively get weapons with somewhat better stats but in Iceborne if the tree you worked towards in the base game didn't reward you with a decent enough weapon in iceborne you'll have to go do another entire tree which is unbelievably tedious to do everytime you want to switch to a different build. The whole system is at such a disconnect with the idea of fun it feels like I'm borderline working a 9-5 job I hate

-Lengthy Hunts-
Due to the introduction of new mechanics like the clutch claw and wall bangs the monsters have super inflated hp which makes the fights incredibly long. I was never a fan of how long the fights lasted in the base game anyway but in Iceborne they take it to a whole another level, it's straight up endurance torture. The fact that a single monster fight can last up to 30-40 minutes long in and of itself is horrible by design. I know you can shorten the time by optimizing the damage with the most meta build and by constantly abusing the clutch claw but the hunts will always last gruesomely long on your first time hunting a monster with no prior knowledge about their moveset. The Barioth and the Shrieking Legiana fights are prime examples of that

-Endgame is way too grindy-
The entire gimmick behind Guiding Lands only exists to further inflate an already artificially bloated game to the point it becomes genuinely frustrating to play. Whoever came up with the idea of gating new monsters behind region levels should be fired from the development team immediately. This quite literally almost killed my interest to continue the game any further for almost an entire month but I decided to just skip the Guiding Lands all together with a very handy tool called cheat engine, there's no way I'm going to waste hundreds of hours of my life grinding away the same monsters in reused areas from the base game just because I want a slightly better set or a better weapon. Monster Hunter fans might cope for it but I'm not stooping so low to the point I'd waste away my whole life grinding in a lazy game mode which was basically just scrapped together from recycling everything

-Borderline gacha game/terrible droprates-
It ties in with the previous point quite flawlessly. In the endgame you're forced to grind materials that have ridiculously low droprates and to compensate for the low droprates the devs added in a mode which literally makes you play a gacha for items and upgrade materials that aren't easy to come by. And the rare materials aren't something you can just ignore, oh no they're mandatory if you want your weapon to do decent enough damage otherwise you can enjoy your 50 minutes long hunts

These were all Iceborne specific gripes but now I'll talk about some that applies for World and the series as a whole
1. Combat is a janky mess and this is coming from someone who solo'd some of the toughest fights in Iceborne's endgame like Alatreon and Fatalis with clocking in almost 200 hours into the game, never once I thought the combat was decent or even okay at best. It's an unresponsive mess which makes Souls combat seem like a work of art in comparison
2. Majority of the fights are terribly designed with little to no thought put into how they'd fair against the game's core combat which is clunky as hell + Capcom's idea of making a fight harder is by giving the monsters a bunch of annoying status effects which artificially amps up the "difficulty", I put difficulty in quotation because nothing in this game is truly difficult, literally anything and everything can be trivialized if you just get a build that counters the specific status effects
3. Chasing a monster around a horribly designed map for 10 minutes when they run away is a complete utter waste of time, so is gathering tracks for them to even show up. It's okay like the first 3-5 times but you have to do this tedious crap every single time you start a quest and that is not fun in the slightest
4. Even the cutscenes are always the same. Like they ALWAYS follow the same pattern, first we're shown a monster we've already hunted and then a new one pops up and beats the ever living shit out of it as if it's supposed to be intimidating or something. Please try and be creative in the way you introduce a monster for once
5. Switch-Axe is quite literally the only weapon I fancy out of the plethora of different choices you have here, everything else puts me to sleep

I went into Monster Hunter World with the expectation of fighting monsters with the weapons of my choice and having fun in the process but what I got was a literal grindfest that doesn't seem to want the players to extract any enjoyment out of itself. MHW+Iceborne is downright the worst game I've played this entire year

A game where a guild self-regulates the colonization of new lands, whilst both promoting scientific development and managing environmental balance as an independent, economic entity. Truly the capitalistic dream fully realized. Also, you whack dinosaurs with a big f- sword, or hammer or whatever.

What I appreciate the most about Monster Hunter World is that it is perfectly adequate to satisfy my every moods whenever I want to play: if I want an adrenaline rush through hunts and varied gameplay mechanics I can put myself against a Savage Deviljho and curse its’ and the Lord’s name; if I just want to progress I can almost always count on online help to dump– cough to carry me during harder fights; if I need to relax I can walk around the main hubs and talk to colourful, funny characters, or doing expeditions to fetch rare materials, discover rare or unique interactions in the wildlife (the sexual habits of lynians are so fascinating and they don’t even mind you recording every second of it), or simply walk around and soak in the beauty of the maps.

Of course, the vast majority of those who will play the game (and those who won’t the c•ckblocked by its godawful optimization and manage some workarounds, thanks nexusmod and steamforums) will mainly be interested in the ‘hunter’ part rather than the ‘world’ part, and it certainly does deliver. Every hunt is a glorious boss fight in and on itself. They are exciting, tense, fast paced, even strategic as you have to manage your resources, your positioning, the condition of your prey and the environments around you. Every new monster is a series of discoveries, to assimilate the monster moveset and work your reflexes on countermeasures, while also adjusting your playstyle to something that may very well be completely different from every fight you have had before. It is certainly difficult, yet the game does not gatekeep its progress, you can almost always find ways to ease the challenge by adequately equipping your palico companion (just give him paralysis or poison gear), other aids such as traps, lynians and minor monsters in the map, or calling for other players to join you. There are plenty of hunters out there always willing to lend a hand.

Crafting always offers new ways to play the game. Today you might see a particular weapon or armour and you will hunt the same monster multiple times, praying the random number god that it will drop the materials you need before the date of your wedding or of your grandchildren’s college diploma. There is a grand total of 14 different weapons to try out, I myself haven’t tried a couple of them yet, surely haven’t mastered more than two or three, and each play so differently it is like trying a new game every time you pick a different one. They all offer complex but accessible mechanics, various way to approach a challenge and a long list of moves and combo to learn. The game actively incentives to not button mash through your fights but carefully weight the timing and damage of each blow, the reaction times of the monsters and how best to utilize your knowledge to balance offence and defence. Of course, not that I am any good at it myself, I keep panicking and just spam heavy blows many times. The best suggestion one could receive upon beginning the game is to play it as a turn-based action game, rather than a real-time one.

Minor grips with the game, aside from the status of the actual PC port, include: 1. the time limit on missions, it sure adds tension but come on, despite having plenty of time to kill the same monster thrice I’d still like to not have a mental pressure if I want to explore the map a little during a hunt; 2. after every faint your stats reverse back to before you ate to gain the bonuses, which means if you have real troubles with a particular monster you’d have to wait every ten minute mark to buff again or waste a lot of consumables to regain those buffs (ancient potions are expensive to make, bloody hell); 3. as much as it is fun to witness monsters fighting each other (and it sure simplifies some of the hunts as they bite hundreds if not thousands of HP out of each other), some monsters such as the bazelgeuse could get a clue and stop intruding every second, attacking your prey but also, always, unavoidably hitting your character as well; 4. the monsters have presence, they sure feel like living dinosaurs walking around, and oftentimes they are so big the camera will commit seppuku altogether and a monster will occupy the full screen, while you won’t be able to figure out for many seconds where you are or what (or if) you are hitting; 5. hitboxes are not, uh, perfect: sometimes, many monsters are clearly coded so that the air they move around can still halve you HP while others can move around and, as long as you aren’t precisely where they are targeting, you won’t get hit. This last one may very well be intentional, but if it is so then it’s a weird design choice to artificially inflate difficulty, in a game that otherwise teaches you to value every space you and the monsters occupy.

MHW looks and sounds beautifully. Just like games such as the witcher 3, the souls series, MGSV and so on, there is an almost surreal and gripping ambience in every map, an absurd amount of secrets, trails and areas to discover, a rich palette of colours. It is just so satisfying to walk around, crawling in caves and climbing rock walls, and end up in a place where flying glowing jellyfishes abound, surrounded by rainbow-tinted corals, and you’d just be there for minutes and stare at this fantastically magnificent atmosphere, while immersing in the sounds of nature.

All in all, MHW is an experience I thoroughly recommend, as long as your computer specs allow it and it doesn’t systematically burn your CPU like, as I understand it, was a clear intentional joke on the behalf of capcom, undoubtedly in cahoots with the CPU manufactures industry. There is potentially endless fun to be had in the game, one of the best modern-day multiplayer experience to have with friends or newly met strangers online (just don’t accept any cough herbal remedy candy they offer you) and certainly a landmark for future looting-based action games. (Editor’s note: it’s been almost three years since MHW released and almost no game learned a thing from it. Game industry, what is wrong with you, you absolute fuc–

This is exactly what World needed and more. It's understandable to me why World lacked quite a bit of content (in comparison to other Monster Hunter games, it's still a hefty game when looking at other games) with it being the first true next gen Monster Hunter. Replaying Generations Ultimate and World back to back, it can't be understated just how much World 99% of the time change things for the better and the sheer amount of things that they did change is absolutely staggering. Still at the end of the day 36 monsters, with only 30 at launch, and some of those monsters being "You REALLY need other people to fight them", it's understandable why people got tired of World and why Iceborne is such an improvement. Maybe not with other players being required for certain fights (which are at least optional), but they added so much more to the game and refined the most polished Monster Hunter game even moreso that you can think of this as a straight up sequel. If you were left wanting with World then Iceborne is an absolute must and is currently the best Monster Hunter game, though that may in time be overtaken with Rise Sunbreak (hopefully that statement doesn't age badly).

Pros
- Adds a lot of content like new areas, Master rank, a lot of monsters and more gear
- Addition of clutch claw is great as a gap closer

Cons
- While the clutch claw is an interesting concept it is actually poorly implemented as the tenderizing mechanic that comes with it is a straight up requirement rather a sweet bonus, If you don't do it you basically deal less damage
- Bloated monster hp to compensate for the tenderizing mechanic, So yeah keep grappling
- Clutch claw targeting is weird and can get really annoying in hard hunts
- Some monster's AI stays too enraged for too long sometimes leaving you too little opportunity to attack or tenderize without getting punished

I haven't finished Iceborne, maybe I will in the future but not right now because of two words, clutch claw. It genuinely ruins what I believe to be a solid expansion and an overall improvement of base Monster Hunter: World.

So what's so bad about the clutch claw? The clutch claw is a tool that lets you grapple onto a monster. From there you can do a few actions, soften a part of the monster, as well as rotate the monster and slam them into a wall toppling them. I honestly don't have issues with what the clutch claw allows you to do, what I do take issue with is that the clutch claw isn't a supplemental tool like the slinger but a mandatory mechanic. And to pour salt in the wound, it's incredibly finnicky to use. I'll be targeting a monster's head with no obstructions and end up attaching to its thigh while it's kicking and get knocked off. However, none of that stuff really matters when compared to the largest issue, softening.

Softening a part of the monster turns that part into a temporary weak point that'll take more damage and allow skills involving weak points to activate on softened parts. All of that on paper does not bother me, just seems like a way to speed up hunts. WRONG! The health pools of monsters have been massively inflated compared to base game because of softening. The finnicky clutch claw is no longer a supplementary tool but now mandatory if you don't want hunts to drag on.

All of this is such a shame, because the monsters in iceborne are all fun to fight, (outside of clutch claw shenanigans). The story still sucks and cutscenes are still unskippable, but the hunts could've been so fun if not for the clutch claw. The clutch claw even infects the base game. There is a new type of stagger, which the community calls clagger, that monsters can experience. Monsters will sometimes get launched away from you, making you miss parts of your weapon combos. So you gotta clutch claw onto the monster to keep the momentum going. Clagger also affects base game monsters making it really annoying when you locked into a super element discharge, missing, and wasting all of your charged phials; all because the designers desperately want you to use the clutch claw.

Iceborne could've been great, but it just serves how one mechanic can ruin a whole experience. There is still fun to be had here but I'm just sick of the clutch claw to keep going for the time being.

So I had a previous review that was a bit more negative on the game and very similar to my lame shitpost review of Xenoblade 2 where I simply said "objectively better than the first game." I feel I was a bit too harsh on Iceborne then. Now a lot of the problems I had back then are still there but 3 years away from this exclusively playing Rise and Sunbreak definitely helped in giving me a newfound outlook for Monster Hunter World and Iceborne. Especially the latter.

Post Monster Hunter 3 I haven't really disliked any Monster Hunter game. 3 has a really lackluster roster, but I understand why it was like that. I don't like it, but I get it. P3rd on though? Banger after banger full on 10 on 10 games baby. P3rd? Banger. 3U? Banger. 4U? ALL TIMER THE POPEYES CHICKEN OF MH. Gen? Banger. GU? Banger. World would be the first one to really sort of shake up this streak for me as while I never did find the game terrible I always felt it was lacking something. A sort of charm the previous games had that the 5th generation wouldn't really bring back until Rise. Iceborne only exacerbated this despite the return of some of the more vibrant and odd monsters from older games. Didn't stop me from putting over 2K hours and now another 295 into it with this replay lmfaooo.

So yeah getting it out of the way now. Iceborne is a bit of a janky load still. The clutch claw sucks. This is a lukewarm take, but man does it suck having to do this to even make WEX work. The movement of the characters also feels really off compared to the previous games and even Rise. There's a bit of that Rockstar Euphoria bullshit going on where I feel some control responses take like 3 hours at times and cool I just got one shot by Fatalis epic. I'd talk about the deco grinding (still sucks), Guiding Lands (kill me), or the FOMO events, but those are mostly a nonissue now. If you're playing MHWI in 2023 (enjoy by the way if you got it on the current sale that shit is a steal) none of these things will really matter as naturally grinding out what you want or deco events may just get you decent decos. For The Guiding Lands unless you really want to augment some gear (and there's no reason to really care about attack and health augments I didn't use any at all this playthrough) you can just avoid it besides the mandatory story quests or Raging Brachydios event (one of the best fights). FOMO events nonexistent since Fatalis dropped back in late 2020 and the game is so much better for it. This is what it should have been all along and it rules. Yeah I still have my issues with some annoying shit. Why does the game punish me for playing good by having that dumb Rajang wall grab and Fatalis falling over knock me down? But the good out weighs the bad. Also while I find Rise's art direction to be much better as I feel MH should be a very stylized (yet realistic) franchise I can definitely at least say that the environments in this game are gorgeous and the HDR is so goooood when you figure out how to make it work. Just the wonderful contrast and colors you can give it. On a technical level yeah World is genuinely impressive especially for a PS4 game, and now on PS5 with the minimized loadtimes and unbroken 60fps lordy... All that paired with the amount of content makes this at this point in time one of the most bang for your buck games. If you've ever been interested in Monster Hunter and wanted an idea of what the franchise is then yes this is the game to play. I may prefer Rise and feel in many ways it is more representative of the franchise as a whole post Tri (goofy yet earnest) World is the game Wilds will definitely build off of more than the former even if it takes some elements from it.

It's a bit of a mess (why is Nergigante turned into Monsterverse Godzilla and why are the ledges so fucking annoying and why are the maps so tight and cramped) and some things really feel like the devs at times are trying to counter the player trying to have any fun (CC tenderizing), but MHWI is in my opinion still one of the gold standards of what a AAA release should be. This doesn't just end at release content wise, but in post launch content with free additional monsters and events to keep the game alive. Yeah it may not be the best MH, but I'm thinking it's a pretty damn good game.

Now if you'll excuse me I'll be playing Monster Hunter Rise and the older ones until Wilds releases alongside any other games I want to play.

If I gotta use one word to describe World, it's that it’s bloated - not in content, but with goals and concepts that come in conflict with each other. An always-online game with unskippable cutscenes and terrible story progression that makes the co-op experience near unplayable for anyone going through the game. Attempts at QoL and tutorialization all over the game to make it more newbie friendly, yet confuses them with distended menus that are much more difficult to navigate and and a variety of unintuitive tertiary mechanics in the form of clutch claw and slinger that badly attempt to solve MH pain points (that were never really a problem) yet only serve to overwhelm new players and hurt the core combat for veterans. And on a more personal note, the more realistic aesthetic takes away a significant amount of the series’ charm to me. It's easy to see now why this game pushed me away from Monster Hunter.

Despite that though, it's still Monster Hunter, and Iceborne adds some pretty fun fights and a mix of cool (and terrible) mechanics that made it worth revisiting. The core movesets of every weapon were revamped in really fun ways in this game that while lacking the spice of GU’s arts/styles or Rise’s wirebug shenanigans, still holds my interest. The game feels pretty balanced on top of that with a decent amount of viable setups and playstyles (elemetal in this game being actually a thing as opposed to Rise’s rather one-sided raw meta)

Though on that note, the way they handle much of the RPG side of things is another contradictory step back from previous games. Moving decorations from craftable to drops makes a bulk of your set’s skills at the mercy of RNG, forcing you to focus on craftable armor for skills and making for less freeform set building overall despite the redesigned skill system being intended to make builds more flexible. Sounds stupid? Yeah I know.

Pretty standard take incoming since the community has made it pretty clear how much it hates the clutch claw mechanic. It involves grappling unto the monster to deal a special attack which weakens the part you are latched on to, meant to give players more flexibility in what parts to attack. In practice though, with monsters balanced around it, it becomes more like a chore that requires you to use up big openings to re-apply a debuff every two minutes or else you deal no damage. The best it does for the game is give every weapon a universal way to latch on to flying monsters and deal some damage, but otherwise it de-emphasizes weapon mechanics and emphasizes a lot of the game’s jank.

It really sucks to get a good opening and instead of engaging with your weapon’s unique tools you just clutch claw because hunts would take way longer otherwise. Finding opportunities to clutch mid-fight is honestly a terrible experience that varies too wildly from monster to monster depending on how the coders felt about placing the hitbox that day. Some monsters make it really easy to clutch on the none-attacking part and make an opening that way, but using the same logic on other monsters will only lead to you getting fucked as you discover that their tail swipe inexplicably places a hitbox on their whole body. It makes certain monsters insanely abusable by this system and others nigh-impossible (without topple/stagger) in a way that has no relation to the overall difficulty of the monster. Overall this mechanic, along with slingers, only make the combat less focused and more inconsistent.

Other minor annoyances are mainly the theming of the game around the “World” and making it a more “believable ecosystem” end up hurting the gameplay for me more than anything else. The maps are a lot more annoying to navigate than anything of previous games. Ancient Forest is honestly one of the worst offenders with this, the dense foliage makes for poor visibility and its design lacks the interconnectedness required to make it work, and forces you into a lot of long and un-intuitive pathways to get where you need. The more “realistic” monster A.I and constant turf wars just add a lot of randomness to the combat.

There are things I like that are unique to this game. The Guiding Lands is a really cool idea for an endgame that could honestly be a whole game of its own. The game uses its position as a console game for some cool monsters every now then, like Namielle’s water, Nightshade’s smoke, and Shara Ishvalada’s sand, which make for good spectacle as well as neat ways for monsters to control space, and the game features really good iterations on most weapon movesets, which makes it hard to not have fun once I'm deep in a hunt.

But all in all, if Rise had more content and was on PC, I’d never touch this game again.

This is for both World & Iceborne.

Wilds got me roaring in some kind of way that made me crave MH for literally 2 months since it's announcement. All single player is how this game should be played unironically, that way you aren't bogged down by inflated near MMO levels of stat increase from part damage all the way to stun values.

Those aside, this is Capcom's so far, MH masterpiece in terms of worldbuilding and ecological care, joyous game.

Don't mind me just writing a love letter for this game--

This is my first entry into the Monster Hunter series and I had no idea what the freak I was doing, lol. Like I was LOST and veterans were talking about older monster and the new changes while I was just ???? Switch Axe go brrrrr. But once you get past that initial learning hurdle and put some hours in, it gets extremely addicting. I ultimately put in about 1K hours into this game? Played the majority of the events and joined the raids. It was some of the best time I've ever spent grinding, lmao. Joining SOS and helping others was also really fun. You’ll meet some of the coolest and helpful players. No two SOS missions are ever the same, haha! Even if you fight the same monster over and over. The devs truly cared for this game and it was amazing seeing all of the new content being added for Iceborne. There’s no “endgame” so it’s ultimately up to you and what your goals are once you finish all of the main storyline. I’ve never been the one to enjoy games where the focal point is to grind, but MH is truly a master at creating good gameplay loops for those who can get into this series!

Overall, I loved World/Iceborne and I absolutely can't wait for the next big game in the series!

Holy shit now the game is hard lol.

Amazing expansion, fun new mechanics for the weapons and the new fights are very hard. Loved my personal hotsprings in my room.

Now let's grind until my LeftShift finger break!

An absolutely phenomenal expansion to the already excellent Monster Hunter World, Iceborne adds a strong selection of new and returning monsters and variants to hunt in a new location, Hoarfrost Reach.

Seliana is a dramatically better hub than the base game with everything a short walk away, and some more QoL features to really smooth out the hunting experience even more. A somewhat more meaningful post-game was also added, and the final boss of the main story is one of my favourite final bosses period. Overall, it would be an absolute crime to not get this expansion if you are planning on jumping in to Monster Hunter World.

A betrayal of nearly everything i loved about Monster Hunter. Being a veteran myself, having experienced the good and bad of generations 2, 3 & 4 i have to say, the beginning of the 5th gen while graphically impressive, was only just that.
It introduced mechanics like open maps lacking areas that are seperated through load screens, but in return are way too big and confusing to navigate for their own good.
Monster AI was more aggressive than ever which made playing slow weapons like Greatsword awful. This game also introduced dumb mechanics like giving some monsters super nova attacks that have to be avoided by hiding behind randomly placed rocks and the worst of them all, the DPS checks that have absolutely no business being in a game like this.
Then there's the clutch claw and it's main mechanic called tenderizing. This is required to deal more damage but the worst thing about it is that Capcom has bloated the HP pools of monsters to compensate for this. So you're required to tenderize at all times. It's horrible game design in every way because tenderizing always stops the action for a short while and you have to repeat it every 30 seconds.
This is also the worst game in the franchise to play in co-op with friends because they decided it was absolutely necessary for the player to "experience" the cutscenes for themselves. Just why??? The next and even prior games can do co-op just fine without forcing every player to go solo, watch a cutscene and then, and only then, be able to finish the story relevant quest together.
The endgame consists of farming completely arbitrary stats in a new area that is made of reused assets. Also this is the only way to gain access to hunt certain monsters because Capcom didn't bother to just give us normal hunt quests.
This game is full of bad design decisions and arbitrary grinding that i fear for Monster Hunter 6, since it will be the same team that brought us World.
I want to be fair though and still give this game 2 stars, because it helped Monster Hunter to gain much more attention. That also had the sideffect of toxic meta players plaguing the community but since i have abandoned this game for good, i don't even care about that. Play Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak or any of the other games instead.

World: Iceborne, the Monster Hunter game that gave the franchise the spotlight it deserved! The game is truly good. Monster Hunter is never a graphical beauty kind of game since most of its previous games are playable in handheld consoles, and yet MH made a big comeback to the home console scene and for the first time ever, the PC scene. With them entering a new hardware they finally went all out with the graphics, it is beautiful a monster hunter game that is so detailed and yet so beautiful. The story for World and Iceborne is pretty actually well-written, yes, its not RDR kind of story but it is a pretty decent one for the franchise. It finally has NPC talking to you like they are actually part of the hunt and they feel alive which is pretty neat. The story still has that MH formula with you hunt down a flagship monster but there is a bigger and bader one, but the continuation of the story is pretty good. The combat is pretty fucking sick! It's one of the greatest combat in all of the franchise coming second is Rise. Every combo feels like you are doing Hunter Arts (MHGU) and if you time it perfectly well you will have the most satisfying hunt of all time. The combat and the weapons for the game is pretty well-balanced and I must say World and Iceborne has got to be top 1 best combat in all of the franchise. The only downside of this game is the weapon designs, it sucks ass, Its just barebones tape together to a piece of metal. All of the previous MH has beautiful and awesome looking weapons but in this game its so trash no inspiration at all, though the armor sets looks nice. The new monsters for this game is pretty good too, some are just straight up dinosaurs and some are actually pretty good and fighting them feels like an actual fight. Overall, Monster Hunter World: Iceborne is a great Monster Hunter game and a solid game. It might have a less monster hunter-ish feel to it but nonetheless its pretty great!