This review does not take Iceborne into consideration
Anyone who knows me knows I'm a monster hunter FREAK. Since falling in love with 4U almost a decade ago, i've been at capcoms every whim. If they said jump id ask how high, etc etc. Im a junkie and tsujimoto is my dealer.
so when world was announced, i was pretty hyped! me and my MH group were looking forward to the big levels, the ecosystem, the big fancy graphics, and just getting to play through a new MH together. Then world came out and..... yeah.
World is easily the biggest departure (so far) between monster hunter gens, and not a lot of what world brought was good. the base monster cast of World, while it has grown on me, felt SERIOUSLY lacking for a long time. Weapon designs were also really bad in lots of places (though, knowing now that they only had like 2-4 weapon designers in the entirety of world's lifespan, im maybe ok with it?), and combining singleplayer & multiplayer to 'streamline' the game made the quest list feel less dense overall. The game was also impressive graphically, but I felt like a lot of the 'monster hunter charm' was lost in that transition (which iceborne thankfully fixed a bit). The colors in World are so muted, save for maybe Elder's Recess? and there's maybe like 5 or 6 colors used through the entirety of the game. Coral Highlands should be WAY more colorful than it is imho. Its like comparing a cartoon to its live action hollywood movie version (which could apply to Monster Hunter now that i think about it...) The story and characters here all feel pretty generic too compared to say, guildmarm or the caravaneer; they're servicable, but only the Handler will stick around in people's minds (for the wrong reasons).
The BIGGEST sin however, and i pray Wilds doesnt take this same approach, is not allowing people to play through the main story together. In World, if you and your buddies are on the same main quest, you all have to load in the quest, find the monster and let the cutscene play out, THEN the other 3 people have to leave their session and load into the host's session. This was omega annoying to deal with, and definitely what killed the interest in it for my MH group. The SOS system helps redeem this a little bit, but there's much less of a communal feeling that older games had (and i dont think we'll ever get back). Plus having PC release later and be on a whole different update schedule for the game (not to mention how bad both versions ran when they dropped on PC (its better now tho)) was just... ugh.
I wont pretend this game is completely irredeemable though: the moveset upgrades here for weapons were pretty dope, Armor Design is pretty great across the board, some of the new monsters in base world are sick, and, for better or worse, this game made monster hunter blow UP over here in the west. You do see some of the horrible insufferable World fans in discussions every now and then, but i would say its a very vocal minority. Or at least I hope so. Oh also Turf Wars are fucking sick!!!
Overall, a lot of very minor (and some major) things make this game add up to be not so strong of an entry for me personally. However, Iceborne does a great job at fixing a lot of the issues I had with the game. If you want to play Monster Hunter, this or Rise are fantastic places to start, since both go dirt cheap.
Anyone who knows me knows I'm a monster hunter FREAK. Since falling in love with 4U almost a decade ago, i've been at capcoms every whim. If they said jump id ask how high, etc etc. Im a junkie and tsujimoto is my dealer.
so when world was announced, i was pretty hyped! me and my MH group were looking forward to the big levels, the ecosystem, the big fancy graphics, and just getting to play through a new MH together. Then world came out and..... yeah.
World is easily the biggest departure (so far) between monster hunter gens, and not a lot of what world brought was good. the base monster cast of World, while it has grown on me, felt SERIOUSLY lacking for a long time. Weapon designs were also really bad in lots of places (though, knowing now that they only had like 2-4 weapon designers in the entirety of world's lifespan, im maybe ok with it?), and combining singleplayer & multiplayer to 'streamline' the game made the quest list feel less dense overall. The game was also impressive graphically, but I felt like a lot of the 'monster hunter charm' was lost in that transition (which iceborne thankfully fixed a bit). The colors in World are so muted, save for maybe Elder's Recess? and there's maybe like 5 or 6 colors used through the entirety of the game. Coral Highlands should be WAY more colorful than it is imho. Its like comparing a cartoon to its live action hollywood movie version (which could apply to Monster Hunter now that i think about it...) The story and characters here all feel pretty generic too compared to say, guildmarm or the caravaneer; they're servicable, but only the Handler will stick around in people's minds (for the wrong reasons).
The BIGGEST sin however, and i pray Wilds doesnt take this same approach, is not allowing people to play through the main story together. In World, if you and your buddies are on the same main quest, you all have to load in the quest, find the monster and let the cutscene play out, THEN the other 3 people have to leave their session and load into the host's session. This was omega annoying to deal with, and definitely what killed the interest in it for my MH group. The SOS system helps redeem this a little bit, but there's much less of a communal feeling that older games had (and i dont think we'll ever get back). Plus having PC release later and be on a whole different update schedule for the game (not to mention how bad both versions ran when they dropped on PC (its better now tho)) was just... ugh.
I wont pretend this game is completely irredeemable though: the moveset upgrades here for weapons were pretty dope, Armor Design is pretty great across the board, some of the new monsters in base world are sick, and, for better or worse, this game made monster hunter blow UP over here in the west. You do see some of the horrible insufferable World fans in discussions every now and then, but i would say its a very vocal minority. Or at least I hope so. Oh also Turf Wars are fucking sick!!!
Overall, a lot of very minor (and some major) things make this game add up to be not so strong of an entry for me personally. However, Iceborne does a great job at fixing a lot of the issues I had with the game. If you want to play Monster Hunter, this or Rise are fantastic places to start, since both go dirt cheap.