Outer Wilds is the perfect example of why you should always approach games that are considered "All time classics"/"Masterpieces" with a shit load of skepticism because despite all of the praises I hear about this game I can't for the love of god even bring myself to say anything remotely positive about it

First off, who thought putting a time restriction in an exploration focused game was a good idea? The amount of backtracking you need to do because of the supernova that triggers every 20 minutes coupled with the amount of annoying unforeseeable traps that also lead to your death is absolutely ridiculous, which was also the main motivator behind killing my intrigue to explore somewhat of a cohesive world with neat ideas and puzzles.
Now onto the elephant in the room, the controls are fucking abysmal which makes simply moving around quite annoying and they had the gall to design multiple segments that revolve solely around controlling your spaceship, which I can only describe as janky. Most of the deaths in this game either happen due to poor controls, random traps that you cant see coming & of course the stupid supernova which is basically the game's way of saying "Uh oh you couldn't explore everything within the measly 20 minutes we gave you? Time to send you back to the very beginning of the game with no way to fast travel" And I have a massive bone to pick with incompetent game devs that don't respect the player's time.
The story here is also quite non-existent and the people who insist otherwise are just plain out wrong because gathering wiki articles and putting them together does not make up for a very cohesive narrative that suck you into the experience, it's jarring if anything. I also don't see the appeal of the tracks here either, they don't fit the tone of the game at all but honestly speaking they're simply just lame.

Whoever thinks Outer Wilds is a masterpiece or a timeless classic, stop lying to yourself
This game sucks

Now this is a game I'm entirely on the fence about. On one hand I think how the game is structured in tandem with the unique interactive mechanics and its overall non-linearity is downright brilliant (with a few hiccups, of course) And on the other hand I absolutely despise the unsatisfying and rushed finale that literally renders most of what you do in the game completely pointless.

Alright, so the beginning stretch of this game can be tad bit confusing and overwhelming but after sinking in a few hours and getting accustomed to all the mechanics and skills it's very easy to get hooked in and fast. The different skills aka the various parts of your psyche that affects the dialogues and how you interact with the world is unarguably the best part of this game. Depending on what part of your psyche you put the most points in you will get VASTLY different outcomes of little tasks like getting a hanged body down from a tree, while also affecting your abilities to pick up on certain leads. Which ultimately ends up giving the game a lot more variety and replay value than it'd initially have if it stuck to the more linear and rigid story telling formula of most other CRPGs. Also the way all the seemingly pointless and insignificant side quests loop back into main quests in the most unexpected way imaginable is done competently and can lead to a lot of "ah ha" moments. I also appreciate the fact that despite the game being entirely reliant on texts the dialogues are delivered in a digestible manner with everything fully voice acted and the voice acting is surprisingly top notch. At first when I was trying to read through every single line of text I thought the dialogues felt dense but that's objectively the wrong way to go about playing the game as you're punished for picking too many options. Once you start playing the game as it is intended you start to appreciate how well written the character interactions are with a lot of genuinely funny banters that don't feel forced. But there is something else entirely that can actually interfere the with the game's pacing and it's the constant DnD skill checks which forces you to do a lot of backtracking and chore-ish tasks just to have a higher chance of succeeding and even then you can fail. Which I can see being the main contributor behind putting off a lot of people and rightfully so and it's objectively a bad game design approach when most people playing the game save scum repeatedly to get past them.

Now onto my main gripe with the game and it's the ending. The finale is flat out terrible with absolutely zero thought put behind and it contradicts the whole investigation this game revolves around. Without delving too deep into spoiler territory, it's the whodunnit. It's entirely detached from everything you do throughout most of the game, from every lead you gather throughout your entire investigation. And to address all the idiotic copium takes I see defending this god awful ending like "oh no but it's supposed to be meta! it fits the themes! it was never about the murder mystery", The game quite literally frames itself as a murder mystery that is LITERALLY your entire objective throughout the whole thing and the game failing to deliver a proper satisfying conclusion shouldn't be above criticism, it's objectively bad and if you can't see that you lack critical thinking skills. Also if there ever was a game that would benefit from having several different endings that vary vastly from one another it'd be THIS but what the game delivered was the exact opposite an extremely linear final segment which contradicts the rest of the game's open-ended nature.

Disco Elysium is a game that has a lot of never-before-seen unique mechanics in a narrative game with a lot of entertainment value but all of it is bogged down by a HORRIBLY botched ending.

𝐄𝐥𝐝𝐞𝐧 𝐑𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝟏𝟎𝟎% 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰

Going in my expectations for the game were already quite low since I just don't see how slapping an open world would fair for a formula of games that built its entire genre around compact level design and meaningful exploration. And as usual, I was right on the money. The open world serves absolutely no purpose other than to get the player from point A to point B with worthless copy-pasted side content sprinkled around which get stale rather fast (more onto the quality of side content later)

But hey it doesn't take a game to be the pinnacle of gaming to please me. A half-decent combat system coupled with fun boss encounters oughta keep me satisfied. Honestly the reason why I extracted so much enjoyment out of DS3 despite all the flaws. Surely, ER delivers on that front, right? Not in the slightest. In fact, I'd say this is quite literally Elden Ring's biggest flaw which as you can tell did not sit right with me, ending up being the most unsatisfactory souls experience thus far


- 𝗟𝗲𝘁'𝘀 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗸 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗯𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗯𝗼𝘀𝘀𝗲𝘀

Elden Ring has the most flawed combat system out of Fromsoft's whole lineup. So much to the point where certain playstyles are just not viable if you're trying to have fun with the game. And the issue lies with how the bosses are designed, they're made over the top aggressive to the point they don't compliment certain playstyles like pure melee & the addition of the jump attack and shield counters do very little to rectify this, so they're not even worth bringing up. The combat is essentially the same as DS3 with bosses designed in a way that encourages passive play which just isn't fun. To make matters even worse a good majority of the bosses are straight out cheap and unfun in terms of difficulty if you plan on not abusing the cheap spirit summoning system. Which ironically enough also ruins most of the bosses, even the very few ones that I'd actually consider decent are completely ruined by summoning. Mindlessly putting two mini bosses together and passing it off as a single fight also goes to show how little thought went into designing most of the fights. Even some of the solo fights try to amp up the difficulty by making the bosses shoot annoying projectiles/AOEs while attacking at the very same time, if that doesn't scream artificial difficulty idk what does. That being said this game had ONE boss fight that I consider to be the absolute best among the souls titles (sekiro not included) and I had the time of my life mastering the fight and that boss is Malenia. This is what every optional challenge bosses should strive to be like. She demands perfection while not being cheap or frustrating, loved every second of it. If ER was just the Malenia fight I'd give it a solid 5/5, no joke.

- 𝗟𝗲𝘁'𝘀 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗸 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗹𝗼𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗻 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱

It's the most unrewarding experience trying to explore every nook and cranny of the pointlessly massive open world where most of it is barren. The recycled caves and catacombs don't bring me any joy to discover since they're all the same with some of the worst dungeon designs I've seen in any video games ever and the bosses being mobs slapped with a boss hp or just reused previous mini bosses makes me straight out distort my face in pure disgust. It's a shameless attempt at padding out side content which does more harm than good to the overall game since a massive chunk of it is just discovering and going through these worthless copy-paste dungeons to fight bosses or mobs disguised as a boss you've already fought multiple times in the past.

- 𝗟𝗲𝘁'𝘀 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗸 𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗹𝗼𝗿𝗲

Actually one of the better aspects of the game. So much effort went into quests that they even kept whole open world regions and dungeons exclusive to specific quests, even bosses, albeit pretty unfun, I can still appreciate the length they're willing to go to make the quests actually worthwhile the player's time. Also like how the lore isn't needlessly obscure to the point it's obnoxious like it was in DS1 to 3
Characters and the lore gets a pass from me. For the first time I was actually invested enough to care about the world and the characters

- 𝗟𝗲𝘁'𝘀 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗸 𝘃𝗶𝘀𝘂𝗮𝗹𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗮𝗰𝗹𝗲𝘀

The initial few areas and the open world for the most part (with the exception of some specific regions) look too samey and straight up ugly as hell but god this game has some of the most eyecandy-esque dungeons and boss areas I've come across in any game ever, period. Which should be a good thing, right? No, I could careless about pretty looking areas when the actual fights are sacrificed in the name of spectacles. This is honestly the main reason why I didn't like the final fight at all, since they ruined a perfectly good first phase with one of the worst spectacle bosses that just screams tedium.


Quantity over quality is the name of the game, you're doing DS2 proud Elden Ring
1/5

Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon is an

incredibly flawed title that people will eat up regardless, because it carries the Fromsoft name while outright ignoring or brushing over the absurdly stupid and contradictory design approach present in the game

Now sit down and let me explain what I mean by the hypocrisy in its design approach
Despite the series crafting its whole identity around the very idea of customization the game actually allows for very little experimentation in terms of any meaningful customization. The main culprit here is how game constantly incentivizes or hell even outright forces you to stick to the most damage dealing tools at your disposal since most of the bosses from the halfway point onward are all pretty shameless DPS rushdowns utterly devoid of any skill expression whatsoever. And, that's further exasperated because of the absolute incompetent balancing that's present in the game which pretty much discourages any experimentation with all the weapons you're given only to use the same broken build just to meet the constant DPS check the game throws at the player. Also, a lot and I mean A LOT of the tools are downright useless such as parry/block shield and various different gun types because of the game constantly demanding you to deal a staggering amount of damage in short bursts. And 9 times out of 10 a lot of the weapons are meaningless stat modifiers with nothing meaningful to offer in terms of the actual combat

Other than the inherently contradicting nature of the game there's not much to say other than the fact than the game is pretty much below subpar with unbelievably lazy level designs where you basically just interact with several different points in the map while killing a few mobs with occasional AC (NPC) boss fights with full fledged bosses being very few and far in between. Thus the gameplay structure ends up being extremely repetitive and boring 90% of the time. But in terms of presentation the game is also quite lacking with the exception of the last few hours and the music is so dull and forgettable to the point that I had to put it on mute

Things I liked (Crazy!)
+ Movement in this game feels extremely seamless and satisfying once you get the hang of it all, which is pretty much why I stuck with a lightweight mech build throughout most of the game
+ The full blown bosses (except Ayre) were somewhat entertaining to fight with Ibis Cel 240 being the cream of the crop
+ Arena challenges started out fun but soon got repetitive once I got to A rank and beyond
+ Despite most people hating the UI I actually think it works out for this game surprisingly well as everything you need to constantly manage are displayed on the lock-on which you're always looking at
+ Yeah I can't think of anymore if I'm gonna be honest lmao

Nitpicks
- The lock on in this game on Keyboard and Mouse is atrocious especially against the final boss of the bad ending
- Not being able to equip parts right after buying and having to go back to the main menu to do it is annoying, especially given the fact that you have to do it a LOT
- Melee attacks can be pretty janky and outright not hit whatever you're fighting despite attacking point blank range
- The NPCs constantly yelling at you if you take hits or do quite literally anything gets tiring super fast
- The sound cues with the red indicator is super lazy and unintuitive

Fromsoft's laziest title so far, I genuinely can't bring myself to give it a score any higher than 1/5

It turned out exactly as I expected. A boring cookie cutter action game with an overemphasis on "Immersion" to the point it made the actual gameplay feel like an afterthought. It's literally just an interactive movie (more on this later) trying to constantly hammer some idiot story down your throat.


There's absolutely no pros so I'll only list down the cons

1. Story

The writing is downright lazy, the characters are all dull (sometimes super obnoxious) and their development is the most forced thing in the universe. Despite being a narrative-driven title the game doesn't even try to tell something even slightly interesting. Which is funny because I thought at least the plot would carry me through the painfully bad combat segments that feel like of tertiary importance.

2. Combat

From the FOV alone I could tell it was gonna be bad and voilà I was right. But it has parrying and parrying should be fun, right? No, it's not. Parrying is rendered pretty much useless because of the restrictive field of view and the fact that you fight nothing but hordes of mobs that comes at you from directions that you can't even see. So, dodging is all you ever rely on to avoid incoming attacks. The stupid cinematic fov exists to ruin a combat system that is already quite dry. Another aspect of the game that really bothered me is how every single enemy is a literal sponge which makes the combat tedious as hell. For example, even the very basic bitch mobs take up to 15-20 slashes to kill.

3. Bosses

You fight the same boss reskinned 8 times and the last boss is also the very first boss you fight with virtually the same moveset but this time he does more damage. Do I gotta say more?

4. RPG leveling system

This only exists to make an already baby game even easier. You can completely ignore this and feel barely any difference even against late game enemies, and this is coming from someone who beat it on hard and normal on and off

5. Side content/Puzzles

Tried doing them for the first 3-4 hours but soon got sick of them and gave up all together since it's just the same crap recycled over and over again. As for the mandatory puzzles they are all braindead. Like are these made for people with down syndrome or what? I personally wouldn't even classify these as puzzles but the game insists they are soooo

6. Overemphasis on presentation

It becomes tiring when the game constantly shoves pretty looking areas and models on your face telling you to look at them. I kind of stopped caring after a while, pretty presentation alone can't save a dry game that has nothing fun to offer.

7. Literally an interactive cinema

Platforming? Press the interact button. Climbing? Press the interact button and watch the character climb. Like pretty much 80% of the action your character takes goes like this. Press the "E" button to do this and do that. Also the sheer amount of QTE segments in this game almost made me consider dropping it all together halfway through.


I spent around roughly 25 hours playing this game and I consider every single one of those hour wasted time

0/5

If you're under the impression of this game being an action title masquerading as a cover shooter, then let me break it to you, it's not an action game by any stretch of the imagination, it is simply a repetitive and extremely flawed movement focused cover shooter with a mind-numbingly boring gameplay loop. Even as a shooter this game has very little entertainment value as it is loaded with meat sponge boss fights that require 0 strategy to take down and can be extremely tedious in the hardest difficulty while also offering little to no actual enemy variety in the mob department. And on top of all that the game is plagued by god awful pacing where you sometimes watch cutscenes that are straight up longer than the actual gameplay segments and the narrative being non-existent with nothing but corny dialogues does not help its cause. Visuals and Music are quite samey and forgettable too which is fitting since the entire game is just that "forgettable"

Going in I expected to absolutely hate this game since I have a track record of dropping every other Rockstar titles I tried in the past but it turns out I ended up liking this one, quite a lot actually. Although, there are specific segments of the game combined with some bafflingly archaic and repetitive design choices that I disliked equally as much

The story is obviously the game's main selling point and oh boy did it not deliver on that front. It's a character-driven narrative with competent writing that is no less worthy of being called a narrative masterpiece. Anyone that's willing to look past the slow pacing at the start is bound to appreciate what the story has to offer given it picks up pretty fast, around 2 chapters in or so. Though, even the slower parts of the story weren't bad and that's all thanks to the memorable cast of characters, to further strengthen my point, I have a terrible memory when it comes down to names but I can recall the entire gang by their names.
But if you know me, the story will mean absolutely nothing if the game has nothing else going on for itself. So no matter how good it is, it's not the highlight in a "video game", it's the dynamic open world. If anyone as of now asks me what my favorite open world game is I'd say it's RDR2 at the drop of a hat, the open world is that good. The amount of effort that went into crafting the world is ridiculous given how there's rarely any repetition and every single encounter always has something new to offer. Exploring the open world for the first time stumbling across random chance encounters and stranger missions or just interacting with the world in general were some of the most fun I've ever had playing this game while being completely enamored by the realistic yet subtly stylized art direction.

Aaand this is where the praises stop, now it's time to whine

This game can be such a fucking waste of time to sit through after the honeymoon phase is over and I blame it all on the stupid obsession with realism Rockstar had while making this game. Oh you want to go from one corner of the map to another one to do a side quest or whatever? Good luck sitting through doing NOTHING while watching your horse in cinematic view from awkward ass angles for 10 minutes and more! Like, I don't care about your stupid boner for realism, don't waste my time and give me an option to fast travel like every other open world games
The gameplay during story missions are either stupid chores or straight up direction-following simulator made for mentally handicapped children. There's so little freedom as to how you can approach the missions it's infuriating, like what the hell do you mean "MISSION FAILED" just because I tried reaching our objectives a little ahead of the stupid NPCs I'm supposed to trail at the pace of a literal goddamn snail?? I swear every single story mission plays out literally the same. It's basically, you follow an NPC for minutes then engage in some unpolished and clunky cover based third person shooter then follow NPCs some more and repeat, it's literally so braindead. I'm sorry but if all you do are the main quests just to wrap up the game, you haven't actually played the game, you just watched some low IQ interactive movie. At least try and take notes from your own damn open world, it's not that hard.
The story also ends on a sour note with an extremely rushed epilogue that's somehow also needlessly stretched out for no goddamn apparent reasons. Honestly would've preferred if the credits rolled right after Chapter 6 instead of the washed up DLC ass epilogue that stretches on for 7 hours

Despite my complaints I still think the pros outweigh the cons, so it's a good game overall in my book. Though I don't recommend it if you don't have the patience for Rockstar's dated game design philosophy

Going in I absolutely had 0 expectations, wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that I was expecting to hate it given how much of a cheap bloodborne knock off the game looked at first glance but the game proved me wrong with its combat system, which is far closer to Sekiro (if you don't play like a braindead idiot, that is) than BB with a spin of their own on the posture system which is the green health bar, it adds a well needed layer of depth to the overall combat, keeping the player constantly switching between different attacks to dwindle down the enemy's health, while also demanding an aggressive playstyle since the enemies tend to regenerate if they aren't being pushed with the green health remaining. Basically it's the almost the exact same thing as the posture meter but it works on vitality damage as well since this game isn't streamlined for parrying which is a missed opportunity since I believe it'd have been better off if it discouraged dodging and focused more on parrying since the combat clearly built around the idea of parrying, the bosses make it obvious. The RPG elements were totally redundant and only exists for the sake of following age old souls tradition, that's also something the game would be better off without.

Thymesia is quite lacking in the level design and visuals department but the combat kept me hooked throughout its measly playtime of 6 hours with some very well-designed humanoid bosses, the non-humanoid ones are just tedium incarnate though

Alright so this is a game I had an extremely negative preconceived notion about until actually playing through it myself on hardcore difficulty. Mostly due to me never really being a fan of the og title or the series all together but this somehow ended up being my favorite out of all the RE games due to just how little nonsense or padding there is in the entire game, you're pretty much just always engaging in the gameplay and fighting through hordes of ganados giving the whole game tons and TONS of replay value.
Though the game having a bloated boss roster with mostly poor boss fights with the exception of one or two sort of diminishes the replay value but eggs and rocket launchers exist so I can kind of look past it but at the same time these kind of games are just not designed around full blown boss fights, it makes no sense that they still decided to shove in so many of them in this day and age. Hands down the worst part of playing through the game
Also horror is still non-existent here but compared to its og counterpart it at least tried and is far more tolerable when it comes down to the overall narrative and corny one-liners and what not but I still cringed through most of it
Okay game, might just throw in a Professional run in the future

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