At the time of writing, I didn't finish the main story yet. But I'm near the end. So, I saw enough to talk about it.

The gameplay loop is great fun. It's just boss rushes for materials and story progression. But what I want to talk about is how this game having a consistent difficulty curve made me love the series. After writing it off.

The first Monster Hunter I tried was Tri on 3DS. But the first actual boss in that game is such a big leap in difficulty I failed it multiple times across multiple hours until I got frustrated and dropped it. Basically, barely understanding the game but having to fight a boss that I think is as hard as the 6th or 7th one you find in this. Having fought monsters that got more difficult progressively, I could learn how to play the game better and have fun with it.

After seeing how I felt about trying this compared to Monstie Tri, it really solidified for me how important a gateway game is for difficult games. In case anyone played any of the older games and had similar issues with the difficulty (Don't know if it's just a Tri thing), I'd recommend you give this series a try again with this one.

At the time of writing, I finished the main game and all the side content (optional dungeons and side quests) and did most of the post game, including the optional dungeon. Basically just need to grind for bosses, so, I can talk about post game too.

I feel a little conflicted on this. To me, the dungeons themselves were either great or pretty bland. They all have their own gimmick, but some of them didn't appeal much to me. The optional dungeons were mostly all great. The post game optional dungeon I thought is the best one in the game.

Another issue I had with it was how all over the place the difficulty was. It took me 3 tries until I started really loving it and looking forward to playing more of the series. It's not an easy game and somehow the second and third big bosses being the hardest (I had less trouble with the final boss) really soured my experience multiple times. I think a consistent difficulty curve is really important for difficult games. Especially for newcomers.

With the bad out of the way, the gameplay loop is consistently great, the ability to subclass and get skills from other classes on your units is great, map drawing is fun and when the dungeons are great they are some of the most fun I had in first person dungeon crawlers. The post game dungeon is my favorite dungeon in a game of this genre.