(this review only for base World; still have to play Iceborne)

I kind of tend to play, for lack of a better word, a “character” on here, I exaggerate perhaps my more snobbish or extremist opinions because, well, I think it’s funny, so let me break out of that framework for just a moment to make sure you know that, right now, I am being completely serious: I do not think my greatest enemies and haters could craft an opening to a game with the specific intention of making me unhappy and do a more effective job than the team at Capcom did for Monster Hunter World.

It’s hard to imagine a video game opening more dull than any (other) given Monster Hunter’s. You start in a village, you’re a hunter, but first you need to spend some number of hours collecting plants and killing tiny monsters that pose no kind of threat and don’t actually teach you any valuable skills because, well, they’re so easy. And maybe do some of the endless tutorial quests that don’t offer anything fun or substantial. Then eventually, hours in, you start doing the task the game is literally titled after and hunt some monsters. These early monsters are also not the best, and since most newcomers are probably also not going to grasp even the general shape of the ideal use of their (probably arbitrarily chosen) starter weapon, you have a game that takes a long, long time to get going. Sunk cost fallacy forced me to push through the dull opening in Monster Hunter Rise (the first time I had spent 60 bucks on a game in a long time, and I wasn’t about to bounce off it easily) and after maybe 15 hours, suddenly something clicked in my brain, I said (out loud) “Oh no!” (realizing I was about to fall down quite a rabbit hole), and then I proceeded to funnel weeks and weeks of my free time into it. (Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate, the other MH title I’ve now played, has an even worse beginning, but knowledge of how much I loved Rise and hope that GU would open up kept me going--and it did.)

Monster Hunter World, on the other hand, has a big AAA-y opening. Very Elder Scrolls hand holding tutorial. I hate the recent Elder Scrolls’s tutorial dungeons (especially Oblivion’s) but can on some level accept them: a lot of people probably play an Elder Scrolls for their first real big action-adventure 3D RPG type game. Maybe they need to learn how to walk, and how to open a menu, and how to open a door. But I humbly suggest that no one is coming to Monster Hunter World as their first real big action-adventure 3D RPG type game; at the very least, no one who does not also have someone like an older sibling sitting next to them on the couch and talking them through it. The opening to this game is, on paper, more “action-packed” than the other games’ openings, but it is so dull. You meet some psychotically chipper, unnamed, hideous NPCs, you end up on the back of the big giant evil boss monster, you get a prompt telling you how to move the camera, you get a prompt telling you how to walk. Impaled on the giant monster back is the ship in which you arrived. It’s impossible to miss. As you walk towards it, one of the psychotically chipper, unnamed, hideous NPCs points directly towards it and forces the camera, and you, to sit there and gaze at it, for what feels like just enough time for the window on your Steam refund to run out. You see some monsters, but can’t fight them, because you don’t have a weapon. Your “friend” gets attacked, some other guy (unnamed, psychotically chipper, and hideous) saves her. A chase sequence happens, but it’s just a cutscene. Other Monster Hunters have key quests you have to do, but they at least give you the illusion of feeling open-ended and exploratory. Monster Hunter World shunts you from story quest to story quest, and what a story it is! (It’s horrible: I noticed a lot of people complaining about how barebones Rise’s story is, but at least it isn’t this.) I’m impressed that this was the first Monster Hunter to make it big in the West, because the opening is horrible, and the story quests feel so restrictive. Where my first time in Rise I luxuriated in the freedom of the quest selection, and took my time, setting mini goals for myself before moving on to the next rank, in World I always feel rushed.

This all sounds like I hate the game. I don’t. I do, however, hate the beginning. It is the least fun I have ever had with a game that I have not given up on. I once almost bought this on Steam sale, before I played Rise, and I can say, I am positive that if I had (assuming I then played it, which is not a given), I never, ever, ever would have gotten into Monster Hunter. I never would have even entertained the idea of buying another Monster Hunter title. I would have probably refunded this game before two hours, or maybe trudged it out to the five hour mark before deciding I hate this game and this series.

Which would be a shame, because this is a great series, and this is a good foundation for a game (that I hope will become great in its expansion). I don’t really like the art style, or, rather, I hate the way this game looks, even compared to the low-res Switch game and 3DS port that are my other entries in the series (both the general muddyness of the color palette and the more “grounded” weapon and armor designs in low and high rank (I’ve heard Iceborne fixes this somewhat)). I don’t like the way single-player and multiplayer are the same thing. I don’t like how intensely the story strings you along from quest to quest. But at its core, this is still phenomenally fun gameplay. Caving in a monster’s skull with a 500 pound slab of bone sharpened into something that vaguely resembles a greatsword is fun. Each of the fourteen weapons feel so different, and are all so satisfying to master (well, I can only actually vouch for eleven: across my three Monster Hunter games and hundreds of hours, now, I still haven’t ever touched a gunner weapon).

The way I feel about it, though, is kind of similar to how I feel about Oblivion, the Elder Scrolls game. Now, I mean, yeah, there are few games with less in common that occupy slightly similar genres (“fantasy” “action” “RPG”), but basically, I don’t like Oblivion very much, largely because I played it after I played both Morrowind and Skyrim. So I loved Morrowind for the old school RPG feel, the lack of direction, and then I loved Skyrim because of what I’ll call modern convenience: it was shallow, but sometimes it’s fun to have that kind of experience, and when I wanted something older school, Morrowind was right there. Then, when I played Oblivion, I just couldn’t get into it. It wasn’t as old school as Morrowind, so it didn’t scratch that itch, but it missed so many of the craven pleasures of Skyrim’s streamlined gameplay. I was never in the mood for Oblivion. I wanted an extreme of the spectrum, either one, and there Oblivion was, frustratingly in the middle.

So that’s World, to me. It is fun, and I enjoy playing it, but I so rarely boot it up, in favor of other MH games (especially now that Rise is on PC). When I want old school, methodical combat and obscure game systems, I can turn to Generations Ultimate (I’m sure there are Monster Hunter fans who would scoff at me even calling GU “old school.” In my defense: I mostly play in guild style). When I want fast paced zipping around in-and-out arcade-y combat, I play Rise. When I turn to World, I do so first out of slight obligation, and second because I do want to play Iceborne, but with Sunbreak coming and still so, so much left to do in GU (and, y’know, a life to live), I’m not sure when I’ll get the chance.