This is a game with an identity crisis. It's a Monster Hunter game that's forgotten a couple key parts of the recipe and replaced them with candy.
These games are built on a core loop of challenging encounters with rewards that make you stronger, so you can repeat the same challenges more efficiently and get stronger still, so that you can then attempt more challenging encounters.
This is not a challenging game. It's hard, at times, but not challenging. I never had to prepare for a difficult monster, never spent longer than 25 minutes in a hunt, never felt like my encounters were battles of attrition. The hardest encounters did result in failures, but those felt like the result of my carelessness, and never required more than two attempts to clear.
The problem is that the lack of challenge isn't just a matter of personal preference, it breaks the loop that powers the game's systems: if the next big monster won't give me much trouble, then why would I spend hours fighting easier ones to make my character stronger?
I made my way up to master rank without optimising my gear at all. I'd make sure to have a maximally upgraded weapon for my current rank and gear with the bare minimum skills to make my weapons of choice play well and enough defense to not get oneshot, and then just blast my way through key quests.
I found myself approaching the expansion's final boss without having crafted more than one copy of a decoration with any of the skills I wanted, and when I realised I'd only be able to get them by fighting even weaker versions of the monsters I was already steamrolling, I lost the will to continue.
I know people dislike the quality of life improvements the game added, and the bugs, and the endemic life, and all that. I don't really mind one way or the other, to be honest. I just want a game that takes itself seriously, and this ain't it.
These games are built on a core loop of challenging encounters with rewards that make you stronger, so you can repeat the same challenges more efficiently and get stronger still, so that you can then attempt more challenging encounters.
This is not a challenging game. It's hard, at times, but not challenging. I never had to prepare for a difficult monster, never spent longer than 25 minutes in a hunt, never felt like my encounters were battles of attrition. The hardest encounters did result in failures, but those felt like the result of my carelessness, and never required more than two attempts to clear.
The problem is that the lack of challenge isn't just a matter of personal preference, it breaks the loop that powers the game's systems: if the next big monster won't give me much trouble, then why would I spend hours fighting easier ones to make my character stronger?
I made my way up to master rank without optimising my gear at all. I'd make sure to have a maximally upgraded weapon for my current rank and gear with the bare minimum skills to make my weapons of choice play well and enough defense to not get oneshot, and then just blast my way through key quests.
I found myself approaching the expansion's final boss without having crafted more than one copy of a decoration with any of the skills I wanted, and when I realised I'd only be able to get them by fighting even weaker versions of the monsters I was already steamrolling, I lost the will to continue.
I know people dislike the quality of life improvements the game added, and the bugs, and the endemic life, and all that. I don't really mind one way or the other, to be honest. I just want a game that takes itself seriously, and this ain't it.
trc
28 days ago