I have been playing Monster Hunter: World for a couple of years now. I played it when it was new on the PS4, but eventually moved to PC when I saw the improved performance and load times (when I saw it was on sale, of course). As a result, I had to start all over, so it took a while to get the motivation to do so. When it comes to Monster Hunter: World, I’ve started over multiple times. I would play it and get somewhat far in the ‘story’ and then not play it for a while. When I’d finally find the motivation to start again, I would remember next to nothing about the various mechanics I had unlocked by that point and start getting worked by a monster, which would usually then lead to me starting over. Well, I have finally stuck with it long enough to see credits, which means I finished it (not really) and can review it, finally. There’s actually still a ton of hunting to do and endgame stuff after seeing credits, as any Monster Hunter fan knows, but I feel the need to share my thoughts and woes having written about it a couple of times but never feeling like I understood it enough to review it.

The Short of It

What I’ve Played

A couple hunts in multiplayer
Half of the Assigned hunts prior to the credits on the PS4
All the Assigned hunts to see credits and the end of the “main storyline” on PC
A few tempered monster hunts

Pros

Weapons, despite some simple designs, are complex and fun to use
Armor, weapons, monsters, and character designs look great
Process of hunting a monster from following its trail, to attacking it, to dealing with the random events with other monsters attacking is all pretty fun and exciting
Coming up with strategies on how to fight a monster and what sort of gear, tools, and weapons are right for the job, along with hazards of the environment help make the process of hunting that much more satisfactory when the job is done
Lots of charm in the personality of the world itself

Cons

While being more approachable than previous MH games, it’s still an obtuse mess that doesn’t explain things all that well
Progression is stretched out too much and makes many rewards feel like a waste; takes far too long to get to the point where the game really opens up
There’s a plot?
Hit boxes on the monster attacks are a bit ridiculous sometimes
Lots of mechanics feel like they’re designed to annoy or get in the way of the player, while others seem to conflict with one another
Trying to play this game in multiplayer with someone is more of a hassle than it should be
When it’s all said and done, the gameplay loop is a little tedious

The Rest of It

Story

If there is a story, I didn’t pay attention. Monster Hunter: World forces you to watch many cutscenes for different monsters and moments in its “plot,” so you might assume that there is a story. In fact, you can’t play a mission in multiplayer unless all the players in the group have watched the cutscenes, so you might expect them to be very important. However, what occurs in those scenes is mostly irrelevant in terms of the story it’s trying to tell. To summarize, there are a bunch of hunters in a mostly undiscovered region of this imaginary world, and there are monsters for them to hunt. The ecosystem of this world is getting screwed up by certain monsters, so you have to hunt and kill them at the behest of the eccentric commanders. I’m fairly certain that’s been the plot of other Monster Hunter games. If I’m wrong, I don’t care, and neither should you because you’re not playing this game for its story.

It’s funny because from what I saw in the dialogue in these scenes there are a lot of statements that sound like references to previous games or to the world’s society of monster hunters. As a complete novice to the franchise, it all went over my head. Most of the scenes just came across as the typical awkward scene of an anime that has been translated “correctly” but not necessarily localized in a way that makes it familiar to a clueless American like myself. As cool as some of the cut-scenes are at making the monsters look rad or make the player’s character look like a badass, I couldn’t tell you what any of it really means. If you’re looking for an in-depth review of Monster Hunter: World’s story and plot, you’re in the wrong place and I think you have the wrong priorities when it comes to this game.

Gameplay & Mechanics

Even though this is the first MH game I’ve played, I know that this is what fans really care about. Before World, the Monster Hunter franchise was limited to portable devices or platforms like the Wii, which were not able to render the game in HD graphics. A lack of story or graphical fidelity didn’t prevent it from becoming one of the most popular game franchises around the world, however. These games are so popular, that the nation of Japan created a faux holiday for the release of a MH game because of the fact that so many people would stay home from work or school to play the latest release of the franchise. I always had an interest in these games, but I usually didn’t have a method of playing them.

What I’d heard before I played World was that the franchise was notorious for having tons of mechanics and for not being good about teaching them. With each new game in the series, the gameplay would get more complicated as old mechanics would stay and new ones would get layered on top. However, I also heard that World was the first Monster Hunter game to really put in an effort to teach new players and was probably the best at getting a novice like myself started. While I would say it does do a decent job, it is still an obtuse mess and I highly recommend looking up some YouTube videos for better, in-depth explanations than the game provides. For that reason, I’m not going to get into the details about the mechanics much and just focus on the high-level overall experience.

And what an experience it is! The fact that I keep coming back to it (and that I kept stepping away) should give you a pretty good idea about how I feel about Monster Hunter: World in some regards. I’ve played many hours of this game and only now have I finally gotten to the part where “the game truly begins,” as many fans would say. It’s true! I’ve put dozens of hours in, and seen credits having “completed” the story, and yet I’ve only now gotten to the point where my weapons, armor, or inventory seem to truly matter. If that sounds intimidating to you for starting a game like this yourself, I don’t blame you. In fact, I have a few gripes about it myself.

When it comes to progress in Monster Hunter: World, it’s all about the weapons, the armor, and the monsters you’re hunting. I happen to really like the idea that leveling up in this game doesn’t actually improve your character, it just gets you access to new hunts. Your overall stats are tied just to your weapons and armor. That means that it’s up to you as the player to become more proficient with your weapon and better at overall basic skills if you want to survive the harder hunts. If you know me and my taste for action games, that’s exactly what I want, because I enjoy the natural reward of overcoming an obstacle and getting better at something more than the game just giving me a reward. However, I’m more than happy to skin my bounty and wear its flesh as a protective trophy as well. So, what’s the problem?

As you might have suspected, it takes too long to get to the point where it matters and it does so through some lame, cheap tricks. Part of the reason I stepped away from the game on the PS4 in the first place was that I wasn’t aware of the fact that the same monsters that I was hunting over and over to collect their gear for different load-outs were all just low-rank versions of the same monsters that I would be hunting later. After the first dozen quests, you’ve unlocked the ability to hunt a good variety of monsters, but it’s not until you reach a particular story quest that all those low-rank monsters become higher-rank versions. What’s the difference? They get a few new moves, they’re tougher…. oh and they render all the equipment you were getting for yourself completely obsolete. Essentially, the game makes all your grinding and efforts in the early sections nearly useless. You might get lots of craftable material while out on hunts, or you might get important research points and money to help you later on. All the weapons and armor you got, however, are immediately outdated and weak in comparison to the higher rank stuff. And since all the monsters are practically the same, it felt like I just started the game over when I didn’t want to.

In addition to that, now that I’ve gotten to the point where I am, it’s sort of happening again with the tempered monster stuff, but at least that feels more like progression in some way than the blanket switch that was flipped in the middle of the game. It’s difficult to convey why this whole thing sucked so much, but the point is that the game lets you grind and play it for a long time, encouraging you to collect parts and gear that will soon be worthless. Then, instead of giving you many new monsters to hunt, it gives you the same ones you’ve been hunting and a few more new ones. Rather than create new and interesting content after holding your hand for so long, they just basically said, “Now try the real thing,” when I thought I already had. It felt like a cop-out. I was annoyed enough to leave, but when I came back, I was ready to just get as far as I could as quickly as possible so it wasn’t a huge waste of time.

Once I made it to the tougher sections and the hunting was worth it, I was able to enjoy the complexities of the game a bit more, of which there are plenty. There are so many systems in this game, it’ll make your head spin. I’ve probably watched the whole playlist of tutorial videos from three different YouTube channels and I still don’t feel like I get it. You have to account for: your weapons stats and their traits; your armor defense and the dozens of different types of skills it unlocks; your accessories and how those contribute to your character; your affinities; the bonuses you get from eating meals; your extra skills you get from eating meals that are completely different from the skills of your armor; what every different consumable item does; what the consumables can be combined to make; what all the vendors do in the hub world; how to use a clutch claw, the reasons why you would do an investigation over other types of quests; how to operate the menus so you have the right loadouts for your armor and items; and so on. In addition to all that, you have to learn how to use your weapons properly.

The weapons of Monster Hunter are really the stars of the show. Part of the reason you want to grind in this game is to unlock the sick new skins for the different weapons and to create the various load-outs that are specifically designed for the challenging monster hunts. If you’re into micromanaging your inventory and crafting different items, there’s plenty to do that here. You’re expected to have equipment, item, and weapon loadouts for all possible situations and the game gives you the ability to save dozens of sets to save you time when you want to go out and hunt a specific monster. I find all the micromanaging of load-outs a bit tedious myself, so I often go the lazy route and just use a standard set—I’m sure MH pros would be shouting at me to be more optimal if they saw how little I cared. I am just more focused on learning the weapon and using it correctly. I got rather far with the long sword in particular, but I’ve jumped around to the great sword, the insect glaive, and the charge blade as well to add more complexity and difficulty to the combat and have had a blast doing so.

Similar to how the Soulsborne games of From Software are able to drastically change your experience and playstyle with the weapons, so too does Monster Hunter: World. I’d still say there’s a bit more variety to the weapons in the Soulsborne games, but the same concept of giving the player a different type of tool to handle a monster or boss applies. In fact, Monster Hunter: World, since it’s so bad at telling you how to use certain things, is probably a little more difficult to learn. Getting down the basic attacks is simple enough, but learning how to use them or how to unlock specific combo routes for the more advanced weapons is where the challenge comes in. At the time of this review, I’ve been learning how to time my tackles with my greatsword to negate attacks. After that, I might move on to the heavy bow gun to see how much easier the game gets if I just sit back and shoot. While the types of weapons available in Monster Hunter have not changed much over the course of the franchise, I can see how much variety they bring to the experience.

As for the monsters themselves, they bring some variety themselves, once you get to the tougher ones. After spending dozens of hours with this game, it doesn’t take long to see a few particular moves that are repeated across multiple monster types. Perhaps the most common attack other than the simple tackle where the monster just runs toward you, is the tail-swipe. The reason I bring it up is that, while the tackle animation on monsters differs slightly, the tail-swipe animation that you see Rathians do is the same as countless other monsters, down to the timing in which the monster looks around before spinning their body. While certain monsters like Rathians and Rathaloses have different move sets, they still seem like re-skins in a lot of ways. If you’re going with the ecosystem story, you could argue that they’re part of the same genus, so it makes sense. However, if a majority of this game is going out and hunting the same monster types over and over again, seeing the same attacks from one genus to another is a little dull. It’s made even more dull when you have to hunt the high-rank levels of the same monsters over again. Nonetheless, there’s still enough variety in the monster types like the elder dragons to keep things fresh, if you’re willing to get that far.

Presentation

Monster Hunter: World is a great-looking game. The designs of the characters, the monsters, the armor, the weapons, and the environment are all fantastic. The hub is a little tough to navigate at first, especially when you don’t fully understand everything yet, but once you get the hang of it and are able to appreciate its layout, it’s a great-looking hub. The environments themselves are vibrant and colorful with great designs all around and watching the monsters move through them helped make the worlds seem more alive with the various flora and fauna. Some of the environments themselves have a bit of a story to them and are designed around the monsters in an interesting and vibrant way. While the Rotten Vale may not be the ‘prettiest’ of the places, it is one of the more interesting ones if you’re willing to look hard at it.

Visuals are a big part of why I like this game so much because the combat was so cool-looking as well. The monsters are all pretty intimidating in their own way, so when you’re able to knock it down and land a huge attack that deals out massive damage and stuns the poor thing, it’s pretty satisfying. I don’t think the interface is very intuitive in terms of what you need to know, considering the countless mechanics in play, but it’s also a minimalist approach that prevents everything from getting in the way, allowing you to marvel at the graphics.

When it comes to the music of Monster Hunter: World, I liked it… for the first 20 hours. Then I got bored with it and turned it off for the sake of listening to my own music. I’m playing with a slight disadvantage by doing so because music is something that is supposed to let you know that certain things are happening in a fight, but I’m willing to deal with that issue. It’s not that the music isn’t good. It is. It’s just that you’re going to be playing the game a lot. Even if the monsters have their own themes, you’re still going to be hearing a lot of those songs multiple times, even during the same hunt just because of how long a hunt can be.

TL;DR (Conclusion)

Monster Hunter: World is a great way for a noob to the franchise to get into it. It’s still overly complicated in ways that aren’t explained very well, and it takes forever to feel like you’re playing the real game. However, I have had a blast with it and it’s managed to make me excited enough to try the next game in the franchise.

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