Monster Hunter: World seems hyper-aware that it's toeing an excellent line between satisfying long-time, dedicated Hunters and accommodating players like myself which are brand-new to its beastly challenges. As your Hunter enters the New World, so too does the series, and while I can't speak to past iterations, it largely succeeds in every way imaginable.
Monster Hunter is one of those series having a reputation for being opaque and impenetrable to new players, and the remnants of those issues can be found scattered in some places in World's quest-giving systems as well as in a number of its late-game tasks. But many of the issues that people were not impressed with in previous Monster Hunter reviews seem to have been wholly rectified without sacrificing the challenge and depth that longtime fans appear to appreciate.
At this time, I'm going to stop comparing Monster Hunter: World to the predecessors, because my perspective is as one of those coveted new Hunters to whom World seems to be appealing, and Monster Hunter: World-besides being the next Monster Hunter game-is simply a deep, addictive action-RPG experience that takes place amidst a lush, imaginative world.
The story is rather simple. You play like a Hunter and a member the Fifth Fleet of hunters, handlers, and scholars that's embarking on a journey to a New World so that you can gain knowledge for that illustrious Guild. But on your way to the brand new World, your ship is sidelined by a mountainous, magmic elder dragon named Zorah Magdaros who has no business hanging out around these parts. Zorah Magdaros' arrival means a complete disruption from the local ecosystem, and it's the 5th Fleet's job to not only discover what those disruptions are and why they're happening, but to revive the monster food chain to its normal, sustainable system.
The story might not be particularly deep, and the only semblance of character development you will see may be the level of gear your player-created Hunter forges. However, it's kind of refreshing to experience a game title in which you're fighting monsters that are not necessarily evil. What these monsters symbolize is nature, and hunting them is equivalent to culling deer. Of course, you will find elements of the timeless world-saving trope added too there to give the narrative a simulation of having actual stakes, but the main focus is on the thrill of discovery and knowledge, uncovering increasingly more information about each one of the dozens upon dozens of species found in the New World, information after that you can use to craft stronger, cooler-looking gear.
What Monster Hunter: World's narrative doesn't lack is length or perhaps an escalation in difficulty. Monster Hunter: World's main story took me about 55 hours to complete, and that makes up about only pausing to accomplish a few side quests that helped me gain levels my gear. I would not recommend plowing with the main missions, however, as taking down the last 3 or 4 monsters required a nearly inhuman quantity of effort with the somewhat powerful but still limited equipment and resources I'd acquired by that point. The best way to experience Monster Hunter: World is to spend some time, grind some monsters, level up your gear, and simply explore the game's richly detailed and intricate locations.
Earning better gear and carving out your own narrative reaches the center of Monster Hunter: World. I'm a sucker for good character customization, and never only can you make your ideal hunter, but you can also customize your Palico, a frequently bipedal feline helper to help you during your hunts by attacking the monsters with you and providing you with health items along with other useful, potentially life-saving tools. The specificity and flexibility of the character creator-for both my Hunter and my Palico-solidified an instant personal link between myself and my avatar, so much so which i was a little disappointed there was no possible way that i can communicate with my Palico apart from asking him for help. In either case, the character creator alone, along with the charm within the animation, gave me enough motivation to hunt monsters, because I felt like my characters deserve the very best gear in the game.
And you'll be hunting a lot of monsters. Aside from the 25 main story missions, there are an almost innumerable amount of side quests you are able to undertake. A few of these are semi-narrative optional quests that you will receive from NPCs around World's central tradeyard (which you'll also repeat anytime you'd like), but the majority of these side quests are investigations that you can choose to accept or ignore. Not only will these investigations net you whatever materials you'd usually receive from slaying or capturing a specific monster, but completing them will even reward you with bonus materials that you won't earn in the primary or optional quests. Investigations could be repeated a restricted quantity of times, but there are so many investigations that you won't exhaust opportunities to hunt a particular monster whose claws you have to level up your weapon or your armor.
The entire reason for hunting monsters boils down to forging and upgrading new and gear that will permit you to definitely more efficiently hunt more difficult monsters. Different types of armor stitched together in the remains of different kinds of monsters will defend you from different elements like thunder, water, ice, fire, and dragon, and various kinds of weapons are more effective against different monsters whose weaknesses you'll discover as you fight them and search for clues about them. You could technically compare Monster Hunter: World's gameplay loop to something like Destiny, but where you can blink and miss Destiny 2's main campaign, Monster Hunter: World's main story takes time, providing you with ample chance to get lost investigating and hunting monsters on your way to taking down the final, most powerful monster.
Thankfully, the monsters themselves are incredibly satisfying to hunt. In early stages, the fights between your thirty-odd large monsters in the game are battles of attrition against gigantic, beautifully-designed, imaginative beasts. The task in the hunt is two-fold: you don't only need to learn the monsters' attack patterns and determine the time to strike, but you should also master the weapon you've selected out of the fourteen base weapon types. These range from katana-like long swords to gunlances (i.e. lances that also fire off charges) to bowguns, which require their very own considerations like which ammo they can use and just how fast and accurately they are able to fire. Each of these fourteen weapon types will completely alter the way you approach fights and adds that experimentation and longevity to hunts that will provide you with enough motivation to keep playing long afterwards you've finished the main story.
Aside in the uniqueness of the weapons, combat may be the one area where Monster Hunter: World might earn its reputation. If you are expecting a fluid, responsive experience, you have to change your expectations at this time. Melee combat requires precision and patience, even going as far as to not allow you to change directions in the middle of a combo. Likewise, you can lock the camera to monster, but i am not saying your character will automatically swing at the monster: you have to line up the hits yourself. If Monster Hunter: World really wants to attract a far more mainstream audience, it's definitely not following the trend of pretty much every action-RPG out there. Even The Surge, despite its other shortcomings, had the decency to lock on to its enemies for you personally. Obviously, Monster Hunter players is going to be accustomed to the series' type of combat by now, and lots of new players will surely discover the higher level of preparation and weapon mastery essential to pull through the sport refreshing. And, when it's all said and done, if melee isn't your lifestyle, you can simply go out having a light bowgun like I did for most of my playthrough, which felt a lot more fun even if I wasn't maximizing my damage output.
Another thing which makes hunting monsters so fun would be the environments themselves. All told, there are five main areas where you'll be hunting monsters, each with their own visual themes and interactive, environmental traps which you can use to turn the tide from the battle. Capcom makes much ado about Monster Hunter: World's new, seamless worlds, but if you hadn't played a Monster Hunter game before, you might be confused. While each one of the five main areas (as well as the two hub worlds) are self-contained, transitioning between the dozen approximately zones within each of those areas is a seamless process. For contemporary players, this could appear to be a no-brainer, and luckily Capcom figured it, because each of the environments are lushly and thematically detailed and as imaginative as the monsters themselves. The traditional Forest, for example, seems like a scene straight out of The Lost World, while the Elder Recess shimmers with crystals and lava. Each of these areas will house monsters that appear to have naturally evolved there, and the rest of the lifeforms seem just like organic. Monster Hunter: World does a great job at approximating nature, particularly when two giant monsters cross paths, resulting in epic territorial battles that can either help you on the hunt or create some unwanted attention.
I took around the most of the monsters I hunted solo, but multiplayer is another way that Monster Hunter: World keeps things fresh. In fact, a few of the weapon types seem specifically geared towards a more cooperative playthrough, like a bagpipe that doubles as a heavy weapon so that as an instrument whose notes will buff both you and your hunting group. Joining up having a squad is a procedure that takes several steps, but it's simple on investigations and optional missions: just visit a quest board, post a search, invite your pals to that particular quest, and depart together (so long as your friends are in or over your current Hunter Rank).
Story missions, however, are a little trickier. You can play story missions together, however in many instances friends won't be able to join you until after the last cutscene of the story mission ends, which is usually whenever a new monster appears on the scene. Expeditions (i.e. free roam) are equally annoying to attempt with a friend. The only real time I went on a cooperative expedition felt just like a fluke rather than a feature. I basically had to trick the game into letting my friend join me on an expedition by firing an SOS flare (which any player can respond to) and then hoping my pal may find my flare around the quest board. To be fair, the entire reason for expeditions is actually to provide yourself time for you to get plants and mine mineral ores, so there's no real reason to possess a friend with you for that. Slaying monsters seems impossible during expeditions, as they'll simply run away, but the annoying thing about that is the game never even attempts to explain this rule. It's nearly as when the open-world nature of Monster Hunter: World and it is cooperative multiplayer-you know, the 2 things that would appeal most to newcomers-are not endemic to the very DNA from the series, and it's in these instances where Monster Hunter's track record of perplexity carries over to World.
If you aren't having fun with friends, multiplayer could be a bit of a mixed bag, a minimum of in my opinion. If you want to have fun with others in your server, you are able to choose to either actively enroll in a random, non-password protected player's quest or allow other players to join your quest. The tradeoff with multiplayer is that, ideally, you can slay more monsters inside a shorter in time exchange for a cut of the currency you earn, but every time your squadmates falls in battle, your reward is lessened, and if your party dies as many as three times, you'll fail most missions, whether it's your fault or otherwise. My experience was mostly positive, but that may be because the only other players around the server were other game journalists who tend not to troll and are pretty good at communicating. Even so, a few of the other players that joined my quests ended up costing us a good chunk of change through their very own carelessness. Playing with strangers has even more possibility to be considered a mixed bag, but dealing with giant monsters having a group of four is exhilarating and hilarious nonetheless.
When you aren't hunting monsters solo or co-operatively, you'll most likely be hanging out in New World's main hub, Astera. This is where you'll upgrade gear, stock up on supplies, eat some food, and generally get ready for your next quest. There are a ton of different NPCs to go to every time you go back to Astera, whether it's the botanist that will harvest craftable materials for you or perhaps a seafarer that will bring supplies in the Old World. While the amount of different consumable and craftable materials might seem overwhelming initially, Astera doesn't appear to live up to Monster Hunter's reputation as incomprehensible. Sure, it's a lot to understand, but the game provides you with enough information to make the right choices. There's also two kinds of currency-zenny and research points-which you are able to sometimes use to purchase the same things (like meals at the canteen, that are a must before every hunt), but for the greater degree you'll spend the various currencies on specific, separate items. Besides, if you get lost, Monster Hunter: World comes with an elegant solution for tutorials: demonstrate to them once, and then make them accessible with the options menu. It's all regulated a lot more intuitive than Monster Hunter's reputation led me to anticipate, which can be said for most of the game.
Monster Hunter: World succeeds (typically) at making its series' formula readily available to newcomers, but it is an in-depth, immersive, and addictive experience which should surely appeal to longtime fans, too. Even after playing the sport for more than fifty hours, there's more gear I want to earn, more weapons I want to upgrade, more monsters I want to hunt. Those who are prepared to take time to learn its mechanics and systems will be rewarded with countless hours of intense battles and also the satisfaction of getting the very best stuff.
