Community Review: Monster Hunter World

19 responses to “Community Review: Monster Hunter World”

1. 

   doktor_molotov

   January 29, 2018 at 11:36 am

   I’m loving it. Reaching the third area made me love it more. It’s real beautiful.

   There is a lot going on with the interface, but for the most part it’s easy to get by with a few basics and put off learning a lot of things till later without feeling penalised.

   Like, do I pay at the canteen with vouchers, points or money? I dunno, worry about that later. What’s a guild card? Is it like a business card for monster hunter players? Are people sending me these? Oh well, worry about that later. Oh what’s this, this House of the Five? All it’s got is stained glass window and some pews? The npc says “have you come to see our famous stained glass window?” Well, not really, but um, okay.

   The only things that seem really important are to create two item loadouts, one for regular hunting, one for capturing, and just remember to pick up the research goal things after every mission, and every couple of missions hit up the smithy to see if you can’t make some dope armor or upgrade weapons..

   If you haven’t discovered it yet, you can set a loadout from your item box by hitting options in the manage boxes screen. Then when you come back from a mission, choose the loadout and it will remove all that junk you picked up and replenish your supplies up to however many you had when you set the loadout.

   I’m sticking with my longsword but the arena is a good place to get to know some of the other weapons. The fights there allow you to pick one of four preset equipment loadouts.

   Reply
2. 

   grandmasterb-funk

   January 29, 2018 at 11:56 am

   I played it all weekend and hit High Rank last night, so i’ve really only scratched the surface but without a doubt this is the best version of Monster Hunter that exists, so many great QoL changes, some Mechanical changes that needed to happen, and it looks very very pretty.

   I’ve been really impressed with the new monsters, Tobi-Kadachi, Paolumu and Odoragon are some of my favourites so far, i’m scared to find out how they act in High Rank.

   Started off on Switch Axe but moved to Lance after loving the changes to it, being able to cancel into the guard dash is a game changer, will probably build a HBG armour set in high rank to go back to my original love from the previous games as i challenged myself to not use it for world in at least low rank.

   basically i’m gonna be thinking about monster hunter all day at work.

   Reply
3. 

   transientmind

   January 29, 2018 at 12:14 pm

   Having an absolute blast. Loving the theme and the pretty and the combat is fun as hell.

   Things I hate with the burning passion of a thousand suns: Playing co-op is a bullshit nightmare to navigate and I just want to grab all the journalists who say it’s easy and SHAKE THEM AWAKE. I can’t play alongside my partner through the game without both of us going our separate ways every time we want to advance, then coming together after we’re done… but only for grinding. MAKE ALL THE ASSIGNMENTS CO-OP, YOU BASTARDS.

   Things I’m disappointed by: I was expecting something a bit more open-worldy than it is. Expeditions are… not quite what I’d hoped they’d be. They’re basically just another instanced hunt, only with random hunts being spawned/despawned on invisible timers, no fail conditions, and no bonus rewards. And it’s a royal pain in the ass to get a specific co-op partner to join you in the supposed open world, too, thanks to the ludicrously time-wasting multiplayer hoops you have to jump through. (Seriously. Join the same online session, select a mission, complete/fail/abandon the mission, then both select ‘return to camp’ instead of ‘base’. Fuck off. What about ‘create party’ and then do everything in that party together? Like, “Go to expedition?” Why is that so fucking hard, Capcom?)

   Also, load times. Even on the PS4 Pro, I’m doing a lot of waiting.

   Things I love: Everything else. All of it. Especially cut-scenes that feature Palicos. Brilliant.

   Reply
   1. 

      claymore35

      January 29, 2018 at 12:38 pm

      I would hope they listen to feedback and fix these issues for the PC release in Spring.
      Cannot wait to jump in with some mates and do some hunts.

      Reply
   2. 

      coldbin

      January 29, 2018 at 1:36 pm

      Assigned quests are co-op unless there are unviewed cutscenes by the quest poster

      Reply
      1. 

         transientmind

         January 29, 2018 at 2:15 pm

         Yes. That’s my complaint. Constantly being forced apart when trying to play through the game co-op.

         It’s not just unwieldy and unnecessary when every other coop game of the last decade appears to have figured out what a ‘party’ is, but it adds a shit-tonne of interstitial states between loading up and actually playing, with the only options being gimmicky bullshit like aborting/failing the mission to start it again together, once you’ve both viewed cut-scenes. Anyone who intended for gameplay flow to play like that is a sadistic prick.

         Reply
   3. 

      mucktard

      January 29, 2018 at 1:41 pm

      There was another monster hunters article we both posted on yesterday i think…
      The multiplayer co op was explained and it makes it much easier – you should go read that!

      in short though – say you have a mission to find to escort the cart to somewhere or to resuce the researcher with that water beast – provided you complete the first part of the mission that can be done solo – you save quit and head back to HQ, then post the job and the other can join – you can then co op the monster hunting part of the game.

      Its shit regardless and i think its set up that way so cutscenes didnt have two people.

      It needs a fix though

      Reply
      1. 

         transientmind

         January 29, 2018 at 2:11 pm

         Yeah, we discovered that on failing the Anjanah assignment. I mentioned before that the only way to play these is to complete or fail the mission. Which is the opposite of a great way of playing together.

         My GF and I sat down together for the weekend, expecting to play monster hunter together, coop.

         Instead, we spent half the time forced apart, trying to get to points that the game would let us play together. Frustrating in the extreme that the experience is so damned disjointed like that. It’s needlessly harder to group with friends than randoms, even if everything was working as intended and you could see the missions posted by people ostensibly in the same session as you (same session ID, squad-session joined) but for some reason not appearing due to network weirdness, etc forcing either or both to restart the game.

         Reply
         1. 

            mucktard

            January 29, 2018 at 3:33 pm

            waiting for something a little more seamless like FarCry 5.

            Not the same style of game i guess – but the campaign co op is meant to be the ducks nuts out of the gate.

            They’re few and far between these days.

            Fingers crossed they still fix the shitty MHW co op in the interim

            Reply
            1. 

               transientmind

               January 29, 2018 at 6:01 pm

               We’re planning on picking up two copies of FC5 purely for that promised co-op experience. If it was the same as FC3,4,P, we wouldn’t bother and one would just play after the other.

            2. 

               mucktard

               January 29, 2018 at 6:22 pm

               do you use the xbox home game sharing?
               if you log into your wifes console under your account, you can set it to be your ‘home’ xbox
               then any digital purchases you make get installed to that xbox.
               anyone who logs into it gets your library of games to play.
               you then log into your other xbox under your account and play the games you own also
               we used to buy x2 of every game – costs $$.
               If you buy it digital its always full retail but you end up saving heaps.
               eb 7 day try and buy policy – if its good, get it digital

               https://support.xbox.com/en-AU/games/game-setup/my-home-xbox

            3. 

               transientmind

               January 30, 2018 at 9:45 am

               Nah, PS4. The PSN has something similar, I think, where you can log in to your profile on any console, download what you own digitally on it, designate it the ‘primary’ then any profile that logs on to that machine can play that content… but I’ve never tried using this technique to have two players play the one copy of a game at the same time in co-op with each other.

4. 

   darkvolcos

   January 29, 2018 at 12:24 pm

   Its pretty good. Only issue I’d say is that, due to my noobiness, to kill a monster im just spamming triangle and circle on it for 10 minutes which can get repetitive and a bit boring.

   Reply
   1. 

      MHW

      January 30, 2018 at 9:57 am

      back then on PSP and Vitae and 3DS it took me a year to overcome frustration and “learn” how to play the game.

      It is not spamming you have to do but preparing for battle, evading being hit and then going in for the kill

      Reply
5. 

   os42

   January 29, 2018 at 12:52 pm

   I think I already have more hours in MH:W (and definitely more progress – hit the 7-star missions last night) than I ever had in 4U or Generations – the ability to play for long periods without getting hand cramps or having to recharge the console, combined with a second thumbstick, already makes it infinitely more appealing than the 3DS games.

   And everything is so much more streamlined… no running out of whetstones/picks/etc, every *required* quest (except the very first tutorial mission) ends with hunting a big monster, actual tutorials, a book that shows you what parts drop from which monsters under what conditions (rather than having to wiki stuff), being able to coop any mission (tho the weird restrictions on assignments can beare extremely annoying at times)…

   That said, not sure I like certain materials being locked behind certain research levels (Anjanath will not drop plate until you hit research level 3 on him, from what I can see), and the cross-monster reliance for weapon upgrades (eg. the Anja hammer at some point requires parts from Rathalos to prevent you from upgrading it until you’ve beaten him). And, your armour upgrade cap is linked to how far you’ve progressed, which means you cannot over-gear, so you don’t have many options once you’ve hit that cap beyond “not getting hit.” Was not sure I’d be able to beat the last couple of 5-star missions alone, and was wary of trying it with a friend because of the health scaling being basically “multiplayer” or “not multiplayer”, but haven’t really had much of an issue with monsters being too tanky in coop – the split aggro makes it much easier to stay alive, so it’s a bit easier overall, even if it takes a little bit longer.

   All in all, really enjoying it so far, doubly so in co-op.

   Reply
   1. 

      EikoandMog

      January 29, 2018 at 3:32 pm

      It’s not locked behind research, it’s just a pretty rare drop.

      Reply
6. 

   ItisTooSmall

   January 29, 2018 at 1:03 pm

   I have only played a little so far maybe 4 hours.

   My impressions currently:

   – Graphics -> Quite nice. Good bump over previous iterations.

   – Gameplay -> Overall feels just like previous Mon Huns so far. So if you like those you will probably like this.

   – Multiplay -> Have not tired yet. Appears as though it works same as Monster Hunter Tri.

   – Open World -> Not as far as I can tell so far. Not sure why I thought this was going to be the
   case. Maybe a review said it. Currently it is just mission based as in previous titles. Pick a mission get spawned into an instance and do mission.

   Would have been nice to get a true open world where you can tackle multiple missions at once and traverese the whole land.

   Though I guess with mission timers doing multiple missions at once would not work so well.

   – Free hunt -> Not so far. I am sure in Tri you had the option to go hunt outside the village outside of missions. Maybe this will open up after more play.

   – GUI -> ARGH! It is way way to small. It is clear it has been deisgned for the upcoming PC edition. If I sit right in front of my TV like I would PC the game interface looks fine and is completely readable. Hovever sitting back as you do on console the text is way to small and icons are hard to make out (eg map). I find myself having to lean in close to tv when text comes up.

   Also – another pointer to PC design is the weapon crafting menu is a tree and the analog stick moves the cursor. (Think mouse on pc).

   ** Very early review (only 4 hours play) so opinion likely to chnage after more play.

   Reply
7. 

   thearbiter117

   January 29, 2018 at 3:50 pm

   This is where i’d put my review

   IF I HAD ONE

   Stupid PC delay

   Reply
8. 

   zak

   January 29, 2018 at 6:12 pm

   So far so good. My first look at Monster Hunter and there’s obviously a lot to take in, but as the first commenter said you can jump right in and work it out as you go. I’m just worried I’m not going to be very good at it – combat games requiring the patience to learn the frame timings have never been my forte so a lot of the time I’m swinging at air. I’m hoping it’s normal for some creatures to take 15+ minutes to take down. If that isn’t the case I’m doing it wrong (or choosing bad fights).

   Didn’t get to play as much as I would have liked on the weekend because the oppressive heat made my PS4 Pro sound and feel like it could burst into flames at any time.

   Reply
   1. 

      transientmind

      January 30, 2018 at 12:08 am

      15min to kill sounds about right for monsters at your level. Mash it for five minutes, chase it as it runs, repeat twice more. 🙂

      Reply