 The post holiday season for games is always slow. This is usually a time of year when I catch up on old games in my backlog or replay classics I'd like to revisit and devote a lot of time to the persistent games I'm currently playing but I'm not playing Destiny 2 or any other persistent game for right now. As such, my plate is pretty clear on big new games and that's good because Monster Hunter World demands an awful lot of the player, which ends up being both good and bad. Today we're going to take a look at Capcom's surprisingly huge mainstream hit. We'll look at what it does well like map design, character customization, combat, and not so well like story, map design, character customization, and combat. And I'll end up looking at RPG mechanics and grind to try and figure out how much is too much. As always, if you like what I have to say or how I sound sane it, do us both a favor and use your preferred input method to click the like, share, and subscribe buttons. Or at least one of them. Before we go further, I need to do a small preamble here. This is taken longer than usual because normally I attempt to boil a game down to one core thing it does well or and then use that as a way to examine that one particular thing. But Monster Hunter World is a complex web of interlocking systems. The game is sprawling and unwieldy and it can't be distilled like that. Ultimately, what you think of the game will be dependent on whether you think this scattershot collections of systems adds up to a compelling package. The game is a jack of many trades and a master of none. I find, as I play games that I like, that I'm very good at picking out things that slightly annoy me. And this is especially true for games that I like quite a bit. What follows is probably going to focus more on what I didn't like than what I did, but with all that said, ultimately I enjoyed this game. It was worth its money and I'd recommend it to most. I just think it's important to realize what you're getting into here. Monster Hunter is a unique game, so while there will be quite a bit of criticism to follow, I thought it was important to state up front that I enjoyed the game quite a bit during my 40 to 60 hours with it. As always, let's get a brief history out of the way. Monster Hunter has been around for a good long while. And while it's so very very well and moving over 40 million units in its life, behind only Street Fighter and Resident Evil amongst Capcom games, it never really broke out into the mainstream here in the West. The first Monster Hunter released all the way back in 2004 for the PS2 and immediately gathered a cult following of players who loved it. That first game would set a tone with its reception, with critic reviews being mixed but on the low side and player reviews being excellent. We will get back to this because these mixed reviews are almost all about one thing, how much tolerance the reviewer has for the grind. But for now, let's just say that Monster Hunter has sold well internationally and developed a devoted fan base while also staying just out of the mainstream. As the first two games released on PlayStation 2, Monster Hunter didn't release another game on a powerful home console in the West. There was an MMO, RPG in Japan, a third game released only on the underpowered but nearly ubiquitous Wii and a series of handheld releases. By the time Monster Hunter World released, they've been so long since Monster Hunter had appeared on a current gen console that it had begun to be known as a handheld title. But with a massive marketing push, seriously, a huge marketing push and a significantly larger budget than previous titles, Capcom made a bet that Monster Hunter World could break out. And sales figures seem to have proven them correct. All right, let's get to analyzing exactly what this strange brew is. Monster Hunter Open World. Almost. Start out, let me just say that when I first started Monster Hunter World, I was deeply disappointed with how it looked. So much so that it became kind of unplayable. Yes, I'm picky. Well, turns out this was a common problem that people with 4K HDR TVs had. If you are still experiencing this and you'll know what the commercials look nothing like the game you're playing, go into the video settings in the game and turn the brightness way, way, way down. That'll fix it. All right, after fixing the broken game, I could finally get out and explore the world. Monster Hunter World World. Previous versions of the game consisted of zones where you would go to find and fight a monster. And one of the things I was most interested in here was an open world. And to be honest, it really isn't one. It's still a zoned world. Each map is a separate zone without any way to connect to the other maps. Now, these maps are bigger than ones in the past and they do include several subzones that are cleverly hiding short loading sequences and the map never feels too small for the job. I was just kind of hoping it would be one large open world and if that's what you're expecting, that isn't the case here. When we're talking about a game like this, it's easy to find yourself grading on a curve. Is it a bigger and better map than previous versions of the game? Absolutely. Is it the map big enough for the gameplay? Yes. Still, large connected biomes would have been a nice touch and I do hope they can get there eventually. The map has a share of invisible walls, but in general, it's well done, quite dense, and the graphics and textures are adequate to excellence. Now, I've slammed games before for having tremendous maps with a bland art style and nothing to do with them, so I'm certainly not going to slam Monster Hunter World for doing more with less. I just wish that traveling between zones could have been seamless. It's not a demerit against the game. It's an observation on something that still has room for improvement. What is here is, for the most part, beautiful. The world feels like an actual ecosystem, dense with things to interact with. Plants, mushrooms, bone piles, monsters, the zones are chock-full of things to see and the art direction is spot on. The environments feel lush and real in a way that is absolutely crucial in a game like this. It's an achievement of the highest order. But before we get into the actual game analysis, there's one more thing that needs to be addressed. Capcom, you sold me a broken game. At launch, for nearly a month on Xbox, matchmaking was completely, totally broken. This is absolutely inexcusable. Video games are expensive products, and it continually amazes me when people defend broken products. No other sector of the economy gets leeway like this. Nobody buys a TV, takes it home to find you can't change the channel, and happily defends that company while they patiently wait a month for a software pass to allow channel switching. This has become a constant problem, and I'm getting sick of it. Back in the day, games weren't released until they worked. Now companies seemingly have zero problems selling you a broken piece of shit, knowing a bunch of people will defend them as they fix problems they knowingly shipped. In Monster Hunter World's case, they decided to not even run a beta on Xbox, which was obviously a cost-saving decision. Not only did the game launch broken, it took three patches to finally get it right. It was infuriating. Alright. Even after being fixed, Monster Hunter World has the worst, most ridiculous absurd multiplayer system I have ever experienced in a game. You can't just group up with your friends, or in my case your kids, and play a mission. The host player has to start the mission, go all the way through until they find the monster and see the three-second cutscene while other people sit and wait. Only after the slight camera zoom that the game considers a cutscene can you join. This can take anywhere from five to ten minutes. I have a hard time understanding why anyone would design something like this. What is the benefit of not just letting friends group up and play the campaign together from the start of each mission? If you want to play the campaign missions together, you've got to have either played the mission already, or each of you has to start separately until you see the cutscene and then join the other player. It is baffling to me that in a game that's not only more fun co-op, but clearly designed with co-op play as a default experience, that you wouldn't try and make that system as seamless and easy as possible. The system is about as unintuitive as can be, and I actually had to do several Google searches to figure out how to play with my kids, how to play in a squad, and how the matchmaking worked at all. The system needs to be completely redesigned from the ground up with an eye to simplicity and ease of use for the next game. That being said, once you finally figure out the Byzantine and opaque grouping system, Monster Hunter World is a very fun game in co-op. Much more fun than solo. Even matchmaking with randoms, the game is more dynamic and interesting with others because there are a bunch of systems in here that we'll get to later that are clearly tuned for more than one player. What's the combat like? Monster Hunter World is an action RPG. This combat falls into the Dark Souls style with slow-deliverate player attack animations, slow monster attack animations, and a dodgebutt. But the combat here can best be described as fun but clunky. This is hard to get across without actually playing the game. First of all, the game runs at a frame rate that feels kinda like stop-motion animation at times. I'm not a PC master race guy who says things like, if it runs under 100 FPS, it's unplayable. Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne run at 30 FPS in the base PS4 and Xbox, and they look and feel fine. I mean, games running at 60 or more frames are clearly more pleasant to play, but I can deal with 30. But Monster Hunter World and the base Xbox feels to me like it's running at lower than 30 FPS. I mean, the player animations are smooth enough, and it's just that the monster animations are extremely choppy, almost as if several animation frames are missing. It's slightly disorienting, and it definitely detracts from the experience. When you're actually fighting the monsters, things are pretty fun. But this, to its credit, is a unique gameplay experience. And to drill down on the combat, we're gonna have to go point by point. Missions begin first with a weird and odd matchmaking system. Oh wait, we covered that, right? All right. After you figure out the weird and odd matchmaking system, missions begin with you being dropped into a map with a target you need to find. Monster Hunter World has added a new mechanic called Scout Flies, which is a really cunning little system that makes the first part of this process much smoother than previous games. You wander the map searching for tracks or markings that your target has left. As you find more and more tracks, your scout flies look for the next one until you've found enough that the flies create a glowing path to the monster. It's simple enough that anyone can find the target without losing the hunting experience that the game is known for. And it's a perfect balance of accessibility and complexity. Over time, finding enough markings and tracks for a specific monster unlocks information about that monster in your journal. Things like its strengths and weaknesses and which monster parts drop from which area of the monster. Actually useful information that affects your gameplay experience. Once the monster's found, the hunt ends and the combat begins. Now, I haven't really played with a ranged weapon all that much so I can only speak to the melee combat. There's a really good variety of weapons here that change the way the games play. Slow, heavy weapons like the hammer do big damage but leave the player open to monster attacks. The fast weapons play more like a traditional hack and slash game and the weapon I've used the most, the insect glaive combines a few combos with the ability to vault into the air and the need to shoot various parts of the monsters to gain buffs to maximize your speed and defense and damage. It is an involved combat system that's simple enough for anyone with enough depth to have a real skill curve that allowed for mastery. It should be commended the way it's designed. It really is excellent. Monster Hunter World adds a lock on feature which honestly probably should have been left out. It's clunky, it's distracting and it's strangely mapped. You lock on with the right stick but you unlock with the left bumper. When the game recognize the input that is sometimes it just doesn't. But even locked on attacks don't get aimed at the monster. All aiming of swings is done manually through positioning which takes getting used to but can be a bit frustrating at times. If you haven't played this game you're probably used to some degree of melee auto aim and that is not here. If you're locked onto a monster and you swing your weapon it won't go toward the monster rather in the direction you're facing. This is probably a matter of preference. It's fine once you get used to it but the combat does have a little less flow than if the lock on acted like other games. And while I think the combat is oddly clunky and doesn't have the flow that other games have there's no denying it's deep and complex web of interplaying systems. The game features a stamina system that's used for dodging and running but not for most attacks. Attacks are done through combos and can be continued until you are hit or decide to stop attacking. Total stamina depletes over time and needs to be refilled by eating or drinking. Healing and stamina regeneration include very long animations longer than any other game I've played I think which adds a nice level of strategy when playing co-op. This is not a single player game, people. This is where we talk about the fact that this really is a co-op game. There are several systems inherent in the combat that make it much less fun to play alone. The game has a sharpening mechanic. Weapons lose their edge after a very few strikes which leads not only to less damage but to frustrating non-hits that cause player knockbacks. The animation for sharpening the sword takes like three to five full seconds and cannot be interrupted by the player leaving you wide open for monster attacks. Now, when playing with a group this is a fun little wrinkle. You've got to attack until the monster is aggroed on someone else at which point you can slink away to a safe distance sharpen your weapon, heal and buff and get back into the action. But when you're playing alone these are just tedious mechanics that often result in cheap hits and boring downtime while you run around to find a spare five seconds to do nothing but watch the same animation for the 300th time. And then there are the stuns. Oh man, the stuns. I have a long standing hatred of stuns in games. I don't like any mechanic that takes control away from the player because in those moments I am no longer playing the game. For all intent and purpose I am watching a mini cutscene. Monster Hunter World features the longest, most annoying, most obnoxious stuns I have ever played. And they are constant. Four or five times per fight, at least the monster will go into a very very cool roaring animation. It looks awesome. Less awesome is that during this time you lose control of your character and watch for a few seconds as your avatar covers his ears and cowards. The second type of stun can be mitigated if you get good, but watch this. If you take enough damage and invisible stun meter fills, once it's full, the next attack will put you into the longest stun I've ever seen. A full five seconds of watching your avatar sway, hold his head and slap his face before the game decides you're allowed to play again. In co-op this is highly annoying. In solo play it's infuriating. This could easily be lowered by half and it would still serve its purpose without feeling so insanely long. Over the course of the game, between being stunned and the roars, you will spend a significant percentage of time watching these mini cutscenes. If you're like me, you will drop your controller into your lap sigh loudly and grit your teeth with frustration. If you're a normal person, you'll probably just be a little bit annoyed. The dodging mechanic works as advertised, but the monster animations, I don't know if this would improve at the competent frame rate, but they just aren't quite exaggerated enough to allow for satisfying engagements. With the lock-on system being nearly useless and the monsters charging all over the place without the exaggerated animations you might expect, much of the combat is running back and forth chasing the monster and waiting for it to go into oddly static idle animations. They go from furiously flying everywhere to patiently sitting still letting you beat on them. It's dynamic, but it's just not quite dynamic enough. Monsters take damage in different parts of their bodies until those parts break. A very interesting and crucial system will go into in our RPG mechanics section. Once one of the parts break, the monster usually will flee. At this point, you chase the monster for a couple of minutes until you arrive in another arena. This happens several times with monsters either trying to sleep to regain health or very, very rarely feed on other monsters. This is not a game you drop into for a few minutes. Each mission is a long time investment of running and item management. It's deep and complex and at the actual mechanics and offer felt just a bit smoother. It would be a truly special combat system, but to me there's just something a little off about it. Unlike Dark Souls, it gets significantly less fun over time after you realize that each mission will play out fundamentally the same. Monster Hunter World has no fodder enemies. There aren't levels to navigate per se. Each mission is a long boss fight in an open map. This greatly reduces the variety and offer in each mission. The only variety really is in the particular attacks of each boss. And I mean, again, this is probably simply a matter of taste. The game is essentially a boss rush mode without the rush. I found the arena missions actually to be the most fun because after a few times tracking, finding and chasing a monster all across the sprawling maps, it started to lose my interest. And you will need to keep your interest to finish this game because while it's centered around combat, this game is a deep and complex RPG at its heart and like all RPGs, how much you like it will depend upon your tolerance for that most controversial of RPG systems. The grind. How much is too much enough? I say your three cent titanium tax goes too far. And I say your three cent titanium tax doesn't go too far enough. There's a fine line between too much grind and not enough grind in video games. For years, grinding has been a dirty word and people who like the grind have had to defend their tastes as others have told them that the type of game they like is actually bad. I'm the kind of person who likes grinding in games. It's a feature that I enjoy when it's done well. I've played WoW for years and put 1500 plus hours into Destiny 1. I've savaged Destiny 2 for completely eliminating the incentive to grind by removing random gun perks and any interesting armor at all. But there's the other side too. Back when I did play WoW, it was in the heyday of the daily quest grinding period. In order to unlock access to certain vendors, the player had to grind the same quests over and over, day after day, week after week. It got to be utterly exhausting like a job. So on one side of the spectrum, you've got Dark Souls that has grinding as a completely optional activity you can do to make the game easier by over-leveling. And on the other side, you've got months of WoW's daily quests. Monster Hunter World is a game that requires grinding to finish and enjoy. It is not optional. It isn't even optional in the Destiny sense. You must grind to progress in Monster Hunter World. That's because Monster Hunter World has grinding baked into the core gameplay loop. Unlike traditional RPGs, Monster Hunter World's entire progression system is built on making armor and weapons. Different sets have different resistances, different strengths and weaknesses and defense ratings. Different weapons have elemental damage types and attack ratings. This system is pretty damn complex and requires a good amount of time and menus. And honestly in general, does a pretty crappy job explaining itself to the player. You're going to have to figure this out and Google will probably have to help you. But at some point, you are going to arrive at a mission that requires you to kill a monster that you'll find can one or two shot you. This becomes a wall that can only be bypassed through crafting better gear. And crafting gear is going to require that you get upgrade materials by carving monsters. We discussed this earlier, but certain monster parts have low drop rates and only drop by breaking certain parts of a monster. So you need to break a monster's head by repeatedly beating on it to even have a chance to get the item you need. And if you're playing co-op, there's no guarantee of the people you're playing with will attack that part that you need broken. Some monsters have parts that drop from hard to hit areas. And most likely, even when you get everything right and break the parts you need to break, there's going to be a time where you have a rare item that just doesn't drop. And even if it does, you'll have to do it several times to get all the materials you need to craft the pieces you want. So you'll have to do three, four, five hunts of the same monster to get all the materials you need to progress your character. Now I would probably really like this if I thought that the combat was perfect. I have often said I'd pay for a Dark Souls or Bloodborne Boss Rush Mode DLC. But as I said before, to me Monster Hunter's combat is good, but not great. So it gets a bit tedious. Armor perks in the early to mid game never really feel like they made much of a tangible benefit outside of their higher stats and different elemental damages or resistances. I am told that the end game features game changing perks and skills, but I haven't seen them and I am dozens and dozens of hours into this game. The game is also highly reliant on crafting, so you're gonna need to run all around the map picking up different ingredients. Now, mostly this is fine. The animations are short and they can be done while running. Admittedly, the bone pile animation is a little too long, but in general, most of the gathering can be done quickly while in the middle of hunts. So the game features deep and highly complex RPG crafting and long grinding, but without the benefit that one gets in a more traditional RPG. Grinding in Dark Souls will get you stats to use a powerful new spell. In Destiny 1, you'll finally get a highly sought after game changing weapon. In other RPGs, you'll unlock powerful new abilities that fundamentally change the combat and add depth or fun. But in Monster Hunter World, you're grinding for a combination of fashion and invisible stat walls. And again, the game's boss rush style means the grinding can only really be done in long drawn out sessions. It's one thing to run a level over and over in Dark Souls and kill all those different enemies or to run the same strike over and over in Destiny 1 because you'll be killing a variety of enemies and then a boss trying to get a drop. It's another to fight the very same boss and only that boss over and over until you get lucky enough to have a particular piece drop from its nose. Anyway, you'll be doing a lot of grinding here. That's what I'm getting at. This is not a narrative game. What's the story, morning glory? So much was made in promotional materials at the fact that this game would have a compelling story. It does not. I personally don't think story really matters in most games. If it's got it, great. But games are carried by gameplay. Rare is the game that can keep me interested with its story alone. If you are considering buying this based upon its story, I can give you the entire thing right here. Spoiler. There's a monster that's annoying people. Go kill that monster. Now there is another monster annoying people. Kill that monster too. Okay, now it's the biggest monster that's annoying people. Kill that monster. There are cutscenes that don't serve much purpose beyond making me mash the button, but alas, the cutscenes are not skippable. Next section. What does it all add up to? In total, Monster Hunter World isn't a tightly focused, highly refined game. It doesn't have a hook that you can easily explain people beyond you'll kill big monsters to make big weapons. That is what you do, but that doesn't really capture the moment to moment of what's going on. A better description would be, you spend 40 minutes chasing and occasionally slowly hitting a monster while also stopping to sharpen your weapon, drink a potion, cook any meat and pick flowers every couple of minutes so that you can go into a menu screen to decipher a Byzantine upgrade system so you can take on bigger monsters. The game is complex and deep and it's almost a game that I would consider perfect but its limitations do hold it back. Those stilted monster animations, the low frame rate, the copious stuns make the combat good but not great. The armor and weapon crafting is cool but the perks and skills aren't game changing enough to make that time investment have a tangible change of the way you play the game. It's got enough grind to keep you interested but the rewards rarely feel worth it. I don't do number grades usually but I am going to here. It's a seven. It's well above average but also well short about standing. It's worth your money and it's something that will provide 40, 50 hours until you feel like you've seen it all and many, many, many dozens more if you find that this game really does it for you. Most importantly, it proved that there's a market for deep, grindy action RPG like this which gives me hope that more games will have the incentive to make their games deeper. Ultimately I hope the next Monster Hunter runs at a better frame rate, launches with operational multiplayer and features more game changing armors and skills. It's pretty close to excellent but it falls just a tiny bit short. All right, thanks. All right, I would be over the moon if you'd watch my other videos and if you watch those other videos it'd be out of this world as you subscribed, shared and liked. And if you do all that I'd be the happiest boy on earth if you invented a time machine. I feel cheated that space fight won't happen in my lifetime. It's bullshit. Sci-Fi lied to me. Bye.