By 
Monster Hunter is one of Capcom‘s long running franchises, the first game came out in 2004! It is best described as an action-equipment game. I classify game genres depend on the main things the player has to do progress the game, and what they are doing most of the time playing. The main thing players do is hunt monsters who are quite deadly and need to be taken down with skill and finesse. At the same time, the player needs to gather loot from the fallen monsters and craft stronger and stronger pieces of equipment to realistically combat stronger and stronger monsters. Since this is an action game you can kick the final monster to death with a naked character, proving skill can triumph, but it would take forever because the kick does 2 points of damage and one mistake will death since the player is not wearing armour. We also cannot call it an RPG game because the choices the player makes is purely to do with equipment, not character building. I actually played the port of the first game on the Playstation Portable but I think I was perhaps too young to really get into the game. The sequel to that, Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, I got really into and had a regular group to play together with.
In Monster Hunter: World, there are 14 (!!!) different weapon types. Each of them has a robust and fleshed out moveset that could have whole games built around them. If you thought the movesets of the weapons from the Soulsborne series, the Monster Hunter series actually wrote the book on it. The series didn’t start out with 14, a few were added over time. Honestly, the movesets of the ones that came later were so much more interesting and dynamic until this game. World is the title that really equalised the power in terms of weapon moves and fluidity. The team did try experiments in the past with a kind of style system, but each weapon took to their own “best” style relatively quickly. The team learned from that and baked some of the style moves into the versions we play in World. Most players stick with one or two main weapons that they have mastered and always use. Which is fine, because getting equipment upgraded takes a lot of valuable resources, and you don’t want to risk spending on a weapon you may not like. Though the game does give you the basic version of every weapon to try out in the training room. I will argue that the training room is a poor representation of actual fights in the game, it’s really only useful for practicing combos and inputs. That’s one of the flaws in the game, that it is such a huge endeavour to get good equipment that players aren’t encouraged to experiment with other weapons. Though I suppose players that hunt long enough will have a good stockpile of resources to burn through to experiment if they so choose. Since I’ve been playing these games for so long, I’ve seen the incremental improvements they’ve been making to each weapon. The weapons in World stand as an achievement as to how far they’ve come with these movesets and they are honestly the best iterations. I am really excited to see where they go next to improve on it. It is a bit hard to describe without going through all the history, but everything they’ve added to fluidity ultimately gives the player more options at any time during combat, and that is what you want in an action game. What is my best move I can make next? What can I do to squeeze out more damage? How can I get in a good position? What are my defensive options? These are all questions players are asking themselves during a fight, and the more tools they have to answer these questions the more freeing the game is. Mastery through autonomy.
Of course, weapons aren’t the only tools the player has to deal with monsters. There’s this new mechanic called a Slinger, which is a wrist mounted slingshot. You can pick up “waterpods” and shoot it at a monster covered with mud to get rid of the mud and change its elemental weakness. In previous games you had to throw certain bombs to stun enemies, these are now shot with the Slinger. It’s a bit more convenient. In the base game it is a bit out of place because you have to sheath your weapon and the Slinger ammo the game gives is not exactly meant to deal damage, so what is its purpose outside of very specific instances? They actually fixed this very problem in Iceborne and made it relevant to the base combat loop. You are able to grab onto monsters head and by shooting the Slinger are able to send them hurtling into a wall causing big damage and a hard knockdown. Not using this mechanic efficiently will enrage the monster, and that’s no good.
The mechanical changes that Iceborne adds is reason enough to play it. It adds more moves to the weapons and shakes up the core gameplay with the Clutch Claw. It actually might be too powerful, the Clutch Claw but it is a good addition and I hope it stays for future games.
Of course, the real meat and potatoes of Iceborne is the content. It adds a new hub, a new map, as well as a horde of monsters, new and returning. Variant monsters were present in previous games, Rathalos, Azure Rathalos, Silver Rathalos. Make no mistake, these are Palette Swaps, when the monster and armour retain the same shape but the colour is changed. The monsters might use their moves differently, but it’s the same moveset, they get fiercer. Their respective armours usually have different skills though, which is nice. This time, they aren’t so much Palette Swaps as actual variants. Anjanath and Fulgur Anjanath, Paolumu and Nightshade Paolumu. These variants have move changes, texture changes, they’re almost new monsters outside of sharing the same overall model and some basic moves. Learning the weapons is half the battle, learning the monsters is the other half. If a player masters a fight in the base game, these changes are enough to shake up the fight by as much as 50%. They are familiar enough to feel comfortable, but different enough to feel scary and new.
A lot of the game is about encountering a monster, feeling very afraid and making safe plays while observing the monster’s various moves. As the player gets more used to the monster, they make riskier plays and tries to squeeze more damage out of every opportunity. This escalates until mastery of that monster is achieved. This actually works on both a micro (monster to monster) scale and a macro scale. The player’s confidence grows as they hunt more and get used to the game, like any other game. Giving more resources and letting the player know they have this pool they can use to hunter more efficiently. Making sure the player grows in bravery is a key facet to the series.
Now that we’ve gone over how excellent the core loop is, we’re going to get into some specific instances. You don’t need to know much of the game and it’s quite spoiler-free. Let’s just say you don’t come to these games for the plot. The name of the game is Monster Hunter.
About halfway through the main base story is where the player transitions from Low Rank to High Rank and has to do a Special Investigation; to track a ??? Rathian. This is done in the background while completing other missions and expeditions. All the player has to do is play as normal while looting monster tracks occasionally. At this point, the player has fought a regular Rathian and knows it does poison damage. The monster to track is a ??? Rathian, giving some clues as to what it can do. The first mandatory missions the player has to do is fight a high-rank Pukei-Pukei, whose armour grants Poison Resist gear. This is genius. The player is introduced to a higher difficulty, making them a bit afraid. They’re then told they have to track a new unknown monster, instilling more fear. This monster is revealed to be a type of monster they have fought before, so they can be less afraid. Then the first mission they have to do is against a familiar monster whose crafted armour helps against this unknown new threat. It really tries to make players go through the feelings a hunter might face. I’ve been playing these games for a decade and I still feel the fear sometimes. You play as a regular human fighting mountain-sized beings, some of these monsters are said to bring about calamities. The player must be instilled with fear so that their eventual triumph is even more rewarding. From the first triumph to mastery over the monster, the player feels better and better.
Here are some minor nitpicks I have with the game. One of the plot points is that a giant monster that is a walking volcano goes through a ravine. The player character then goes to the map on the other side of the ravine and that monster has just vanished. Seriously? How do you lose something the size of a volcano? The map on the other side also shows no sign of having a volcano just pass by. It’s a bit silly.
Sometimes monsters can queue up a set of moves that knock the player down over and over. This can result in death. The player is invulnerable while lying on the ground, but has to get up after a while. Sometimes the strategy is to lay on the ground until the monster is idle for a bit to get up and heal. It is difficult to tell when is a good time as some monsters (especially when enraged) are so aggressive. Perhaps some type of rolling while on the ground should be added to mitigate this, and I can’t think of a good reason why there isn’t any. Of course, players should know the ideal position is to not get hit in the first place, but c’mon.
There are some special missions called Investigations that the player can unlock by just playing the game. Seriously, these are awarded from almost anything, fighting a monster, picking up tracks, etc. Sometimes the game locks certain Investigations behind invisible conditions that seem a bit arbitrary. Almost like they didn’t want me to fight the monster before I was supposed to. But if that’s the case why place these monsters in the world before their specific mission? I’d chase a monster around picking up their footprints and never get their Investigation involving them because it wasn’t time yet. These Investigations are crucial for obtaining gear as they give extra rewards and monster parts, including extremely rare ones.
The player is encouraged to eat at the canteen for buffs before heading out and doing missions. These buffs are cleared if the character faints. This is fine. Eating for certain skills have been in these games forever, and have always been cleared by fainting unless certain skills are equipped. In this game, you can eat while on a mission which is new. What is annoying is that if you load into a mission, faint immediately, you have to wait 10 minutes before being able to eat again. I get that the character is “full”, but the character also just fainted so they need to regain their strength, let me eat! Usually I AFK until I can eat because I want the buff.
Players can pick up Bounties from an NPC in the hub, this is taught early on. These Bounties give players upgrade materials to upgrade their armour. Not monster parts, but an Armour Sphere that increases the stats of armour, up to a cap. The spheres themselves scale to the relative power of the player and their equipment, but the Bounties are always the same. If players need to do a low-level mission to hunt monster parts to upgrade a piece of equipment, they are still encouraged to do the Bounties because they are still awarding power that is relevant. Some example objectives are “Pick up 10 plants”, “Pick up 7 bugs”, “Mine 15 times”, very basic stuff that the player is always encouraged to do to build up their resource pool.
Finally, World adds so much nice Quality of Life tweaks that it would be really hard to revisit and replay older games now. In the previous games you had to run around the map and hopefully run into the monster, then you had to tag each monster with a Paint Ball to track them across the map when they decided to fly away. Now there is a system where Scoutflies track for you and you can actually follow a monster’s tracks to where they will be, and the Scoutflies get better the more the player tracks. Tracking is done by picking up on the trail left behind by the monster; footprints, scratches, carcasses, etc. Players can call for a mount in Iceborne that will run around and follow monsters, but of course runs away when the fight starts. Older games also had a problem with power progression where each transition from Low to High to G rank the player always runs into a sort of soft wall. The curve in this game is relatively smooth. It can be a bit annoying to fight a monster over and over just for that drop you need; But all the while the player is gaining more skill as well as stocking up on other parts that the monster has.
Not a lot of game series can claim that their latest release is their Best Release. Monster Hunter can. Everything either adds mechanically to the player or improves upon the flaws. World honestly adds so much that it makes every other sequel look like they’re not adding enough. Monster Hunter: World is Capcom’s best selling game because of the additions to make the game more friendly to both newcomers and returning players. Before this, it really used to be a niche game with a very loyal following (I’m one of them). It is also a relief to see it return to the Playstation and for the first time outside of Japan (the MMO is on PC only in Japan) the PC. While the first few titles were released on Sony platforms, they had a bit of a… “Falling out”. For awhile they were exclusively on Nintendo hardware. Wii, Wii U, DS, 3DS, Switch. While these are certainly not bad systems, it didn’t get the reach it deserved. Until now. Whether the team decides to release more expansions or stop with Iceborne and go into a sequel, I’m sure it will be a blast. This series has never had a bad installment. Each game was better than the last, World is just such an immense, massive improvement that it feels like 5 extra titles worth of progress. That’s not even counting Iceborne! The event cycle in the game is so generous as well as being so engaging. Always new content, new monsters, new equipment, new crossovers. Final Fantasy XIV, The Witcher 3, Devil May Cry, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Megaman to name a few of the crossovers there are in the game. It’s a tremendous series with a lot of progress behind it. It is only going to grow more from here, in popularity and the game itself.
