One of the first actual worthy expansions that I bought separately from a game. It expands even more Monster Hunter World with more equipments, monsters, mechanics; just much more content in general. Definetely one of the best expansions ever made.

-Even more Changes
MHW already basically remade the gameplay of the Monster Hunter franchise, and Iceborne added even more things, some to continue in next games, somes don't.

The main new mechanic added on Iceborne is the Clutch Claw; a equipment that you can use, without sheathing the weapon, to do a "semi-mount" on the monster and attack him, if you get hit you dismount, unless you are using certain mantles. If you just attack with a normal attack, besides doing damage, the monster's part will be tenderized; if you are using a Light Weapon you need to hit 2 times, unless you are using a special skill; if it's a Heavy Weapon you only need to hit 1 time to tenderize it. You can also use slinger ammo while mounting with the Clutch Claw to send a monster into a wall to topple it or send it to a ledge to make him fall down; you can only use it when he is not enraged.
With this, it came a problem: tenderize a monster feels like it's mandatory. Because tenderizing a part gives so much bonus damage, the monsters were balanced to have more health and take less damage and even some skills were also balanced with the clutch claw in mind. This was made to influence the players to use the Clutch Claw, but now it feels like you need to use it all the time. The "Wall Bang", when you use slinger ammo to make the monster hit a wall, feels like the only correct way to do a lot of damage on a monster when he is not enraged.

All the weapons received new moves, some use the clutch claw some don't. Making all the weapons much more stronger and versatile and making the gameplay even more action focused.

New decorations and now Level 4 decorations.
Some skills can go above their max level.

A new snowy location called Hoarfrost Reach and another one that you unlock after completing the story and is really important for the endgame grind, it also makes the endgame here much more diverse and better than base world, that was basically hunt tempered monster to try to get good decorations.

A new base snowy village called Seliana was added, I fell that a lot players that played MH: Freedom Unite will feel kind of familiar with this new village. Seliana is MUCH better than Astera, being much more smaller with more convenient placement of things like the Smither, the Canteen, item boxes and the Tailraider Safari, also no loading screens except if you go to the also new Gathering Hall, that I liked much more than the other one on Astera.


-Even More Monsters
The base game had 36 Large Monsters, one of the smallest rosters in the franchise. But Iceborne added 35 new ones, almost doubled the roster, literally by 1, being the expansion that added the most monsters in the franchise; MHW Iceborne have now a total of 71 Large Monsters. Out of the 35 added, 18 are returning monsters and 17 are new ones.
Also, now we have a monke, a furious monke.

And of course, more monsters means more equipments, equipment that looks FUCKING SICK... except some weapons that, unfortunatly, still look terrible, though it's less than base world.


-Story
I kinda liked the story of Iceborne more than the MHW one because we have a little bit more of character development.
The new plot is basically: "there is earthquakes, monsters migrating to other habitats, ice and a weird "song" going on. Go discover what the fuck is doing that", is basically that, with a couple of cool moments.


-Soundtrack
The soundtrack is still outstanding. Honestly I just put this here to recommend some songs:

MHW: Iceborne's Main Theme - Succession of Light
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOIkiPeIbvY

Nay! The Honor is All Ours
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0xTx2BsLRc

Seliana's Theme:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jc-lYkl0lrc

Velkhana's Theme(Flagship of Iceborne)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtOcADX4v6k


-The Guiding Lands
Now this is the new endgame of World that is a major addition and adds a really different and better endgame from the base one.
The Guiding Lands is the new location that has a set of different regions in it; as I said, you unlock after beating the expansion's main story. All the monster materials that you grind here are all used to augment your weapon. Normal and Tempered monsters has different drops.

It has 6 different regions that you can Level Up but also Level Down, unless the levels are fixed. You can have 3 regions on level 7, the max level; 1 region. Also, you can go to other people's Guiding Lands if you don't to want to grind to level up or down your regions.

The monsters appear on different areas by the RNG; but you can control who appears based on the level of the region or just use Lures, that you get by completing special tracks or creating via Elder Melder.

The Guiding Lands was an amazing addition that motivates to continue playing a lot because is an major part on augmenting the weapon and is a total step forward compared to the endgame of base World.

Also there are monsters that you only unlock on the Guiding Lands.

-Conclusion
I wanted this review to be longer, there is things that i didn't talked about like specific unique monsters and mechanics that they added and title updates, that are now all on the game. But is mostly because I want players to experience most for themselves.

It was even more fun to watch the dev diaries; the final one was quite emotional.

Iceborne was the first expansion that I bought full price separately, and it was 100% worth it. It adds even more to an already complete solid game. It made World even better than it was and added +400 hours to my experience.
Like World, i recommend that you beat Iceborne on solo and them go multiplayer.

If you loved World, I highly recommend Iceborne. Is an amazing example on how to make a worthy expansion that adds even more to an complete game.

I played Iceborne as a whole, complete experience, months after the final update, and in this way it is phenomenal and one of the most addicting games I've ever played. I think I could talk about this game for way too long so I'll try to instead be more brief. Iceborne (and further the entire Monster Hunter franchise) is absolute heaven for anyone that loves personal customization. The gameplay loop of Monster Hunter is just so absurdly addicting, and when you combine that with the higher budget experience that World/Iceborne brought, it's honestly incredible. While the progression does lock certain things behind a lot of dedicated play time, I didn't mind because I always felt like I had something greater to work for, including many of the layered armor sets that require later Guiding Lands levels that look absolutely incredible. Playing from the beginning of Iceborne all the way to beating Fatalis with friends was an unforgettable experience. Making new sets for the next big challenge and then finally beating it never stopped being so satisfying. There is so much to do in Iceborne and I wanted to do every last bit, and I did, and I couldn't be happier that I decided to experience this game in full.

I could not be more excited for Monster Hunter 6 when they hopefully take the best of World/Iceborne and run with it. I was not a fan of some of the forced MMO elements, such as the DPS check for Kulve or the very frustrating Safi siege that has a very stupid rewards system. I feel as though that they've got enough feedback on these that they won't implement them again. I do commend Capcom for taking risks, because plenty of them in World DID work out, but a lot are just not great additions to the series. I can forgive it as long as they don't return in the future. The 'new' things that worked, such as the final phase of the Raging Brachydios fight or the much larger and more fleshed out maps, really, really worked. The RNG element for decorations is very frustrating and there should be a way, at a high price, to turn a huge amount of lower level decorations into things like Attack 4 because those gems just never showed up once after over 300 hours which is absolutely ridiculous, bad luck protection would be entirely necessary if they decide to use this system of decos again. Additionally, the multiplayer limitations, where you would have to view a cutscene first in order to join up on someone or just not be able to join at all, is incredibly dumb and should just not be a thing period. Some things are more nitpicky but I honestly want to nitpick because I just loved the game so much regardless and want Monster Hunter in this form to reach the full potential that I can envision.

Overall: 9/10

This is exactly what World needed and more. It's understandable to me why World lacked quite a bit of content (in comparison to other Monster Hunter games, it's still a hefty game when looking at other games) with it being the first true next gen Monster Hunter. Replaying Generations Ultimate and World back to back, it can't be understated just how much World 99% of the time change things for the better and the sheer amount of things that they did change is absolutely staggering. Still at the end of the day 36 monsters, with only 30 at launch, and some of those monsters being "You REALLY need other people to fight them", it's understandable why people got tired of World and why Iceborne is such an improvement. Maybe not with other players being required for certain fights (which are at least optional), but they added so much more to the game and refined the most polished Monster Hunter game even moreso that you can think of this as a straight up sequel. If you were left wanting with World then Iceborne is an absolute must and is currently the best Monster Hunter game, though that may in time be overtaken with Rise Sunbreak (hopefully that statement doesn't age badly).

If I gotta use one word to describe World, it's that it’s bloated - not in content, but with goals and concepts that come in conflict with each other. An always-online game with unskippable cutscenes and terrible story progression that makes the co-op experience near unplayable for anyone going through the game. Attempts at QoL and tutorialization all over the game to make it more newbie friendly, yet confuses them with distended menus that are much more difficult to navigate and and a variety of unintuitive tertiary mechanics in the form of clutch claw and slinger that badly attempt to solve MH pain points (that were never really a problem) yet only serve to overwhelm new players and hurt the core combat for veterans. And on a more personal note, the more realistic aesthetic takes away a significant amount of the series’ charm to me. It's easy to see now why this game pushed me away from Monster Hunter.

Despite that though, it's still Monster Hunter, and Iceborne adds some pretty fun fights and a mix of cool (and terrible) mechanics that made it worth revisiting. The core movesets of every weapon were revamped in really fun ways in this game that while lacking the spice of GU’s arts/styles or Rise’s wirebug shenanigans, still holds my interest. The game feels pretty balanced on top of that with a decent amount of viable setups and playstyles (elemetal in this game being actually a thing as opposed to Rise’s rather one-sided raw meta)

Though on that note, the way they handle much of the RPG side of things is another contradictory step back from previous games. Moving decorations from craftable to drops makes a bulk of your set’s skills at the mercy of RNG, forcing you to focus on craftable armor for skills and making for less freeform set building overall despite the redesigned skill system being intended to make builds more flexible. Sounds stupid? Yeah I know.

Pretty standard take incoming since the community has made it pretty clear how much it hates the clutch claw mechanic. It involves grappling unto the monster to deal a special attack which weakens the part you are latched on to, meant to give players more flexibility in what parts to attack. In practice though, with monsters balanced around it, it becomes more like a chore that requires you to use up big openings to re-apply a debuff every two minutes or else you deal no damage. The best it does for the game is give every weapon a universal way to latch on to flying monsters and deal some damage, but otherwise it de-emphasizes weapon mechanics and emphasizes a lot of the game’s jank.

It really sucks to get a good opening and instead of engaging with your weapon’s unique tools you just clutch claw because hunts would take way longer otherwise. Finding opportunities to clutch mid-fight is honestly a terrible experience that varies too wildly from monster to monster depending on how the coders felt about placing the hitbox that day. Some monsters make it really easy to clutch on the none-attacking part and make an opening that way, but using the same logic on other monsters will only lead to you getting fucked as you discover that their tail swipe inexplicably places a hitbox on their whole body. It makes certain monsters insanely abusable by this system and others nigh-impossible (without topple/stagger) in a way that has no relation to the overall difficulty of the monster. Overall this mechanic, along with slingers, only make the combat less focused and more inconsistent.

Other minor annoyances are mainly the theming of the game around the “World” and making it a more “believable ecosystem” end up hurting the gameplay for me more than anything else. The maps are a lot more annoying to navigate than anything of previous games. Ancient Forest is honestly one of the worst offenders with this, the dense foliage makes for poor visibility and its design lacks the interconnectedness required to make it work, and forces you into a lot of long and un-intuitive pathways to get where you need. The more “realistic” monster A.I and constant turf wars just add a lot of randomness to the combat.

There are things I like that are unique to this game. The Guiding Lands is a really cool idea for an endgame that could honestly be a whole game of its own. The game uses its position as a console game for some cool monsters every now then, like Namielle’s water, Nightshade’s smoke, and Shara Ishvalada’s sand, which make for good spectacle as well as neat ways for monsters to control space, and the game features really good iterations on most weapon movesets, which makes it hard to not have fun once I'm deep in a hunt.

But all in all, if Rise had more content and was on PC, I’d never touch this game again.

The new monsters are all really cool and fun to fight. The clutch claw is a pretty fun addition as well. The difficulty is ramped up which is a welcome change since there wasn't much in the way of challenge in the base game aside from nergi. I really hate fighting tigrex though. The more annoying parts of the expansion were the master rank versions of previous monsters like legiana and beezlegeuse but thankfully you're only required to fight them once. The story is still completely uninteresting and the fact that it keeps you from doing multiplayer until you see the cutscenes amplifies this problem. That being said, the cutscenes showing the monsters in action were very cool so it kind of balances out.

increible dlc que se vuelve una pija durante los ultimos 2 bosses, el endgame de este juego no solo es extremadamente grindy y repetitivo sino que tambien los monstruos que te quieren hacer matar tienen un repertorio de ataques que te destruyen de un golpe independientemente de la armadura que tengas, tuve que pasarme el juego metiendome a partiditas de randoms de rango 999 hasta que mate a fatalis con unos y la verdad fue muy poco satisfactorio porque ahora que lo mate despues de 1 año de tener el juego instalado siento que ese merito no es mio y me da paja y me hace sentir que desperdicie muchisimas horas jugando esto y me deprime.

le daria un puntaje muchisimo mas bajo porque la cantidad de tiempo que perdi para siquiera llegar a fatalis por mi cuenta es demasiada y realmente se sintio horrible ver como me one shotteaban despues de cientos de horas de grind en las guiding lands, pero tambien seria injusto hacerlo porque es una buena expansion, es bonita, tiene monstruos piolas y la pelea contra safijiiva es de las cosas mas epicas que jugue y sigue siendo uno de mis juegos favoritos y el que me introdujo a la saga.