This is the second part of a two-part review for Monster Hunter: world, except this one will be for Iceborne. I strongly encourage you to read the first part here. Iceborne is an equally long game as World, but I don’t have as much to cover this time, so it should be shorter. This DLC has been hyped up for me way before I got into Monster Hunter, so I went in with moderate expectations, but considering my issues with the base game, I wasn’t expecting anything mind-blowing. Needless to say, it was a fantastic experience with a few snags, let’s get right into it.
Iceborne is a substantial DLC right away because it fundamentally changes how each weapon is played and what they can do. Longswords for example, get the Iai slash and Iai spirit slash. Iai slash becomes an essential tool since landing it will allow your meter to naturally charge overtime, giving you more room to disengage from the monster without fully compromising your ability to perform your Spirit Slash combo. Iai Spirit Slash on the other hand is a higher skilled foresight slash that rewards you with tremendous damage, large part-break damage, and is visually striking. However, the issue with this particular move is the timing is far too tight at times, and it has a lot of factors that make it unreliable and random which severely hinders any sort of benefit it could provide on paper. I’m not an expert when it comes to how this move works, however, I recommend watching this video by Peppo, a former speedrunner about Iai Spirit Slash. It was incredibly informal, and was personally the decision for me to never use this move despite the theoretical potential and advantage it provides. With that said, the simple inclusion of Iai Slash makes Longsword much more forgiving to play despite already being rather easy. Other weapons I can’t comment on as much, however a lot of them usually tie into another mechanic introduced into Iceborne, which is the Clutch Claw.
Clutch Claw is a rather divisive mechanic overall. In concept, it allows you to latch onto a monster from a relatively close distance, once you are latched onto a monster you have a few options. You can “tenderize” that part of the monster, which allows for more damage to be dealt in that specific area. Tenderizing takes two strikes to tenderize with light weapons, while heavy weapons only take one. This would be a fantastic mechanic because it’d allow the hunters a much faster means of defeating monsters while also rewarding monster knowledge by tenderizing weak points to deal even more damage. The issue with this mechanic for Iceborne specifically are the monsters themselves, or rather their bloated health pools. Monsters in Iceborne require you tenderize them to deal adequate damage for them to go down at a reasonable pace, which bogs down many fights to “clutch claw and tenderize as soon as possible”. It heavily restricts the approach one can take fighting monsters in Iceborne, that’s not to mention how inaccurate The Clutch Claw also is. Aiming the clutch claw requires you to aim a reticle at the part you wish to clutch onto, if you aim successfully, then there’s no issue, but that’s the problem, the aiming is terrible. Monsters are incredibly fast and always moving, so having the time to carefully aim and clutch onto a monster is a nightmare, on top of its short range, you really need to put yourself in danger to do it. At least if you latch onto the wrong part, you can jump to other parts of the monster, but this can waste time and has incredibly odd input buffering issues from personal experience, but this may have been my own issue entirely by quickly hitting the buttons, it was annoying all the same.
Clutch Claw’s second important use is wall banging with the slinger. In World, the slinger was mostly used for environmental interaction and getting the monster’s attention while also being able to interrupt their attacks if timed right. Wall banging is not only better in every conceivable way to these options, but once again brings up a balancing issue, except in reverse to tenderizing. If you can clutch onto a monster’s face while they’re not enraged you can use up all of your slinger ammo to make them go sprinting into a wall, which will deal tremendous part break damage and have them topple over, giving you a gigantic opening. You can also adjust where the monster is facing to ensure they run into some obstacle or wall for the topple, which is useful. Wall banging pretty much trivializes any fight before Iceborne, and in Iceborne itself, it can be equally trivializing with the right coordination, guaranteeing a topple is already strong, but wall banging itself can deal immense damage to a monster as well. While I think the challenge of the monsters you fight in Iceborne can make up the difference here, wall banging at first is an incredibly satisfying and fun mechanic, but it’s far too easy and rewarding for something that only requires some slinger ammo and the monster not being enraged. Let’s not forget to mention that tenderizing the monster will drop slinger ammo for you if you use a light weapon, the game is giving you the resources to repeat this process over and over. That’s the fundamental problem with Iceborne to me, they design these monsters around both of these concepts, to tenderize, and to wall bang,, so to make up for that, they made monsters have so much health and resistance, if you decide not to use these methods, I’d argue your chances of succeeding later become vastly lower. Not to mention it can slow down certain fights to an absolute crawl, because you need to use the clutch claw, but if the monster is moving around a lot, and you’re just getting unlucky and knocked off a lot, you’re just kind of screwed. Granted you can still fight the monster normally, but with their health, and that lovely time limit adding pressure to be a bit faster, it’s a combination I did not enjoy very much initially, but you do get used to the new flow Iceborne presents, though I feel it dumbs down gameplay a lot and can be a crutch.
I think I’ve addressed some negatives, let’s get into some positives! The monster roster for Iceborne is nothing short of utterly amazing! While I definitely had my favorites from World like Nergigante, Teostra, and Odagaron to name a few, Iceborne quickly introduced me to some of my all-time favorite monsters ever in both design and fights. Nargacuga’s blinding speed yet incredibly fair openings, Brachydios being a knuckle duster with explosive AoE’s, and Barioth’s blinding speed and aggression that can be stopped cold by shattering his wings. There were very few fights in Iceborne I didn’t enjoy or at least tolerated compared to base World, it gave the game much needed variety outside of World’s roster which felt very dinosaur and dragon loaded. Iceborne certainly doesn’t shy away from adding more of these types of monsters, but was pleasantly surprised to see more diverse design inclusions like Banbaro. One thing I could have done without are all the new variants of old monsters. In concept, I think the idea is good, but in Iceborne, they didn’t feel substantial enough at all to warrant including in my eyes. There are exceptions of course like Coral Pukei-Pukei, and Frostfang Barioth to name a few, but others like Ebony Odagaron and Nightshade Paolumu felt more like padding than worthwhile variants worth being in the DLC. That’s a negligent issue in the grand scheme of things, but still an issue regardless, still an amazing roster of monsters I was very pleased with.
Iceborne also has us exploring a new region: The Hoarfrost Reach. Hoarfrost Reach is a beautiful landscape covered in snow, but wasn’t too large or difficult to navigate, on top of being rather flat compared to the likes of the Ancient Forest, I was immediately a fan of this new area. One thing I was not a fan of constantly having to consume hot drinks to ensure my stamina wasn’t lowered by the cold. Thematically speaking, it’s incredibly cohesive and makes sense, mechanically? It’s bothersome to keep up with, but considering it’s not that often you need to refresh your immunity, it’s ignorable, but something I noticed compared to Elder’s Recess where you only needed to consume Cold Drinks for specific sections, not the entire map. We also get an entire new hub for this DLC, Seliana, wow. Seliana in stark comparison to Astera, was remarkably designed, much flatter, much easier to traverse, and had an unbelievably cozy and immersive feel. I loved everything Seliana had to offer in both layout and new activities such as the generator which just made certain items an absolute breeze to get without farming expeditions anymore. Seliana also had a much better and inviting Gathering Hub, with hot springs, more convenient layout, and again just really cozy. It has much better music, you get your own room you can customize and do side quests to obtain more decoration options which is an awesome inclusion that’ll give the game far more playtime and longevity for people who enjoy that. I personally only dabbled with it, but I was thoroughly impressed with how much you could do with it. As soon as I reached, I never went back to Astera, it’s just too bothersome and badly designed to navigate. I appreciate its verticality and scope, but Seliana is just more inviting and non-intrusive, it wins by a landslide.
Progression with Iceborne also felt far better than base world. A plethora of new monsters means more gear than ever to craft, and most of them are once again useful in their own right and look good to boot, with the added bonus of not having an armor set that can essentially carry you throughout the game like the Defender Gear. With that said, the last armor set in the game one could arguably obtain is far too versatile with how it’s designed, every single weapon or playstyle can be supported by it, and it’s due to this armor set that Iceborne’s endgame grinding is always the same, which is a huge detriment. Had the game allowed for any and all armor combinations to, in theory, be viable, it would have made building and using them long-term far more satisfying and valuable, but instead, what awaits you is a far superior armor set everyone uses, with zero reason not to, no negatives, no drawbacks, nothing, the only caveat being how you obtain it, but we’ll get there. Besides that one issue, the plethora of new options is great, and I very much enjoyed the progression in Iceborne more than the base world. I personally built far more weapons and armor in this expansion than my entire time in Base World because the monsters and difficulty increase every mission warranted it enough to feel important to do.
Iceborne unfortunately retreads the same issues the base world does with cutscenes, missions, and characters. None of it mattered to me, it’s all simply, once again, a means to justify why you’re fighting specific monsters, it works, but is completely unimportant overall. I once again found myself wanting to skip these cutscenes in favor of fighting large monsters. Characters are as one-dimensional as ever, but we do get a break from the Handler in this expansion for a little while, which was nice, but nothing significant. It’s honestly a tragedy these negatives still exist, as you also need to watch the cutscene first before others can join your hunt, which was equally annoying in base World, this same issue persists here. For as much as Iceborne improved upon base world, this was not one of those areas, and it’s a shame too because this DLC truly felt like it was really trying to right every wrong, but I guess it can’t all be perfect.
Let’s get into my largest criticism for Iceborne, the endgame, or more specifically, the endgame monsters you will be fighting. Now, it’d be hard for me to talk about this since it’s riddled with spoilers. I was inspired by one of my friends and inspirations, @DetectiveFail to use pastebin to discuss spoilers. So for the last section of this review, I highly suggest reading it here if you want my thoughts on it. For those who don’t, or wish not to, I will still give a brief summary here. Essentially, a lot of the final Monsters you fight in World boil down to DPS checks that don’t necessarily cater to skill, but more so how good your build is, and forces you to grind for something good enough to overcome the challenge. Monster Hunter already made it difficult at times to win due to the time limit implemented in hunts, and here that problem is exacerbated further. If your damage isn’t good enough, then you will simply wipe, that’s all there is to it. Not to mention the difficulty spike in the last two monsters especially is far too high, and I personally struggled to defeat them for several hours, to days. It was certainly rewarding and a huge accomplishment, but also an obstacle that will ensure I will never aim to complete this DLC ever again because the entire grind was rather unpleasant and not very fun. Instead it was incredibly frustrating and felt like the odds were always against me to win, this is ironically in the same spirit as Monster Hunter aims for, to feel an insurmountable challenge against giant monsters you can and will overcome. But here it feels legitimately impossible, and many have told me from talking about the final boss in Iceborne that they never came close to beating it.
This has been a very long review in the making, I appreciate everyone’s patience and support as I got this finished. I’m happy to say it is now finished, and ready to review some other great games I’ve been playing while working on this. Overall, I did love Iceborne, it was nothing but an improvement from the base game with tons of implementations, monsters, and ideas I felt were mostly good, others I can’t necessarily say I’d be sad if they never returned. While I do take many issues with the game and its expansion, I got to say it’s still a remarkable game. I’ve always wanted to get into this series, and I’m glad I did with this one! I can easily recommend it to others for the immersive monster behavior and designs, the soundtrack, and the fun combat that hits a few snags along the way. Thank you all for reading my review of Iceborne! Next time, we’ll be mixing drinks and changing lives! Until next time.
Iceborne is a substantial DLC right away because it fundamentally changes how each weapon is played and what they can do. Longswords for example, get the Iai slash and Iai spirit slash. Iai slash becomes an essential tool since landing it will allow your meter to naturally charge overtime, giving you more room to disengage from the monster without fully compromising your ability to perform your Spirit Slash combo. Iai Spirit Slash on the other hand is a higher skilled foresight slash that rewards you with tremendous damage, large part-break damage, and is visually striking. However, the issue with this particular move is the timing is far too tight at times, and it has a lot of factors that make it unreliable and random which severely hinders any sort of benefit it could provide on paper. I’m not an expert when it comes to how this move works, however, I recommend watching this video by Peppo, a former speedrunner about Iai Spirit Slash. It was incredibly informal, and was personally the decision for me to never use this move despite the theoretical potential and advantage it provides. With that said, the simple inclusion of Iai Slash makes Longsword much more forgiving to play despite already being rather easy. Other weapons I can’t comment on as much, however a lot of them usually tie into another mechanic introduced into Iceborne, which is the Clutch Claw.
Clutch Claw is a rather divisive mechanic overall. In concept, it allows you to latch onto a monster from a relatively close distance, once you are latched onto a monster you have a few options. You can “tenderize” that part of the monster, which allows for more damage to be dealt in that specific area. Tenderizing takes two strikes to tenderize with light weapons, while heavy weapons only take one. This would be a fantastic mechanic because it’d allow the hunters a much faster means of defeating monsters while also rewarding monster knowledge by tenderizing weak points to deal even more damage. The issue with this mechanic for Iceborne specifically are the monsters themselves, or rather their bloated health pools. Monsters in Iceborne require you tenderize them to deal adequate damage for them to go down at a reasonable pace, which bogs down many fights to “clutch claw and tenderize as soon as possible”. It heavily restricts the approach one can take fighting monsters in Iceborne, that’s not to mention how inaccurate The Clutch Claw also is. Aiming the clutch claw requires you to aim a reticle at the part you wish to clutch onto, if you aim successfully, then there’s no issue, but that’s the problem, the aiming is terrible. Monsters are incredibly fast and always moving, so having the time to carefully aim and clutch onto a monster is a nightmare, on top of its short range, you really need to put yourself in danger to do it. At least if you latch onto the wrong part, you can jump to other parts of the monster, but this can waste time and has incredibly odd input buffering issues from personal experience, but this may have been my own issue entirely by quickly hitting the buttons, it was annoying all the same.
Clutch Claw’s second important use is wall banging with the slinger. In World, the slinger was mostly used for environmental interaction and getting the monster’s attention while also being able to interrupt their attacks if timed right. Wall banging is not only better in every conceivable way to these options, but once again brings up a balancing issue, except in reverse to tenderizing. If you can clutch onto a monster’s face while they’re not enraged you can use up all of your slinger ammo to make them go sprinting into a wall, which will deal tremendous part break damage and have them topple over, giving you a gigantic opening. You can also adjust where the monster is facing to ensure they run into some obstacle or wall for the topple, which is useful. Wall banging pretty much trivializes any fight before Iceborne, and in Iceborne itself, it can be equally trivializing with the right coordination, guaranteeing a topple is already strong, but wall banging itself can deal immense damage to a monster as well. While I think the challenge of the monsters you fight in Iceborne can make up the difference here, wall banging at first is an incredibly satisfying and fun mechanic, but it’s far too easy and rewarding for something that only requires some slinger ammo and the monster not being enraged. Let’s not forget to mention that tenderizing the monster will drop slinger ammo for you if you use a light weapon, the game is giving you the resources to repeat this process over and over. That’s the fundamental problem with Iceborne to me, they design these monsters around both of these concepts, to tenderize, and to wall bang,, so to make up for that, they made monsters have so much health and resistance, if you decide not to use these methods, I’d argue your chances of succeeding later become vastly lower. Not to mention it can slow down certain fights to an absolute crawl, because you need to use the clutch claw, but if the monster is moving around a lot, and you’re just getting unlucky and knocked off a lot, you’re just kind of screwed. Granted you can still fight the monster normally, but with their health, and that lovely time limit adding pressure to be a bit faster, it’s a combination I did not enjoy very much initially, but you do get used to the new flow Iceborne presents, though I feel it dumbs down gameplay a lot and can be a crutch.
I think I’ve addressed some negatives, let’s get into some positives! The monster roster for Iceborne is nothing short of utterly amazing! While I definitely had my favorites from World like Nergigante, Teostra, and Odagaron to name a few, Iceborne quickly introduced me to some of my all-time favorite monsters ever in both design and fights. Nargacuga’s blinding speed yet incredibly fair openings, Brachydios being a knuckle duster with explosive AoE’s, and Barioth’s blinding speed and aggression that can be stopped cold by shattering his wings. There were very few fights in Iceborne I didn’t enjoy or at least tolerated compared to base World, it gave the game much needed variety outside of World’s roster which felt very dinosaur and dragon loaded. Iceborne certainly doesn’t shy away from adding more of these types of monsters, but was pleasantly surprised to see more diverse design inclusions like Banbaro. One thing I could have done without are all the new variants of old monsters. In concept, I think the idea is good, but in Iceborne, they didn’t feel substantial enough at all to warrant including in my eyes. There are exceptions of course like Coral Pukei-Pukei, and Frostfang Barioth to name a few, but others like Ebony Odagaron and Nightshade Paolumu felt more like padding than worthwhile variants worth being in the DLC. That’s a negligent issue in the grand scheme of things, but still an issue regardless, still an amazing roster of monsters I was very pleased with.
Iceborne also has us exploring a new region: The Hoarfrost Reach. Hoarfrost Reach is a beautiful landscape covered in snow, but wasn’t too large or difficult to navigate, on top of being rather flat compared to the likes of the Ancient Forest, I was immediately a fan of this new area. One thing I was not a fan of constantly having to consume hot drinks to ensure my stamina wasn’t lowered by the cold. Thematically speaking, it’s incredibly cohesive and makes sense, mechanically? It’s bothersome to keep up with, but considering it’s not that often you need to refresh your immunity, it’s ignorable, but something I noticed compared to Elder’s Recess where you only needed to consume Cold Drinks for specific sections, not the entire map. We also get an entire new hub for this DLC, Seliana, wow. Seliana in stark comparison to Astera, was remarkably designed, much flatter, much easier to traverse, and had an unbelievably cozy and immersive feel. I loved everything Seliana had to offer in both layout and new activities such as the generator which just made certain items an absolute breeze to get without farming expeditions anymore. Seliana also had a much better and inviting Gathering Hub, with hot springs, more convenient layout, and again just really cozy. It has much better music, you get your own room you can customize and do side quests to obtain more decoration options which is an awesome inclusion that’ll give the game far more playtime and longevity for people who enjoy that. I personally only dabbled with it, but I was thoroughly impressed with how much you could do with it. As soon as I reached, I never went back to Astera, it’s just too bothersome and badly designed to navigate. I appreciate its verticality and scope, but Seliana is just more inviting and non-intrusive, it wins by a landslide.
Progression with Iceborne also felt far better than base world. A plethora of new monsters means more gear than ever to craft, and most of them are once again useful in their own right and look good to boot, with the added bonus of not having an armor set that can essentially carry you throughout the game like the Defender Gear. With that said, the last armor set in the game one could arguably obtain is far too versatile with how it’s designed, every single weapon or playstyle can be supported by it, and it’s due to this armor set that Iceborne’s endgame grinding is always the same, which is a huge detriment. Had the game allowed for any and all armor combinations to, in theory, be viable, it would have made building and using them long-term far more satisfying and valuable, but instead, what awaits you is a far superior armor set everyone uses, with zero reason not to, no negatives, no drawbacks, nothing, the only caveat being how you obtain it, but we’ll get there. Besides that one issue, the plethora of new options is great, and I very much enjoyed the progression in Iceborne more than the base world. I personally built far more weapons and armor in this expansion than my entire time in Base World because the monsters and difficulty increase every mission warranted it enough to feel important to do.
Iceborne unfortunately retreads the same issues the base world does with cutscenes, missions, and characters. None of it mattered to me, it’s all simply, once again, a means to justify why you’re fighting specific monsters, it works, but is completely unimportant overall. I once again found myself wanting to skip these cutscenes in favor of fighting large monsters. Characters are as one-dimensional as ever, but we do get a break from the Handler in this expansion for a little while, which was nice, but nothing significant. It’s honestly a tragedy these negatives still exist, as you also need to watch the cutscene first before others can join your hunt, which was equally annoying in base World, this same issue persists here. For as much as Iceborne improved upon base world, this was not one of those areas, and it’s a shame too because this DLC truly felt like it was really trying to right every wrong, but I guess it can’t all be perfect.
Let’s get into my largest criticism for Iceborne, the endgame, or more specifically, the endgame monsters you will be fighting. Now, it’d be hard for me to talk about this since it’s riddled with spoilers. I was inspired by one of my friends and inspirations, @DetectiveFail to use pastebin to discuss spoilers. So for the last section of this review, I highly suggest reading it here if you want my thoughts on it. For those who don’t, or wish not to, I will still give a brief summary here. Essentially, a lot of the final Monsters you fight in World boil down to DPS checks that don’t necessarily cater to skill, but more so how good your build is, and forces you to grind for something good enough to overcome the challenge. Monster Hunter already made it difficult at times to win due to the time limit implemented in hunts, and here that problem is exacerbated further. If your damage isn’t good enough, then you will simply wipe, that’s all there is to it. Not to mention the difficulty spike in the last two monsters especially is far too high, and I personally struggled to defeat them for several hours, to days. It was certainly rewarding and a huge accomplishment, but also an obstacle that will ensure I will never aim to complete this DLC ever again because the entire grind was rather unpleasant and not very fun. Instead it was incredibly frustrating and felt like the odds were always against me to win, this is ironically in the same spirit as Monster Hunter aims for, to feel an insurmountable challenge against giant monsters you can and will overcome. But here it feels legitimately impossible, and many have told me from talking about the final boss in Iceborne that they never came close to beating it.
This has been a very long review in the making, I appreciate everyone’s patience and support as I got this finished. I’m happy to say it is now finished, and ready to review some other great games I’ve been playing while working on this. Overall, I did love Iceborne, it was nothing but an improvement from the base game with tons of implementations, monsters, and ideas I felt were mostly good, others I can’t necessarily say I’d be sad if they never returned. While I do take many issues with the game and its expansion, I got to say it’s still a remarkable game. I’ve always wanted to get into this series, and I’m glad I did with this one! I can easily recommend it to others for the immersive monster behavior and designs, the soundtrack, and the fun combat that hits a few snags along the way. Thank you all for reading my review of Iceborne! Next time, we’ll be mixing drinks and changing lives! Until next time.
This is for both World & Iceborne.
Wilds got me roaring in some kind of way that made me crave MH for literally 2 months since it's announcement. All single player is how this game should be played unironically, that way you aren't bogged down by inflated near MMO levels of stat increase from part damage all the way to stun values.
Those aside, this is Capcom's so far, MH masterpiece in terms of worldbuilding and ecological care, joyous game.
Wilds got me roaring in some kind of way that made me crave MH for literally 2 months since it's announcement. All single player is how this game should be played unironically, that way you aren't bogged down by inflated near MMO levels of stat increase from part damage all the way to stun values.
Those aside, this is Capcom's so far, MH masterpiece in terms of worldbuilding and ecological care, joyous game.
Uma adição incrível a um jogo maravilhoso. DLCS muito boa, trazendo adições incríveis e combates desafiadores ao jogo. Amei a DLC.
Droga 3, ainda mais viciavel.
big, huge, massive improvement and expansions over the base game. addictive and rewarding
haven't finished all the optionals but the main story is over, and given how big everything is, i don't really plan on 100%.
while this is a massive improvement from the main game, the main issues still stand, those being :
-hunting for clues is silly
-a absurd downgrade of weaponry from Generations, given how the main focus is the visuals and feel of the world to attract new players
-astere is still too big for no reason other than ''LOOK HOW AWESOME THIS NEW HUB IS''
-The absurdity of grind to get mantles.
-the cryptic way of unlocking certain equipments and missions.
but speaking of the DLC itself, its much more of the same, some classics come back, the addition of guildlands is a interesting way to grind and upgrade old gear.
however i still prefer rise, simply put a more straightfoward and fun experience
while this is a massive improvement from the main game, the main issues still stand, those being :
-hunting for clues is silly
-a absurd downgrade of weaponry from Generations, given how the main focus is the visuals and feel of the world to attract new players
-astere is still too big for no reason other than ''LOOK HOW AWESOME THIS NEW HUB IS''
-The absurdity of grind to get mantles.
-the cryptic way of unlocking certain equipments and missions.
but speaking of the DLC itself, its much more of the same, some classics come back, the addition of guildlands is a interesting way to grind and upgrade old gear.
however i still prefer rise, simply put a more straightfoward and fun experience
World: Iceborne, the Monster Hunter game that gave the franchise the spotlight it deserved! The game is truly good. Monster Hunter is never a graphical beauty kind of game since most of its previous games are playable in handheld consoles, and yet MH made a big comeback to the home console scene and for the first time ever, the PC scene. With them entering a new hardware they finally went all out with the graphics, it is beautiful a monster hunter game that is so detailed and yet so beautiful. The story for World and Iceborne is pretty actually well-written, yes, its not RDR kind of story but it is a pretty decent one for the franchise. It finally has NPC talking to you like they are actually part of the hunt and they feel alive which is pretty neat. The story still has that MH formula with you hunt down a flagship monster but there is a bigger and bader one, but the continuation of the story is pretty good. The combat is pretty fucking sick! It's one of the greatest combat in all of the franchise coming second is Rise. Every combo feels like you are doing Hunter Arts (MHGU) and if you time it perfectly well you will have the most satisfying hunt of all time. The combat and the weapons for the game is pretty well-balanced and I must say World and Iceborne has got to be top 1 best combat in all of the franchise. The only downside of this game is the weapon designs, it sucks ass, Its just barebones tape together to a piece of metal. All of the previous MH has beautiful and awesome looking weapons but in this game its so trash no inspiration at all, though the armor sets looks nice. The new monsters for this game is pretty good too, some are just straight up dinosaurs and some are actually pretty good and fighting them feels like an actual fight. Overall, Monster Hunter World: Iceborne is a great Monster Hunter game and a solid game. It might have a less monster hunter-ish feel to it but nonetheless its pretty great!
Another forever game. Don't get me started on World. This game was my life for a solid year, the only thing holding it back is the godawful servers that render online play nearly unplayable.
Super fun with friends.
I still have a lot of things to do even after almost 400 hours. 😼👍
I still have a lot of things to do even after almost 400 hours. 😼👍
greatest videogame of all time
trying to get loot was a REAL pain in this game.
theres a grappling hook in this one (its bad)
I have a lot of problems with Iceborne... It's still great though.
super duper fun the game is a collection of great boss fights with some awesome progression until you get to like alatreon. still have to fight fatalis
see my review for MHW for overall take, but MAJOR improvement over the base game
only real gripe is the renaming of G rank to Master rank, it's just so ehhhhh
G rank forever
only real gripe is the renaming of G rank to Master rank, it's just so ehhhhh
G rank forever
(Logged as a shoe-in for both the base Monster Hunter: World game, and the Iceborne expansion.)
Lavish & deathly exciting at practically all times - varied and expressive social MMO tissue connecting its numerous multi-layered terrariums of gorgeous arenas and silly monsties.
I do have some background with the series, with much history on Freedom Unite, and far less with the fantranslation of Portable 3rd + 3Ultimate at various points through highschool, and hit the credits of Rise. Freedom Unite came packed with FMV cutscenes that demonstrate how the monsters lived in their downtime - characterising the monsters to assure the player that they weren't merely thoughtless models with movesets to memorise, but individual links in the food chain with roles that keep the world biodiverse & strong.
It was always my favourite part of the game, and what felt like the series' missing hook to really sell me on the core conceit was in how this aspect is somewhat downplayed or unexplored.
By God's grace this was the kind of ecological focus MH:W absolutely relishes in. An interlinking tapestry of ecosystems ticking away, living & interacting in countless ways to make the New World feel so gd raw. And it's not just pageantry either, it plays into behaviours and environment interactions from traps to turf wars. So so so good to head out for a simple hunt to watch it blossom into a scrappy mess of tooth & claw, so so so good to go on aimless expedition to a zone and notice a new handful of behaviours from their endemic life. I’d not be able to sleep at night if I didn’t compliment the chefs on all of this, every monster in every zone is given so much purpose it’s inspiring.
One thing this series has always been great at is its environment design - the world of Monster Hunter is a land of plenty, and everything is blown out of proportion to match. You're eating sirloin steaks the size of your head, oyster side dishes that can feed an army. The tooth you built your hammer out of can sink a ship. Zones and skyboxes that coil across different unique biomes rich in visual stimuli, adding heaps of context for the world and how things are as they are. Pan the camera up at any point and you can assuredly see a spire of choral, ice or crystal towering over you from what appears to be a mile away. Hoarfrost Reach is gorgeous I need to live there NOW.
Moment to moment combat is of course good as hell. I love that it’s slow and weighty enough to separate it from a more typical Capcom character action affair. Even with the amassing layers of QoL the series has glazed itself with, World still focuses on hefty player move commitment and punishment. Every weapon here feels great and each individually recontextualises your approach to any fight, but I found a home with the Dual Blades I’m afraid. I love these stupid ale blades man!!! Basically adored the progression right up until the Furious Rajang, where the game takes a very steep swerve into grind and Raid-like Design territory I find catatonic & diagnostic. The Fatalis fight is so much fun I wish I could solo it 😢
Lavish & deathly exciting at practically all times - varied and expressive social MMO tissue connecting its numerous multi-layered terrariums of gorgeous arenas and silly monsties.
I do have some background with the series, with much history on Freedom Unite, and far less with the fantranslation of Portable 3rd + 3Ultimate at various points through highschool, and hit the credits of Rise. Freedom Unite came packed with FMV cutscenes that demonstrate how the monsters lived in their downtime - characterising the monsters to assure the player that they weren't merely thoughtless models with movesets to memorise, but individual links in the food chain with roles that keep the world biodiverse & strong.
It was always my favourite part of the game, and what felt like the series' missing hook to really sell me on the core conceit was in how this aspect is somewhat downplayed or unexplored.
By God's grace this was the kind of ecological focus MH:W absolutely relishes in. An interlinking tapestry of ecosystems ticking away, living & interacting in countless ways to make the New World feel so gd raw. And it's not just pageantry either, it plays into behaviours and environment interactions from traps to turf wars. So so so good to head out for a simple hunt to watch it blossom into a scrappy mess of tooth & claw, so so so good to go on aimless expedition to a zone and notice a new handful of behaviours from their endemic life. I’d not be able to sleep at night if I didn’t compliment the chefs on all of this, every monster in every zone is given so much purpose it’s inspiring.
One thing this series has always been great at is its environment design - the world of Monster Hunter is a land of plenty, and everything is blown out of proportion to match. You're eating sirloin steaks the size of your head, oyster side dishes that can feed an army. The tooth you built your hammer out of can sink a ship. Zones and skyboxes that coil across different unique biomes rich in visual stimuli, adding heaps of context for the world and how things are as they are. Pan the camera up at any point and you can assuredly see a spire of choral, ice or crystal towering over you from what appears to be a mile away. Hoarfrost Reach is gorgeous I need to live there NOW.
Moment to moment combat is of course good as hell. I love that it’s slow and weighty enough to separate it from a more typical Capcom character action affair. Even with the amassing layers of QoL the series has glazed itself with, World still focuses on hefty player move commitment and punishment. Every weapon here feels great and each individually recontextualises your approach to any fight, but I found a home with the Dual Blades I’m afraid. I love these stupid ale blades man!!! Basically adored the progression right up until the Furious Rajang, where the game takes a very steep swerve into grind and Raid-like Design territory I find catatonic & diagnostic. The Fatalis fight is so much fun I wish I could solo it 😢
Absolutely blows my mind at the sheer amount of incompetence required to fuck up an already bad game by this much more.
Holy shit now the game is hard lol.
Amazing expansion, fun new mechanics for the weapons and the new fights are very hard. Loved my personal hotsprings in my room.
Now let's grind until my LeftShift finger break!
Amazing expansion, fun new mechanics for the weapons and the new fights are very hard. Loved my personal hotsprings in my room.
Now let's grind until my LeftShift finger break!
I haven't finished Iceborne, maybe I will in the future but not right now because of two words, clutch claw. It genuinely ruins what I believe to be a solid expansion and an overall improvement of base Monster Hunter: World.
So what's so bad about the clutch claw? The clutch claw is a tool that lets you grapple onto a monster. From there you can do a few actions, soften a part of the monster, as well as rotate the monster and slam them into a wall toppling them. I honestly don't have issues with what the clutch claw allows you to do, what I do take issue with is that the clutch claw isn't a supplemental tool like the slinger but a mandatory mechanic. And to pour salt in the wound, it's incredibly finnicky to use. I'll be targeting a monster's head with no obstructions and end up attaching to its thigh while it's kicking and get knocked off. However, none of that stuff really matters when compared to the largest issue, softening.
Softening a part of the monster turns that part into a temporary weak point that'll take more damage and allow skills involving weak points to activate on softened parts. All of that on paper does not bother me, just seems like a way to speed up hunts. WRONG! The health pools of monsters have been massively inflated compared to base game because of softening. The finnicky clutch claw is no longer a supplementary tool but now mandatory if you don't want hunts to drag on.
All of this is such a shame, because the monsters in iceborne are all fun to fight, (outside of clutch claw shenanigans). The story still sucks and cutscenes are still unskippable, but the hunts could've been so fun if not for the clutch claw. The clutch claw even infects the base game. There is a new type of stagger, which the community calls clagger, that monsters can experience. Monsters will sometimes get launched away from you, making you miss parts of your weapon combos. So you gotta clutch claw onto the monster to keep the momentum going. Clagger also affects base game monsters making it really annoying when you locked into a super element discharge, missing, and wasting all of your charged phials; all because the designers desperately want you to use the clutch claw.
Iceborne could've been great, but it just serves how one mechanic can ruin a whole experience. There is still fun to be had here but I'm just sick of the clutch claw to keep going for the time being.
So what's so bad about the clutch claw? The clutch claw is a tool that lets you grapple onto a monster. From there you can do a few actions, soften a part of the monster, as well as rotate the monster and slam them into a wall toppling them. I honestly don't have issues with what the clutch claw allows you to do, what I do take issue with is that the clutch claw isn't a supplemental tool like the slinger but a mandatory mechanic. And to pour salt in the wound, it's incredibly finnicky to use. I'll be targeting a monster's head with no obstructions and end up attaching to its thigh while it's kicking and get knocked off. However, none of that stuff really matters when compared to the largest issue, softening.
Softening a part of the monster turns that part into a temporary weak point that'll take more damage and allow skills involving weak points to activate on softened parts. All of that on paper does not bother me, just seems like a way to speed up hunts. WRONG! The health pools of monsters have been massively inflated compared to base game because of softening. The finnicky clutch claw is no longer a supplementary tool but now mandatory if you don't want hunts to drag on.
All of this is such a shame, because the monsters in iceborne are all fun to fight, (outside of clutch claw shenanigans). The story still sucks and cutscenes are still unskippable, but the hunts could've been so fun if not for the clutch claw. The clutch claw even infects the base game. There is a new type of stagger, which the community calls clagger, that monsters can experience. Monsters will sometimes get launched away from you, making you miss parts of your weapon combos. So you gotta clutch claw onto the monster to keep the momentum going. Clagger also affects base game monsters making it really annoying when you locked into a super element discharge, missing, and wasting all of your charged phials; all because the designers desperately want you to use the clutch claw.
Iceborne could've been great, but it just serves how one mechanic can ruin a whole experience. There is still fun to be had here but I'm just sick of the clutch claw to keep going for the time being.
CLUTCH CLAW TENDERIZE CLUTCH CLAW WALLBANG UNTIL THE MONSTER IS ENRAGED WOOO NOW REPEAT THIS SHIT IS SOOOO FUN!!!
So I had a previous review that was a bit more negative on the game and very similar to my lame shitpost review of Xenoblade 2 where I simply said "objectively better than the first game." I feel I was a bit too harsh on Iceborne then. Now a lot of the problems I had back then are still there but 3 years away from this exclusively playing Rise and Sunbreak definitely helped in giving me a newfound outlook for Monster Hunter World and Iceborne. Especially the latter.
Post Monster Hunter 3 I haven't really disliked any Monster Hunter game. 3 has a really lackluster roster, but I understand why it was like that. I don't like it, but I get it. P3rd on though? Banger after banger full on 10 on 10 games baby. P3rd? Banger. 3U? Banger. 4U? ALL TIMER THE POPEYES CHICKEN OF MH. Gen? Banger. GU? Banger. World would be the first one to really sort of shake up this streak for me as while I never did find the game terrible I always felt it was lacking something. A sort of charm the previous games had that the 5th generation wouldn't really bring back until Rise. Iceborne only exacerbated this despite the return of some of the more vibrant and odd monsters from older games. Didn't stop me from putting over 2K hours and now another 295 into it with this replay lmfaooo.
So yeah getting it out of the way now. Iceborne is a bit of a janky load still. The clutch claw sucks. This is a lukewarm take, but man does it suck having to do this to even make WEX work. The movement of the characters also feels really off compared to the previous games and even Rise. There's a bit of that Rockstar Euphoria bullshit going on where I feel some control responses take like 3 hours at times and cool I just got one shot by Fatalis epic. I'd talk about the deco grinding (still sucks), Guiding Lands (kill me), or the FOMO events, but those are mostly a nonissue now. If you're playing MHWI in 2023 (enjoy by the way if you got it on the current sale that shit is a steal) none of these things will really matter as naturally grinding out what you want or deco events may just get you decent decos. For The Guiding Lands unless you really want to augment some gear (and there's no reason to really care about attack and health augments I didn't use any at all this playthrough) you can just avoid it besides the mandatory story quests or Raging Brachydios event (one of the best fights). FOMO events nonexistent since Fatalis dropped back in late 2020 and the game is so much better for it. This is what it should have been all along and it rules. Yeah I still have my issues with some annoying shit. Why does the game punish me for playing good by having that dumb Rajang wall grab and Fatalis falling over knock me down? But the good out weighs the bad. Also while I find Rise's art direction to be much better as I feel MH should be a very stylized (yet realistic) franchise I can definitely at least say that the environments in this game are gorgeous and the HDR is so goooood when you figure out how to make it work. Just the wonderful contrast and colors you can give it. On a technical level yeah World is genuinely impressive especially for a PS4 game, and now on PS5 with the minimized loadtimes and unbroken 60fps lordy... All that paired with the amount of content makes this at this point in time one of the most bang for your buck games. If you've ever been interested in Monster Hunter and wanted an idea of what the franchise is then yes this is the game to play. I may prefer Rise and feel in many ways it is more representative of the franchise as a whole post Tri (goofy yet earnest) World is the game Wilds will definitely build off of more than the former even if it takes some elements from it.
It's a bit of a mess (why is Nergigante turned into Monsterverse Godzilla and why are the ledges so fucking annoying and why are the maps so tight and cramped) and some things really feel like the devs at times are trying to counter the player trying to have any fun (CC tenderizing), but MHWI is in my opinion still one of the gold standards of what a AAA release should be. This doesn't just end at release content wise, but in post launch content with free additional monsters and events to keep the game alive. Yeah it may not be the best MH, but I'm thinking it's a pretty damn good game.
Now if you'll excuse me I'll be playing Monster Hunter Rise and the older ones until Wilds releases alongside any other games I want to play.
Post Monster Hunter 3 I haven't really disliked any Monster Hunter game. 3 has a really lackluster roster, but I understand why it was like that. I don't like it, but I get it. P3rd on though? Banger after banger full on 10 on 10 games baby. P3rd? Banger. 3U? Banger. 4U? ALL TIMER THE POPEYES CHICKEN OF MH. Gen? Banger. GU? Banger. World would be the first one to really sort of shake up this streak for me as while I never did find the game terrible I always felt it was lacking something. A sort of charm the previous games had that the 5th generation wouldn't really bring back until Rise. Iceborne only exacerbated this despite the return of some of the more vibrant and odd monsters from older games. Didn't stop me from putting over 2K hours and now another 295 into it with this replay lmfaooo.
So yeah getting it out of the way now. Iceborne is a bit of a janky load still. The clutch claw sucks. This is a lukewarm take, but man does it suck having to do this to even make WEX work. The movement of the characters also feels really off compared to the previous games and even Rise. There's a bit of that Rockstar Euphoria bullshit going on where I feel some control responses take like 3 hours at times and cool I just got one shot by Fatalis epic. I'd talk about the deco grinding (still sucks), Guiding Lands (kill me), or the FOMO events, but those are mostly a nonissue now. If you're playing MHWI in 2023 (enjoy by the way if you got it on the current sale that shit is a steal) none of these things will really matter as naturally grinding out what you want or deco events may just get you decent decos. For The Guiding Lands unless you really want to augment some gear (and there's no reason to really care about attack and health augments I didn't use any at all this playthrough) you can just avoid it besides the mandatory story quests or Raging Brachydios event (one of the best fights). FOMO events nonexistent since Fatalis dropped back in late 2020 and the game is so much better for it. This is what it should have been all along and it rules. Yeah I still have my issues with some annoying shit. Why does the game punish me for playing good by having that dumb Rajang wall grab and Fatalis falling over knock me down? But the good out weighs the bad. Also while I find Rise's art direction to be much better as I feel MH should be a very stylized (yet realistic) franchise I can definitely at least say that the environments in this game are gorgeous and the HDR is so goooood when you figure out how to make it work. Just the wonderful contrast and colors you can give it. On a technical level yeah World is genuinely impressive especially for a PS4 game, and now on PS5 with the minimized loadtimes and unbroken 60fps lordy... All that paired with the amount of content makes this at this point in time one of the most bang for your buck games. If you've ever been interested in Monster Hunter and wanted an idea of what the franchise is then yes this is the game to play. I may prefer Rise and feel in many ways it is more representative of the franchise as a whole post Tri (goofy yet earnest) World is the game Wilds will definitely build off of more than the former even if it takes some elements from it.
It's a bit of a mess (why is Nergigante turned into Monsterverse Godzilla and why are the ledges so fucking annoying and why are the maps so tight and cramped) and some things really feel like the devs at times are trying to counter the player trying to have any fun (CC tenderizing), but MHWI is in my opinion still one of the gold standards of what a AAA release should be. This doesn't just end at release content wise, but in post launch content with free additional monsters and events to keep the game alive. Yeah it may not be the best MH, but I'm thinking it's a pretty damn good game.
Now if you'll excuse me I'll be playing Monster Hunter Rise and the older ones until Wilds releases alongside any other games I want to play.
Why do my friends refuse to play the greatest game of all time with me?
Happy hunting!
Da nova geração, é o melhor.
Mecânica, Gráfico, História, Bestiário, Caçadas e Eventos, tudo nesse jogo é bem feito.
Mecânica, Gráfico, História, Bestiário, Caçadas e Eventos, tudo nesse jogo é bem feito.
Iceborne is an awesome expansion for World until you get deeper into the endgame where you're more encouraged to use the Clutch Claw to tenderize parts of the monsters. This feature alone spoils the game for me nowadays as returning to it after playing Rise or earlier games in the series makes you realize just how obnoxious it is without adding anything of substance.
is it ever truly finished or better question do I ever want it to be over?
Je note juste l'extension, pas le jeu dans son intégralité.
J'ai sûrement jamais vu une extension aussi généreuse en terme de contenu, il y en a autant que pour le jeu de base, voire plus. Les nouveaux monstres sont cools et en voir certains d'anciens jeux de retour fait très plaisir. Le boss final est la définition du mot "épique".
J'ai sûrement jamais vu une extension aussi généreuse en terme de contenu, il y en a autant que pour le jeu de base, voire plus. Les nouveaux monstres sont cools et en voir certains d'anciens jeux de retour fait très plaisir. Le boss final est la définition du mot "épique".
DLC potente demais, Wilds ta em boas mãos
First MH I seriously played, was super fun, played with Bammboo and Frog in 2023 Spring/Summer. Stopped right before Alatreon due mostly to the annoying 2 week rotation of Safi.
One of the better Monster Hunters after it fully released. Terrible endgame monsters you can tell were stunted by the pandemic shutting down development (Fatalis and Alatreon are really terribly done fights, especially Fatalis who has weapon matchups that are insanely bad to the point runners will avoid them) but there was a soul and care put into this game not found in most other games. There was finally an actual gameplay loop, albeit way too grindy. The clutch claw and tenderization nerf was atrocious and should be modded out of your game ASAP if you're on PC. It has a few flaws holding it back, but many of them are moddable on PC. The game boasts far, far more pros than cons without a doubt. Great MH game. Aged a bit better than.... some other entries.