This review contains spoilers
In my opinion, this is the best game that's been released in the past 25-30 years. So lets start off with the negatives.
The story is fairly basic. The general gist of it is that there's a big monster called Zorah Magdaros and you have to stop it from destroying the hunter settlements by leading it from some area known as the Everstream. I had to look this up, because even though I've played this game for roughly 750 hours the story is forgettable. It's deeper than the stories of other Monster Hunter games save for Monster Hunter 4, but the other games have the plots with the same amount of nuance as that of an NES game.
The other major negative is that there is a mechanic known as the Clutch Claw that was introduced in the Iceborne expansion. It is extremely finnicky and does not feel good to use at all - it was only put in the game to try and balance an overpowered skill and while it did the job, it makes the experience worse overall. I will explain this further when I talk about the gameplay.
Now for the positives. Firstly, the graphics are pretty decent, the monsters look detailed, the different stages look absolutely massive and has a sense of scale unrivaled by the rest of the series - from the labyrinthine Ancient Forest to the beautiful Hoarfrost Reach - graphically it's good, not the best, but good.
The star of the show, however, is the gameplay. Shocking, I know.
The first thing I should say is that, in my opinion, Monster Hunter has the best core gameplay (especially World and Iceborne) out of every single game I've played. The combat is so nuanced and complex (from the skill system, to the huge variety of weapons and weapon types), yet satisfying.
Simply put, the main loop of the game is that you go out on quests, fight monsters (the vast majority of whom are boss battles), you then use their parts that you gain after winning - you then make armour and weapons out of those parts, then you go and fighting bigger and badder monsters. These monsters are super fun to fight, they can be difficult starting out, but learning their movesets, as well as your weapons, is key to mastering this game, and mastering this game is the best feeling in the world. I know I'm being overly dramatic here, but that's how much I love this game.
The skill system adds a whole other level of depth to the game, as it allows for a wide variety of playstyles (not even taking the weapons into account), as you have damage focused skills such as Weakness Exploit (the OP skill that the Clutch Claw was introduced to nerf), and Attack Boost, as well as defensive and support skills. If you can wrap your head around all this, then you can spend literal thousands of hours sinking your teeth into making different builds and doing everything there is to do.
This game is god tier. Game of the year every year.
The story is fairly basic. The general gist of it is that there's a big monster called Zorah Magdaros and you have to stop it from destroying the hunter settlements by leading it from some area known as the Everstream. I had to look this up, because even though I've played this game for roughly 750 hours the story is forgettable. It's deeper than the stories of other Monster Hunter games save for Monster Hunter 4, but the other games have the plots with the same amount of nuance as that of an NES game.
The other major negative is that there is a mechanic known as the Clutch Claw that was introduced in the Iceborne expansion. It is extremely finnicky and does not feel good to use at all - it was only put in the game to try and balance an overpowered skill and while it did the job, it makes the experience worse overall. I will explain this further when I talk about the gameplay.
Now for the positives. Firstly, the graphics are pretty decent, the monsters look detailed, the different stages look absolutely massive and has a sense of scale unrivaled by the rest of the series - from the labyrinthine Ancient Forest to the beautiful Hoarfrost Reach - graphically it's good, not the best, but good.
The star of the show, however, is the gameplay. Shocking, I know.
The first thing I should say is that, in my opinion, Monster Hunter has the best core gameplay (especially World and Iceborne) out of every single game I've played. The combat is so nuanced and complex (from the skill system, to the huge variety of weapons and weapon types), yet satisfying.
Simply put, the main loop of the game is that you go out on quests, fight monsters (the vast majority of whom are boss battles), you then use their parts that you gain after winning - you then make armour and weapons out of those parts, then you go and fighting bigger and badder monsters. These monsters are super fun to fight, they can be difficult starting out, but learning their movesets, as well as your weapons, is key to mastering this game, and mastering this game is the best feeling in the world. I know I'm being overly dramatic here, but that's how much I love this game.
The skill system adds a whole other level of depth to the game, as it allows for a wide variety of playstyles (not even taking the weapons into account), as you have damage focused skills such as Weakness Exploit (the OP skill that the Clutch Claw was introduced to nerf), and Attack Boost, as well as defensive and support skills. If you can wrap your head around all this, then you can spend literal thousands of hours sinking your teeth into making different builds and doing everything there is to do.
This game is god tier. Game of the year every year.