11 reviews liked by MikanPenguin


[[ Note that the game is played on Immortal difficulty with roughly 60 hours of playtime. This review doesn't apply to easier difficulties ]]

I've always seen Metroidvania as that dated sub-genre that indie devs latch onto desperately to put out barrage of middling quality video games with a rare few exceptions. And one of those exceptions turned out to be a Ubisoft title that somehow dethroned Hollow Knight to become my new favorite

Alright so I'll be drawing direct comparisons to Hollow Knight quite a lot in this review just to use it as a point of reference as to how this game is the better Metroidvania in every conceivable way possible while also looking at it through an objective lens

The Lost Crown manages to pull off what every other title in this sub-genre fails and that is having a consistent break-neck pacing throughout the entirety of its playthrough to the point I wasn't bored even once during the 58 hours I spent on the game. That's largely due to the abilities you unlock being tied to the main quest thus reducing the need to backtrack around the map a gazillion times fishing for upgrades integral to the core progression. And then you look at Hollow Knight where it has a botched pacing for pretty much the entirety of its first half where you're just fishing for upgrades while providing barely any content of substance only to hide most of its meaty part after you're done doing all the time-wastey chores

This game while staying consistent to its time focused theme delivers some of the most fun and creative abilities I've seen, deviating from the sub-genre's oversaturation of the usual double jump, dash and different projectiles that function the same way and absolutely nothing else. The abilities you gain access to aren't simply a means to get access to newer areas, the game goes out of its way to design bosses, mobs, encounters and even large chunk of the map. For example, the last area is designed entirely around the grapple hook and it has some of the most seamless traversal I've seen in any games of this kind. There's also no need to upgrade your abilities once you get them, that is it, you're done, now you can go and try them out on enemies in the overworld and bosses and some abilities even has unique interactions with specific enemies. Then there's Hollow Knight that even ties something basic as a downward slash/dive/whatever as an unlockable ability (which you get from the get go in this game) that also needs to be upgraded to deal any substantial amount of damage, if this isn't the most shameless example of padding I don't know what is. HK repeatedly pulls this with other rudimentary abilities such as the dash, the projectile and the upward slash where upgrading them gives the abilities a change of color and a slight increase in DPS and AoE. Then again this isn't even my main gripe with these barebones nothing power ups you get for playing through the game, it's just how unsubstantial they are to the core combat, you can basically ignore them and waltz through every encounter just fine. On the other hand in The Lost Crown, the abilities are INTEGRAL to every major boss fights, you simply can not beat a boss without properly utilizing every single ability at your disposal.

The combat here is surprisingly really good despite the limitations set by the sub-genre. It has some obvious hack and slash genes to its DNA but not the yucky kind where you basically ignore the enemy's moves and juggle them to death, there's a massive emphasis on parrying which sets it apart from the likes of DMC. Here you're forced to pay attention to most enemies' moves to earn the opportunity to do your typical hack and slash combos but as you gradually progress through the game (especially near the end game) you can trivialize every encounter if you're skilled enough in hack and slashes. There are also flashy supers you can do for dealing a good amount of damage but they're not just flashy for the sake of being flashy, you have to play well to earn those supers. They're like your rewards for playing the game well and it's because of how the meter works. It's called Athra meter and the way it works is quite simple but effective, the more you land parries the more your meter fills up and the more you get hit the more your meter decreases. And the athra supers can also be used to iframe some tricky to time boss attacks. The abilities are also put on a cooldown so that you can't mindlessly spam them, which is a good thing.
Complimentary to the combat system is the game's absurd variety in enemies that aren't just visual differences it's also how they interact with the core combat and the arsenal of different abilities at your disposal. A huge amount of effort went into designing the enemies and the further you progress the more obvious it becomes. Throughout the playthrough as you unlock more power ups there will be several different enemies and minibosses designed around the ability you've just unlocked, which helps the combat from growing stale. Then there's Hollow Knight where the enemy variety basically boils down to visual differences since the same approach works for quite literally everything in the game, there's no real enemy variety except for the bosses in that game is what I'm trying to say.

I could've thrown in the bosses (major ones) in the same paragraph as the enemy variety but the bosses are way too good and deserves a separate section. These are the key milestones of your progress in the game and they're all very well designed providing a consistent curve of difficulty. Throughout my time with the game I was at legit disbelief at how consistent also the quality of these bosses are, I was expecting the game to drop the ball at one point when it comes down to the bosses but the game never did, in fact it kept getting better and better with each major encounter. Definitely the cream of the crop and the best part of the game

The story is there. There are a ton of funny plot-twists but the narrative can largely be ignored since the focus of this game is on the gameplay for the most part, which is how video games should be.

The presentation of this game is phenomenal, the game both looks and sounds amazing. The visual direction makes up for the lack of any fancy graphics with some amazing usage of colors and vfx I've seen that makes everything pop. And the sound effects for mundane things like grappling, parrying or even your slashes making contact with the enemies just adds to the already fantastic gameplay. The major boss fights also has some incredible tracks accompanying them but the fact that the music is synced with the bosses' different phases is what elevates the presentation to god-tier level

Some grievances include:
-Some platforming segments can go on for way too long with barely any mobs to fight. I wouldn't bring this up at all if the combat wasn't amazing but it is so that makes it feel a bit underutilized at some points
-Backtracking. Too much unnecessary backtracking is why I'll forever dislike this sub-genre. The fast travel point being separated from the checkpoints only adds more insult to injury.
-The checkpoints aka bench aka bonfire aka whatever are spaced out way too far away from one another which makes the runbacks to enemies or platforming segments UNBEARABLY long
-Charms/Amulets needing upgrades is plain out stupid and only exists to pad out playtime
-Some optional minibosses are painfully limited in their moveset pool but the combat is so good that it's a non-issue

Overall it's undoubtedly clear that this game is a full on masterpiece but I'm still hesitant to call it one of my all time favorites because of how much I dislike this sub-genre that loves to waste your time for no reason. But if you do, then this is THE best game you'll ever play, period.

Now this is a game I'm entirely on the fence about. On one hand I think how the game is structured in tandem with the unique interactive mechanics and its overall non-linearity is downright brilliant (with a few hiccups, of course) And on the other hand I absolutely despise the unsatisfying and rushed finale that literally renders most of what you do in the game completely pointless.

Alright, so the beginning stretch of this game can be tad bit confusing and overwhelming but after sinking in a few hours and getting accustomed to all the mechanics and skills it's very easy to get hooked in and fast. The different skills aka the various parts of your psyche that affects the dialogues and how you interact with the world is unarguably the best part of this game. Depending on what part of your psyche you put the most points in you will get VASTLY different outcomes of little tasks like getting a hanged body down from a tree, while also affecting your abilities to pick up on certain leads. Which ultimately ends up giving the game a lot more variety and replay value than it'd initially have if it stuck to the more linear and rigid story telling formula of most other CRPGs. Also the way all the seemingly pointless and insignificant side quests loop back into main quests in the most unexpected way imaginable is done competently and can lead to a lot of "ah ha" moments. I also appreciate the fact that despite the game being entirely reliant on texts the dialogues are delivered in a digestible manner with everything fully voice acted and the voice acting is surprisingly top notch. At first when I was trying to read through every single line of text I thought the dialogues felt dense but that's objectively the wrong way to go about playing the game as you're punished for picking too many options. Once you start playing the game as it is intended you start to appreciate how well written the character interactions are with a lot of genuinely funny banters that don't feel forced. But there is something else entirely that can actually interfere the with the game's pacing and it's the constant DnD skill checks which forces you to do a lot of backtracking and chore-ish tasks just to have a higher chance of succeeding and even then you can fail. Which I can see being the main contributor behind putting off a lot of people and rightfully so and it's objectively a bad game design approach when most people playing the game save scum repeatedly to get past them.

Now onto my main gripe with the game and it's the ending. The finale is flat out terrible with absolutely zero thought put behind and it contradicts the whole investigation this game revolves around. Without delving too deep into spoiler territory, it's the whodunnit. It's entirely detached from everything you do throughout most of the game, from every lead you gather throughout your entire investigation. And to address all the idiotic copium takes I see defending this god awful ending like "oh no but it's supposed to be meta! it fits the themes! it was never about the murder mystery", The game quite literally frames itself as a murder mystery that is LITERALLY your entire objective throughout the whole thing and the game failing to deliver a proper satisfying conclusion shouldn't be above criticism, it's objectively bad and if you can't see that you lack critical thinking skills. Also if there ever was a game that would benefit from having several different endings that vary vastly from one another it'd be THIS but what the game delivered was the exact opposite an extremely linear final segment which contradicts the rest of the game's open-ended nature.

Disco Elysium is a game that has a lot of never-before-seen unique mechanics in a narrative game with a lot of entertainment value but all of it is bogged down by a HORRIBLY botched ending.

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Going in I expected to absolutely hate this game since I have a track record of dropping every other Rockstar titles I tried in the past but it turns out I ended up liking this one, quite a lot actually. Although, there are specific segments of the game combined with some bafflingly archaic and repetitive design choices that I disliked equally as much

The story is obviously the game's main selling point and oh boy did it not deliver on that front. It's a character-driven narrative with competent writing that is no less worthy of being called a narrative masterpiece. Anyone that's willing to look past the slow pacing at the start is bound to appreciate what the story has to offer given it picks up pretty fast, around 2 chapters in or so. Though, even the slower parts of the story weren't bad and that's all thanks to the memorable cast of characters, to further strengthen my point, I have a terrible memory when it comes down to names but I can recall the entire gang by their names.
But if you know me, the story will mean absolutely nothing if the game has nothing else going on for itself. So no matter how good it is, it's not the highlight in a "video game", it's the dynamic open world. If anyone as of now asks me what my favorite open world game is I'd say it's RDR2 at the drop of a hat, the open world is that good. The amount of effort that went into crafting the world is ridiculous given how there's rarely any repetition and every single encounter always has something new to offer. Exploring the open world for the first time stumbling across random chance encounters and stranger missions or just interacting with the world in general were some of the most fun I've ever had playing this game while being completely enamored by the realistic yet subtly stylized art direction.

Aaand this is where the praises stop, now it's time to whine

This game can be such a fucking waste of time to sit through after the honeymoon phase is over and I blame it all on the stupid obsession with realism Rockstar had while making this game. Oh you want to go from one corner of the map to another one to do a side quest or whatever? Good luck sitting through doing NOTHING while watching your horse in cinematic view from awkward ass angles for 10 minutes and more! Like, I don't care about your stupid boner for realism, don't waste my time and give me an option to fast travel like every other open world games
The gameplay during story missions are either stupid chores or straight up direction-following simulator made for mentally handicapped children. There's so little freedom as to how you can approach the missions it's infuriating, like what the hell do you mean "MISSION FAILED" just because I tried reaching our objectives a little ahead of the stupid NPCs I'm supposed to trail at the pace of a literal goddamn snail?? I swear every single story mission plays out literally the same. It's basically, you follow an NPC for minutes then engage in some unpolished and clunky cover based third person shooter then follow NPCs some more and repeat, it's literally so braindead. I'm sorry but if all you do are the main quests just to wrap up the game, you haven't actually played the game, you just watched some low IQ interactive movie. At least try and take notes from your own damn open world, it's not that hard.
The story also ends on a sour note with an extremely rushed epilogue that's somehow also needlessly stretched out for no goddamn apparent reasons. Honestly would've preferred if the credits rolled right after Chapter 6 instead of the washed up DLC ass epilogue that stretches on for 7 hours

Despite my complaints I still think the pros outweigh the cons, so it's a good game overall in my book. Though I don't recommend it if you don't have the patience for Rockstar's dated game design philosophy

Stranger of Paradise

Let me preface this by saying that i have never played a single Final Fantasy title in my entire life nor do I want to anytime soon, in fact I approached this game as something more akin to Sekiro than anything else because of how the combat works, which to no one's surprise actually turned out to be really good. Though Team Ninja's ineptitude when it comes down to game design really stuck out like a sore thumb in other areas, especially in the level design department.

When it comes down to certain aspects of the game that I did manage to extract some enjoyment out of, I ultimately still found myself on the fence unable to keep a positive outlook and that's because of the game being inconsistent as hell with its overall quality throughout its entire runtime.

The introductory boss to this game coupled with a few until the halfway point were all pretty well crafted to serve as fantastic tutors of the risk and reward centered combat (that is if you play the game right) but the quality of the boss fights drop to an embarrassing degree of low once you're halfway through the game where they start pinning you up against bosses that are either frustratingly cheap or straight up ds2-tier with no more than 3 different moves. The bosses all remain roughly the same until the very final one and that's where they pull a complete 180 and give you one of the best bosses you'll ever fight.

The combat allows for a lot of freedom as to how the players want to tackle the challenges which can be considered a con, no hear me out, you are absolutely not going to take away the same amount of fun if you decide to play this game like a wuss and just target the bosses' hp bar while completely ignoring the break gauge, which I've seen some people doing in their gameplay footages. On the flipside, if you parry everything thrown at your way and constantly remain on the offense which this game encourages, you'll find yourself having the time of your life, though I understand the skill-ceiling for this kind of playstyle is quite high but this is objectively the intended way to play the game. So, even if the game offers you a plethora of different ways to take down enemies and bosses, you'll most likely end up with a sour experience of the combat if you choose to ignore the more risk and reward centric playstyle.

The story in one word is just goofy, I'm not the one to care all that much about stories in video games but the comically goofy writing at times seemed as if it was poking fun at stupid JRPG tropes, so I kind of dig it for that. It also gets a pass for making me laugh despite everything about it being so painfully one-dimensional.

The level design in this game just screams incompetence, they're all infuriatingly bad. Samey, confusing, uninspiring, forgettable, boring, filler are the words I'd use to describe every single area in this game, they're all bad, none stood out to me, absolutely NONE. What makes it worse is that the enemies you fight on your way to the boss are all canon fodders that go down in just a few hits, team ninja could've at least put some mini bosses that pose at least somewhat of a challenge instead of littering the levels with boring same 3-5 enemies, which would've prevented the levels from feeling like they were a complete utter waste of time.

Now this is where i stray from the positive sentiment everyone shares about this game, which is the customization choices. While it is undeniably fun to try out different jobs, weapons and armor sets in the beginning hours of the game but quite soon it divulges into being a goddamn chore. As for the jobs (skill trees, basically) it's fine if each weapon types had their dedicated jobs but they take this whole customization thing to the point of obnoxiousness where you're able to basically craft your playstyle taking upgrades from different jobs and mixing them up all into one of your choice which honestly feels like a waste of time when the core combat is more reliant on the player's skill if anything. That's why I couldn't be bothered with it and decided to stick with the Berserker job throughout most of the game. The game also dropping different sets of gear everytime you kill a mob can be quite annoying but there's a dedicated button that allows you to just optimize the highest level weapons and armor sets on you and your team members so I can kind of look past it. This is probably something of an homage to Final Fantasy where it's the staple or whatever, don't know, don't care, my point ultimately being that this game could've been way better if it was a bit more streamlined.

The lack of good music can also make the game more boring to play through than it actually is. Every single track is just some unforgettable background noise that you wouldn't even bother listening to outside of the playthrough, which is a shame since this game could've used some kickass tracks given just how much of a pure adrenaline rush it is fighting some of the bosses taking full advantage of the combat.

In conclusion, I actually ended up having a lot of fun playing through this one and I'm glad it's the first game I picked up this year. Wanted to start the year in a positive note when it comes down to video games so I don't regret picking up this one and sticking to it til the credits rolled. So, despite how overly critical I was of the game I'd still consider this to be one of the better action titles I've played in a while

tl;dr decent game but drops the ball super hard from the halfway point until the final boss, could've been better if it was more streamlined instead of the annoying degree of customization it offers

This film is chinese kaimsa shitting his guts after three days of e-sex

Gris

2018

everybody wants to be Journey but without the ᚻᚪᚱᚢᚳᚪ ᚾᚪ ᛘᚢᚳᚪᛋᚻᛁ ᚾᛁ ᚳᚢᚳᚻᛁᚻᚪᛏᛖᛏᚪ ᚳᛖᚾᛄᚪ ᚾᚩ ᛘᛁᚳᚻᛁ ᛋᚩᚢᚷᚩᚾ ᚾᚩ ᚳᚪᚹᚪ ᛁᚪᛘᛁ ᚾᛁ ᛘᚩ ᛁᚳᚩᚢ ᛋᛖᛁᛄᚪ ᛋᛇ ᛘᚩ ᚳᚩᛏᛇᛋᚢ ᚾᛁ ᛏᚪᚳᚻᛁ ᛘᛁᚳᚻᛁ ᚹᚩ ᚠᚢᛋᚪᚷᚢ

And that's 1 done out of 3
I think the game is overall quite okay considering how the character action genre was still in its infancy stage back then but god isn't the overall entertainment value bogged down by a staggering amount of annoying puzzles and platforming segments

There's nothing to say about the story other than the fact that it merely exists to push the gameplay further and that's fine. I like this approach better than turning a video game into some lazy and uninspiring interactive cinema

Combat is quite simple and it's very easy to get the grasp of the basics even on the hardest difficulty the game provides going in for the first time. I like the fact that you have to actually watch out for the enemies' attacks and counter them before you start chaining unlike DMC where the enemies are just glorified punching bag for juggling combos, but in here when you get to chain multiple attacks it's earned and not handed to you. But sadly the counter isn't utilized well enough as quite a lot of the mobs don't have any attacks that you can get a parry out of so you have to use the awkward and janky roll to avoid their attacks before you can get your hits in. The bigger mobs also rarely ever stagger themselves but can easily stagger you leaving for a barrage of attacks if you're swarmed by the little guys at the same time. So the combat after a certain point into the game when you get a bunch of upgrades basically divulges into just a crowd-controlling tool for the small-fries and playing it defensive against the big mobs until you get a prompt to play some annoying QTE mini-game that kills the flow of the combat encounters entirely. The tools you're given outside of your signature Blades of Chaos are all quite barebones, especially the sub-weapon as it is inferior to the default weapon in every way possible in turn giving you zero incentives to ever use it. The rage mode is also quite useless as it barely lasts for a few seconds and does nothing outside of merely giving Kratos a damage boost. Which is a massive missed opportunity as I believe a lot more could've been done with it, like giving Kratos an all new weapon or at least new moves that let us swiftly deal with the more annoying enemies instead of just making it a "Press to Win" button that lasts only for a few seconds. Oh and the button prompt for circle mashing can go to hell

What truly ruined the latter half of the game for me were the constant bombardment of tedious puzzles mixed in with obnoxious platforming segments that exist solely to ruin the overall pacing of the game. It was fine for the first half but in the latter half there were straight up more puzzles than combat segments which honestly made me throw the controller and do something else. Like is this supposed to be a puzzle platformer or what? I know this is an issue plaguing most other action games that released around this time but I was just way too exasperated having to go through nothing but puzzles and platforming segments when I just wanted to hack away at some mobs, so I couldn't really ignore it. Hopefully it's toned down a little in 2 and 3

The lack of boss fights can really make it draining to sit through the whole game when it's nothing but hacking away at fodders. At least there's some variety among the mobs which I can appreciate. As for the 3 bosses that are there, The Hydra one was okay and was basically a tutorial boss fight in charge of teaching you the counter mechanic (which I hoped would've been more prominent throughout the entire game) the 2nd one was basically an environmental puzzle so it was obviously fucking boring and finally Aries, who I'm quite disappointed with, since the game basically strips you away of all your abilities just to give you some random greatsword you've never used just for the sake of spectacle and story. Only the Hydra was somewhat fun to fight while the other two were just eh

I know I ripped into this game quite hard despite how old it is but I can at least say this much with confidence that I've extracted way more enjoyment out of this than I did with whatever the fuck that terrible 2018 reboot was

Breath of the Wild

I suppose that wraps it up for the base game. As much as I'd love to shit all over the game there are some aspects of it I ended up liking, unfortunately. But the cons still outweigh the pros and oh boy do I not have a lot to complain here

( + ) Lets get the positives out of the way first, the open world is competently designed, although quite generic at times it still holds up very well compared to the deluge of uninspiring and linear open world titles with no sense of creativity whatsoever. The fact that the main quests never really get in the way of exploration really adds to the sense of the adventure which is pretty much the entire selling point of the game and it does somewhat deliver on that front. The physics engine coupled with the rune abilities also pave the way of tackling problems and traversing through tricky terrains in various different ways. Lastly, there's the cell-shaded artstyle, which really helps to mask the overall age of the game when it comes to the visuals and still manage to look fantastic even by today's standards

( - ) This game can be absurdly tedious at times and I mean ABSURDLY TEDIOUS. Simply traversing through it can aid to more frustration over entertainment after the honeymoon phase is over because of the game doing absolutely nothing to give the players a more convenient way of exploring the massive open world. To rub salt into the wound they tie down sprinting in empty terrains to the stamina bar. Like, I understand the need for stamina while climbing mountains as it can gatekeep more difficult areas if you haven't made enough progress. But, there's absolutely no reason to deplete the stamina bar when the only method of faster travel is on a horse that controls like crap and surfing on shields that break within mere seconds, as it does nothing but waste time and in turn bore the players.
The game also suffers from being just all around repetitive in its structure. The 4 main quests leading up to the final encounter all basically play out the same and the side quests are just a bunch of random fetch quests that boil down to doing the same errands just for a different NPC. The shrines sprinkled throughout the open world also suffer from being incredibly samey. After reaching the halfway point I ended up mostly just using them as checkpoints instead of checking out whatever puzzle or combat encounters await inside as they're all roughly the same, especially the combat shrines.
The absolute worst aspect of the game would be its horrid combat and the laughably bad enemy/boss encounters. But you might say "Fa, it's totally normal for an open world game to have lackluster combat since the focus is put on the exploration instead." To that I'd say you're completely wrong since the combat is just as integral as exploration is when it comes down to these types of games because most of the times your objectives are centered around combat which is arguably more significant than the exploration part itself. And crafting a decent combat system doesn't really take all that effort so I can't really see the logic in these arguments so I just dismiss them as cop-out defense to shield any cohesive criticisms. Digressions and tangents aside, BoTW's combat being on the lackluster side could've been easily remedied by pinning link up against enemies with well thought out movesets or by having proper variety in the enemy department, since the combat revolves around pattern memorization it'd only make sense for the enemies to actually be somewhat capable of putting up a fight. But as it turns out the enemies/bosses in this game are COMPLETELY inept, most of the time the fight basically just boils down to finding out their gimmick and just abusing it throughout the whole fight to win. The only exception to this rule would be the Lynels, which are somehow more engaging than the major bosses despite being literal mobs. Mechanically weak encounters with more emphasis put on dumb gimmicks outright ruined any potentials of the game even having a half decent combat
As for the story, I couldn't bring myself to care about any of it. It's just a bunch of nothing with the core characters being no personality having losers that only exist to guide you towards your next destination or annoy you during the main dungeons or be a damsel in distress

the open world is pretty ok everything else tho not so much

Not only is this expansion objectively bad in every single aspect but it also made me re-evaluate my opinion on the game as a whole which is overall quite negative. If you don't want to read paragraphs after paragraphs of me going over all the flaws and the bafflingly stupid design choices Capcom took with this one just know that
𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐡𝐨𝐭 𝐦𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝟏𝟎% 𝐨𝐟 𝐢𝐭 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐡 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐚 𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐢𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮'𝐫𝐞 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮'𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐥𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐲 𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐠𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚 𝐝𝐢𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐟 𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝟏 𝐨𝐫 𝟐 𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐬/𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐢𝐧 + 𝐚𝐧 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐲 𝐠𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐲 𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐬 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐚 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞

I usually go into games with a negative preconceived notion but this time around it was the exact opposite. In fact, I was excited for all the additional content which is somehow even longer than base game only to be hammered with disappointment after disappointment after the end of every single co-op session with a friend. My distaste stems from the accumulation of plethora of different reasons and I'll try to go somewhat in depth as to why I think MHW+Iceborne was the worst gaming experience I've had in recent times

-Recycled Fights/Content-
Right off the bat after hunting like 2 new monsters you're back to fighting the same things you've already killed a gazillion times in base game but now its their "subspecies" variant, which is really just a glorified word for reskins with little to no new addition to their movesets. This game has a serious reskin problem, to the point it can downright kill the motivation required to actually make progress. This is one of the main contributing factor as to why I called the game artificially bloated since even the newer monsters get recycled at one point or another. Also for a massive expansion all we got was only one new area which didn't even get properly utilized with another area which is just so bafflingly lazy to me, it's literally all the previous areas you fought the monsters in but now mashed into one. Like it's so obvious that Capcom became complacent to the point they can just reuse not just the monsters but even the areas and the troglodyte fandom will just eat it all up and praise it like it's a masterpiece which I can assure you it's not

-Weapon Tree System-
The way the weapon tree system works is straight up incompetent, like there's no justifying as to why I should have to go and farm base game monsters again for materials to get the specific weapon I want. Doesn't that like defeat the whole purpose of the defender weapons the base game introduced to get most people to speed up their progress? At least in the base game you could stick to one tree and progressively get weapons with somewhat better stats but in Iceborne if the tree you worked towards in the base game didn't reward you with a decent enough weapon in iceborne you'll have to go do another entire tree which is unbelievably tedious to do everytime you want to switch to a different build. The whole system is at such a disconnect with the idea of fun it feels like I'm borderline working a 9-5 job I hate

-Lengthy Hunts-
Due to the introduction of new mechanics like the clutch claw and wall bangs the monsters have super inflated hp which makes the fights incredibly long. I was never a fan of how long the fights lasted in the base game anyway but in Iceborne they take it to a whole another level, it's straight up endurance torture. The fact that a single monster fight can last up to 30-40 minutes long in and of itself is horrible by design. I know you can shorten the time by optimizing the damage with the most meta build and by constantly abusing the clutch claw but the hunts will always last gruesomely long on your first time hunting a monster with no prior knowledge about their moveset. The Barioth and the Shrieking Legiana fights are prime examples of that

-Endgame is way too grindy-
The entire gimmick behind Guiding Lands only exists to further inflate an already artificially bloated game to the point it becomes genuinely frustrating to play. Whoever came up with the idea of gating new monsters behind region levels should be fired from the development team immediately. This quite literally almost killed my interest to continue the game any further for almost an entire month but I decided to just skip the Guiding Lands all together with a very handy tool called cheat engine, there's no way I'm going to waste hundreds of hours of my life grinding away the same monsters in reused areas from the base game just because I want a slightly better set or a better weapon. Monster Hunter fans might cope for it but I'm not stooping so low to the point I'd waste away my whole life grinding in a lazy game mode which was basically just scrapped together from recycling everything

-Borderline gacha game/terrible droprates-
It ties in with the previous point quite flawlessly. In the endgame you're forced to grind materials that have ridiculously low droprates and to compensate for the low droprates the devs added in a mode which literally makes you play a gacha for items and upgrade materials that aren't easy to come by. And the rare materials aren't something you can just ignore, oh no they're mandatory if you want your weapon to do decent enough damage otherwise you can enjoy your 50 minutes long hunts

These were all Iceborne specific gripes but now I'll talk about some that applies for World and the series as a whole
1. Combat is a janky mess and this is coming from someone who solo'd some of the toughest fights in Iceborne's endgame like Alatreon and Fatalis with clocking in almost 200 hours into the game, never once I thought the combat was decent or even okay at best. It's an unresponsive mess which makes Souls combat seem like a work of art in comparison
2. Majority of the fights are terribly designed with little to no thought put into how they'd fair against the game's core combat which is clunky as hell + Capcom's idea of making a fight harder is by giving the monsters a bunch of annoying status effects which artificially amps up the "difficulty", I put difficulty in quotation because nothing in this game is truly difficult, literally anything and everything can be trivialized if you just get a build that counters the specific status effects
3. Chasing a monster around a horribly designed map for 10 minutes when they run away is a complete utter waste of time, so is gathering tracks for them to even show up. It's okay like the first 3-5 times but you have to do this tedious crap every single time you start a quest and that is not fun in the slightest
4. Even the cutscenes are always the same. Like they ALWAYS follow the same pattern, first we're shown a monster we've already hunted and then a new one pops up and beats the ever living shit out of it as if it's supposed to be intimidating or something. Please try and be creative in the way you introduce a monster for once
5. Switch-Axe is quite literally the only weapon I fancy out of the plethora of different choices you have here, everything else puts me to sleep

I went into Monster Hunter World with the expectation of fighting monsters with the weapons of my choice and having fun in the process but what I got was a literal grindfest that doesn't seem to want the players to extract any enjoyment out of itself. MHW+Iceborne is downright the worst game I've played this entire year