If I gotta use one word to describe World, it's that it’s bloated - not in content, but with goals and concepts that come in conflict with each other. An always-online game with unskippable cutscenes and terrible story progression that makes the co-op experience near unplayable for anyone going through the game. Attempts at QoL and tutorialization all over the game to make it more newbie friendly, yet confuses them with distended menus that are much more difficult to navigate and and a variety of unintuitive tertiary mechanics in the form of clutch claw and slinger that badly attempt to solve MH pain points (that were never really a problem) yet only serve to overwhelm new players and hurt the core combat for veterans. And on a more personal note, the more realistic aesthetic takes away a significant amount of the series’ charm to me. It's easy to see now why this game pushed me away from Monster Hunter.
Despite that though, it's still Monster Hunter, and Iceborne adds some pretty fun fights and a mix of cool (and terrible) mechanics that made it worth revisiting. The core movesets of every weapon were revamped in really fun ways in this game that while lacking the spice of GU’s arts/styles or Rise’s wirebug shenanigans, still holds my interest. The game feels pretty balanced on top of that with a decent amount of viable setups and playstyles (elemetal in this game being actually a thing as opposed to Rise’s rather one-sided raw meta)
Though on that note, the way they handle much of the RPG side of things is another contradictory step back from previous games. Moving decorations from craftable to drops makes a bulk of your set’s skills at the mercy of RNG, forcing you to focus on craftable armor for skills and making for less freeform set building overall despite the redesigned skill system being intended to make builds more flexible. Sounds stupid? Yeah I know.
Pretty standard take incoming since the community has made it pretty clear how much it hates the clutch claw mechanic. It involves grappling unto the monster to deal a special attack which weakens the part you are latched on to, meant to give players more flexibility in what parts to attack. In practice though, with monsters balanced around it, it becomes more like a chore that requires you to use up big openings to re-apply a debuff every two minutes or else you deal no damage. The best it does for the game is give every weapon a universal way to latch on to flying monsters and deal some damage, but otherwise it de-emphasizes weapon mechanics and emphasizes a lot of the game’s jank.
It really sucks to get a good opening and instead of engaging with your weapon’s unique tools you just clutch claw because hunts would take way longer otherwise. Finding opportunities to clutch mid-fight is honestly a terrible experience that varies too wildly from monster to monster depending on how the coders felt about placing the hitbox that day. Some monsters make it really easy to clutch on the none-attacking part and make an opening that way, but using the same logic on other monsters will only lead to you getting fucked as you discover that their tail swipe inexplicably places a hitbox on their whole body. It makes certain monsters insanely abusable by this system and others nigh-impossible (without topple/stagger) in a way that has no relation to the overall difficulty of the monster. Overall this mechanic, along with slingers, only make the combat less focused and more inconsistent.
Other minor annoyances are mainly the theming of the game around the “World” and making it a more “believable ecosystem” end up hurting the gameplay for me more than anything else. The maps are a lot more annoying to navigate than anything of previous games. Ancient Forest is honestly one of the worst offenders with this, the dense foliage makes for poor visibility and its design lacks the interconnectedness required to make it work, and forces you into a lot of long and un-intuitive pathways to get where you need. The more “realistic” monster A.I and constant turf wars just add a lot of randomness to the combat.
There are things I like that are unique to this game. The Guiding Lands is a really cool idea for an endgame that could honestly be a whole game of its own. The game uses its position as a console game for some cool monsters every now then, like Namielle’s water, Nightshade’s smoke, and Shara Ishvalada’s sand, which make for good spectacle as well as neat ways for monsters to control space, and the game features really good iterations on most weapon movesets, which makes it hard to not have fun once I'm deep in a hunt.
But all in all, if Rise had more content and was on PC, I’d never touch this game again.
Despite that though, it's still Monster Hunter, and Iceborne adds some pretty fun fights and a mix of cool (and terrible) mechanics that made it worth revisiting. The core movesets of every weapon were revamped in really fun ways in this game that while lacking the spice of GU’s arts/styles or Rise’s wirebug shenanigans, still holds my interest. The game feels pretty balanced on top of that with a decent amount of viable setups and playstyles (elemetal in this game being actually a thing as opposed to Rise’s rather one-sided raw meta)
Though on that note, the way they handle much of the RPG side of things is another contradictory step back from previous games. Moving decorations from craftable to drops makes a bulk of your set’s skills at the mercy of RNG, forcing you to focus on craftable armor for skills and making for less freeform set building overall despite the redesigned skill system being intended to make builds more flexible. Sounds stupid? Yeah I know.
Pretty standard take incoming since the community has made it pretty clear how much it hates the clutch claw mechanic. It involves grappling unto the monster to deal a special attack which weakens the part you are latched on to, meant to give players more flexibility in what parts to attack. In practice though, with monsters balanced around it, it becomes more like a chore that requires you to use up big openings to re-apply a debuff every two minutes or else you deal no damage. The best it does for the game is give every weapon a universal way to latch on to flying monsters and deal some damage, but otherwise it de-emphasizes weapon mechanics and emphasizes a lot of the game’s jank.
It really sucks to get a good opening and instead of engaging with your weapon’s unique tools you just clutch claw because hunts would take way longer otherwise. Finding opportunities to clutch mid-fight is honestly a terrible experience that varies too wildly from monster to monster depending on how the coders felt about placing the hitbox that day. Some monsters make it really easy to clutch on the none-attacking part and make an opening that way, but using the same logic on other monsters will only lead to you getting fucked as you discover that their tail swipe inexplicably places a hitbox on their whole body. It makes certain monsters insanely abusable by this system and others nigh-impossible (without topple/stagger) in a way that has no relation to the overall difficulty of the monster. Overall this mechanic, along with slingers, only make the combat less focused and more inconsistent.
Other minor annoyances are mainly the theming of the game around the “World” and making it a more “believable ecosystem” end up hurting the gameplay for me more than anything else. The maps are a lot more annoying to navigate than anything of previous games. Ancient Forest is honestly one of the worst offenders with this, the dense foliage makes for poor visibility and its design lacks the interconnectedness required to make it work, and forces you into a lot of long and un-intuitive pathways to get where you need. The more “realistic” monster A.I and constant turf wars just add a lot of randomness to the combat.
There are things I like that are unique to this game. The Guiding Lands is a really cool idea for an endgame that could honestly be a whole game of its own. The game uses its position as a console game for some cool monsters every now then, like Namielle’s water, Nightshade’s smoke, and Shara Ishvalada’s sand, which make for good spectacle as well as neat ways for monsters to control space, and the game features really good iterations on most weapon movesets, which makes it hard to not have fun once I'm deep in a hunt.
But all in all, if Rise had more content and was on PC, I’d never touch this game again.