This game is fucked. What’s more fucked is that I really like it.

A lot of what this game does appeals to my ideal idea of a comfy game: A crazy amount of mechanical depth and variety comes paired with a behemoth amount of content that gives you adequate space to explore all that depth while also ticking off progression. You will get into a loop where you’re always being introduced to new encounters and new tools to play them with and once you’re in there this game is something special. Issue is uhhh….you won’t get there, not for 10 hours and not without the help of a dozen online resources.

idk where to begin with the new player experience because it's so fucked on so many levels. This game has some of the worst pacing I have ever experienced and is filled to the brim with awful elements surrounding the core gameplay. This is an unfortunate side effect of it being an anniversary title, as it spends a lot of its first hours homaging MH1/2’s quests and pacing, subjecting you to shitty gimmick monsters that were coded 16 years ago and forcing you through slow paced gathering quests with obfuscated objectives.
Remember in MH1 how you first encountered Rathalos when he interrupted an egg delivery quest? Well, you probably don’t because you didn’t play that shit, but this game is gonna make you do that four times for each of the flagship monsters of the game!


The experience from 1★ to 3★ Village is so painful that I think you have to either be an MH veteran, have friends egging you through it, or are a little crazy to go through that shit on your own. I’m probably in the “a little crazy” camp. Combine all the above with the fact that the player is subjected to the worst content in the game right at the start while they are still new and uncomfortable with every aspect regardless of how well designed it is, and this game’s starting hours are a fucking disaster.

What’s most tragic about many of the game’s issues is that it feels like the devs knew about them and included secret ways to fix them.
Sick of not knowing where the monster is and forgetting to paintball them? Psychoserums do that for you and you can get them for practically free.
Hate the idea of grinding for mega potions and whetstones? There is a quest here that lets you get an infinite amount from a trader, and there is also a free pack of essential items hidden in the most random menu option.
Hate the fact that the ore you want is a 3% drop chance? There is this random short quest here that gives you a 100% chance of getting a whole bunch of them, and there is also an item that lets you duplicate them if you already got some!
At first, I was in disbelief that anyone could get into this game, but after figuring out all this stuff, I can see how this game is playable by people who don’t devote their days entirely into Monster Hunter, but that still begs the question...Why? Why hide all the features that make this game not a pain in the ass? I will never know.

On top of that, if you played this game on your own, you will likely not even see the potential in the combat considering the game doesn’t tell you anything about the crazy movesets it provides you with, and without the use of community guides and resources you will probably play like a headless chicken and not get much out of it.

At the very least, in terms of community resources there is a lot of good stuff online that I think is necessary for playing the game. A well laid out spreadsheet of all important quests for progression, unlocks, e.t.c, and a highly informative set of guides for each weapon that lay out the differences between every style and the important skills and sets to look out for each. Most important of all is God’s Gift: Kiranico, a japanese-made resource where you can search up practically anything and get the info you want. What's this monster’s hitzones? Where do you get this item? What’s the upgrade path for this weapon? Which quest gives the best rewards for this resource? It's amazing how much effort was put into it.
But the fact this is all information is stuff you need to access outside the game is ridiculous and heavily discouraging to say the least.

Despite spending the last six paragraphs trashing the game, the unfortunate truth is...I really like it. Once you get past it all and get in the groove, it really is good, Trust Me Bro™.


On top of Monster Hunter’s classic diversity of weapons, this game provides Hunter Arts (supers that can be used after filling up a bar) and Styles (alternate weapon movesets). Very few of the styles feel ill-considered, and I found a good reason to want to try every one of them (though some are clearly above the rest in terms of immediate fun factor). The combinations you can create with styles, arts, and sets make the game feel like an immense playground of overwhelming possibilities where there is always a new thing you want to try. These elements enhance each other too, as the set building becomes much more interesting when you factor in how you can use it to optimize the specific style/art combination you are going for.


I want to illustrate a quick example in the writing but it's honestly hard for me to describe without presenting unintelligible word salad to anyone who hasn’t played the game, but the point is that as you get invested into one aspect you will probably find yourself getting pulled into others with how greatly all these systems synergize.
You pick a weapon/style combo you enjoy, discover a weird super that is meant to be made into a powerhouse with use of a specific set to play around it. Find another super and you will start connecting the dots with how a different style/set can make for a viable and completely different way of playing the weapon. It really puts the RPGshit in these games to the best use possible, combining them with its core combat mechanics to allow you to experiment with playstyles while also giving you incentive to grind out more content to make all the shit you want to test those ideas with.

It's also a great fit for the absurd amount of content in this game. The game contains monsters from games all across the series, designed by all sorts of people for different console gens and under different design philosophies. The diversity in encounters would easily turn into a negative if not for the fact that the player’s array of options that allow them to adapt wasn’t equally expansive. Having trouble with a flying monster shitting your day up? Maybe try Aerial Style. Finding this monster’s attacks too aggressive and difficult to avoid? Try Adept style to counter it and get insane evade windows and parries.. Just about every encounter in this game can be hard countered and it works well to make me try new things I haven’t considered before.

The grinding experience in this game ranges in quality, but I have more good memories than bad ones as targeting specific parts can change the experience of a fight dramatically. One highlight I had was trying to grind for Gore Magala horns which required me to intentionally get afflicted by his debuffs in order to activate his awakened state earlier to force him to reveal his horns (which are usually hidden), and play around traps to get the opportunity to break them before he gets knocked out of awakened state, the whole thing felt like a secret hard mode version of the fight. That shit probably sounds too fucked up for most people, and the drop rates for some stuff is unreasonably low, but I really enjoyed it when it was used to give a new spin on fights.

Finally, and this is just a me thing, I do quite enjoy the visuals of this game as old and varying in quality as they are. Despite the re-textures there is a lot of 6th-gen charm in the maps that appeals to me with a wide variety of vibes. The forest maps tend to make me think of MGS3 a lot, and shoutout to Verdant Hill’s awesome ambient sounds. The hodge-podge that this game is doesn’t make for a cohesive whole but I ultimately liked it.

Before I finish I do want to put it out there that aside from having a knowledgeable friend to ease you into the game, there is the option of playing this game on emulator instead. Playing on emulator gets you the ability to use a save transfer to skip much of the game’s shittier content, use a save editor to tailor the experience to yourself by skipping the fishing/mining, as well as the nice bonus of 60fps. If you use Ryujinx to emulate, it's relatively easy to run and comes with built-in online support so you can play with anybody else who uses the emulator (without having to go through hamachi or anything of the sort!). Having played on both, I think it's a far superior way of playing the game, and I’d probably play it on PC all the time if not for access to the wider playerbase on the Switch (since it's hard to find friends willing to download an emulator to play this garbage with me).

But yeah umm, Capcom does it to me again, a game that is fucking terrible in so many ways but also addicting in how well it succeeds at what it sets out to do. I probably won’t need another game for a while.