I don't quite see the point of this game.
Besides a time waster and a somewhat-functioning Skinner machine, of course.
But in my (granted, limited) time with the game I didn't make a single interesting decision, be it during a battle or in any of the menus, upgrading items or choosing a weapon. What's more, none of the simple battles offer any challenge at all - the creatures have barely enough time to react to you before you've tapped them to death with a few hits. The bigger monster might require a few rolls or blocks before you down them, but even with them I've reached a point with my upgrades where they melt. I'm sure they'll get more challenging soon enough once the numbers climb higher again, but even then the fights are mechanically too undemanding. That's fine if that's what you want, but I prefer more involving, or at the very least more challenging, fight for one's life.
But perhaps the biggest sin the game commits is that there's no real reason to get off your sofa and go hunt some monsters because you can clean up your surroundings, put the phone away, pick it up again when you remember, and there you are - replenished. Not even once did I go out of my way to hunt somebody, instead just shrugging my shoulders when I ran out of stuff to do in my vicinity, and opening up another app. Not that there's anything to motivate it either - I could see stuff outside my vicinity, but felt no desire for anything, seeing no value in any of the pickups nor any interest in chasing down any of the monsters. You might want to do it, if you're actually trying to do the quests, but looking at the quest list I felt another instance of "what's the point of it all?"
It doesn't help that the game looks awful - bland GPS maps mixing with the occasional generic textures. The closest I game to a pleasant surprise was seeing low-pixel images of familiar places as backgrounds to some mineable rocks. Seeing a Google maps version of my street with some monsters on it doesn't really do it for me alone.
The best moment was joining a friend's game and having a laugh at the silliness of the game. I do appreciate it for affording me such a relatively simple and easy way to have a bit of a coop, but that's the best I can say for it.
So, all the complexity seems empty, the battles lacklustre, and the motivation for moving around in real life non-existent; perhaps I'm being unfair towards a game that requires more attention and more time investment, but throughout my time with it, it just couldn't convince me in why I should bother more. I don't usually play games like this and perhaps that's the reason for my distaste, but if it couldn't impress me with an experience that I've never had before, what could it wow me with then?
Certainly not with anything this game has so far.
And yea, I've read that the game gets more engaging as you go along, with combos, different weapons, and hunting specific monsters for quests and crafting, but the lacklustre presentation and repetitive gameplay loop isn't really incentivising me to explore further - you only have a few pages to convince your readers that you're worth it, and if you can't, well, there's always somebody else who will. Monster Hunter Now just didn't convince me.
Besides a time waster and a somewhat-functioning Skinner machine, of course.
But in my (granted, limited) time with the game I didn't make a single interesting decision, be it during a battle or in any of the menus, upgrading items or choosing a weapon. What's more, none of the simple battles offer any challenge at all - the creatures have barely enough time to react to you before you've tapped them to death with a few hits. The bigger monster might require a few rolls or blocks before you down them, but even with them I've reached a point with my upgrades where they melt. I'm sure they'll get more challenging soon enough once the numbers climb higher again, but even then the fights are mechanically too undemanding. That's fine if that's what you want, but I prefer more involving, or at the very least more challenging, fight for one's life.
But perhaps the biggest sin the game commits is that there's no real reason to get off your sofa and go hunt some monsters because you can clean up your surroundings, put the phone away, pick it up again when you remember, and there you are - replenished. Not even once did I go out of my way to hunt somebody, instead just shrugging my shoulders when I ran out of stuff to do in my vicinity, and opening up another app. Not that there's anything to motivate it either - I could see stuff outside my vicinity, but felt no desire for anything, seeing no value in any of the pickups nor any interest in chasing down any of the monsters. You might want to do it, if you're actually trying to do the quests, but looking at the quest list I felt another instance of "what's the point of it all?"
It doesn't help that the game looks awful - bland GPS maps mixing with the occasional generic textures. The closest I game to a pleasant surprise was seeing low-pixel images of familiar places as backgrounds to some mineable rocks. Seeing a Google maps version of my street with some monsters on it doesn't really do it for me alone.
The best moment was joining a friend's game and having a laugh at the silliness of the game. I do appreciate it for affording me such a relatively simple and easy way to have a bit of a coop, but that's the best I can say for it.
So, all the complexity seems empty, the battles lacklustre, and the motivation for moving around in real life non-existent; perhaps I'm being unfair towards a game that requires more attention and more time investment, but throughout my time with it, it just couldn't convince me in why I should bother more. I don't usually play games like this and perhaps that's the reason for my distaste, but if it couldn't impress me with an experience that I've never had before, what could it wow me with then?
Certainly not with anything this game has so far.
And yea, I've read that the game gets more engaging as you go along, with combos, different weapons, and hunting specific monsters for quests and crafting, but the lacklustre presentation and repetitive gameplay loop isn't really incentivising me to explore further - you only have a few pages to convince your readers that you're worth it, and if you can't, well, there's always somebody else who will. Monster Hunter Now just didn't convince me.