[Videogames] Monster Hunter: World (especially recommended for Dark Souls fans)

For PS4/XB1, with a PC version coming later this year.

TL;DR: get this freaking game, it's amazing. If you like Demon's Souls / Dark Souls / Bloodborne, this game is probably for you. It was released this past Friday, and has received 100% favorable reviews, and a 91% average on Metacritic:
http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/monster-hunter-world/critic-reviews


It's a foregone conclusion that this game was going to be my personal game of the year... I hate playing on handhelds, yet I played this series obsessively on the 3DS anyway.

For the uninitiated, the Monster Hunter series has been around since the early 2000s, and never really caught on in the United States. But it's the definition of a system-seller in Japan; it's big in Japan like Halo and Call of Duty are big here. There are freaking car commercials that feature Monster Hunter monsters; it's absolutely legion over there.

Monster Hunter World is the first game in the series to land on a major home console in a very, very long time. Up to this point they have been recycling a 15-year old engine, and the "new" games that had been coming out for 3DS felt more like expansions than new games (I loved them all anyway though). This time they finally rebuilt it from the ground up, getting rid of many, many opaque game mechanics in the process. It's the perfect time for newcomers to get into the series.

If you like challenging, strategic combat, you cannot go wrong here... it's basically "Boss Fight: the game", as fighting giant monsters is what you're doing 80% of the time. There are 14 weapon types to choose from (11 melee and 3 ranged options), and at least one of them is guaranteed to click for you.

 

Excellent! Well if and when you guys get it, definitely feel free to reply to the thread and/or PM me, I'm happy to give advice or help you on any quests you're stuck on. I will be obsessively playing nothing but this for the next 2 months at least, probably a lot longer as they'll be releasing new monsters in the coming months. And IIRC, the new monsters will all be free.

 

Awwww! Sad-face indeed. It was always supposed to come out after the console releases, but now it's delayed much longer. It should be really awesome when it does come out just for graphical performance alone. The game never reaches 60 FPS even on PS4 Pro; it's a very resource-intensive game. I would've strongly considered getting an XBX to play this for that reason, but my friends are all on PS4, so it's a foregone conclusion. The PS4 will have the largest playerbase by a wide margin anyway though, so I don't consider it a big loss.

Nope, you don't need PS Plus to play single-player, you only need it for multiplayer. To me it is still super-fun solo, but admittedly it is even more fun with friends.

 

It definitely is an even better experience with a crew. And, this is the first time in the series where there is anything besides ad-hoc matchmaking.

There's a construct called "Squads", which IIRC can have up to 50 people (I might be a bit off on that number). How the multiplayer works is that you enter an online session that has a bunch of people in it, like 20 usually from what I've seen. But if you're in a squad, you can instead join the squad's session, so then everybody in the session with you is a consistent crew. I'm in a squad with 5 people in it right now (all real-life friends). The limit for number of people in 1 quest still maxes out at 4 though, so no taking 8-man crews out to trivialize all the content.

Random heads-up on multiplayer though: the way they handle multiplayer progression through story is the only thing that I really loathe about this game. You need to do story to rank up, and the game forces you to watch story cutscenes solo before you can do them multiplayer.
That means that often, you will post a story quest, be required to do it solo up through the cutscene, and then your friends can hop into your game after 5 minutes, or however long it took to get to the cutscene. If that sounds dumb, that's because it is.
But, Monster Hunter has never been story-focused. Most time will be spent in "end-game", where there are no dumb restrictions on multiplayer.

I'm in a squad entirely with real-life friends. Currently we have 3 series veterans who all spent 20+ hours on the game this weekend already (including me), and we also have two guys for whom this is their first Monster Hunter. I'd like to add you, because the more the merrier, but I'm just going to check with them before I do that. If they want to keep it just real-life friends, we can always start a separate Clutchfans squad too.

 

Yeah, that's where my friends came down on it.

I'm probably overthinking this, but since I will generally prioritize my real-life friends squad when available, maybe I shouldn't be the one to create the ClutchFans squad. This is the first time they've done this kind of online functionality, and it doesn't feel fully-baked yet. I don't see a way for a squad leader to designate "officers", so the leader has to do all the accepting members etc.
If someone else wants to create one though, send me a PSN friend request (PSID: Drex2234), and I'll happily join in any time my friends aren't around, or if anyone needs an assist.

 

Well the first thing to note is that there is no such thing as "XP/Levels". Yes there are hunter "ranks", but those don't actually make you more powerful, they just dictate what quests are unlocked. So there is no "character progression" stats-wise, only gear-based progression.

So when you ask "where you can't advance unless you have specific armor", well, technically yes, since the cycle of the game boils down to "kill monster / make gear out of monster / fight tougher monster / repeat". It's not realistic to expect to advance with the starting armor & weapons; by end-game you'd be getting one-shot-killed all the time.

That said, it is totally playable single-player. You do not need to play multiplayer to realistically get at any of the content, since the quests scale monster health down for single-player games.

Whether that makes it "casual" or "intensive", I suppose that's up to you to decide. The progression of the game being all gear-based is a huge part of the appeal for me... I love crafting the armor with the skills that fit with my exact playstyle and preferences with each weapon type. It makes it much more interesting for me than a game that ties skills to character levels, because when you do that, once I reach max level, that appeal of progression is either gone, or severely lessened.

Hope that all makes sense; let me know if it doesn't and I'll try to explain it better!

 

One town, though it's certainly quite a bit bigger and more impressive-looking than any of the previous towns. There are more NPCs to interact with on a regular basis than ever before, too.

And yeah, still distinct maps too, but they're real huge. Being multilevel, some are quite confusing to navigate at first actually, Ancient Forest included. But you learn them eventually, and the scout flies can help you get around in the meantime.