Alpha as Fuck
It's at the moment your character goes airborne, two blades in hand, and begins to spin down the back of a giant wyvern where the power fantasy kicks into overdrive. This game is all about a regular sized human taking on big, mean, and strong goliaths. You will forge gear and weapons using mats you find from the land and off the monster themselves to upgrade your weapons and armor. Then you take said gear and go hunt ever stronger monsters. It's a simple gameplay loop but an effective one.
The controls on this game are a bit clunky with a keyboard and mouse and remapping your keys is light. It blows me away you cant use the numbers as a quick access for potions but that is the case. When I finally let go of my pride and grabbed a controller my experience changed for the better. The controls are obviously made for a controller and feel best with one.
Each monster is unique in the way they look and attack. While you will get some similarity in the way these look, the move sets change, and overall fighting behaviors can vary. This is also the case amongst the same monsters on a different level. A monster you were ripping apart on the easy difficulty surprises you with an all knew fire attack that rips through armor in hard mode. It keeps you on your toes and forces you to prepare for fights. It also keeps the game fresh and interesting as you progress.
What's best is the beautiful landscapes you traverse to hunt and kill beasts that are an apparent threat to humanity. Each landscape is unique and has some really cool features from glowing pools to thick jungles. Even on a 980, I was able to keep my frames +50 for most of the game only suffering from a boss that was using some really bright fire attacks. I saw some frame drops then and I am wondering if it's not more a coding bug rather then a graphics bug as this area was not the most detail heavy. The biggest drawback was the fact the game didn't release nor have patched in any widescreen support.
The story exists but it's not too much to speak of. It more an excuse to get you to kill shit and The Handler gets annoying as hell as she will remind you of your quests every time you come back to town. This is really annoying when farming gear but goes away as you move through the story. A huge plus is you get a little buddy called a palico. These little cats can also be decked out in gear and will help you in fights. They have abilities like healing that can help in a pinch.
How Did They Not Test This?
If you have heard about the controversy around Monster Hunter World's release or simply looked at its rating on Steam you will see that the rosy picture I paint in the first section, is not the full story. That is because this game is plagued with crashes and connection issues. Every time you log in you can create or join a session with friends or strangers. This makes it easier to join them on hunts or events. The problem is getting this to work can be an adventure in itself. That or it just won't.
There were several times where I was in a session with friends and would be dropped, given the 'mv' bug message, and be unable to reconnect. Their sessions were no longer available and if I could see it I couldn't join any of their missions. Resetting the game sometimes worked but sometimes didn't. Most of this went away when I had the game set to always run in admin but it wasn't a cure-all. This was, fortunately, the worst bug I ran into while I had a friend who would constantly crash in the forest. Mind you the game doesn't save till you finish missions so if it happened right after a monster kill, which it did, he would lose all of that. I know PC releases are relatively new grounds for Capcom but it's not like PC games are new.
The game is good in that the gameplay is fun and addictive. There is a lot to do and the fights are very well put together. The different weapons and monster add a variety of gameplay that has kept me playing after the story ends. In reality, the story just feels like the start. If only they could fix these connections issues Monster Hunter World would be one of the best I have played this year.
TL;DR:
Monster Hunter World is an extremely fun monster slaying RPG stuck behind a net of release bug and issues that can kill anyone's experience. This is a buy but maybe not yet.
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