I get it now

I started Monster Hunter World twice in the past but would always end up putting it down. After five or six hours of playtime, I would inevitably find myself questioning the mountains of praise that were heaped onto this game and thinking "am I missing something?".

It turns out I was.

For my third and now first successful attempt, I approached it from a solo experience perspective. See my previous go's I was playing co-op with a friend which is how many people recommend playing and having finished the "main quest" I can see why. Co-oping in the second half of the game is especially useful and fun because the monsters you'll be fighting can get quite challenging or frustrating to fight on your own. I found myself poping an SOS flare in some of the last few hunts, and once someone came to my rescue, I had a far more enjoyable time.

However, starting out playing solo I believe is the better approach. Just like soloing a boss in the Dark Souls series is far more gratifying than summoning another player. The experience here is also very satisfying and engaging when it's essentially a 1v1. When it was just me, I had to pay more attention and engage more in the game's mechanics, Which can be somewhat mitigated with a group. Speaking of game mechanics and systems...

The User Experience:

This is where Monster Hunter World reaches both it's highest of highs but also lowest depths. Let's start with some good. Weapons! I think reviewer Skill-Up put it nicely. Each of the only 14 weapons "could literally be the main weapon of entire games". I couldn't agree more. While the seemingly limited amount of weapons sounds like a negative, each one is so varied and so unique feeling with such depth of combos and moves and mechanics that 14 weapons may start to feel like too much! I tried three weapons before finding the 4th one that I ended up using for my entire playthrough. The first being the Sword and Shield with which you start. The second was a weapon called the Charge Blade which is both a larger sword and shield that builds up and stores energy from different attacks that can be unleashed for more significant damage and transform into a comically massive axe that puts in work.

The third was the Dual Blades, which the name suggests, dual-wielding short swords but they grant higher mobility, better dodge I-frames, fast long combos and elements damage and a secondary powered up "Demon Mode" that gives more powerful combos and severe fantastic damage. The fourth weapon I fell in love using for the rest of the game is the Insect Glaive.

This weapon is fantastic. A long double-bladed staff with varied combos also enables me to vault into the air with the staff, dodge midair and attack that can relaunch me further into the air chaining multiple times. It's possible to stay airborne sometimes for 15+ seconds, and this is just half of what the Insect Glavie offers. The "Insect" part is an actual big bug that hangs onto your arm, can be directed to attack whatever part of a monster you aim for. You can return it to you with buffs to your damage, speed and poise that affect your combos and even grant more with all three active!

The depth is nuts, adequately and it also carries over to the Monsters. They are some of the best-designed bosses I've fought in a while. Every monster has a visually distinct design that hints to the player what kind of a fighting style they'll possess. Every monster will have at least 1 or 2 unique attacks or abilities that make sense for that type and keep every fight feeling different enough from the last. The coolest part of these monsters is that they feel like real animals and not video game enemies. The effort Capcom has put into making these monsters feel like living creatures is exemplary from their animations and movement to the sound design of every monster is just a delight to behold.

The experience falters for me, and likely others who put MHW down early are awful explanations and tutorials. It is quite a mess. One of the fastest ways to turn off a player is bombarding them with tutorials that are just lines and lines of text about every system. Of which there are many. Once you get to the central hub zone after a pretty cool gameplay intro, you're given a flood of new information all in text form with the odd picture that's meant to illustrate but usually doesn't help. And nothing is adequately reinforced or communicated to the player about the important stuff or what they should focus on first. It feels like graduating from the 7th grade and then getting thrown straight into University. To be clear, it's not the number of systems and things to learn; it's how and when they are introduced and explained. The UI isn't great either and takes longer than it should before you start feeling comfortable enough navigating it.

Final Thoughts:

The good news is that the actual Monster Hunting and fighting (you know, the main thing you play the game for) far out weights these glaring faults. If you push onwards and past the first six or seven confusing hours, doing your best to learn then you'll find what everyone was talking about. Having finally played it properly and seen what this game has to offer, I'm glad I gave it another chance. Monster Hunter World is not this perfect or amazing game design feat, but it is a worthwhile ride.