Do you have more than 8GB of RAM?
Do you like to battle bosses?
Do you like being free to experiment your playstyle without having to create multiple characters?
Then this game is a blast, whether you play it by yourself or with your friends. Treat every monster as a boss, prepare for the boss, just as you would in any other game. That is the correct mindset, anything else will make the game feel like a letdown.

As someone who has played both the first Dark Souls game and this game, I can draw many parallels, but MHW is definitely easier without being too easy. I have played this game exclusively co-op with my SO, but many story missions must be played solo.

Multiplayer is rather convoluted, but it is 100% worth the effort and super fun to make builds with your bestie to complement one another.
In order to play multiplayer, your friend must first join your session, one of you posts a quest and the other joins said quest. When that fails, the one starting the quest must trigger the hunting objective by completing whatever cutscene or objective comes first. Once the objective becomes a hunt, the host needs to either send a public SOS flare or preferably click ''Return from Quest'' or ''Return from Expedition''. This will save your progress and allows your buddy to join next time. Make sure that both you and your buddy have completed any prior objectives to the hunt to be able to play co-op. When choosing to let your buddy join with a SOS flare, make sure to cancel the flare ASAP to avoid random players from joining, your friend doesn't need to finish loading for you to cancel the flare.