Recent reviews by Ao Yuki

The game design is amazing, lots of variables to consider, near limitless choice of playstyle. The game gives you a pretty accurate war scenario. For example, not realizing your gun is unable to penetrate the guy with the armored tank, so you spend the whole game trying to shoot it down without realizing you need a bigger gun, or a bloody bomb. It does happen in real life wars, however when it happens in the game without the game teaching you, how to deal with a target you cant kill, it just dwarfs you.


Almost all new players will just immediately drop this game because this game has so much going on, that beginners cant learn the basics before getting blown to bits by veterans and whales with hard fought and earned tanks, or silver gilded tanks. The hardest part of the game is going from beginner to no longer beginner. You will spent countless of hours just being a beginner, unable to do much as you understand the system, and pitifully grind for better equipment with one of the most absolutely predatory leveling system imaginable by sane humans.

However if you can put all of that behind you, this game will be a gem to you. As long as you're a beginner, this game will forever be trash with current system

stupid game

My opinion of this game after more than 1k hours. This review may includes things from Base game. (100 hours in pirated copy, around another 100 hours in base game probably? and the rest is in Iceborne. Pre-ordered Iceborne)

*skip to TLDR if you want to read just the gameplay part*


Story: Story was really fulfilling, a lot more detailed and has a deeper insight into it compared to Base game. I feel like if you didn't play Iceborne, you would be standing at a cliffhanger right before the climax part after you killed the Base game's final boss monster.

Music: Absolute transcend to the higher planes. New music, nostalgic music, all are great quality. Almost as good as Nier

Gameplay: (will be discussed along with all the hate reviews)

Game Engine integrity: I've noticed a lot of people having this issues including my friends, however I noticed that it is absolutely random, and after several attempts at file verification on steam, it usually fixes any crash bugs. So far the only software issue I've found is people not being able to boot at all, but the problem is most of the time not the game. Either there's some missing or corrupt drivers in your PC, or some permission denied request. Its difficult to find any bugs in game. No item duplication bugs, minimal (extremely rare) monster ragdoll unlike that other free to play monster hunter ripoff game, and I've never seen anyone no-clipping through things they're not supposed to clip through. Not in my gameplay, nor in other people's gameplay.

Multiplayer: Only 3 kinds of player you will meet. 1) Qualified Hunters. 2) Unqualified Hunters with sub-optimal performance. 3) the blatant toxic, or the cheater. Type 3 is very rare, but from time to time you'll find them. But I've yet to met any online community that doesn't have toxicity in them so to be fair, the in-game community so far is pretty clean. Type 1 is a lot more common to find if you request emergency help. These peoples usually have hundreds of hours of experience and can absolutely trash the monster. Type 2 is uncommon enough but if you find them incompetent you can kick them out of the hunt. Other than the obnoxious "Random DC" the netcode is pretty good. Its a P2P network but everyone's client has the same monster in the same position and the server tells the monster what to do, so you will never be out of sync during hunts. No such thing as "OH LAG KILLED ME" or "OH I HIT A WALL BUT I CUT ITS TAIL". For the obnoxious "Random DC", from my observations its the Session Host's fault. The game is P2P so if the Session Host has bad network, everyone in the gathering hub will get bad connection.

Cutscene and Cinematics: The cutscenes are really good, but on rare occasions it can be bugged out. They use game assets for cutscenes so your character, and any mods that alter character appearance will be translated into the cutscenes. One big bummer is that you can't skip any of these cutscenes. None at all. For good reason though, the cutscene sometimes show you reliable information on both the story and the gameplay.

Graphics: To compare with older monster hunter games? ABSOLUTELY ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ BEAUTIFUL. To compare with other games of its size, price and tier? Still a beautiful masterpiece. The monster designs, the world terrain, the effects such as fire or electric, god rays, even skybox is gorgeous. The details that I can't give thumbs up are color accuracy and brightness level. Color accuracy is a little poor (red looks like washed out, blue looks pale etc), even worse if you enable HDR (weird huh). However its nothing noticeable once you've played the game a bit.

Computer strength requirement: Quite high. If your PC was just enough for minimum base game requirement, you may need an upgrade for smoother experience. New maps are big. Monsters produce more effects.



Gameplay. Ah yes finally. Where do I begin?

Tutorial: Bare bones, learn everything but the basics yourself. Quoting Punk Duck "Forget the main story, forget everything, pick a weapon, go to training room and beat the ♥♥♥♥ out of the log until you find something you like". Tutorials on the clutch-claw however is pretty good.

General Hunt experience: You are not a god. You are a human, armed with a stick, or a bigger stick, or a long stick, or pokey stick with big shield, or a club in some cases. Monsters are real monsters. This game does have a stronger difficulty gradient. In my opinion, low rank quests are the real tutorial. First High Rank quest is your "Welcome to Monster Hunter: World". Master Rank quest assumes that you have reached at least Hunter Rank 100 in High Rank. That's quite far, I would estimate 80 hours of experience. Master Rank quest get noticeably harder every quest, even I myself failed 5 or 6 quest along the way on my first playthrough.

Difficulty: FAILING A QUEST IS NORMAL. STOP GETTING TRIGGERED CAUSE YOU CANT BEAT THE ♥♥♥♥ OUT OF THAT MONSTER.

Clutch-claw: [Game changer? Yes absolutely.] [Game breaking? Far from it.] The monsters becomes more aggressive in MR so it makes sense to give players an option to create an opening. Otherwise its dodge-roll frenzy in any hunts. People saying that all the hunts seems boring and repetitive is because all they do is tryna hit the monster when it's obviously charging at them and then say "wtf i hit monster but monster hit me".

Hot Drinks: on some occasions i dont even drink this stuff. i still managed to kill the monster. these people who complain are people who's bad at item loadout management, and terribly bad at the game because they always run out of stamina. even if you forgot to bring the item, the game always gives it to you in the wild. as simple as plucking some hot chili and getting two hot drinks worth 20 mins total up time.

Story Quests: most of them are in expedition mode compared to base game so you have unlimited lives and time to kill the monster, to learn the monster. stop leaving the expedition and shooting SOS for help. just keep going at the monster like a zombie until you understand all its moves. items are cheap enough you'll find yourself stockpiling 700 ancient potions for no reason. use the items ffs.

Master rank difficulty is stupidly hard: then you're not a master. stay in high rank mother ♥♥♥♥♥♥. just cause you suck doesn't mean everyone else is

Endgame monsters are too hard: tell me one good reason why it should not be hard. ITS AN END-GAME MONSTER

Monsters are too tanky: throw away your high rank weapons. have you ever killed a high rank monster with low rank weapons under 15 minutes?

My high rank weapon have lifesteal. my master rank weapon doesnt: get out of your comfort zone. this is the pinnacle of "i took things for granted and refuse to let it go."

Monsters new moves made melee bad: no, you're just confused because heavy bowgun is still op. i find hbg op, veterans find hbg op. dont get jealous. where's the fun in killing monsters under 60 seconds. you paid 50 bucks to kill a monster quickly or you pay 50 bucks for a bloody adrenaline rush combat with a monster?

Game is grindy: hahahahaha. no. well maybe yes but the purpose capcom blocks all those cool upgrades behind a gated system is so that you have experience in the game. you fought this monster several times. you improve your basic skills as a hunter. you learn new tricks. you learn the diversity of weapons. experience surpasses gear. i have to use level 1 weapons every time i join my new hunter friends so that i dont overkill the monster. thats how much value experience have.