Recent reviews by dag

Well, after so much time, I guess I might as well chip in with my own experiences with the game. At the time of writing I have 145 hours in the game so I think my experience has some validity to it.

I became interested in the series more than a decade ago, but I didn't ever really pick it up due to not having a 3DS or a PSP to play the older titles, so World was my first time playing a game in the series, and I've played it in 2020, when it was mostly content-complete. Then, I've played Rise (but hated it so I didn't finish it until Sunbreak, which I enjoyed greatly), and had a relatively good time going through its DLC alongside its content updates.

Wilds feels *exceptionally* slow at pushing out updates, and the ones that come out feel lackluster, for the lack of a better word. Fights in the game are never challenging, the grind for artian weapons is kind of trivial and boring, and the gear from updates is not worth grinding for.

I don't hate the roster of monsters in this game, even though in my opinion elder dragons were some of the coolest fights in the series, usually because they were designed with kicking your ass in mind. In Wilds, it feels like some monsters like Arkveld or Gore Magala are supposed to be difficult, but in the end just fall short. The hunters have an answer to everything with basically every weapon, so positioning and thinking ahead holds zero importance. Just mash buttons and counter/offset when the monster is about to hit you. I play lance, and it feels like a part of my chosen weapon's identity is being stripped away and put into every single other weapon, making a lot of them feel kind of samey - they can all serve one purpose and play in a somewhat similar fashion.

I like the seikrets, they are some of my favourite silly creatures in the world of Monster Hunter, but they do trivialize the gameplay and make the overworld feel boring. Why walk and explore like in older games when I can just mark a monster and autopilot? World had tailriders but you had to work for them still and they weren't too fast, moreso just a convenience to sharpen or use consumables while moving from point to point. In Wilds, exploration and immersing yourself in the world is probably not even close to the most important few things they had in mind while making the game, with the entire podium being taken up by "go kill monster NOW".

While I don't expect much from a story in this series, the low rank in Wilds feels bad. The story boils down to a kid being sad that his family is dead, then seeing the essence of himself in the monster that killed it. Along with the mandatory seikret riding sessions that take WAY too long, the pacing feels horrible and the story is generally uninteresting, other than the hunter being cool a couple of times.

But all of that is small compared to the two elephants in the room:
The first one? Pretty obvious, as I feel like every other review will mention it: the optimization is nonexistent, even this long after launch. The community was finding its own fixes early on into the game's life, funnily enough, but in the end it shouldn't be the responsibility of consumers to fix the product.

The second one, and the one I feel is more relevant to me personally is... The community itself. I will not complain about the people who care and want the game to be the best version of itself, but rather about those overly defensive about the game. In a conversation I had about the game I mentioned that I felt the game was too easy (which is a common argument and I can understand the frustration) but I have also stated that the combat felt samey, the tools I had were too powerful and I didn't enjoy the overall feeling of the game. The response I got? Roughly paraphrased because I don't have the logs, "Just play other weapons, duh. You're not as good with them so you'll have more trouble, and also I play all weapons so I have more authority on the matter". While I do understand that I do have probably over 1000 hours played on lance throughout the entire series, I don't feel like me being good would destroy the feeling of the weapon. So, I did some testing, and... In general, all of the weapons felt samey. Focus mode makes it far too easy to be optimal and aggressive with your hits, and while I'm pretty sure the monsters have high health numerically, you burn through it so easily. It's kind of why my favourite fight of the game was Jin Dahaad, my best run with lance took me just under 9 minutes.

And for the second part of my experiment, I went to play older games. I've already played through GU and 4U, so I already knew what the outcome would be, but I picked up Frontier as well. And it kicked my ass. Hard.

So far, the game is underwhelming. I hold very little trust for the series' future, especially if they keep removing what made Monster Hunter the genre-defining game it is.

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i love killing various red, blue, yellow, and purple shapes

halo 2 and 3 fans, i've got some news for you

okay, jokes aside - this game is really damn good... albeit a little easy, especially as you get some of the abilities. other than the bouncing mouse secret room. ♥♥♥♥ the bouncing mouse secret room.

bought this game for myself and two friends, i believe one of em is ruining their friendship because he keeps playing instead of doing something else

Edit: Game is still unavailable in 180 countries. Sony thinks they can get away with this. Keep boycotting this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ behaviour.

repub if dwarf chad

i was thinking whether i should buy this or pizza tower, and while i still want pizza tower, man was this the right choice

game got pretty good tbh

as a 5'4 dwarf, this game does more than just sate all my dwarven needs

can't really tell you why, but unlike with world, something just does not click