This is BY FAR the worst game in the series I've ever played. No challenge whatsoever, story is boring as hell, and the performance is straight garbage. The sad part is it could have been so much better. The weapons and armor sets look sick as usual. Combat is actually fun with all the new movesets and animations. The potential was there, but they totally screwed it up with bad design choices and straying from what makes Monster Hunter great.

The Difficulty

This game's difficulty is a joke. I haven't even come close to carting once, not even for a second. Seriously, I think my longest hunt during the main story was like 10 minutes tops. Traps and flash bombs are basically useless now, status effects don't matter because your damn cat heals you instantly. Monsters always seem to lag behind with their aim, giving you tons of space to dodge. Positioning also doesn't matter now with focus mode. And with the new wound system, you can just stun lock them if you have the right build. Oh, and if you get low on health, just hop on your mount and circle around while you heal back up full. There's zero sense of accomplishment.

The Story

The series never really was about the story, but this one just throws pointless cutscenes and boring dialogue at you to get to the next monster. Nata is seriously annoying. This kid's village gets wiped out by a monster, and suddenly he's all sympathetic towards it. A monster that kills random animals and is a menace to the ecosystem. I've been slaying monsters left and right until THIS one, and for some reason he has no problem with the others. The other characters are just as bad, they have zero personality or development. They could have used the development time to actually improve the game itself.

The Exploration

The Seikret is what totally ruins exploration. It's like an auto-pilot that takes you straight to your target without you even having to touch your controller. What's the point of paintballs when monsters are just marked on the map and you can auto path to them? This isn't Monster Hunter anymore, it's more like a guided tour. There's zero incentive to explore because every quest dumps you right into the action.

The Performance

The game runs like absolute garbage for how bad it looks. Everything is a blurry mess and wide open deserts make your frame rate tank for seemingly no reason. Even with frame generation on, I'm only getting around 110 FPS on my 4070 TI Super. The funny thing is, they said the recommended specs would get you 60FPS WITH frame generation! WITH! Are they serious? Is this what the industry is coming to now? Just hiding bad performance behind fake frames?