Recent reviews by Sir Zorba

Nah. It's just not Monster Hunter anymore. I've been thinking this since World and knew it was only gonna get worse for the sake of mainstream appeal, something that rarely ever improves a game. There's no friction left, no satisfaction for overcoming a meaningful challenge. It's inarguably easier as a base game than basically any previous title.

This series peaked in 4th generation, and I'd refund Wilds if I could. Too bad I was dealing with tech issues for so long I got past the refund period.

The other top negative reviews have put most of what I think of this expansion more eloquently than I could, so I'm just going to echo what they're saying.

The one specific thing I want to draw attention to though is the complete disconnect the marketing for the expansion seems to have had from the finished product. Wuk Lamat was almost nowhere to be seen in the marketing. It was always focused on the WoL, Krile, and Erenville, all of which took a back seat to this dumb "peace and friendship" lion that shows up and recruits us without any resistance. This was not the "summer vacation exploring a new land" that was advertised to us. It was not a "low stakes" story in the slightest despite not being *as high* stakes as Shadowbringers/Endwalker. The potential "conflict between scions" boiled down to a single interaction in the first dungeon.

For a game that everyone sold me on trying because the story was so good(and it was, despite some major issues I have with Endwalker's pacing and plot holes), Dawntrail is a major flop that made me take another look at DRAGONFLIGHT in WoW and think "perhaps I judged you too harshly." I don't skip cutscenes, but after finishing Dawntrail I kinda wish I had this time.

This game has a decent variety of content/features in the roguelike "crusades," cult management activities, sidequests, minigames, etc. Unfortunately it's all about as shallow as a puddle, and the game overall feels like it's still in early access.

Pros:

--The visual presentation is the only thing this game really excels at.

Cons

--Very little interesting weapon/power variety during crusades, some weapons feel downright unusable(claws in particular)
--Enemies have not gotten much different halfway into the third area. Minibosses are just large versions of smaller enemies and only the Bishop of each realm really adds anything new, but not nearly enough. The two I've fought so far are about 50% minion spawns, 40% existing attacks from the equivalent small enemy, 10% something unique.
--Cult/follower management is very simplistic, not challenging in the slightest, and progression comes too fast. I unlocked all but 2 nodes on the red crown's upgrade tree before I beat the second bishop, and I wasn't overly consistent about performing sermons which levels it up, nor was I dying excessively. I've unlocked about half of the divine inspiration tree from the central shrine and don't see much use in the things I've got left to unlock. The only times I've had difficulty meeting hunger/cleanliness requirements were right at the beginning of the game, and faith requirements are only ever an issue when failing a quest. That happened exactly two times, once where a cultist asked for a meal I had not unlocked yet, and another because of a bug I'll explain later. I've had one dissenter who achieved absolutely nothing, and any faith losses from performing rituals that should horrify the members are easily regained simply by running around and blessing everyone.
--Very buggy. Nothing I've personally experienced has been game-breaking but the bugs I've seen cause a lot of confusion. Many times I've had followers ask me to do something to either themselves or another follower, but the quest target itself is an entirely different follower from the one that was named. One of these was a follower named Thety telling me "we caught Thety stealing from another member, please imprison them." I imprisoned him immediately without double checking the actual name on the quest, and failed because he was not the one the quest actually wanted.

Will update if the game improves beyond my current progression but so far it's not looking great.