It's the most accessible entry into the series and is a great point for newcomers to jump on board.
the world looks gorgeous and is fully connected. the monsters look wonderful and riding the seikret around is a nice evolutionary step up from the doggos in rise. the usual loop is in there: do the story to learn the mechanics at low hunter levels and it's the usual - hunt monster, get bits, use bits to make armour to hunt the next monster in the chain, repeat.
there's no weird forced mechanics like rise's tower defense and the campaign is gripping enough to move you along.

overall, imo, a great next step in the series.

be warned though - the engine is taxing on your hardware and you may experience the occasional crash. hopefully this'll be sorted in patches over the next short while, but if that's a deal-breaker then either wait for optimisation patches or skip.

UPDATE: there have been a couple of patches since i wrote the review and since then i've not had another crash. not sure about the optimisation part (runs ok on my machine) but the weird crash that sometimes happened when joining a quest seems to have gone away.

It's the most accessible entry into the series and is a great point for newcomers to jump on board. the world looks gorgeous and is fully connected. the monsters look wonderful and riding the seikret around is a nice evolutionary step up from the doggos in rise. the usual loop is in there: do the story to learn the mechanics at low hunter levels and it's the usual - hunt monster, get bits, use bits to make armour to hunt the next monster in the chain, repeat. there's no weird forced mechanics like rise's tower defense and the campaign is gripping enough to move you along. overall, imo, a great next step in the series. be warned though - the engine is taxing on your hardware and you may experience the occasional crash. hopefully this'll be sorted in patches over the next short while, but if that's a deal-breaker then either wait for optimisation patches or skip. UPDATE: there have been a couple of patches since i wrote the review and since then i've not had another crash. not sure about the optimisation part (runs ok on my machine) but the weird crash that sometimes happened when joining a quest seems to have gone away.