| Mnementh said: I like the aspect of preparing for a hunt very much. Alone that I can go out into the wild just to gather materials for potions and traps to be prepared for mynext quest is something cool. It makes me feel like a real hunter, not some action hero. I am not convinced by the demo, that this aspect is back. But that is normal, the demos were always just some quests, all the surroundings are not visible. My MonHun I like the most is Tri (for Wii) or it's HD variant on WiiU. The reason is, that Tri had a mode without time limit. I could just go out and gather materials or try out new weapons without much pressure. After I defeated big monsters in quests they could appear in this mode, which gave a nice chance ot get some more of the rare materials. That mode was nice, I doubt it or something similar will come back, but I still hope. As you I liked the new mobility very much. Not only with the wirebug, also the palamute helps here very much. Fast traversing a level is extremely helpful and the movement feels so great and enjoyable, I probably roam each new area for some time at first, just for the fun of it. |
I'm not really convinced that the aspect of having to prepare for a hunt is back, either, and it's for more reasons than it just being a demo. Having bugs everywhere that give you health, as well as being able to gather materials pretty quickly, I think are two key indicators. In fairness though, the monsters are also much more aggressive than in World and there seems to be less of those healing bugs in general (might just be they are more spread out?). Also a lot of the really good materials are more out of the way this time, at least in this map, so maybe that will create subtle enough changes to bring back the zen cycle of collecting some materials for a good chunk of game time before going on a hunt.
What I kind of tried to get across in the OP is though, that I don't particularly care if they push the series far enough to the point where it becomes a great action game. I don't really mind series having nuanced shifts in direction, so much as when they do it without considering that they need to put more depth into that newfound direction, where prior games might have just dabbled in those elements. That was my biggest problem with World, it didn't add enough to the action part, so the decreased value placed on traditional Monster Hunter aspects for an increased action take felt a bit off to me.
It's interesting you say that, I've been thinking back on my time with 4 Ultimate and World and I'm actually kind of confused as to which entries have the free roam mechanic. From what I remember in 4 Ultimate, expeditions were free roam but had their own maps, so I guess by your criteria it didn't really count as the same thing since you were exploring unique maps rather than the same areas. In World there actually IS free roam i'm pretty sure. I don't remember if there's a catch, though.
