Oh boy, this title. So... the game looks very interesting. However, I'm not sure if I should get it or not. My history with Monster Hunter goes back to Monster Hunter Freedom 2 on the PSP. I liked the game and I put something like 10-20 hours into it. But after a while it got boring and I stopped playing. I also played Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate on 3DS: A friend of mine and myself preordered the game and planned to play it together. And we did - at least for a while. But I again stopped playing after roughly 20 hours.
I think what bugs me with Monster Hunter is the gameplay loop: You hunt the same Monsters multiple times to craft new weapons and armor... which rather quickly become too weak for more difficult missions, so you have to grind again... or at least that's how I remember it. I can get behind a bit of grinding in RPGs (even though I prefer RPGs with fast-forward functions like the PS1 Final Fantasy games on Switch or Dragon Quest XI) as you grind to overcome an obstacle so you can move the story forward. However, in Monster Hunter it felt to me like the gameplay loop was to do grinding so you can do more grinding right afterwards. Fighting a Monster for a prolonged period of time, multiple times, then farming stuff like honey just so I could fight that monster once again just wasn't a lot of fun. I realize that some people dig this style of gameplay loop a lot: A friend of mine is majorly into World of Warcraft and he always talks about doing raids and killing the same bosses over and over again to get an item with a 3% drop rate. I'm happy he's so into the game, but I'm not sure if I can enjoy something like this.
Also, (from the perspective of a relative newcomer) when I played the Rise demo it felt like someone had thrown a pair of dice to determine which button on the controller does what. But I played Dark Souls right before that, so maybe I just got confused.
Bottom line: I want to get into this series, but I'm not sure if I can. Did Monster Hunter get more newcomer friendly since the days of Ultimate 4? Or is it still baby steps? Because I remember reading with each new entry that they changed something to make the game more streamlined, but it was always just a few little things.
Edit: The fact that Curl mentioned you'll need less materials to craft armor this time to speed up the process gives me hope.
Last edited by Louie - on 22 February 2021
