For those who do not have the demo here is a list of the weapons and my impressions.
Sword and Shield – In Monster Hunter this is your weirdest weapon, it has very low damage but attacks very fast, the shield helps a lot but in the first game I only ever used them for their status effects like stun locking, which this category received high %’s in. But I still found my way to dual wielding if only because I thought dual wielding was cool. (Which is was)
Lance and Shield – Another weird one, this is a Pro set, once you have figured out where to hit on a monster this is probably the best weapon to use. The only down side is that you have 0 mobility, the plus side is you don’t need it. The key to this weapon is knowing when to attack and defend or just flat out run. This set controls like a tank the cool thing is it resets, so you can actually very quickly move back to the beginning position of your attack to hit the monster in the exact same spots again.
Great Sword – This is usually the bread and butter weapon, great for new players because of it being a Great Sword, high damage and lots of forgiving motions the great sword is a great starter weapon only after the Sword and Shield. You can block with this as well. This weapon teaches how to cancel high delay moves by rolling and also helps a lot with camera management as the attacks are so wide you have ample time to learn how to maneuver you view in combat. Not to mention to amazing blocking ability.
Hammer – The power weapon of the game, it is capable of stunning the monster when you catch them in the face with a powerful maul, the weapon is very fast paced and anyone who used the Great Sword will love this mainly if you like the idea of 1 hit BOOOM run 1 hit BOOOM *stun* Combo. But you cannot block at all.
Long Sword – Not the great sword by a long shot, the weapon cannot do charge moves but has Spirit combo’s, it’s a very fast paced weapon meant for laying in damage, while the Great Sword is meant to knock things over and chop off tails. The full spirit combo can take out small Wyverns and bosses in 4 or 5 combos, (Very powerful on red glow) or 7 to 10 minutes of fighting. The weapon allows for its own attacking side dodge making it very fast because right after you can get into the fight again.
GUNNER – GUNNERS do not use Hunter gear. (You can only be a gunner by using guns) duh =D
Bow Guns – It’s not fair to wrap them all together but don’t want to spend all day explaining them, you can play the demo but it doesn’t give a very clear idea of what the powers of the Heavy and Light really are, heck the Medium one is usually OP until you run out of ammo.
Light – Usually for pegging, status effecting and healing allies, there is no real damage output here, you have buck shots if you decide to get close to the target, but I think it only gets small shell pierce ammo, even then that is better off on mid or heavy class. This weapon is for hit and run, the good thing is that that you can always run. This is probably the best gun for party games.
Mid – This is for the player who wants some of the light with some of the heavy, It can also use Buck 2 or 3 not sure in Tri and Pierce 2. The explosive rounds are limited to 1 I believe. This one teaches conservation. Not really the best to solo with.
Heavy – This is the Meat and potatoes of the offline hunt, prepared you should be able to kill any monster solo offline. At least if the HR (Hunter Ranks) stop at 5 or to Bonus. This guy gets everything except the light bow guns stuff.
Just because you use 1 weapon doesn’t mean you can’t switch, you can move on to any weapon you want. The only but here is from Hunter weapons to Gunner, keep Hunter armor at the ready just in case you want to switch to Swords n stuff and vise versa.
That’s my impression of the Weapons except the SwitchAxe.
