Excellent, looks real fun, sadly won't ever touch it based on the fact I still didn't try World, but hope you all enjoy it a lot.

Okay. Read and watched enough reviews to know that this game has been stunted for casuals completely and this will hurt them, it's the un apologetic depth and difficulty that made World a hit. Idk how many more people they think they can get in, why so greedy. This will likely have an adverse effect and push the people they have away. Short and even less challenging than Rises campaign and even the end game is so, yeah, they'll compensate with the Expansion like they did with Sunbreak but it'll be over compensation again. Might skip this completely. Sub 50 hours with no challenge or need to gear. What's the point. They took the literally point of the game out. A pity.

This looks like it would be the perfect on point and then go back to the more challenging and massively longer World which remains fantastic. They literally designed this gor people like you. Also, Rise is easy AF and a lot easier than world and also "free" on PS Extra along with it's expansion or if it is not anymore it's cheap as chips on sales. No excuses. Get on one of them. 

I feel like Monster Hunter is one of those game franchises where the first game in the series you ever get into is the one you'll probably like the best.

It's kind of like sports games or FPS type game franchises, they tend to feel too samey despite the new features and graphics. So there are always going to be mixed opinions by old fans who may:

A. Like it because it's been 15+ years since they've done Monster Hunter.
B. Like it because it's the second game in the series they ever played.
C. And this is the most likely - feel kinda bored with it because of the "been there, done that" feeling, without the nostalgia of the original game they played.

I'm projecting myself onto C a bit, because I'm the type of gamer that tends to rarely like imitations or sequels that are too similar to existing games unless I didn't get enough into the older ones. I'm not saying that samey sorts of games shouldn't exist, as if I was going to be a new Monster Hunter player, I'd likely have the best time with the more recent games, not from the era I started in: 2 and 3. But for me, 3 is always going to be the top one, because of the sheer amount of time I spent on it, and the office lunchtime group we had in the 3DS port of it - and we never really replicated that with 4, even though 4 was objectively better. Smash Bros was another series I found similar, after playing a ton of the N64 version, the much more popular Melee (where many new fans got into it for the first time) didn't make much of an impression on me.

Also, IMO, once you've done Monster Hunter multiplayer on handheld, then single/online play on home console becomes an empty/depressing experience. Kinda like being a kid at the playground when no one else is there - great experience if you've never been to a playground before, but once you've spent months there jamming with your friends, you don't really want to be there alone anymore.

Idk, Rise was my second and I preferred it on many aspects until I realised it was too easy and then it became too hard in the expansion as they over compensated, that's the only reason I prefer world. 

I don't think they should be stripping things back for the casuals when their most successful game is sweaty AF. They might get more in now but the next entry, there will be backlash as the hardcore MHers rip it to pieces. Capcom is willingly putting themselves back to where they were before their recent popularity, they gotta ruin it. 

I'm getting so tempted. But remember folks...

15 hours story.
Little end game variety
No challenge even in end game
No reason to upgrade gear from monster to monster

No reason to grind only for the sake of it
Waiting for the expansion and Master Rank seems the way to go

Gear sets mean little now asides from doing straight crit

It is even more casualized than Rise

Even eating is less of a component 

This is not the MH we know, not the slight pain in the ass but such rewarding monster killing, Gear driven loop. It's not an imitation of itself to get the masses in. 

You are tempting me to just go back to PoE2 when the patch drops. That honestly sounds terrible, but I feel forced to buy it.

"Unapologetic depth and difficulty that made World a hit"

This is off by a long shot. Base world was one of the easiest MH games up until that point. It was also streamlined to hell compared to the previous games. The conversation you are having right now is the exact same that was happening when world came out. Yet is made the series explode in sales.

World only got any semblance of the difficulty the series is known for with its Iceborne expansion (or the post-game updates if you count those). But by then the base game was already selling like hotcakes.

MHWilds seems to go even further into that direction, especially with the streamlining, but using World as the baseline for non-casual, hard MH when it was the biggest step towards this direction up until that point is a weird take.

It wasn't streamlined, it was evolved from nonsense segregated maps and bad design. This is a completely different situation. Same with Rise, they get a pass with that cause of the hardware and the way they done it with the power ups and arcade feel made sense. The world games are supposed to be challenging from the get go. You're supposed to be spending 30+ minutes on a fight, not less than 15 and often 5-10 like in wilds. 

No it wasn't. Base World has comically low stagger limits, monsters dropped like flies due to easy to abuse weakpoints and overpowered additions like mantles, you could easily cram several DPS skills into your armor with the change in slots/decorations, most weapons lost their limitations that balanced them and much more.

I understand that you may like World more but you are talking like you are either willfully ignoring how this series works or you lack that context.

World was not unapologetically hard. It was actually one of the easier entries in the franchise up until that point
World upped the difficulty with its expansion, as MH has always done (with the addition of post game updates in the case of the past 2 entries).
This wildly depends on skill level but after you become halfway decent you should not "be spending 30+ minutes on a fight" on your average hunts. This was not true for the 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th gen and it is certainly not true for World where solo sub 5minute runs on endgame monsters were popping up within days after release, which usually takes a couple of weeks. And other than the last part, this does not only apply to hardcore players doing runs.

To put this out there, I am worried about Wilds. The 2 betas were ok but what I am hearing makes me think they are doubling down on their bad choices. What I find objectionable with your posts is that you claim MH had this identity that Wilds is moving away from when the identity you are basing this off of is a game that, compared to the previous 15 years of MH, was the biggest step towards the direction Wilds is going in most aspects.