Monster Hunter World: Iceborne released formally on Friday, September 6, 2019, and while I have enjoyed parts of this new expansion so far, I don't feel that it's fair to do a proper review on the game until a few months into the game's shelf life once the endgame meta and most players have gotten their feet wet into the post-game grind. That's why this write-up is simply based off my experiences and impressions during the first week of the game following the initial release.
** Starting off, I haven't rushed through the majority of the story campaign for the expansion like most people have blown their load on. After getting 90% of the monster reveals (including the last boss) spoiled on Saturday (9/7/19), I've been going at this with baby steps. **
I love all of the new QoL (quality of life) changes, but at the same time, a lot of this shit that should have been available at the start. I get it - as a newcomer to this series, I haven't properly "earned my stripes" in terms of enduring the archaic (read: primitive) humble beginnings of this series, but when Capcom decided to bring this series to current gen consoles, they knew they had to make this more user-friendly and optimized. Granted, they've listened to their player base FAR more than they have for anything fighting game related so I thank them highly for my enjoyment of the game during the base titles tenure.
My favorite QoL changes so far? Saving Radial (shortcut) menu loadouts to your preset item loadouts, more room for stuff on the weapon/armor crafting Wishlist, and a few visual changes that were needed, especially for spotting dropped materials on the ground that were blending into the background/environments previously.
Being able to use communication stickers/gestures in Astera/Seliana is a plus too if you're in a session with international players. I made a habit to put a lot of gestures on my communication shortcuts for multiplayer in terms of callouts for "Let's capture this thing!", "Swords & Blades PLEASE cut the tail!", and "Outta my way, Hammer Bro here!" For the most part it's working to my benefit without having to resort to Flinch Free in my builds, but you still get twats playing this after all of this time who are all swarming around the head and not trying to damage other weak points or cut the tail.
I like to think that these were the same twats who flake out of the game every few months and don't come back until something new gets added since they don't have a shred of courtesy that a lot of players who were grinding during the last festival in preparation for this expansion.
More slots for Harvesting and Weapon/Armor/Charm Crafting Wishlists were more than appreciated. (Laughs) I still have stuff from the base game that I never finished acquiring crafting materials for. I just added a wealth more things to craft in Master Rank.
Only weapon I'm using right now is Hammer (Hammer main FYI), but I plan on switching back to Gunlance and HBG in post-game. I just want to get a feel of the new and returning monsters on Master Rank (MR) first since it's an all-new ball game. Maybe it's just me but the Slugger skill (which can be upgraded to lvl5 now for 60% added KO potential) is REALLY good this time around with the added buff to Charged Upswings and Charged Brutal Upswings. Almost every other time I land those moves on a monster they are either reeling or flat out KOed now.
My biggest gripe on Hammer though is that they haven't fixed the hitbox on Upswings and there's still that off chance that all of the hits of a Brutal Upswing will miss completely. So fucking frustrating when that matters most when you have a monster downed and can't get that additional KO to keep them down longer after the stun/stagger. You used to be able to SLIGHTLY aim the analog stick to correct your swings a little better on alignment of those attacks for Brutal Upswing and Big Bang combos, but I haven't noticed that being the case thus far.
Maybe it's just me, but I feel like there's a lot more stamina drain now in terms of trying to maintain a charge while moving around and evading. I found myself letting go prematurely a lot earlier than the base game just for I won't run out of stamina while evading.
I like the Clutch Claw a LOT more now that there's an optional quest that serves as a formal tutorial on how to use the new slinger functionality properly. My only gripe about it as there's still monsters that won't allow you to grapple onto them with this new mechanic to bring them down to your level for inflicting damage, so it's not the "end all" solution like how Capcom was acting like it was when they first introduced it in the early trailers for Iceborne. Some weapon classes get to do some amazing things with it while others (like the Hammer) can just fire slinger ammo while unsheathed. I don't feel like it's not going to revolutionize the wheel on most weapon classes' individual playstyles in most cases.
Mounts seem to be possible multiple times now back to back in succession. There was one hunt I did early into Master Rank where I mounted the monster at least 3-4 times back to back where previously I was under the impression that there was a "cooldown" of sorts before you were able to do that to a monster again. I guess not, not that I'm complaining about that aspect.
Difficulty
If this is the equivalent of fabled “G rank” in previous Monster Hunter games then I’m not impressed as a newcomer. The way Monster Hunter series vets talk about it as if it’s the Devil May Cry series' equivalent of Dante Must Die difficulty tier of these games. The Arch Tempered monsters limited to event quests posed MUCH more of a threat than most of the monsters I’ve seen thus far, with Barioth being the only hunt I thought was more frustrating/annoying than actually difficult since that monster continuously moves around giving you little to no means to hit it until it’s exhausted. Shrieking Legiana is another "annoying" new monster type/variant and that fight is just straight up stupid on a lot of levels. Again - I repeat myself. I don't think it's hard or difficult, just frustrating in terms of level design that could have been streamlined. Oh and don't tell me to bring dung pods and flash pods for that hunt because I did that and still felt it was just absolutely awful in single player.
Visuals
The changes to the visuals are appreciated, even with the smallest details smoothed out on your hunter during cutscenes and the Handler not having a butterface outside of those scenes (which was meme worthy for the most part). There’s some refined details to monsters now that’s appreciated on the returning cast, such as you can see Odogaron’s scales redden in anger when he’s fired up/enraged in better detail. I’m sure these details pop out more on PlayStation 4 Pro of Xbox One X but it’s noticeable on my standard PS4 just fine enough. What I’m not a fan of are the longer load times between hunts. I get that with the story hunts that they have to load a cutscene or something before/after said hunt, but geez this game tackled on a ton of downtime it seems.
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| When you get this far into the expansion's narrative you will appreciate this meme... |
The new Gathering Hub and new base of operations, Seliana, in the Hoarfrost Reach has streamlined all of your needs at the NPC shops and stations, but geez it takes more time loading into anything than actually hunting said monsters.
Bugs & Glitches
Glitches and bugs galore in this from what I’ve noticed so far. I’ll list off the ones off the top of my head.
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| An example of the layered armor coloring issue described below. Mind you, I don't even own this armor set in any capacity. |
Custom radial settings weren’t saving to my item loadouts until I figured out what the trick was. After assigning what you want your communication customized settings to the radial menu, you register it to the item loadout but DO NOT override the radial settings when the menu asks you to. It’s so damn confusing that Capcom did this feature like that. I had to force myself NOT to overwrite those settings with the default radial settings everytime I would swap item loadouts. By the third day, this issue corrected itself after I completely exited out of the game and loaded it back up, but goddamn that was yet another annoying shortcoming with this expansion.
Glavenus' hunt is allegedly bugged. I haven't run into this myself but players are running into instances where they are picking up "Unknown" materials after carving his corpse. Capcom has already stated that this will be the first to be patched out at a later date.
There's some odd clipping through objects and environments with some of the new monsters in the new region, Hoarfrost Reach, making me think that Capcom's playtesters must have had time off for the most part. That's not to mention some hilarious, yet pathetic instances where monsters are flying/retreating into walls over and over until being struck with an attack or Clutch Claw.
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| In the two images above, Shrieking Legiana decided to fly repeatedly into the nearby mountain wall over and over until I was able to mount onto him with the Clutch Claw. Wasted five precious minutes of this annoying hunt because of that... |
Speaking of the Clutch Claw, there's some instances where your hunter won't grapple onto the monster as intended and immediately get thrown off or the Claw passes through the monster completely. A minor annoyance but that can be easily fixed.
This hasn't been proven yet, but I could swear that Hot Drinks are bugged. I feel like Cold Drinks, Demondrugs, and Armorskins all last longer than this new item that is essential for braving the harsh environment of the Hoarfrost Reach. It seems like the Hot Drink wears off in less than five minutes of unsheathing my weapon or even faster if I'm evading and moving around. I have been going through Hot Drinks so fast that I had to start harvesting the Hot Peppers to craft them. Once again, this is just something more annoying than anything else.
Monsters
In comparison to the open beta, I’ll give my impressions of the several new monsters (along with a few additional ones if you fought the hidden ones along with Velkhana in the last trial session) beta monsters in terms of their behavior and patterns in that compared to the expansion
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- Great Jagras - Nothing’s changed. He’s essentially what he was in the base game more or less. I’m just too twitchy from reacting to him like he’s Greatest Jagras from the festival events.
- Banbero - Pretty much the same as I remember from the beta, just a LOT damn bigger.
- Beotodus - Causes Iceblight a lot more frequently from his attacks than I remember in one of the beta sessions. More annoying to keep him above ground than swimming below it.
- Nargacuga - He was optional in the Ancient Forest when you accepted the Great Jagras quest in the beta. Most people weren’t even aware he was roaming around the forest (Area 8 I believe) until at least the 2nd or 3rd beta session. In the beta, he abused his mace-like tail attacks religiously, but from my impression of fighting him in the expansion he was an absolute pushover. With better gear and my skills up to par, I had him KOed for 70-80% of the fight and didn’t allow him to do much anyway when he wasn’t having turf wars with Rathalos. That fight was a little of a letdown in this expansion if I'm honest.
- Tigrex - I thought his AI behavior was essentially the same as the beta but that rock toss move was completely brand new. Definitely caught me off guard right off the bat. His hitbox on his tramples and jumping tackles are just as wonky/janky as Vaal Hazak and Teostra’s. I KNEW Capcom wasn’t going to fix that shit in that regard, yet people were making tons of excuses saying that it was just the beta and it would be fixed in the expansion.
- Velkhana - I’ve only fought her during the first encounter where you repel her away from the Elder’s Recess, so I’m going to guess she’s going to reveal the other aces up her sleeves from the beta down the road, but I thought the first encounter with this new Elder Dragon in the expansion was pretty darn lame. Model seems a LOT smaller than what I remembered from the beta.
Closing Thoughts
One thing that needs to stop though from the Monster Hunter World community is this mindset from the veteran players that are shooting down players on social media, especially on the Reddit forums, when someone reports one of these various ongoing bugs/glitches that need to be addressed. Time and time again, I have see veterans talk down to newer players and discredit these reports when Capcom needs to be made painfully aware that there's problems with this expansion. When I read these posts, I get this negative vibe from the vets as if we should be just happy that we have an expansion period for this game and should deal with it while sitting on our hands while the house is burning down around us.
Fuck that noise. I was never a fan of keeping expectations low to justify a mediocre sequel/DLC expansion for any game. Iceborne retails at $39.99 as full blown expansion to the base game; I paid $59.99 for the Master Edition and I expect to get my money's worth. I'm not one of these tools like the folks who buy 2K (formerly THQ) WWE Games, then go into denial EVERY.SINGLE.TIME when it doesn't live up to their expectations or when people find a laundry list of bugs and glitches that need to be addressed. I'm not saying the damn game is unplayable. I'm just asking to simply address this stuff before it becomes a lingering issue and deters people from playing it altogether. I enjoyed the hell out of what was offered previously. This just comes off as a minimalist effort in a lot of aspects. Besides, if this was ANY other AAA title, people would have been shitting all over it in terms of some of the bugs that people have been running across instead of throwing over a new coat of paint and ignoring it.
I hate shitting on the player base too as I raved about this being my favorite community to game with in my review of the base game. Everyone was so welcoming and friendly and now it's devolving into that douchebaggery of Dark Souls and/or of the same elk that I frowned upon from the FGC (fighting game community) with that same "git gud" response to any question or request to feedback.
I had people say that my disappointments from the game so far stem from "fatigue" of the game. Trust me, I would have taken it back to the damn store and gotten a refund if that was the case. I'm not tired of the Monster Hunter grind, despite 600+ hours of gameplay time over the past year. I dunno, I was expecting a little more from this expansion rather than a half-assed new area (and a "surprise" in post-game) in a pretty boring new locale once the "newness" of it wears off while rehashing a lot of the older monsters for the sake of "variants" due to the environmental/ecological changes to their world. I thought only like ONE of the new fights ruled out of the new monsters brought to this expansion that I have ran into. The rest have ranged from "Meh..." to "Now that's interesting..." at best. I know that I'm only a little past the halfway mark, but I had the misfortune of getting 90-95% of the new monsters spoiled to me anyway the day after launch, so I know what's in the pipeline ahead. I'm not going to lie but that definitely played a factor into killing my hype/anticipation/excitement for this expansion.
When I say I'm disappointed at aspects of this expansion don't take it the wrong way as your experience may vary from mine. I'm going to keep at it and see that maybe if I enjoy the endgame grind like before, but otherwise, I doubt I'm going to stick with this as long as I did with the base game, especially when you're regulated to fighting reskinned variants of older monsters with VERY few new types (Barioth, Nargacuga, Tigrex, etc. use the same skeleton and behavior patterns for the most part outside of a few unique attacks while Brachydios and Glavenus actually seem to have different skeletons from Anjanath than I first thought.)- something they didn't have to add at $40+ price tag to do in the first place, along with the quality of life changes. I didn't shy away from the beta sessions as those were the things that got me interested in the base game to purchase it in the first place. Hell, I STILL enjoy facing Rathalos just from the blasts I had hunting it in those sessions to this day. Forgive me if I'm not one of the Monster Hunter veterans who get off from 2-3 variants of the same monster. I know most see that as Capcom being generous as they stack the deck in terms of monster variety well over the number of opponents found in the base game, but what was the point of of that back in the base game when everyone was farming Elder Dragons in the endgame grind and rarely saw the rest of the title's monsters outside of sporadic event quests? We could potentially run into the same pattern here if the endgame grind ends up repeating the same process. I'm just concerned that's all.
I know that everyone who reads this write-up and walk away thinking that I'm a complete Debbie Downer on the game when everyone else is up and over the moon about it. It's not a crime to have a difference of opinion. There's a few things that I have really enjoyed, such as the hunts against Glavenus and Brachydios, along with revisiting some of the older cast of monsters to see what new tricks that they have up their sleeves. I'm optimistic that Capcom will iron out these issues in this expansion and stabilize what has been an excellent experience thus far with the base game. I just want to get to a point where I enjoy this expansion as much as the original game.
Until next time, my fellow hunters. Happy Hunting!
Fuck that noise. I was never a fan of keeping expectations low to justify a mediocre sequel/DLC expansion for any game. Iceborne retails at $39.99 as full blown expansion to the base game; I paid $59.99 for the Master Edition and I expect to get my money's worth. I'm not one of these tools like the folks who buy 2K (formerly THQ) WWE Games, then go into denial EVERY.SINGLE.TIME when it doesn't live up to their expectations or when people find a laundry list of bugs and glitches that need to be addressed. I'm not saying the damn game is unplayable. I'm just asking to simply address this stuff before it becomes a lingering issue and deters people from playing it altogether. I enjoyed the hell out of what was offered previously. This just comes off as a minimalist effort in a lot of aspects. Besides, if this was ANY other AAA title, people would have been shitting all over it in terms of some of the bugs that people have been running across instead of throwing over a new coat of paint and ignoring it.
I hate shitting on the player base too as I raved about this being my favorite community to game with in my review of the base game. Everyone was so welcoming and friendly and now it's devolving into that douchebaggery of Dark Souls and/or of the same elk that I frowned upon from the FGC (fighting game community) with that same "git gud" response to any question or request to feedback.
I had people say that my disappointments from the game so far stem from "fatigue" of the game. Trust me, I would have taken it back to the damn store and gotten a refund if that was the case. I'm not tired of the Monster Hunter grind, despite 600+ hours of gameplay time over the past year. I dunno, I was expecting a little more from this expansion rather than a half-assed new area (and a "surprise" in post-game) in a pretty boring new locale once the "newness" of it wears off while rehashing a lot of the older monsters for the sake of "variants" due to the environmental/ecological changes to their world. I thought only like ONE of the new fights ruled out of the new monsters brought to this expansion that I have ran into. The rest have ranged from "Meh..." to "Now that's interesting..." at best. I know that I'm only a little past the halfway mark, but I had the misfortune of getting 90-95% of the new monsters spoiled to me anyway the day after launch, so I know what's in the pipeline ahead. I'm not going to lie but that definitely played a factor into killing my hype/anticipation/excitement for this expansion.
When I say I'm disappointed at aspects of this expansion don't take it the wrong way as your experience may vary from mine. I'm going to keep at it and see that maybe if I enjoy the endgame grind like before, but otherwise, I doubt I'm going to stick with this as long as I did with the base game, especially when you're regulated to fighting reskinned variants of older monsters with VERY few new types (Barioth, Nargacuga, Tigrex, etc. use the same skeleton and behavior patterns for the most part outside of a few unique attacks while Brachydios and Glavenus actually seem to have different skeletons from Anjanath than I first thought.)- something they didn't have to add at $40+ price tag to do in the first place, along with the quality of life changes. I didn't shy away from the beta sessions as those were the things that got me interested in the base game to purchase it in the first place. Hell, I STILL enjoy facing Rathalos just from the blasts I had hunting it in those sessions to this day. Forgive me if I'm not one of the Monster Hunter veterans who get off from 2-3 variants of the same monster. I know most see that as Capcom being generous as they stack the deck in terms of monster variety well over the number of opponents found in the base game, but what was the point of of that back in the base game when everyone was farming Elder Dragons in the endgame grind and rarely saw the rest of the title's monsters outside of sporadic event quests? We could potentially run into the same pattern here if the endgame grind ends up repeating the same process. I'm just concerned that's all.
I know that everyone who reads this write-up and walk away thinking that I'm a complete Debbie Downer on the game when everyone else is up and over the moon about it. It's not a crime to have a difference of opinion. There's a few things that I have really enjoyed, such as the hunts against Glavenus and Brachydios, along with revisiting some of the older cast of monsters to see what new tricks that they have up their sleeves. I'm optimistic that Capcom will iron out these issues in this expansion and stabilize what has been an excellent experience thus far with the base game. I just want to get to a point where I enjoy this expansion as much as the original game.
Until next time, my fellow hunters. Happy Hunting!
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