Monster Hunter: World has only been out for a few days, but the action role-playing game is already making its mark on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Reviewers across the world have rated the game and generally found it to be one of the best Capcom creations in a long time. According to the critics, the game has an outstanding story, great visuals, and excellent gameplay. And if you’re willing to invest dozens of hours into it, you might find it to be an exceedingly engrossing tale.
Still, Monster Hunter: World isn’t perfect, and can certainly prove daunting for folks that are new to the series.
Read on for some of the early verdicts on Monster Hunter: World from reviewers that have taken the game for a spin:
Game Informer
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Daniel Tack at Game Informer could find little wrong with Monster Hunter: World. He found that the game’s use of scale to show the monsters was outstanding and was impressed by its graphics. He gave the game a score of 9.5 out of 10.
The latest game in the Monster Hunter franchise brings the core elements that have made the franchise a cult classic – difficult battles, fun and interesting progression, and stomping on dinosaurs with your friends – and opens the door for a deluge of new players with a more accessible sheen.
The Good
“Monster Hunter: World is the most accessible game in the series, and funnels new players into the core systems and mechanics over the first 20 hours of the game.”
“An element of exploration adds to the experience, as you can stumble upon all-manner of interesting things out in the wild, from new Palico tribes and gadgets, creatures to collect and put in your house, and undiscovered monster clues that can lead on a dangerous, wild ride.”
“From terrifying roars to explosive traps, the sound triumphantly conveys critical information and creates immersion.”
The Bad
“Some framerate issues happen from time to time, creating a jarring combat experience, especially when there is more than one giant monster on the screen at the same time..”
“There are a few other minor down points, including one of the story-based battles (that the game has the ridiculous notion that you’d want the opportunity to play it more than once!) being an unfun slog that’s more of a trial of patience than a battle with a monster. When playing multiplayer, you must wait for a friend to complete story-based mission objectives before joining in their quests as well, but in the grand scheme of things these quibbles can be overlooked.”
IGN
IGN’s Joe Skrebels offered a similarly glowing review of Monster Hunter: World and gave it a score of 9.5 out of 10. Skrebels was impressed with the game’s graphics, but especially liked its worlds that all proved as immersive as they were beautiful.
There’s been an assumption that World would simplify the series’ more obscure ideas to help court a western audience. After just the first few hours, it becomes abundantly clear those concerns are unfounded.
The Good
“Its hunting grounds feel expansive, each a separate ecosystem that would tick along nicely by itself without your involvement. It presents a near-overwhelming world of possibilities for customisation and specialisation.”
“Each of 14 weapon types makes combat feel like an entirely different game, from the grace and familiarity of a sword and shield, to the explosive pummel of an ammo-switching Bowgun, to the downright oddity of the Hunting Horn, a massive hammer that plays stat-buffing tunes.”
The Bad
“No matter how much I or any other fan tries to convince you, there’s a chance that a game that requires this much management alongside its maiming simply won’t be for you.”
“World makes a much-needed change, combining the series’ traditionally separate single and multiplayer campaigns into a single string of quests. It’s a step in the right direction, but also creates its strangest problem: to play a story quest, all players must have watched any cutscenes it include (and their absurdly poor lip-syncing) first.”
Polygon
Polygon’s Chelsea Stark was downright impressed with Monster Hunter: World and called it “a Monster Hunter for everybody.” However, Stark acknowledged that the game, which earned a 9.0 from Polygon, might not be right for everyone.
To answer the three most pressing questions around Monster Hunter World: Yes, its creators have made a notoriously inaccessible franchise into something that, if not totally accessible, somewhat resembles it. Yes, it’s still filled with countless menus and tough-to-parse mythos. And yes, this game lets you be best friends with a cat.
The Good
“It’s all these elements — the unpredictability of monster hunts, the variety and challenge of weapons, the fact you can spend more time hunting and less time crafting — that will appeal to so many types of new players.”
“Each monster, from the moment you first spot it across a clearing to the point you’ve turned its parts into spectacular armor, is distinct thanks to unique visual designs and many special ways each beast can kill you.”
The Bad
“Monster Hunter: World is still complex. It still won’t hold your hand through parts and may require a few friends for optimal enjoyment.”
The Verge
The Verge’s Sam Byford didn’t offer up an actual score for Monster Hunter: World, but his headline said it all: “King of Beasts.” In his review, Byford extolled the virtues of Monster Hunter: World and and suggested it ultimately proved to be “exactly what I wanted it to be.”
Monster Hunter World is a glorious, long overdue overhaul of one of my favorite video game series of all time.
The Good
“There’s a new system that helps you find the target monster by searching for tracks, rather than hoping you randomly bump into it. There are options for more Western-style control schemes — for example, you can select items through a radial menu, or click in the left analog stick to sprint.”
“While the series has always had wonderful art direction, World finally has the power to do it justice; Monster Hunter’s take on fantasy is wholly unique, and the combination of fantastic beasts, exotic locales, and cute-but-tough cats loses nothing in the leap to bigger screens.”
The Bad
“My only real concern with Monster Hunter World is the amount of content and how Capcom plans to support it going forward.”
“I can’t tell you whether you’ll love Monster Hunter World, nor whether it’ll be enough for Monster Hunter to finally take off in the West. The series is never going to be for everyone.”
GameSpot
If you’re looking for someone who didn’t quite find Monster Hunter: World to be as good as the others, look no further than GameSpot’s Ginny Woo, who gave the game a score of 8 out of 10. While that’s not necessarily a bad thing, Woo took issue with the game’s level “verticality” and difficulty.
This is likely the biggest and best that the franchise has ever been.
The Good
“Monster Hunter World feels like an open-world game to some extent, with fantastically large maps of a scale that we haven't seen before (both vertically and horizontally), no discernable game-pausing loading screens between zones in hunting areas, and a wealth of beautifully rendered environments to slaughter colossal monsters in.”
“Apart from the overall sprucing up of graphics and the cutscenes with full voice-over, the standout improvements really come from the simplification of the existing systems in a way that welcomes newcomers without alienating existing fans.”
The Bad
“To play with friends alone, you’ll have to join in on their fun via the friends list on the console dashboard, or by sharing a 12-digit session ID. In a game that’s all about momentum and sprinting off into the horizon at the next challenge, getting your hunting posse together is manageable but slightly tedious.”
“The new verticality of levels occasionally leads to frustrating AI pathing glitches.”
“Difficulty spike in end-game content can be daunting to the inexperienced.”
