A Love Letter To Monster Hunter
The Review Contains Harsh Language.
I recently downloaded the Iceborne expansion for Monster Hunter World. I deleted Monster Hunter off of my PS4 because I needed to make space for other games so I reloaded the full game with the dlc onto my hard disk.
Tragedy struck.
My save data was gone.
200+ hours erased completely.
Needless to say I was sad. But I told myself that I would just muscle through the main game to get to the Iceborne content. I had cleared Monster Hunter World before and I was sure that I could do it again. I thought it would be a chore to run through all these hunts and quests again.
But boy howdy was I wrong.
I came to appreciate once again how much Monster Hunter World FUCKS.
The main conceit of the Monster Hunter series is right there in the name. You hunt monsters. And that’s it! And it is honed to perfection. The design of Monster Hunter’s feedback loop and the way it encourages you to continue playing has been discussed extensively so I’m just going to engage in pure sentimentality.
I hunted monsters with Dual Blades and I defy you to tell me that these are not the coolest weapon to hunt monsters with. Yeah smashing a dragon’s face in with a hammer is neat and blasting hot lead into a flaming lion can be sick, there is nothing, nothing better than turning into a spinning top of death and slamming yourself into a fucking bighuge monster. Using the Dual Blades is looking in the face of an unchallenged force of nature and picking up two knives to kill it instead of the perfectly useful gun. Dual Blades are the weapon of a courageous hunter: no defense, only speed. You become the tornado and everything that gets caught up in your tempest shall fall before you.
The monsters are fucking awesome too. Radobaan and Uragaan are giant wheels that crush you into the ground. Teostra is a flaming lion that flies and makes you explode. Zorah Magdaros is LAVA GODZILLA. The monsters are the core of the game and Capcom did a damn good job of making them look cool and make them interesting to fight. You find out firsthand why these apex predators are at the top of the food chain. But are they really the top of the food chain? NO! YOU ARE! You take your dual exploding chainsaws, you rip them down to size, and carve up their bodies to make new weapons.
Don’t even get me started on the Palicoes. I love my sweet little boy Fletcher. My baby kitty dressed in a jester’s costume and wielding an exploding spear alongside me. My good good kitten keeps me topped up while I rip out all of Odogaron’s teeth with my hatchets. He is my darling cute son and I do get angry when a monster knocks him out, often to my strategic detriment, but I’ll die before I let Fletcher go unavenged.
The designs of the weapons absolutely SMACK. Exploding brass knuckles, draconic claws, poison knives, the list goes on. Not only are these aesthetically cool, they rip and tear just as well as any other. And the armor is fucking awesome as well. You can be anything from a walking stone tank to an electric cowboy and they’re all viable in combat. And that’s really the thing about weapons and armor in Monster Hunter, they’re all very aesthetically cool and you don’t have to sacrifice your combat stats if you equip just what looks cool. I cannot count the hours I have spent gathering materials for a new set of Dual Blades just because I saw something that looked cool.
Monster Hunter is the ultimate series if you want to feel powerful and look fucking sick while conquering the food chain. I’ve spent well over 250 hours playing Monster Hunter World and I cannot wait to spend another 200 hours hunting all the Iceborne monsters and crafting all the new, sick weapons.
Final Score: 90%