This is what I’m most interested in, strangely. The Styles were an absolute blast.
I mean, I’m still getting this Day One, naturally. There’s nothing quite like a Monster Hunter game when it’s new and fresh for everyone. Lobbies full, no one knowing what they’re doing. Perfection.
If I’ve never played a Monster Hunter before…is the demo, a good way to get a taste? Is it like, parse-able? Or does it assume a ton of preexisting knowledge?
Maybe you could watch that movie instead…
There is a very basic tutorial, the same kind of tutorial you’ll find in the final game, but the game notoriously won’t teach you how to use the various weapons properly, as it’s basically what the game is all about.
If you enjoy the demo somehow, you’ll probably love the game, so it does its job i am guessing! Just don’t pull your hairs if you can’t manage to kill the pink dragon.
I have friends who’ve played them back to the PSP(?), so I’m aware of the general vibe. I keep considering dipping my toe in, but I haven’t been ready to commit my life to it this far.
It’s not that big a commitment. I only have 180 hours on World and I didn’t even finish Iceborne!
Exactly, merely one or two months of your yearly gaming life if you’re reasonable!
It’s one of my favourite series, always keen for a new one - and I only ever really play casually, and mostly single player.
I would recommend watching a Gaijin Hunter video on whichever weapon looks interesting to you. A consistent failing of the series is that it never teaches you how the weapon actually works. At best, they give you a couple of moves and combos, but they completely avoid any discussion of the weapon’s fundamentals or how they gain/spend resources.
Normally, I would say that “go watch a video to learn about the game” is a big knock against a game. But in this case, it’s basically a requirement to unlocking the experience that everyone wants from it.
Yeah you’ll want to do that eventually, but as a brand new player on their first hunt?
There’s already so much to learn with the basic game flow and controls, especially now with the Wirebugs and monster puppeteering.
Smashing a few of the documented combos is all you really need to get past all that initial tutorial material, especially if you go with the easier beginner weapons that are usually recommended for first-timers.
I’ve never played a Monster Hunter game either so I can help here!
My guess is the demo is a good taste in that, compared to most games, it’s an opaque, newcomer-hostile experience. The tutorial guy even says something along the lines of ‘just remember your training!’ and I was like… what fucking training? This is the tutorial, right? Most of the basic info is buried in a menu but that told me more than anything the tutorial did. After that I spent a session or two getting annoyed familiar with the controls and the numerous menus which all seem to behave differently.
I’m not going to lie: it was very frustrating and I did a lot of moaning with my (MH experienced) friends as I wrestled with it all. However, I did enjoy the rhythm, crunch, difficulty and spectacle of the game once I started to get a bit more comfortable, so much so, I ended up buying the game in the end. Take from that what you will @CLWheeljack!
I liken it to The Wonderful 101 demo which felt hostile and alien in so many ways, and as frustrating as it was initially, something about it clicked and I wanted to explore it more. (It came to be one of my favourite games on the Wii U.)
That makes sense. I guess lack of tutorialization is kind of in line with the series overall aesthetic.
Probably the closest I’ve gotten to this is Dragon’s Dogma, and the large enemy encounters there, and that has a somewhat similar lack of detailed tutorials about the weapons and whatnot.
I have concerns, in that case–I put 60 hours into version 2 of the demo alone. Maybe I should plan to learn a new weapon!
As @geggis indicated, tutorials are not the strong suit of MH games. In a way they are like (old??) fighting games. What you mostly need to learn is how to use your weapon attack moves and combos. These can be found by experimentation, drilling down to menus, or watching online videos. This is done until you are pretty good with “A moves like this” and “A, B, A+B moves like that.” A lot of the other learning curve appears to be cut out of Rise with the automation of a lot of the gathering and crafting.
What the demo does:
It gives you a place to in tinker around with weapons and get an idea of the scale and pacing of monster fights in the MH franchise. It just throws you in mid stream preset weapon and armor choices.
What the demo doesn’t do:
MH games will ease you in. You start with nothing and start hunting or harvesting in very easy situations. You usually won’t even fight a real monster for a few fights. Then you will get into the cycle of beating a monster, getting its parts, choosing how to use said parts to make new stuff, repeat the fight for more parts, or advance to harder fights. There will probably be minor story stuff to take you through a chunk of the game learning systems and monsters, then you will likely be set to grind and expand gear (although this might not be the case as Rise is one of the few western releases that doesn’t already have all the G rank stuff developed).
Really, the demo essentially says, “this is a sword and shield or a greatsword, pick one of them then fight that over there.” It doesn’t really walk you through HOW to use them and it definitely doesn’t give you the main hook of MH which is advancing your way through crafting gear out of parts to make personalized combos for boss fight after boss fight.
It is one of my favorite franchises and the co-op experience is second to none.
This is not a bad comparison, in that your performance depends a lot on your knowledge of “matchups,” i.e. not just knowing your own weapon’s moves but also those of your opponent, the monster, and when you’ll have openings and how to punish them.
This is a very bad comparison because I sucked at those and… oh wait I still suck at MH actually :(
Ah, okay. Sounds like it’s a good way to get a taste of how the combat mechanics feel, but doesn’t expect you to know anything about the crafting/progression systems.
I was mostly worried it would be a demo for existing fans only, where that you’d just kind of be thrown into a complex hunt with like a huge pool of gear to select from where it, like, expected you to know what the different gear bits mean already. Sounds like it doesn’t do that.
Yeah, I have always thought MH demos were weird. It would be like the demo for a 100 hour RPG game as just having the player pick a mage with this staff and those spells or a warrior with this two handed weapon and armor or a thief with this dagger and these skills to go fight one of these few mid game encounters. The analogy breaks down as MH is NOT a story game. MH story is thin window dressing about ecology and monsters needing hunting. MH is however definitely a long game with a very engaging advancement path that has lots of player choice. All of that choice and advancement is cut out of their demos.
That said, a lot of the advancement of MH games is learning the monsters, so with their easy, medium, and hard encounters with the same gear options, maybe they are sort of representing the advancement of MH if in a sideways way.
In the full games there is a training area where you can practice with all the weapons, ‘remember your training’ was probably referring to that.
Do we know WHEN Rise releases? I am not usually chomping at the bit for a Nintendo eshop release.