Now I got back into playing the PS4 version because of this thread.
I love the longsword, I love the dodge-y nature of fighting with it. Did a rathian (working on my wyvern blade upgrades) and Bazelguese flew in. That was exciting, dung pods took care of it though.
Still need one more spike+
Boom!
You are now rocking arguably the single best headpiece in the game, and one of the most devastating charge blades (blue sharpness for daaaaaays).
This is obviously just my take on the whole thing, but I think most mainstream RPGs have a lot of gear and weapon and consumable bloat. Stuff that looks good, provides the illusion of variety and progression and deep systems, but really in the end only offer marginal upgrades and/or gameplay improvements.
MH ain’t like that. Everything matters. Every piece of new gear you craft matters. Every use of an armor core or stacking of skills matters. Even the consumables you may be looking at now, thinking you’ll never make or use, one day you’ll discover and wonder how you lived without.
None of this is a substitute for skill; the game is hard, good gear or no, but it goes a long way toward providing MEANINGFUL things to chase. And once you obtain that new sword or chest piece, you feel the difference.
Anyway, could just be the ravings of a forgone addict, but that’s my take on why these games, once they get the hook in ya, remain so popular with the series’ fans.
The more I read about this game the more it sounds like I will love it, but conversely the less I want to fire it up. I’m so burned out on difficult work projects and juggling three (!) house transactions at once that the thought of trying to learn a deep and intricate game sounds too much for my exhausted mental state. At the same time, deep and intricate games are what I live for! A conundrum!
I think what I need is a damn vacation so I can deep dive into this at some point. :)
it is a lot, but you don’t really need to follow all the skills super closely or anything. There is a large aspect of min-maxing to the game, but you absolutely don’t have to do it. It’s also more of the end game of monster hunter. All you really have to do is set up a item loadout to take into every raid once, then get your basic armor and weapon loadout, and just fight some monsters. until HR, you should be able to get through things without really worrying about your gear.
It’s not as complicated as it sounds… heck I can do it. There are some weapons that require more effort than others but some that are pretty straight forward. As for the battles, yeah the gear matters but if you just keep making new armor with your new stuff you’re going to do pretty all right until you hit a few ones and I bet it doesn’t take you long to figure out what you have to do, without guides.
The fun is the battle and reading the monsters. Some will hate the fighting the same monster over and over again, but I find it fresh each time and you learn them as you go.
Great thing about MH is that it is both a deep and intricate game and also a game where you smack monsters in the face with gigantic weapons. It’s really not that complicated, lol. As other’s have said, you can go as deep as you want into min/max skill stacking–all that detail is there and you’re rewarded for learning how everything meshes together–but you can also just build whatever random gear you can make from whatever parts you have and still have a blast smacking monsters in the face.
If the core of the game appeals to you–big monster fights in an incredibly detailed and interactive environment where you kill crazy monsters and dragons and make big weapons and ludicrous outfits out their parts–then the rest of the stuff will eventually fall into place.
Just pick a weapon that seems cool, go wander around in the forest, and go smack a monster in the face. It’ll feel real good : )
Oddly, I find it incredibly relaxing.
Does this game require any complex button combinations, or is it more like - RB = block, RT =power attack, etc…
I can play Dark Souls, but if I have to remember ABAX = special attack then I will fail hard.
Somewhere in between. Combos are usually short (3-4 attacks) and most can be executed by repeatedly pressing the same key. The key thing though is that different attacks in combos matter, for example you don’t always want a forward lunge or a shield bash, sometimes you want a nice horizontal or vertical slash. Each melee weapon (11 of them I think?) also has its own combos.
Here’s a charge blade tutorial, arguably the most complex weapon in the game. Sword and shield on the other hand is quite simple, and Greatsword has a few nuances of its own. If you go through these you should get a pretty good idea on what is required in terms of button inputs.
The hard part in picking up a weapon is figuring out the attacks that are worth using. Most seem to have a core attack that you want to build towards and then a bunch of auxiliary stuff that’s useful in different situations but not what you want to focus on. I find the YT guides useful because they help short circuit that confusing ‘what attacks are worthwhile’ barrier.
CB is hard because the way you’re ‘meant’ to be using the weapon is not really intuitive or explained well. You want to keep your shield charged because that lets you unleash your super attack, but the way you charge it in the first place is by canceling a weaker form of that super attack, which in practice would probably seem a bit like a whiff or a mistake if you were to pull that off without reading up on the weapon first.
All you need to be ‘effective’ is to figure out the basic core loop but then there’s still a lot more that you can learn about the weapon as you figure out ways to use its other moves and quirks.
It may be pushing my limits for my ability to remember what attacks to do but I may be able to muddle through :-)
That’s good to know. It was sounding very Dark Soulsy and while I like that game, I definitely need to be in the right mood otherwise it gets frustrating and tedious quick.
Is not hard in a “dark souls” type of way. The monsters are animals, and most of them are not vicious killers tryiing to murder you. In the Dark souls game if you find a monster and he see you, they will try to murder you until you manage to break contact or kill him. Thats not really the case here.
Monster Hunter give you a lot of space, to learn the animal ways to move. You can use capes or tail grass to hide from the animal and stalk them.
If things looks really bad, you can break contact and plan a different strategy. I think the only moment the monsters regain health is when you go to sleep, so being afk for 1 minute will not break the hunt.
If a fight seems frustrating, you can fire a flare and (with luck) get carried or maybe have somebody even worse than you tank the mission faster than you. I that case you learned one thing: theres worse people than you.
Another reason I don’t think Monster Hunter is really a “hard” game is because you have infinite time to prepare a fight. While you are on the base you can check the monster weakness (like is he fragile to fire?), create a lot of potions, craft traps, craft poisons, think a strategy. Maybe even craft a special weapon for the purpose. Preparation will make the next battle much much smoother. In other type of games you can’t prepare for the events, or preparations can’t do much for you.
Things you can do for a monster in preparation mode is have weapons that will deal extra damage to it. Have bombs for when it sleep. Have a lot of health potions so you can heal when you feel it. And eat a great food to have some fat extra advantages.
Speaking of eating, when the effect of the last dinner fade of, you can eat again to refresh the effect. Some food items even give you a “extra life” protection, if thats what you need.
The most complex button press will be two buttons at once, like Triangle and Circle. The rest of the combat is just stringing together basic attacks into situational combos. A lot of the nuance of combat does depend on the weapon, something like the charge blade has a lot more going on than the hammer or sword and shield, which spelt3r pointed out well.
But here’s an example of one of the most effective and devastating combos with (my personal fave) the hammer–
Monster goes down and is laying on its side. You run up to the monster, position yourself near its head and then do this: Circle, Circle, Circle, Circle. Boom, you just did like 500 damage.
I think the thing to get used to isn’t necessarily the combos, it’s the combat animations and the positioning. That said, it’s also what gives the combat such a unique feel, and makes you feel like a badass once you’ve mastered it.
It’ll become instinctive after a while. And as you work your way through the game, you’ll have so many encounters with so many different monsters, you’ll discover a lot of cool shit just by chance. And a lot of encounters can simply be won by button mashing!
I’m currently trying to learn the sword and shield and I haven’t gotten to the point where I can remember the combos off-hand, but the other day I stunned a monster and just ran up to its head spamming attacks and it died in an instant, haha. Obviously on harder encounters that play style may not fly, but you won’t hit the hard stuff till later in the game. And early on you can always play with friends/strangers to help overcome a tough fight.
Speaking of which, I’m on PS4 (gately912) and steam (scott dobros) for any hunts with QT3ers.
It really depends on the weapon. Longsword is fairly simple to remember, mash attack until bar fills, once bar fills mash powered attack, rinse repeat, once gauge is full, press 2 attack buttons together for big attack. Greatsword isn’t too bad either, but a lot less mobile, so you need to know positioning better.
Also, the game shows button prompts for attacks in the top left corner of the screen, so you can always glance to see what the button combo is.
That sounds like a good thing and what I like about Dark Souls.
That sounds helpful if I need some help.
This is moving up the ol’ wishlist for when I get back to my computer that can actually handle it.
The positioning is where the fun is for the bowguns too, at least in solo. They’re pretty simple and seem kinda boring on the face of it (aim, fire, swap ammos) but it’s quickly become my preferred ‘fun’ way to play. You have lower defense than a melee and so mistakes can hurt. But when you manage to keep a monster at an arms length for an entire fight while repeatedly running and sliding in to shotgun him in the face, that’s a pretty sweet feeling. There’s a bit of variety in the build types too as the primary shot types all have a bit of a different feel too. It’s all about learning when you can punish.
That’s the other thing - when things are going really well you’ll sometimes find yourself with a sweet momentum as you’re just stun chaining the monster’s face into oblivion. That circle combo that Scott mentioned on the hammer is a thing of devastating beauty.
I think it is important to know, as others have said, these are not like Fighting game kind of combos. You don’t have to be a dedicated fan of a specific genre or game to get them and yeah the game will guide you to use it. After awhile though you’ll just remember them and not look anymore or set yourself up for it more naturally.
Bingo.
idk, go fight a g rank Rajang and then come tell me the game “isn’t hard”
I don’t think anyone is saying it’s not a challenge… But come one, this entry in the series is actually designed to expand the fanbase, to introduce it to others, and it does a pretty good job at doing that.