I played it a bit yesterday. Seems pretty good, as a fan of Monster Hunter I think I’m going to enjoy this. There were some performance issues and graphical problems/oddities (rain drops look like big white streaks on my screen which is really distracting) but hopefully the patch next week can address it to some degree. The developers say there’s a bug preventing the game from using multiple cores and that’s something on the list.
Ya…played last night and same sentiment…some graphical issues and odd graphics in spots…the camera is annoying at times.
I like Monster Hunter, don’t love it, so thought I’d see if this is more enjoyable for me…not yet, but will give it more of a go this weekend.
The kid and I have both played quite a bit now and had some great battles against these different types of monsters.
It’s very enjoyable setting up zip lines all over and being able to have camps anywhere…and start a mission from your camp so quickly.
Its Monster Hunter but different and so far even with the crappy camera and glitchy graphics on the PS5, we are having a really good time with it.
There are definitely things I like about the game, but I also feel like it needed about 3 more months of polish. It does not feel tuned very well at all.
I started with the umbrella weapon and it was a huge mistake, as the parry window is incredibly small. It’s especially odd when the game has such a generous amount of iframes on dodge. Combined with some seriously wonky hitboxes and it very much felt like a high-risk, very low reward weapon. The weapon does no damage without the gauge built up (which you do primarily through parrying) and between missing parries and chasing monsters around, the gauge was always low to empty. The time it would take me to pick myself off the ground, dodge, and drink a potion would pretty much drain it. There are apparently weapon upgrades later in the game that improves both those things, but I didn’t want to slog through the game being miserable only for it to get manageable when I’m near the end. :)
So after I finished Chapter 1 and unlocked the other weapons, I swapped to the staff. It’s almost a mix of concepts with Charge Blade from MH and Switchglaive from Nioh 2. The problem I have with that weapon is that unleashing the charged up attack (where much of your damage is) also relies on building up a gauge and doesn’t seem tuned correctly for how monsters move. For instance, even if I’m in the right area I need to be and am able to have a monster charge a bulwark and stun/drop it, by the time the animation plays the monster is oftentimes back up, moving, or has knocked me out of the attack. Either that, or every time I almost have the gauge built up the monster moves areas and it all depletes, which is especially annoying. In general, many monsters have way too much movement for my tastes. As I typically play in MP, so much of my time is spent just chasing monsters around the arena because their attacks cover so much ground, just zipping from one end of the battlefield to the next.
I don’t see any value for monsters being so flighty in this. One fight I had to chase a monster after it moved locations 9 times, which was incredibly annoying. We’d catch up to it, maybe land 2-3 hits each, and it was off to the next. In Monster Hunter, this would be an opportunity to sharpen weapons, gather materials for ammo or coatings, but there’s not really any point to it in this one. They at least need to work on the AI and tune it so they don’t flee quite so often (and to be fair, sometimes the monsters aren’t too bad so there’s some RNG involved it seems).
One other thing they need to put in is being immune when you are knocked down on the ground. In MH, when you’re knocked flat you’re immune until you start to get back up. This prevents cheap 1-2 combos and being juggled endlessly from one hit, but this game seems to have both those issues? Most attacks knock you down, and then I get in situations where the monster is attacking too quickly for me to get up/move so I get juggled to death, never being able to regain control of my character.
I would say I’m having a good time with it in some aspects but the game needed more time. The most glaring evidence of that are the graphical and performance problems, but it permeates throughout the game. Lots of little things everywhere that just don’t feel tuned very well to me. Hopefully they’re able to weather the rocky launch (which we can probably thank EA for) and continue polishing up and expanding on the game.
Just got to the mighty hunts which is like High Rank in MH. Setting up camps to make chasing down kemono who run goes a long way towards making it feel better but it definitely feels like they run too early and too often.
If you get knocked down, hit dodge as you hit the ground to reduce damage and recovery time. There are also skills that gain a bonus when you do this.
For sure. But monsters like the ice wolf (Dreadstalker? Can’t remember his name) can really put you in a spin cycle. It may have to do with latency with the host, but I farmed him quite a bit and there were times I couldn’t get out after the first attack knocked me down. Just flop, flop, flop, dead.
I’d like to see it work how it does in MH, where you’re immune while you’re still prone but become vulnerable when you get up. It prevents that sort of situation.
usually plopping down a spring will get you out since it has massive iframes