Recent reviews by Deep

MHW, and subsequently IB, was my first MH experience. Thankfully, I had some experienced friends (both from the franchise at large and PS4) to show me the ropes. Why do I mention that? If you haven't played MH before, there are a lot of nuances and little things that can add up to a confusing or frustrating experience for the unlearned.

For example, the food experience. You should pretty much always eat the appropriate meal before every hunt. There's a sort of unlock/achievement system some ingredients are locked behind, and having more ingredients means a better chance at having the right fresh ingredients for your meal; fresh ingredients give better HP/Stamina returns when used in a recipe, such as eating for an attack buff, or eating for a felyne skill. Felyne skills are things like Felyne insurance, which gives you an extra "life" for the hunt. There's also Felyne Black Belt which gives you increased stamina recovery, which can greatly affect enjoyment of playing dual blades or bow, because they're stamina-reliant weapons.

Consumables: Demon and Armor drugs should be used at the start of each hunt, last for the hunt duration, but fall off when you get carted. There's mega versions of both. Remember the stamina reliant weapons? There's a 4 minute duration drink called dash juice that increases stamina recovery, too. Depending on the environment, you need to drink a suitable hot or cold drink to counter the temperature effects, and they last 10 minutes. The HUD indicator for your buffs isn't helpful in understanding when its time to refresh them, or how much time is remaining. Should I re-engage the monster, or do I need to refresh my buffs? It's easy to lose track of time.

Equipment: I think that decorations (gem/jewel and armor slot system) are a pain point for many players. There's a lot RNG (there were some recent improvements that helped this so much), and the rare decorations are truly rare. Skills come from both decorations and armor, but some skills are unique to decorations; skills are things like attack up, doing more damage when you're at low hp, increasing stamina recovery rate, or increasing affinity (crit) rate/damage against weak spots. In high rank and master rank, having a decent skill build will make or break your hunt, or make a weapon significantly more enjoyable to play.

I'm a big believer in games not spelling each and every thing out for you. Taking time to figure things out is part of the game, but some knowledge in MH is "out of the way". That's really the only critical talk I have to say about it. Everything else about the MHW and IB experience has been incredible, to the point that it's changed the way I think about games. Sale, or not, this game is beyond worth the buy.