You've probably read a bunch of takes on Monster Hunter World from people who have been with the game since before half of us were born. Capcom's long-running series has done the rounds on everything from PSP to Wii U, nurturing its cult classic status among a dedicated army of fans. They all agree World is a triumph.
But what about those of us who have never really clicked with it? If that's the verdict you're interested in, good news, because we have bounced off the series several times in the past, mostly because we found the low-end visuals and load times were too much of a barrier for our vista-craving brain. As a result, we went into World in almost total ignorance of how it worked. All we knew is we needed to use a whetstone now and then.
Guess what? We think it's brilliant too.
New World order
Monster Hunter World is a simple game at heart. You and your little Palico cat buddy go out into vibrant, densely layered environments full of exotic flora and fauna, hunt things, and then return to base to create new gear out of the monster parts you harvested. Once you get your head around that core loop, it becomes incredibly moreish, and Monster Hunter World settles into the rhythm we used to find with Destiny, where the mechanics and environments were so satisfying that - even when we didn't have a quest to complete - we'd happily turn it on for an hour just to find some loot and make the numbers go a little higher.
It's a simple game at heart, then, but finding that heart can take a while, because years of iterative development have left the game bloated with systems, and it has an unfortunate habit of either failing to explain itself adequately, or throwing so many screens of text and video at you that it's easy to miss the significance of a key tutorial. Those series devotees we mentioned earlier have praised the game for paring back some of its more arcane rituals for this PS4 and Xbox One installment, but it's still a pretty hefty learning curve.
For example, one of the most important things in the entire game is selecting a weapon that suits you. There are over a dozen that you can choose between, but the game doesn't really emphasize the significance of this decision, and while there is a training area that you can access through your private quarters, the game doesn't tell you that it would be a good idea to go spend an hour there trying everything out until you settle on a weapon that feels great for your instinctive play style. There are probably a lot of players out there who will bounce off the game because they chose the wrong whacking stick and couldn't find the fun.
Get Rex
On balance though, we're inclined to give Monster Hunter World a pass for its dubious onboarding, because while the very early stages could definitely be clearer, the game's wilful obscurantism ends up being one of its greatest virtues.
Let's have a counterexample to the weapons thing. A good few hours into the game, we're tasked with taking down our first Anjanath, a lumbering T-Rex style beast that represents a greater challenge than anything else we've faced to that point. Once we find the beast, we decide it's probably a good time to send out our first "SOS Flare", a multiplayer system that invites other players to join your game session and help out. The flare goes up, and we get back to skirmishing with the Anjanath, rolling and blocking as much as possible to avoid its gargantuan swipes and charges, occasionally landing a hit with our lumbering Bone Sword but clearly taking more than we dish out.
Just as we're starting to doubt our stocks of potions will see us through, however, the Anjanath reels up as something small and flashy starts dancing through the air around its haunches. It takes a few moments for us to realise it's another player, doing things we never realised you could do in the game. They're using an Insect Glaive, a rapid-attack weapon that allows you to pole-vault into the air, dash around and unleash devastating aerial combos, complete with hand-picked "Kinsect" based buffs. We had no idea this thing existed, but suddenly we wanted nothing more in the world than to master its every form.
Monster Hunter World is more than a simple loot slasher, then - it's another of those games where part of the thrill is uncovering a seemingly endless diversity of new and entertaining systems and gameplay concepts. Whether you want to become a glaive sensei or master trapper, or you see a set of armor on another player that you must have, there always seems to be another target to set yourself, and by the time you've finished having fun on the journey to your destination, you've found another place to head next.
Two legs bad, four legs good
Speaking of journeys, your nominal motivation in the game is to pursue a giant Elder Dragon called Zorah Magdaros as it smashes its way through the exotic continent upon whose shores you've alighted. This is perhaps the line beyond which the game's love of its depth and obscurity is genuinely misplaced. Whereas the NPCs and quest-givers in Destiny - to continue that comparison - eventually grew into lovable personalities, Monster Hunter World doesn't offer much to latch onto. It doesn't help that two of your most frequent companions - the Planner and Field Team Leader - apparently don't even qualify for actual names. The Palicoes who dance around to prepare your meals are more memorable than any characters we encountered on our quest.
More could have been done with this side of the game, then, but at least the developers built the story around the pursuit of a giant monster, because the game's bestiary are definitely the stars. From Tobi-Kadachis and Paolumus to Anjanaths and Rathalos, the monsters will be the names you talk about with your fellow hunters, whether you're seeking guidance on how best to deal with them or just sharing war stories.
Squaring up to monsters is rarely just a case of laying into them indiscriminately - anything worth an introductory cutscene is capable of squashing you, leaving your Palico to haul you back to base camp on a gurney, and you can only "faint" like this three times before you fail the mission. You can stock up on healing potions and other status-buffing elixirs to carry you through a tough fight, but they may not be enough. Sometimes the only answer is to take your time, really study your foe's attacks and movements to understand where the chinks lie in its armor, and then measure your aggression to take advantage.
Life finds a way
It also helps to roll deep, and while the game's multiplayer systems are often as complex as everything else, it's worth spending a bit of time learning how to squad up. It's not so much that it makes the game easier - it's more that it feels like a very different game, where you can try different strategies together and tackle more challenging beasts in new ways.
That vaunted shift to PS4 and Xbox One (with a PC version still to follow) has finally filled in the technological gaps that Monster Hunter players always had to plug with their imaginations, too. From Ancient Forest to the Coral Highlands and every monster in between, this is a game with breathtaking art design and visual imagination, and the seamless environments mean the chases that punctuate labored encounters with the truly big beasts no longer mean extra load times. We feel slightly ashamed that it took high-end visuals to show us the light with Monster Hunter, but there is something special about falling in love with our first one in 4K.
And it's definitely love. At this stage, we're playing the game away from our controllers as much as we are when we're in front of the TV. Our phone browser has slowed to a crawl under the combined weight of a dozen wiki tabs, and our home screen is never clear of WhatsApp and Facebook notifications as friends swap tips and coordinate hunts. It's become that kind of game, and if you also stumbled into 2018 slightly bereft, wondering where your next big gaming obsession was going to come from, Capcom really has delivered the answer.
The Monster Hunter World life can take a while to get you, but once it does you’ll wonder what you ever did without it.