Welcome back!
Since last time, I have delved deeper into the Rotten Vale, following a story thread that has become surprisingly compelling. New monsters have also come out of this nightmare fuel, pest-ridden of a woodwork and Odogaron is now among my favorites. He is a lean, vicious ball of teeth and death and was ridiculously awesome to fight. Each of his motions feels both fluid and lightning quick while still managing to offer tells with enough time to react. This is animation black magic. The sheer savagery of this guy is hard to understate. He has no compunction about climbing on and tearing the crap out of even other monsters in ways that make me feel sorry for the poor bastards. That gaping maw with a monster attached to it is about as disciplined and well-behaved as nitroglycerin.
Some monsters have also become deeply satisfying to hunt. Radobaan is one of those. There’s nothing like this feeling as you trigger the perfect attack from a sliding rear position and your blades go from bouncing off its bone defenses to digging deep into its flesh to the resounding symphony of meaty hits as you rend muscle from bone, all torn off in a shower of debris and now I sound like I should be on a list somewhere. Those moments that have your character gleefully cartwheeling across the monsters’ back as it transforms into a spinning scythe of death that would make Panzer Kunst practitioners proud while BIG NUMBERS shower your screen in an unreadable celebration of how much you are hurting him with that one attack are really, really satisfying to pull off.
Beside my enjoyment of its denizen, in the end the Rotten Vale wasn't what I expected it to be but their vision for it remains very cool. It was also the first time the story kind of hit me with its themes, actually feeling meaningful and eliciting emotions instead of just being an excuse to introduce more monsters. The beauty I found at the bottom delivered and it was masterfully pulled off artistically, as this game showed it routinely does.
However, at this point I felt like I wasn’t discovering stuff anymore. I was just beating monster after monster after monster and it started to get repetitive. Track it, get the investigation, beat the thing up, craft the armor. Rinse and repeat. This game was beginning to be nothing but combat to me. Good, dynamic combat but it still shrank down to only that.
The big showdown with Zorah Magdaros happened. Unfortunately the single most tedious mission of the game, I figured this was going to be the stepping-off point between World and Iceborne. And to be honest, I was ready for it. Most locales had been explored and I felt there was nothing left to learn. The Big Bad went away into the sunset and we returned home to ponder the meaning of our lives now, breathing out a deep sigh of relief. The job was done.
Then things got weird.
The game invited me to explore the Wildspire Wastes again. Some kind of minor side-plot mystery or something about a Pukei-Pukei ignoring confinement and traveling to a place where it wasn't supposed to. Well, might as well take the chance to hunt a Diablos for the last horn my Palico needs while I’m at it. Wait a second, normal-faced not-psychopathic-eyed Handler, I’ll be right back. Just the usual steamroll.
Someone got rolled over alright. As in, it charged at me, and I went horizontal. Huh. That’s odd. I’ve got the best possible gear in the game. Maybe I just forgot to pay attention to my health and-. Nope. His underground attack takes 2/3rd clean off my health. What’s going on? Even lesser monsters are casually swiping off half my health with a smug grin. Following instead the story hunt for that lowly Pukei-Pukei I figure that I'm going to take it slow. The fight opens and, as I gain the upper hand, a black shape suddenly swoops out of the skies. The handler yells, the music explodes triumphantly, the Pukei cowers and, doing my part, I be dead.
God, what is happening? Making my way back, I run into a canyon and feel a wave of relief. Grimalkynes! I adore these little guys, they are darn cute and each of their encounters is so wholesome, from luring them out with raw meat to helping save their friends. Once more I stand in front of a little tribe gesturing frantically toward me. Shaken from what’s going on, I’m glad for the small respite. Still, those tribal masks are new and-
My character collapses forward, her leg twitching nervously as one of them just pulled out a blowdart and stuck me in the buttcheek.
My god. I'm in the Jumanji.
The world wants me very, very dead and makes no apology about enforcing that fate. By now my cart is padded and I have started to adorn it with trinkets and collectibles because clearly this is my life now. As it turns out, the game has exploded wide open again. High rank gear became available. Decorations are a thing. Upgrades have opened up further. The game has basically reset, and the best part - exploration - is front and center again. Still, if we all recycled as much as Capcom just did right there, the earth would be much greener. This amounts to basically retreading every area and doing everything over. Luckily, I enjoyed these environments and delight in returning to them. I still can't help feel this is a cheap MMO trick to extend the game's length. While the return to relaxed exploration was a relief, I still felt pretty lukewarm about the whole thing.
Then I met Bazelgeuse. Holy crap. That thing will swoop down and one-shot you like it's nobody's business. My trusty good old tactics of getting in close and personal to flail at its tenders fails when this black whirlwind of death drops CBU's on me like it's Christmas. Seeing it take to the skies and just carpet-bomb the area to nuke the shit out of me and any living thing unfortunate enough to be in it while the soundtrack shifts and
soars higher makes it just feel so god damn awesome and like it's the Blitz all over again. I haven’t defeated it yet but now it’s showing up anywhere, at any time! A routine optional mission? Not on this feral B52’s watch. This made Monster Hunter enjoyable again. It took the predictability out and replaced it with epicness. I’m not sure how I’ll feel about it in a few hours but for now it’s given me amazing moments.
Things are still starting to feel a little bit grindy. Moments of pure gaming magic are still there and I am grateful that they still happen at all more than 60 hours in. I loved Kirin, how the environment came alive with thunder. Oh you fabulous, great ball of lighting you. I still love that if you slay a Kestodon in the open, crows and carrion birds will crowd it and if you don’t skin it fast enough, rob you of the loot. That if you kill Shamos, the pack will disperse and loose aggro after a while. I like that this game lets me play pretend in its world. I still love fighting with monsters, only now noticing a boulder above I can slingshot into falling down onto their noggin while cackling like a little girl.
What I'm not a fan of is that the game went from teaching you lessons with scary big hits and visual cues to just killing you in one shot. It's not a good feeling and I can't say that I like it. On the other hand, the game also taught you to stay away from the big ones at the start and since this is pretty much a reboot, I feel the way to go is to climb that ladder up again. Except this time it’s a bit different, there’s about twice as many materials involved. I just hope things will keep as fresh and varied as it did with that stroke of Bazelgeuse-shaped genius.
MHW has a lot of really amazing design elements. I can't say that grind is one of them. Seeing monsters slug it out? Yep, still awesome. Systemic, immersive sim-grade unpredictability of the environment? Hell yes. Beautiful, multi-layered locales that make biological sense in a way that would shame most open worlds? I adore it. Dynamic boss battles in a living, breathing ecosystem? This might just solve boss battles for me.
It's been wonderful so far and I only hope this game won't betray itself by making me farm like it's one of those dumb old MMO it's standing so far above.