I dont think I actually beat all of the game myself, but I was wondering as you didn't seem to recognize the Kirin.  I think MH4U was a great example of how to do non-dragon like Monsters.  I remember having some preconceptions about fighting insects and baboons going in, but I ended up loving the variety.  I just checked the monster list of X and it seems to follow that of 4U closely, so I'll definitely be checking out how the game shapes up on Switch.

Just entered the Rotten Vale.  Interesting location, very much reminiscent of older MH maps, where you'd have some large area's connected by narrow walkways.  The Rabudaan was pretty cool, even if it only took me 2 seconds to recognize it as being nothing more than an easier Urugaan.  And that's still my main concern with the whole game, it's just too darn easy.  Even more so with your Palico spawning healh restoring items every time you take a reasonable hit.  I've hardly used any potions in the whole game, or any other item for that matter.  And I'm also woefully underprepared as I have done no grinding for better gear up till now, I'm even still wearing my leather grieves.  Think I'll go for Rabudaan grieves though, the 'guard' perk seems very usefull to me as a hammer player as it reduces damage taken and stamina usage.

Something else that so far has been notable in it's exception: hot and cool drinks.  Hunters are impervious to the effects of sizzling heat and icey cold it seems.

So all in all it's a very cool game, with the graphics and everything, but the trade off seems to be that it's kind of like a 'my first monster hunter'.

edit: read up on 'guard', it only reduces knockback and stamina depletion while guarding, so all in all it's neigh useless for me.    Oh well.

robio said:

Yeah, I was going to say the cool drinks do return.


As far as the difficulty goes, I have kind of hit a wall where it completely spiked up. You will see it when you unlock the final level, but you're still a ways off from that. Once you get there though, you will be reminded of the ridiculously strong monsters. I just went up against a black diabolos that knocked me out in a single hit.

Diabolos and I never really got on well.  I don't think I've ever solo'd one.  There's just something incredibly unsettling about them.

SupremeAC said:

Defeated the Legiana yesterday.  One of the better monsters so far, with an actual ranged ice attack.  The design was clearly inspired by the movie Avatar though.

I really don’t have any experience with how the multiplayer worked in the previous games so I can’t compare however I did like much of how it is done in this game. I played the vast majority of the game in multiplayer, probably 95% or more. The SOS system is for quickly jumping into hunts so people aren’t going to continue hunting with the same people in those. If you want to do hunts with the same group of people then you could do a search for online sessions. There’s a bunch of parameters that you can specify as to what kind of sessions that you want to search for to join such as those who are hunting specific monsters, types of missions, etc. Squads would probably be good as well or maybe better but I haven’t really checked out how that works yet. I don’t know if PS4 has something similar but on the Xbox One there is a feature called ‘Looking for Group’ which is an excellent way of finding like minded players for any game.

I played Co-op for the first time in Monster Hunter World.  Like the other hunters here might remember, I bought the game on Xbone a couple of months back, with the intention to get it again on PC for co-op with a friend of mine.  First impressions: for all the changes, the matchmaking is still even, if not more, archaic.  Now there are proper story missions, with proper cutscenes, and they're neigh impossible to play through together.  First of all, you can play these missions only once, so you need to be at the exact same point in the story to be able to play them together.  Of course, the game doesn't want you to actually start them together, instead you both need to start solo, then you need to quit the quest and enter your friend's quest when he calls for help with an SOS flair.  So far, so cumbersome.  The SOS flair system works, but it's open to all hunters, so if you don't hurry, someone else might have joined your friend's quest before you got the chance to do so.  We did this, but it didn't work very well, with the completion of the quest not getting recognized for the both of us, resulting in us having to go through it all a second time so both our games would recognize the quest as completed.

I'm also now playing through the Steam Link on my by this time slightly archaic FX6300 - 650 Ti Boost - 8Gig RAM desktop, which doesn't meet the minimum requirements for the game.  My CPU just qualifies, but Capcom requests at least a GTX760.  Still, I manage, although the game does look worse than on the Xbone.  I'll have to try it on my computer monitor once too, to see how badly the streaming impacts the graphics and framerate.  Playing on my telly though, the moment you start moving, everything becomes a muddy blur.  I'm playing on low, with a few settings turned up a notch, selected a 30FPS frame cap and reduced resolution to 1600x900, which is slightly above how the Xbone renders it.  Framerate is pretty uneven as well, and there's some imput lag, but I'm pegging both of those as down to the streaming.

Anyhow, it's still the same game.  It's still fun, but heavily dumbed down.  It's still fun to accidentally knock your mate into the air with your oversized weapon.  I played solo with Hammer and Charge Blade, and am now rocking a Charge Blade and Hunting horn for co-op.  The lure of the hammer is strong, but the hunting horn is pretty similar and allows you to buff your whole party, so I'm going to try to stick with the 2 weapon types I'm using now.