The Monsters Win

The sad news this week is that I've officially given up on Monster Hunter:  World.  It's not that it's a bad game, it's just that it's not the kind of game for me.  It was a questionable choice to begin with and it's the kind of game that I could see myself potentially revisiting at a future date.  I didn't finish the main storyline, so I don't feel like I can reasonably call this a review--it's just my personal thoughts on what I liked and disliked about the game.

Giant monsters are a central part of Monster Hunter:  World

Liked
+ Character creation has lots of options for a personalized hunter.  One of the features I particularly liked was the ability to pick the color you wanted and then use a customizable color palette to get exactly what you were looking for.  There are a wide variety of hair, makeup, and facial features to choose from.  You could potentially spend a lot of time tweaking your character to make them fit the aesthetic you're shooting for.

+Palicos!  Not only do you get to create your own character, but you also get to create a super cute, felyne companion.  The aforementioned character creation options are also extended to your palico--you can choose from a wide variety of fur lengths, colors, and patterns to make your felyne guardian feel like your own personal companion.

+Tasks to keep you busy.  There are plenty of options for how you can spend your time--main story quests, optional side quests, collection missions (to get new ingredients for the palico chef), arena fights, going on expeditions to explore new areas, or just farming for ingredients.

+ Looks nice.  The graphics are nice and I liked the variety of zones (in the part that I played).  There are some pretty stock biome types (your traditional jungle or desert), but there are also some interesting varieties like the coral highlands.

+Armor sets and weapons look cool and there are a ton.  The monsters you kill or capture provide crafting materials that can be used to craft new armors or upgrade your weapons.  Each type of armor has a look that closely matches the monster that dropped the parts.

+Collectibles.  You can capture small creatures and them keep them as pets in your room area of the main base.  It's fun to find new critters to capture.

Disliked
-Always online.  Monster Hunter:  World is clearly meant to be a multiplayer title.  You must play online, but you can very easily restrict your session to singleplayer tasks.  There really isn't an option for playing offline and others will join your session.  There are some nice options for having other people help you--you can fire an SOS flare and other hunters could help fight a monster.  I really didn't have problems with this system and 99% of the people who joined my game were doing their own thing.  I think it would be a great game to play multiplayer, but I just wish there was an option to play offline.

-Very grindy/repetitive.  I mentioned that there are a ton of armor sets and weapons, which is great, but the reality is that building those sets requires farming monster parts.  This potentially means killing the same monster over and over.  Killing monsters is fun, but doing it over and over just felt way too grindy to me.  The fights themselves are long and I just found that I didn't have the patience or desire to keep grinding out parts.

-Story is not very engaging.  I was semi-pursuing the main storyline, but didn't feel particularly drawn to the story missions.  To me, the meat of the game seems to be about farming monsters to upgrade your armor and weapons and, unfortunately, I lost interest.

I don't think Monster Hunter:  World is a bad game, it's just one that isn't for me at the moment.  I think there are gamers out there who will really enjoy it--killing monsters is a lot of fun.  The reality for me was that I just couldn't get into the grindy, repetitive nature of farming parts.  I'm going to shelve it for now and maybe re-visit in the future.