Recent reviews by SameToBeHonest

I don't have a fully formed opinion on this game yet as I have not reached credits, but I do want to say something that I haven't really seen mentioned much: I LOVE the sandbox design elements of everything working together in weird ways. I just had a run where I hit a guy, he counterattacked which caused an earthquake, where a stalactite landed on my cats head and the head of the other guy who also counter attacked, which caused an earthquake, which caused a stalactite to fall on my cats head, which knocked it, and because I was doing a sidequest, I had an item that instantly exploded corpses, so my dude died. There's a level of refined, insane, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ interacting with other refined, insane, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that is akin to something like Spelunky. It's a fantastic game that makes unique stories out of every run.

This is a really lean RPG for people that want a mechanically engaging RPG where item use and resource management are actually core to the games identity and difficulty, but don't want to sit through a 100 hour run of an Atlus game. It's artistically superb (pixel art, art direction, music, writing), fun, replayable, challenging, it has a good core time management system that plays on risk/reward really well, encounters are threatening and scary, there's so much ♥♥♥♥ to try and find and companions to use. I think an issue you could take from this game is there's a lot of backtracking and going through old areas, but that's part of the core identity of routing: knowing when to go places, when to leave places, and then when to come back to the place later. I also think you could say the difficulty falls apart as soon as you get companions. This is really well alleviated in Cursed mode, where it does still get easier, but everything still will destroy you if you do not have a good gameplan and you do not execute on it well. This game has fantastic RPG mechanics and build crafting and very enjoyable turn based gameplay. This game is basically perfect, and is the most impressive game I've played this year.

Try to go in with minimal knowledge and play through the game on standard difficulty, and if you want to replay, go to cursed mode, but do a little research on recruiting companions first, otherwise you'll have a really hard time getting through the early game.

This game is so heartfelt and beautiful, but also tragic and sad, but also horrifying and unnerving, but also really funny and joyful. Love your neighbor and your neighbor will love you.

Cannot wait for Malison, please put it on steam so we can wishlist it Frankie!

skong when

This is a very very fun game, feels really good on the steam deck. It's currently really buggy, but even with that it's very fun

libra is the best boss fromsoft has ever made

I have very conflicting feelings on this game. It's good, the monster roster is fantastic, the music is great, the area design is beautiful and imaginative, the weapons feel impactful and fun to use, the seikret is very cool, wounds as a way to farm materials is a really cool system, I love being able to go from monster to monster on the world and be given quest rewards with no loading screens. The final boss is the best modern final boss, and it's not really close. Monster diversity is so cool for how small of a roster this is, monkeys, octopi, giant lion bears, spiders, elemental creatures, a chicken, I love a lot of this game so much.

I don't like this game as much as World and Rise (I'm a fifth genner, I will play through GU at some point). Weapons have been stripped of weakness and super buffed, which homogenizes overall weapon design. Weapons don't have unique weaknesses anymore, so the skill floor and ceiling are much lower overall. As an example, the new moves on the Gunlance give you everything you want: damage, all resource use, and a period of free defense with a guard point. Mashing the new combo is the correct way to play the weapon with every shelling type. You can also block early out of combos and be rewarded with a perfect block, which you can do with basically every weapon. All weapons now have extremely good immediate defense with invincible windows or perfect blocks which you're rewarded for really strongly, so positioning doesn't matter anymore. You can just play Sekiro simulator with every weapon and be just as rewarded as outpositioning and knowing monster movesets and areas.

I don't like focus mode. Even if monsters were super buffed to completely remove stun from wounds, which is a HUGE problem, aiming your attacks is too powerful of a mechanic prima facie. Everything will always land, and this kills all attack commitment. I don't think we'll ever be rid of attack aiming now, which is really sad. Attack aiming to start a combo is fine, but continuing to be able to aim while we're in a combo is wrong and looks weird. Why can I turn if I'm doing a True Charge Slash? It kills animation believability.

Really the big thing with the two above points is that I feel like there's too much combat (and overall game design) bloat. Fifth gen, and especially Risebreak already teetered on the edge of allowing the hunter to do too many things with no downsides, but new attacks and mechanics are just more powerful than old ones, and they solve all of your problems without offering any down side. Why would I use my full moveset on Gunlance when I can just spam the new attack that doesn't need to exist? Do 2 moves instead of the 20 of the weapon, that all had their own uses originally, but the 2 attacks do all of them with no downsides? This can be extrapolated to many of the weapons: why ever use SAED with Charge Blade? It's too high of a commitment and Savage Axe does more damage AND IS EASIER TO SET UP (I am aware that SAED has higher damage potential than Savage Axe, but this really only matters to speedrunners). So much of the new combat model can just be stripped away in order to let the weapons movesets breathe.

With overall hunter power, it's no wonder that monsters die so quickly and prove no challenge. This is outside of the OBJECTIVE fact that monsters do less damage in this game than in the older games. Their HP value is similar, they're stunned more, they do less damage, all the while we can directly aim our new overpowered attacks at the monsters weakpoints (that we can increase the damage to), and the monster is just stunlocked until they die. Hunters need a considerable power down OR the new moves need to be made much worse so that the old moves can compete and we can actually increase the skill ceiling to be what it appears to be.

Bloat is a useful word for this game because bloat is its biggest problem (despite the pitiful roster size). Have a mount that automatically takes you to the super far away location of this huge map so you don't have to ever move around on foot and get used to the map. Have 20 different zones to go to for food and various odds and ends rewards where a couple small villages were all the were ever needed, just to showcase world size. Have 2 weapons that you can freely swap to, where the 2nd weapon will basically only be a 'swap to it because you want to', where 1 before is how people came to fall in love with their weapons. So many features exist in this game that are just fat that would be better trimmed.

Low rank is genuinely awful, which is horrible, because it's the majority of the game that people that are just passing through are going to see. I don't care about any of these characters, I don't care about how sad Arkveld is, I don't care about how pretty you think the environment is, I don't care to find out again how pretty you think the environment is for the 10th mission in a row, I am not excited to fight pathetic monsters that fall over after my slow escort quest, there's nothing here. I thought I hated the game when going through low rank, but I'm glad I stuck around for high rank. The story is not why people play Monster Hunter and it will never be.

Performance is unacceptable. I can get it to work to the degree that I need on a mid/low end computer, but I grew up with the N64, so horrible performance is something I'm accustomed to. Most performance problems smooth out once you reach high rank, but there's a couple monsters that still have problems. I'm sure this will be changed in the future, but for now, this is really bad. I loved Elden Ring on launch, I dealt with Dragon's Dogma 2 on launch (that was bad, too), but the PC port is horribly optimized.

I still do like this game despite all of the above. Monster Hunter is a rich, beautiful, complex game with awesome creatures doing really cool things, all of the creatures are believable, you still feel really powerful and like you're overcoming a mountain in a good fight, basically every song is really good, Nu Udra, Rey Dau, Zoh Shia (who you can only fight once, currently), updated Rathalos, Arkveld, Gore Magala, Guardian Fulgur Anjanth, Xu Wu: these fights are all extraordinary. This roster might be the best base roster of any monster hunter game. I think a lot of these problems will be fixed over time, and difficulty will probably be overall better with the G rank expansion, but as is currently, I just like this game with so many amazing parts. I'm hopeful for the future, and I trust the monster hunter team. This game has made me terrified for 7th gen Monster Hunter, though, and I could see how people would be willing to hop off here.

Edit as of 4/27:
I don't really feel the same way about most of my criticism as I once did. I think a lot of my specific criticism was more Gunlance specific than not: I've been playing a lot more with other weapons and with the HR introduction of the final boss/Mizutsune and I think this game feels really good right now. It's beautiful, it's fun, the weapon mechanics of other weapons are really interesting and fun, the monsters if you fight them tempered or especially tempered 5 star are all much better fights and feel complete. I'm very excited for AT Rey Dau on tuesday, the gathering hub is beautiful, the singing with the Diva at the grand hub is wonderful. I've been trying to collect most armor and I think that has made me really appreciate this game. I still think Low Rank is a bit of a mess, but I'm more willing to forgive it at this point. I don't like the wound system still, but focus mode as a whole I've come around to. I think this game is fantastic, definitely the best base experience of new gen, and I can only imagine this game getting better as time goes on.

I don't know what to say about this game because I still am processing what I played, but this game is definitely excellent, thematically EXTREMELY dense, moving, tragic, and wonderful

I don't know how to review this game but this game hurt my soul

If you think you're going to like this game, you're going to like this game. Please play this game so that history does not forget it

I think about the screenshot I took of Uragaan sleeping next to Dodogoma before I killed them both for no particular reason a lot