Monster Hunter World (PS4)

[Kaepora_Gaebora]

8 hours ago, drahkon said:

My mate and I are nearing the end of Monster Hunter World's story.

We've been doing quite a few optional quests to farm materials and now we're at a point where we can finish off "normal" monsters in a matter of 10-15 minutes. Teostra was a different beast, though. My mate died twice and I had to use 7 mega potions and some crazy evasive manoeuvres to not perish  

Next up is one of the most annoying monsters...Vaal Hazak. Effluvia Resistance is a must.

I've got to fight the Black Veiled VH on Friday night; my friend hasn't had as much time as me to get through Iceborne, he tried it last night both solo and with the SOS and failed every time, text me to say he'd unplugged his Xbox from the TV he was that annoyed with it 😂🙈

I've unlocked the Stygian Zinogre, Furious Rajang and Raging Brachy quests but I've halted that at the moment for some achievement hunting, been collecting rare animals and working through the research logs at the mo, not getting any HR or MR points but it's nice to have a different objective for the moment before it all kicks off with those beasts again!

[Kaepora_Gaebora]

Looks like the Alatreon is coming next week, 9th July! 

Also some sort of streaming/announcement thing on Friday as well talking about what else is coming in the update 💪

[drahkon]

Gonna be doing some Iceborne quests this evening with my mate.

Will set up a Charge Blade class. Played with Lance for a while but it's a little too static for my taste. I think it's time to fight with a more technical weapon Can't wait to get my ass kicked.

[Kaepora_Gaebora]

4 hours ago, drahkon said:

Gonna be doing some Iceborne quests this evening with my mate.

Will set up a Charge Blade class. Played with Lance for a while but it's a little too static for my taste. I think it's time to fight with a more technical weapon Can't wait to get my ass kicked.

You wut? 

A weapon couldn't GET more technical than the Lance, you clearly weren't thrusting it properly...

No I get what you mean, love the Lance though, tried the Switch Axe on MHG but never found it as satisfying as the Lance, being in the thick of the action!

[S.C.G]

1 hour ago, Kaepora_Gaebora said:

You wut? 

A weapon couldn't GET more technical than the Lance, you clearly weren't thrusting it properly...

No I get what you mean, love the Lance though, tried the Switch Axe on MHG but never found it as satisfying as the Lance, being in the thick of the action!

Well, you're both more adventurous than me when it comes to weapons in this game, Dual Blades for life!

I really should get back into this, I haven't played it in a little while since the expansion, I'd have tried to play the game online with you but you're on the Xbox version, right? I've only got the PS4 version.

Having said that, I have been getting into Sea of Thieves recently and I remember you saying that you were getting into that a while back.

Long-winded thread de-railment to say... Happy Birthday! I hope you're having a good day and if you do want to play some games on the Xbox One at some point, let me know, we could even get that game of Perfect Dark in.

Back on-topic... Monster Hunter World is brilliant, probably one of the best games on the PS4 that I don't play as often as I probably should.

[drahkon]

Phew. 4 hour session done

The Charge Blade is awesome. Probably my favourite weapon. A little tricky to use but once it clicks...very satisfying.

Anyways, playing through Iceborne's story again just reminded me that some of the new monsters are tedious to fight...it's slightly more bearable with a second player but still annoying at times.

[Kaepora_Gaebora]

Thanks @S.C.G ❤️

Yeah I'm Xbox only when it comes to MH, my girlfriend actually has it on her PS4 and I half started a new go buuuut...I'd already put enough time in to the Xbox version so just carried on with that instead! Such a shame it doesn't have cross play, would be ideal for that, to be fair it still has a good community on Xbox, probably thanks to it being on game pass, but MR still well populated too 😎

Haven't played SoT for a little bit, love dipping in and out of it so be good to try and set sail together!

[drahkon]

Alatreon sucks.

The fight forces you to play a certain way (elemental builds, use a myriad of healing items) because the monster has a nuke attack that will wipe out everyone unless you deal enough of the right elemental damage (Alatreon switches between three...) to weaken that attack. It's a DPS check...deal enough damage or fail.

It's early days but the community seems to agree with my first assessment.

As a blast main, I can pretty much say goodbye to getting Alatreon's gear. No way I will spend time farming for an elemental build that might not even work well enough to pass the DPS check.

Edit: After a few more fights: I'm done with this...that nuke is ridiculous. The thing is: everything else is absolutely amazing. Alatreon hits hard, and is just fun to fight. That one attack, though...ruins everything.

Edited July 9, 2020 by drahkon

[Kav]

If you’re Canta, nothing is impossible!

 

[Kav]

Charge Blade might be my favourite weapon, but Lance is the best... and this shows why...

 

[Kav]

On 10/07/2020 at 3:50 PM, Kav said:

If you’re Canta, nothing is impossible!

 

Seriously, nothing is impossible...

 

[Happenstance]

Tempted to re-buy Monster Hunter World and carry on my save but I’ve got a feeling I would be completely lost.

[Kaepora_Gaebora]

Developer Diary is coming tomorrow, described as the "Final" one, so perhaps the last of the free content updates and big event Monsters, if the rumours are to be believed it'll be a big one to go out on...

[Kaepora_Gaebora]

I realise that @Hero-of-Time would have been th man to ask about this mainly, but has any one else tried to take down Alatreon yet? 

I've managed to get past his room destroyer once, but he's an absolute brute of a fight, you think you're doing well and then boom, does that move and you're all down for the count.

Safi Jiva has been quite fun, Raging Brachy took awhile...some of this end game stuff is brutal!

[RedShell]

Better late than never!  

So far so good. It’s all pretty familiar but there’s also quite a lot of new features/mechanics in there too. It’s great seeing how familiar monsters look with the improved visuals, even the smaller ones get quite the makeover.  I’m really loving how the hammer feels in this version too, super satisfying.  

[Kav]

Wowsers!

 

[Julius]

I've finally convinced some of my friends to start playing this with me, so I started it up a couple of hours ago and finished the first few assigned missions solo. Don't know if it's something they'll commit to week in and week out, or if it's something they'll want to move on from, but at least I tried!  worst case it'll just become a single player game I'll chip away at over the year (much rather this than FIFA...). I've told them to avoid using the Guardian armour if they can, because it's clearly for those wanting to shoot through the main game to get to Iceborne, and I feel like we'd be missing out on a lot of the core gameplay loop to this game if we did that. 

Firstly: spent way too long on character customisation, nearly an hour and a half between designing my character and my Palico! I was going for samurai vibes, think it turned out pretty well in the end, if I do say so myself. 

Still very slowly getting to grips with the gameplay, and still stuck choosing between Great Sword and Longsword, too. I love the weight of the Great Sword...but I wanted to make a samurai character, and there's a katana longsword from the outset. Decisions, decisions...

Anyways, like I said, super early on, but I get the appeal, and I'm quite enjoying it! Seeing all of the monsters interact with one another out in the open has definitely been the highlight for me, that and the Anjanath turning up out of nowhere in the middle of me chasing down the Kula-Ya-Ku and ducking for cover 

[Hero-of-Time]

Good to see you give the game a go, @Julius. Back in the PS2 days the Greatsword was my weapon of choice. Like you said, I enjoyed the weight behind each swing, plus the ability to block is very handy when learning monster attack patterns. 

Once Longswords were added to the games I started using them. The fast movement and danger of having no way to block made it my go to weapon ever since.

A great thing about the series is that there's no real right or wrong answer when it comes to weapon choice. Yes, some may be better suited for certain battles but for the most part you can just choose what you want and go with it.

[Julius]

So hadn't played this since again until today(/yesterday - Friday ), waiting for the guys to play through the tutorial and giving me the chance to look up some beginner's tips, how online works, etc. 

Okay, elephant in the room: how online multiplayer works for quests kind of sucks. It really does. It's obtuse, it's way messier than it needs to be with locking people out because not everyone has watched the cutscenes, etc. It's seriously archaic for a game designed with multiplayer in mind. The tutorials are also quite long and wordy, and there are a lot of them; really reminds me of Xenoblade at times in this regard, and glad I had looked up some guides, etc., and played a little behind the tutorial quest so I could give direction on how the basics of the game work (and I'm sure there's still loads I missed, but oh well). 

Anyways, now that the only negatives I have about this are out of the way...this game absolutely rules! My playtime before today(/yesterday)? Just over 3 hours. Now? 10 hours  the guys really liked it. I really liked it! It's a lot to take in, like I said the tutorials are a bit frantic and the online took a while to get our heads around, but once we were actually hunting some monsters, it was nothing but a good time. 

I played the quests for the Kukei Kukei and Barroth by myself in-between quests and issues with getting the online working, and both went alright. It wasn't exactly fun, kind of a long, drawn out grind by myself, even if the world and the interactions between the monsters had so much to offer. Barroth took particularly long, it was a very bad time to find out about stamina being reduced that's for sure! First time it got slammed through the ground by what I later learned to be the Diabolos, I followed it down into the cavern below, and got hit by its tail animation as it fought the Diabolos (not an actual attack) which one-shot me. Second time things went much more smoothly, but again, it was quite long, and this was when I figured out how to cook, the important of steak in replenishing stamina, and beat the Barroth on my lonesome with what I imagine was only a minute or two to spare! 

But enough about my solo session, because the time I spent with the guys playing was infinitely more enjoyable, on a number of fronts. The quests weren't too bad, it was a great way to share with them some of the basics I feel (I missed out on a second Kukei Kukei looting because I was busy teaching a friend how to cook steak and replenish stamina!), but they're so awkward in terms of cutscenes. If the ability to play quests together needs to be locked behind a cutscene, then I feel this should have happened across all of them at the end of a quest (or, you know, it could get with the times and just have us watch it together, but I'll put down that pitchfork). It's what eventually deterred us from continuing with them, as we got to grips with the basics, and, for now, just wanted to hunt some monsters together. We beat the Barroth together (I didn't get a Tail drop so my wait for the awesome looking Barroth Helm continued) and then I suggested trying an expedition instead. And making a squad did help some, though, that's for sure.

I feel like this is how the game is really meant to be played, the assigned quests and story are almost certainly just a tutorial in my eyes (I mean, I imagine this to be the case up until some more difficult enemies, anyways). We went into the Wildspire Waste and hunted Barroth until those of us who wanted a Barroth Helm had the Tail (took a good number of attempts!), and we also took down the Rathian too. Got absolutely demolished by the Diabolos, mind, but I imagine we're just underlevelled. 

Then we went back to the Ancient Forest, took out the Anjenath (which was a LONG fight), and even tracked down the Rathalos (took forever with it flying all over the place!) who eventually flew off. The freedom of exploration in the expeditions and allowing us to naturally run into Rathalos was awesome, and obviously I don't know if/when it turns up in the assigned quests, but it felt so much more powerful running into it this way  Seeing the Anjenath just pick up a Great Jagras by the neck with its teeth and throwing it around in the air is one heck of a sight, I was kind of taken aback by some of the unique monster fight animations, I thought it was awesome. 

But, yeah, I love it. GTA V offers stupid but aimless fun, and there's certainly a time and a place where I need that, because it's also a great game for venting and moaning about work. But Monster Hunter felt like such a good time, to put it in a way it felt constructive where GTA might feel destructive (not that that's a bad thing). Cooking steak and the little tune that plays, setting your sights on a set of armour and remembering what you need to hunt and what you need to drop from them once slain, chilling out in the Gathering Hub arm wrestling or drinking and falling around the place, it was so much fun. It was a learning experience, and not only do I feel we got way better at the game, but it was refreshing to feel like we weren't talking exclusively about work (actually, for the first time in forever, I don't think it came up once as the focal point of conversation), but other stupid things people our age do too: girls, games, films, just having a fun time enjoying each other's company and slaying monsters. It's weird how few times it genuinely feels like we've opened up like that during COVID and just spoke about the most stupid and random things, it really felt like a normal Friday night again for a change. And while I know that's possible in GTA and other games, of course, the constructive nature of Monster Hunter I feel really had an impact on how the conversations carried, and I'm really grateful for that. 

Does it become our primary multiplayer game now? Is it in rotation with GTA? Are we going to end up dropping it? I have absolutely no idea. But I loved my time with it in this session, and really hope we make our way back to Astera soon.