It’s been a year for Monster Hunter World since it first came out on PS4. After 800 hours on PS4, I can say this is the game that I love the most. To start off, I’m not a Japanese-games lover, so when I started I didn’t give it my full attention, which this game might be my next kind of “Try and Drop” game. But later, I got hooked on the action and it exceeded my expectation in every way.

The game is basically you kill the monsters, get the materials, craft better gears, fight harder monsters, replay it until you master your weapons and dominate the monsters. The grinding is real, but the rewards are worth your time. When you finally figured out how to beat a monster that you’ve been struggling for a long time, that’s when you figured out how satisfying the game is.

Graphics
This game looks gorgeous, everything is perfect and detailed. Also, the performance is absolutely beast, I rarely seen any hiccups or lags either. Furthermore, the monsters are very detailed, it has footprints and different features like special animation, moves, patterns, auras etc. I have to say that this is the most polished Monster Hunter I've ever played.

Gameplay
The game has plenty of weapons to choose from, so you won’t get bored in anytime soon. Each of them has different playstyle and requires time & dedication to master it. The combos are pretty amazing, some of them are based on the previous Monster Hunter game, but this time, they expanded it furthermore with much more useful & complex attack skills. Take Long Sword as an example, now we have a more detailed Fade Slash and we can also do a following up Spirit Blade to build up the gauge. Not just that, Helm Breaker is an absolute beast skill to use where it jumps up and ends with a high damage slash. In addition, there is a skill called “Foresight Slash”. It’s very hard to use and requires you to be in a mid-combo. After a while, you will figure out the monster’s patterns, it gives you a sense when the monster's going to roar or attack you, so that you can use Foresight to dodge it and gain spirit gauge faster. Not just LS, but the other weapons also has special/new moves that gives you advantage if you know how to use it correctly/timingly. For instance, Guard Point of Charge Blade, if you do it at the right time, it can knock the monster out with KO damage; just like LS’s Foresight Slash, it will dodge the attack and you won’t lose any health. Each weapon has an important role in some situation. There is no perfect weapon or the best weapon to choose, but in some cases, some weapons might give you an advantage over the others. For example: If I want to play safely, I would choose charge blade or gunlance, which give me a shield to straight up dodge the attack easier than using LS’s Foresight Slash; or if I want to play aggressively, then LS or Dual Blades would deal much higher damage; or if I want to attack the monster at a distance, then Bow would be a better choice.

RPG aspect
The weapons have different paths to upgrade depends on the monster and the elements. It has different element to choose from: Ice, Thunder, Dragon, Fire, Raw damage, etc. Most of the monster will have different weaknesses and if you choose the best one, it would extract the most damage out of it. For example, I mostly go with raw damage (no element), since I’m kind of lazy to change up everything, and raw damage is perfect for most of the situations. When you fight Elder Dragons, they have a special feature called “Elder Seal”, which is their special aura abilities that protect themselves and enable them to enrage some special moves. So, if you use a weapon that has Elder Seal from Medium to High, it will suppress the Elders’ special skills. For example: Nergigante has a special move called “Dive Bomb”, that it flies up and tries to kamikaze into you causing high amount of damage or maybe instant-kill. If you or your friends use High elder seal weapons, it will take a longer time to regrowth its nails on the back (a sign to tell when it’s going to use the special ability) and the ability to do the “Dive Bomb”. So, if your team doesn’t have any weapons with ES, you will see its nails go black faster and do dive bomb more frequently. That’s the reason why you must have the patience and time to understand the monsters:the patterns/features, where its roams, where its sleep, etc. On the other hand, the monsters are also very balanced, you might feel overwhelming at the beginning but after a while you will eventually get it.

The last part would be the core reason of the game: decoration grinding and different armors/weapons grinding.
The armor system is pretty good, where you need to mix different monster’s armors to gain the best skills out of it. Each armor has different skills to go along with it, the upgrade will just be for the base armor stat, which help you withstand the damage from the monster’s attack, and nothing else. So, the best build is the one with great skills set, not with a high armor number. Some weapons require specific skills set to make it better, so you might want to grind for multiple monsters to build the best one that is suitable with your weapons. For example: Long Sword requires high affinity and damage to be able to get the best out of Helm Breaker skill, so Nergigante’s helm might be the best helm because it has 2 Maximum Might skill and 1 Attack skill. Maximum Might give you more affinity (Crit Chance) while your stamina is at full. But for dual blade, this skill is useless, when most of the attacks/combos require high usage of stamina, and barely be able to keep full stamina for a long time like Long Sword’s players. That’s the reason why you need to build a set for each weapon specifically. The other way to obtain skills is to use decoration and put it on the armor. The higher rarity the decorations are, the better skills it gives. Also, different decoration gems have different level (size) and only fit to the same size or bigger to be able to use it. The size ranging from 1 to 3 with 1 is the smallest and 3 is the largest. For example: Attack skill gem is only size 1, Critical Boost is size 2, Handicraft is size 3. The armors will have different gem slot with different sizes. Decorations are very hard to find, which the rarest will or might only appear in tempered threat-level 3 monsters fight, and of course, it won’t be easy; and the result is also based on RNG which you might have to replay a thousand times just to get a second Attack Gem. But as I said, the reward is very satisfying, and this is one of the reasons. To be able to build the perfect set with the perfect decorations, it will take you hundred of hours to complete it.

Pros:
- Developers are constantly updating the contents. Ice Borne DLC is coming and I can’t wait for it.
- Other DLCs are just cosmetic and stickers to chat with the others. It’s an option and you don’t have to buy it. I just want to support the developers a cup of coffee for this awesome game and also be able to get something for myself.

Cons:
- You/your friends must watch the cutscene to be able to join others.
- Snap Head during fight when the monster appears.
- People leaves mid-battle; the monster’s health is still scaled, and the others are not able to join.

TL; DR:
Fight the monsters. Failed. Try Again. Replay it. Get better gears. Try it again. Killed the monsters. Advance to higher monsters. Master the weapons. Build the best set. Try out different weapons. Find the best decorations. Dominate.
I would gladly give this game 10/10 and this is my personal 2018 GOTY. It’s been a great year so far and with the Iceborne DLC is coming, I might be able to put in another 1000 hours in 2019.
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