It’s still 2019. I’m heading home to England in the October and I’ll have a couple of months of unemployment before I find a job. So that means I needed some games to play! Before I came back to England I ordered two very special games for my PS4, Persona Dancing All Night Collection – and Icebourne for PS4. I was also able to pre-order the Iceborne Master Edition which came with a delightful Velkhana steelbook. So yes, I played through all of World again just to get to Iceborne. Now from this point in order to market their new games, Monster Hunter games included a “defender” weapons and “guardian” armour. Basically it gives you fantastic boosts and abilities but in Master Rank you’ll struggle wearing it. In short, its a fast way to get from the start to the end of the game. It’s a blessing for older players or players who are playing on a different console but this is a nightmare for new players. In Iceborne the armour has 251 base defence and resistances to Fire, Dragon and Ice. You also get Recovery Lv3, marathon runner, Health boost level 3 and Divine Blessing. The weapons are all unbelievably busted for LR-HR that it is insane. They pack double the power of the standard weapons and come with blast blight.
I have mixed feelings on this feature. I appreciated that I could use this armour to get through to the Master Rank stuff quicker but I hate that this takes away a new players ability to learn. Capcom’s website for Icebourne and Sunbreak proudly show of the armour as great for new players to blast to master rank. That’s all well and good but Monster Hunter was never a game about numbers, its a game about progression and learning how to hunt specific monsters. New players are missing out on the best aspect of Monster Hunter and that sucks. Theres a reason that heading online in Monster Hunter these days is sometimes like flipping a coin, sometimes you get veterans who know how to play the game and other times they’re beginners still stuck in Guardian armour who cart twice and rage quit. Monster Hunter is an intimate game experience that requires practice to learn the monster but here you can simply equip this armour and then divine blessing out of your problems. Don’t get me wrong, I wore this outfit on PS4 to get to Master Rank and when I finally built my MR Odogaron armour I missed the divine blessing, but I knew I had worked for the cooler looking armour that provided better skills and defence. The Guardian armour also encourages the new players to not craft any new armour because the Guardian armour and defender weapons are simply better than anything you can craft until the middle of master rank. So in the end new players have a 20hr tutorial looking like an overweight knight (the armour looks dumb on both guys and girls) until finally you hit MR1.
and breathe…
Anyway – Iceborne – the ultimate content update for MHW and oh boy did it deliver. Lets start with the new mechanic, the clutch claw and slinger. In World the slinger felt a bit useless being able to do situational moves to the monsters, now in Iceborne the clutch claw add-on makes it one of the most fun gimmicks to the MH formula to date. You can now grapple to a monster’s body and attack them with your weapon. This weakens an area of a monster causing more damage on repeated attacks. Even more fun is that if you grapple a monsters head you can unload your entire slinger into the monster causing them to ram into a nearby wall or other monster. This does not count as a mount by the way, you can mount and clutch claw as two separate actions! This makes slinger ammo more valuable and useful and it becomes one of the most fun elements of Icebourne hunts. The clutch claw also increased the move available to each weapon having at least one way to latch onto a monster through their movements.
For this game I used the Hammer all the way from LR-HR and then swapped the Insect Glaive and the Sword and Shield and I had a blast. Particularly the Glaive being able to clutch claw drop onto a monster was one of the most satisfying experiences in the game. The Sword and Shield also had an amazing claw uppercut that could help you latch onto a monster easily. During the end game I also experimented with the bow and the light bow gun. I honestly could never get these to work right on the 3DS and having the second stick really helped them feel organic to use. However, I feel like its just too safe using them and not as engaging as other weapon types.
Also one big change that World introduced was that armour sets no longer forced which weapon you could use. In previous MH games you had to make blademaster or gunner armour and they could only use certain weapons. In my eyes this turned me off trying ranged weapons even more since I had to put in double the amount of resources to make another decent set of armour for weapons that are inherently tricky to use. World and Iceborne changed this by making an alpha and a beta set, the alpha set has more skills prebuilt into the armour but less slots for customisation whereas the beta has the opposite being more customisable but with less skills. This is a fantastic change allowing for tones of customisation while also making it easier to swap to different weapon types. But also on the topic of weapons and armour World and Iceborne leaned a little too heavily into realism.. the armour for the most part looks great, maybe its missing some of the crazier armour from previous games, but on the whole the armour looks good. Monster Hunter was always know for its crazy weapon designs though. Swords that are fish, hammers that are magnum barrels. The weapons in Iceborne, and especially vanilla World are mostly uninspired and boring. As a hammer user, the bone hammer is used all the way until the end of the game with just a small amount of coloured plumage sticking out to differentiate it. Interesting weapon designs make players want to forge new gear. Heck in World there was a contest for fans to design a weapon and the greatsword weapon had a fricking animated engine in the top of the blade. I don’t even use greatsword but I crafted it because it looked amazing! Iceborne tried to fix this adding some crazier looking weapons but in the end I don’t think they could fully escape from World’s bland weapon designs.
Onto the roster and this actually has some good end game content! World had some good endgame monsters and coupled with the monsters here it really caps out at a fantastic end game for casual hunts and for hardcore monster hunting. To start with all of the new monsters received a subspecies except Jagres, Kulu and Tzitzi. These arn’t bad, they feel very similar to their originals with an element or ailment slapped on. My favourite one surprisingly is Coral Pukei Pukei which is basically like a fire hydrant monster shooting pressurised water at you. Seething Bazelgeuse is the only version of Bazel you can fight in MR and its a great fight full of mad diving and explosions. The new Elder Dragons also got subspecies, Blackveil Vaal Hazak is an amazing concept for a blind fungus dragon and the effect when you fight it is awesome but the fight is a little bit of bore compared to the original Vaal. Nerg has Ruiner Nergigante with an amazing design looking slick. The problem is to fight Ruiner Nerg you have to raise your MR to 100… Such a shame this amazing monster is locked behind this huge task. The other subspecies introduced are nothing special. For returning monsters, Tigrex, Nargacuga, Brachydios, Yian Garuda, Barioth, Zinogre and Glavenus. Really nice selection of returning monsters here. They feel like the best looking and playing versions of the monsters, with Glavenus, Tigrex, Yian Garuda and Narga being at their highest. Barioth feels overly jumpy this time while Brachy and Zinogre feel a bit nerfed. Not bad but Brachy is a much easier fight now compared to before.
This line up of classics really helps Icebourne’s roster to feel complete and I haven’t even mentioned the new monsters for Icebourne. Beotodus is basically a ice Jyuratodus. It gets a pass because it looks cooler but I can only remember hunting one or two total. However the next new monster Bambaro is an amazing monster that I hope we get to see more of. It’s a big moose brute wyvern with great horns that are begging to be broken. It also can roll up trees and snow into large ball and yeet them at you – Amazing monster and a surprising addition. Glavenus also got a new subspecies called the Acidic Glavenus. Prior to the games launch they said this Glavenus used its tail like a long sword with more stabs and long swipes compared to the originals great swings. I like both versions equally which is pretty rare with the subspecies. There were three new elder dragons added this time too. Velkhana is the flagship for this game and I have to be honest, I never liked it very much. It looks royal and strong and I like the gimmick of making ice platforms for you to walk over and it drops icicles from thin air because its that cold. I feel the fight wasn’t overly engaging especially compared to other Elder Dragon introduced in Iceborne Namielle. Namielle is a water- thunder elder dragon based on jellyfish and deep sea squid. It can control water and generates puddles on the ground that it manipulates to disrupt your movement. It can also charge its electricity and zap you if you’re in the puddles nearby. It has Chameleos’s skeleton and with its long wings it feels like Gore Magala. This monster also has some awesome armour looking like Splatoon characters especially on the female hunter. Finally there is Shara Ishvalda the final boss, this monsters starts as a large golem monster covered in rock. You begin by breaking the rock off it revealing its thin boney exterior with beady menacing eyes that follow you. It’s an interesting fight the first few times but it doesn’t really scream epic – especially compared to Zorah for all of its flaws.
It feels like they tried to speed this game up compared to world and as such Velkhana and the surprise reveal of Shara fall flat in my eyes. There is also some plot that happens in the story, I can’t tell you what happened. But one thing which was a crying shame they did not do, for a few missions in the story the Handler leaves to explore with another character and she is replaced by the “Serious Handler” voiced by Erica Lindbeck. Lindbeck voices Futaba Sakura in Persona 5 so my bias may be showing but I much prefer the Serious handler to the regular one. It feels more mature, kind of like a person trying to do their best even if they can’t live up to what they want to really do. Even though she gets swapped back out later on, I wish we had the opportunity to swap between the two handlers after the story was completed.
The new hub Selina also feels like a response to the previously large overwhelming hub in World, it’s a decent hub but it lacks a lot of the charm of Astera even though I prefer it mechanically. The new map is fantastic, the Hoarfrost Reach is expansive and has many icey themed environmental hazards for you to interact with. World on its launch had too many fire monsters and with the return of the ice region this problem is fixed. Icebourne has a fantastically balanced roster of monsters.
Finally lets round up the updates. First update – Rajang
Oh lord. I was not happy when I saw this. I struggled fighting Rajang in MH4U and I struggled here too! If I remember right I beat the Furious Rajang more than the regular one. It’s a great fight and I’m happy it was the first DLC monster to add some variety and difficulty to the game. Next came another raid monster SafiJiva and I loved fighting Safi. I used the internet to meet people to go into lobbies with and worked together to take down Safi multiple times. It helped that people were actively fighting Safi because the rewards from it were amazing up until the very endgame. When you defeated Safi or Kulve you received random weapons with random ailments or abilities and you could awaken the weapon to add more abilities onto to. Safi’s weapons looked incredible too, like a demons weapon with some having eyes open on them. Also there was Stygian Zinogre who was fine, he kind of felt a little overshadowed by SafiJiva. Wave 3 reintroduced Raging Brachydios and Furious Rajang both were excellent fights and were great monsters to reintroduce. Wave 4 introduced Frostfang Barioth… bit disappointing especially when Barioth already has a way better subspecies in the Sand Barioth. I have no idea what the differences are between the two are other than one has blue ice teeth. Oh yeah and they brought back Alatreon. Yes the first Black Dragon of the fifth generation, Alatreon was frustrating when it came out since the monster has a damage cap to break otherwise you would fail its quest. Alatreon encouraged hunters to use elemental weapons to hit its weakness and overall I didn’t find it a fun fight. I found it vastly unfair with the damage cap. Without that its a tough fight but its a shame that it ruins a potentially incredible fight. This culminated in the final update adding Fatalis in his own castle as a super powerful monster. I could never beat Fatalis, it was too much for me. I feel if I was able to continue practicing then eventually I could do it but I never could. But it doesn’t matter Monster Hunter World Iceborne is the best way to experience modern monster hunter with gorgeous graphics and a fun gameplay loop. If you haven’t tried MHW/Iceborne I insist that you try them out, get some friends and play for an entire weekend, you’ll have a blast. Or go online to the forums and find people to play with, the game still has an active community and probably will continue to until the release of the next main console Monster Hunter game. World was the most distinct game in the series and Iceborne is the delightful main course that helped to complete this package.
Brad talks about things. 