I had high hopes. Lots of people love this game, and it looks good to watch online. However, in my opinion this game is far from fun. First I’ll start with the controls. It constantly feels like I’m trying to move someone who has bricks tied to them. There’s a weird delay. It’s not snappy like it should be really. It doesn’t feel good to control to me quite honestly. Every action you do is restrictive. It feels like things you do in the heat of battle take years and years. It feels like a game of artificial waiting. I understand not being able to roll cancel healing, and having to take the hit because you chose that, but you can’t even dodge out of a combo. It’s stupid that I have to sit there and watch my character get pummeled when I spam dodge, but nothing happens cause I’m finishing a combo that doesn’t even hit. Do you know why it doesn’t hit? Because lock on in this game is terrible. It always wizzes around to different body parts, and it doesn’t really feel like true lock on. Your character never prioritizes that direction. Your screen does, but not you. This creates a disconnect when you’re up close. You’ll hit the monster twice he moves, and your character is still hitting the other direction. Combo doesn’t end monster turns around and whips you in the face. You can’t change directions while you’re attacking either which makes the game feel clunky.

EDIT:

After playing a few more hours things started to make a bit more sense. All my above complaints are still very true in my eyes, but the game in the simplest of terms is at times fun. When you first start it outs very jarring, and I feel the scaling of armor and weapons you have to monsters you fight in the first world is not so great. On the first island I’d constantly have all my health be dropped a lot. The Tobi-Kadachi felt like a huge leap in difficulty compared to the Jagras, and others before it. Anjanath actually was a lot easier for me as he didn’t move around so much. Yes I was using dual swords even for the Tobi as they are a fast weapon and able to keep up with his erratic movement. Then I got to the Coral highlands, this is when things started clicking. The game felt fun and fair. It felt like I could survive encounters, and make meaningful choices that led to me winning instead of me getting destroyed. I will continue to play this game, and I have not used the guardian armor as I feel using it is a crutch when getting through the main story. If you play with it, you’re not gonna get the full experience and you’ll miss a lot of technique because you just think about how you can tank the hit easily. Lastly two gripes, flying enemies add terrible artificial difficulty to the game. You don’t know when they’ll land, and they’re most of the time so close to the ground that you can just barely hit them. They gave you a false sense of hope putting them so close. I’ve just started using traps and other items, so maybe there’s a fix for this I’m not aware of yet. Secondly, I hate being stun locked. It’s fine to be stunned, but don’t let me be stunned run over by the Ratholon, and then have him burn me alive which kills me. It’s complete RNG, and I think it’s unfair that one single move can end your life so easily at any time. Maybe decrease the damage for subsequent hit during the stun duration or something. I think one of the most important things about this game is to remember that it’s not about just fighting monsters with your brawn, but it’s also about your brain. Using things like the Paratoad, shock trap, or mantling off the environment. These are just 3 of the many things you have at your disposal. Learning technique and using different items makes the game a lot more fun and bearable.

EDIT 2:

Hitting magmacores on Zora’s back is incredibly frustrating and if you’re stuck in a combo you’re absolutely effed in terms of getting hit and burned by fire. This ultimately takes away from your healing ability in later battles during the mission, and I think that’s terrible design. To lose healing items to a boss sure, but I don’t want to lose my chances to succeed to a rock that spews magma and doesn’t give me ample warning to dodge without superhuman awareness and speed.

EDIT 3:

I’m not sure why the creators of this game think it’s more realistic that two monsters would target you instead of focusing on each other at all times. It makes no sense. Also dead monsters body’s should not disappear, if you are fighting another monster in the same area you will no time to carve the dead one it’s idiotic and there’s nothing you can do about it. This game is deeply flawed in some respects. It has an absurd spike in difficulty after Coral Highlands. One example of this being the Bezelgeuse. He is a monster that literally drops explosives, and trying to get close to him without getting one shot or hit at all is an absolute nightmare just like the rest of the game after Coral.

Despite my gripes, I continue to play this game. Nearing 100 hours and 4 missions into iceborne I write this edit. I don't know if this review will ever end to be quite frank with you. The game isn't a nightmare after coral these were the words of 6 hour playtime. I'm now at 96 hours and quite happy with the game mostly. I love this game, and I absolutely despise that I like this game. Flashback to the end of the game, I absolutely despise Nergigante, but he was a wall a much needed one. After that all the other elder dragons felt lackluster I'd say. None of them seemed as challenging as him. They just had annoying gimmicks like constant little chip damage. I'd say Daora was the easiest with Teostra being the most annoying. After that you'll fight the final boss and he's I mean he's there. I liked the boss, I thought he was easy, but lore wise I thought he was a good fit for the finale. The fight was not Uber challenging, but the games not just all about monsters its about plot too. I quite like the story. Now, onto Iceborne. I just finished killing the barioth on my 3rd attempt and boy do I hate that thing with a passion. He sits on the edge of op in my opinion. He's just fast enough that you're like what the ♥♥♥♥, but also at the same time full of openings that you're like okay this is doable with every healing item in my utility belt. He's your first real challenge in iceborne, and I gotta say iceborne the start of it was a lot more fun then the start of the actual game for me. Most likely because I had everything in much clearer focus now how to hunt monsters. The stamina problems you get while fighting in the new map though I'm just really not a fan of. These monsters will take very big advantage of that, and the reliance on hot drinks annoys me to no end. Even with the cold decoration you'll still lose stamina. I used to use dual blades which just felt easy fun and light to use, but now I've branched out into hammer and gun Lance territory. I like to craft different type weapons for each element. This way things are fresh and I don't get bored of using the same thing over and over. Gun Lance is my favorite though. There's something incredibly satisfying about sticking a monster with a wyrmstake. I also think shields in this game are just a smidge op. Realistically, how am I gonna black a huge tail with a shield. There's no way my tiny human arms can do such a monumental task, but that's video games of course. Maybe I'll continue this review maybe I won't who knows.