-Note: Do use a controller when playing due to how dodging works in the game-

With great sneezing comes great times in quarantine, and that time is spent on games.
"Yes this commission work takes 3 months to complete boss, honest!"

You can tell that the devs put a lot of care and effort in the game, polishing and adding weird little things for you to catch to scratch that completionist itch in you. With so much faffing about built in, you're forgiven to pick flowers, admire the scenery and catch some bugs, only to get pummeled into red paste by an angry monkey firing laser beams - probably because he didn't like how your armour's coordinated. It's kinda like Animal Crossing: Prepare to Die Edition if you think about it.

On top of that, you can invade the privacy of your local sentient cats in various places, and sell the incriminating pictures to a shady old man in a corner for his "research." If you got the tickets, you get the pictures.

All this is a pretty good segway from the underlying issues in the game. A pretty frustrating caveat I find are in new movesets by monsters such as Kirin, who probably played way too many MMOs and decided to spam its flashy new AOE move to delegate your hunter in their personal no-no square, dreaming of the DPS that they'll never be able to do. Many new monsters get cursed with similar moves, throwing them down like some sort of deadly Dance Dance Revolution.

As old as Plesioth's hipchecks have been plaguing hunters in 3U, and Garuga's sudden dash in FU, there has been undodgeable attacks in MH, but in MHW, it seems more prevalent here. Combined with the wonky iframe dodge mechanics the game has (compared to the older games), it is up to the RNG gods to decide if it's time for a chunk of your health to disappear.

An unholy embodiment of these two tricks would be Lunastra. This nuclear weapon with wings would sporadically release typhoon-force winds amidst nuclear fire, rendering my hunter to shield the heresy with her arms until her terminal case of jazz hands proved fatal. That attack is very much telegraphed, yes, but it has the radius to eliminate every sentient being in the galaxy, with the duration long enough to turn the unlucky into well done-steaks like the tasteless demon she is.

Those attacks are cheap, and only serve to frustrate the player when you're supposed to learn the monster's moves and dodge them skillfully. Where's Amatsumagatsuchi's big s u c c that I can dive away and laugh at my teammates getting launched into the stratosphere?

Don't get me wrong, MHW isn't a particularly difficult game. It has numerous QOL improvements and the clutch claw that makes hunts less painful. It's just those cheap spammy attacks that detracts from the experience as a whole.

Finally, the biggest issue with the game are the lagspikes. God forbid someone earns an expensive zenny-reducing trip back to camp, because the game would freeze up for 5+ seconds, even if you're playing solo. If you're unlucky, this can cause you to disconnect entirely, leaving you to fight a beefed up monster at 4x its usual health alone if you were in a party. This has been in the game ever since its disastrous launch with its partner Error Code 50352-MW1 and it's puzzling as to why it's still here despite all the complaints.

I really try to like the game, but at the end, my impressions are mixed, much like my morals as a cat paparazzi. I'll give it a solid floaty paolumu pendant/10, with a sprinkling of pub teammates that puts fainting goats to shame.