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| Designing my character. |
Once you have your character design done, you can choose your default armor for the start of your adventure. Your options are leather, chainmail, or no armor. Don't worry about the armor not being so great, you do get to upgrade to better armor later.
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| I chose the leather armor to start. |
After that came my favorite part, designing my Palico. A Palico is your feline best friend who goes monster hunting with you and assists you with finding items, healing you, and using gadgets to distract the monster while you battle them. They are also such cute kitties! Naturally, I designed mine to look like our cat Loki and named him after Loki also. Loki remained unimpressed, but allowed it because he is a diva after all.
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| My Palico, Loki. |
The initial introduction to the main story introduces you to the game mechanics and gives you a few tutorials on how to choose weapons, how to train with them, and how to battle monsters. I enjoyed exploring everything. The different areas are beautiful and the real stars are the monsters themselves. There are no cookie cutter monsters here. Each one is unique and they really stand out. You also have a vast amount of wildlife ranging from insects to non aggressive monsters.
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| Exploring the Ancient Forest. |
The game will not hold your hand completely. There will be things you have to look up or you will have to ask friends for help. Explore everything. Part of the monster hunts is tracking. The more tracking you do, the more information you will unlock about various monsters such as elements they're weak to and which parts of their bodies are breakable. You will also be able to craft weapons and armor with materials from the monsters you hunt which you get after successfully completing your quest.
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| You can earn armor and weapon materials from monster hunts. |
This is where the main headquarters comes in. Here you will find things to help you on your monster hunts. This is the hub where you can get main and optional quests as well as events. There are vendors where you can buy items you need for crafting or ammo for weapons. There is also a botanist area where you can grow various plants for crafting items. In order to craft weapons and armor you need to visit the workshop. If you have enough of the materials needed, you can craft weapons, armor, and charms for yourself. You can also craft armor and weapons for your Palico. The workshop is also where you can upgrade your equipment to make it stronger and even add elemental strengths to it.
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| Build all the things in the workshop. |
Another useful thing is the canteen. An adorable team of Palicoes will cook meals for you. Eating meals before you go on your monster hunts gives you and your Palico a boost to different stats depending on the type of meal you eat like a boost to your health and stamina. You can pay for your meals with money, points, or vouchers from your daily log in bonus. Protip: If you use the vouchers everyone on your session can get a meal cooked for them for free. It's a nice way to help out your buddies.
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| Enjoy a stat boosting meal courtesy of the adorable Palicoes! |
Choosing weapons may seem like a daunting task, but you can test them out in the training area which is accessed from your room to see how they work and decide if it's a weapon you want to use. Weapons range from light bowguns to heavy axes and more. You can change your equipment before going on quests according to which monster you're hunting. For weapons like the bowgun you can craft ammo for it. You can also craft traps, bombs, and healing items with materials you find and from the monsters you hunt.
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| Using a light bowgun to hunt a monster. |
You do need an internet connection to play Monster Hunter World. This game strongly encourages you to play with your friends and other players and to work as a team hunting monsters. That's not to say you can't play solo at all because you can. You can make the session private or switch the number of players on a quest to 1 and passcode it if you wish. If you're not a subscriber to Playstation Plus or Xbox Live you will be pushed to offline mode and single player as well. Personally, I like doing the monster hunts with my friends. We all have fun together, help each other out, crack jokes, and have a great time exploring and hunting monsters. This is also where the SOS flare comes in handy. If you're finding a monster hunt to be challenging, you can fire the SOS flare and other players can join your quest and help you out. To me, that's a win win.
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| Hunting a dragon with my good friend Sol. |
More friends means more buddies to help you out with monster hunts and vice versa. You can exchange guild cards with other players. You can edit the greeting on your guild card, choose a background setting, and choose a pose for you and your Palico. The guild cards show your hunter rank, stats, and achievements. They do more than that though. First of all, if you play with a buddy you've exchanged guild cards with you gain unity which is how much you play together. The longer you play together the higher the unity. The second thing which is pretty cool is the guild cards you have from your friends allows you to hire their Palicoes to help with monster hunts or you can hire them for Tailraider Safaris which has them going out and gathering resources for you. The current number of guild cards you can receive is set at 100.
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| My guild card is humorous. |
You don't always have to go monster hunting. You can go on expeditions which aren't timed and allow you to explore to your heart's content. You can gather crafting resources, take in the view, or go fishing. There are gathering quests where you need to get certain materials in order to upgrade camps and headquarters. Expeditions are perfect for doing these. I enjoyed taking breaks here and there just to do some fishing.
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| Fishing time! |
While the main story itself is rather light, it is interesting. The big thing about Monster Hunter World is the thrill of hunting all these monsters that are unpredictable and challenging and creating an exciting sense of adventure. Going on these adventures with your friends makes it even better. Sure it can be challenging, but it is a lot of fun rising to those challenges and exploring the incredible world that this game has created. It's worth visiting again and again.
If you're playing the game on Playstation 4, I'm on there as Pirotess. I look forward to enjoying the game with everyone!
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| Taking a break in my room. See you at the next adventure! |
*Monster Hunter World is playable on the following platforms: Playstation 4 and Xbox One
*Author's Note: Monster Hunter World will be coming to PC in Fall of 2018
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