Topic: Monster Hunter: World

@CrazedCavalier Personally don't care for arts and styles, honestly. (wished they kept Prowler, though)

Styles were pretty heavily imbalanced, and stuff like aerial style was disappointing like the original mounting mechanics. I liked a lot of the individual moves, but I hated having an extra layer of weapon selection. You could never have just the 'great sword,' you were always in a loadout with a bunch of options closed off to you. I also don't like cooldowns, so the hunter arts bugged me just like the limiting mechanic on wyvern fire and mantles bug me. Cross added too many lazy meters (often on top of existing meters) instead of making mechanics that felt like Monster Hunter. Granted, I still like it more than 4.

https://www.polygon.com/2017/8/23/16191034/monster-hunter-wor...

They're really going hard on World. Makes me wonder all the more if we'll see the Switch get MH in the West....

@Joeynator3000 I don't see it as the best. The more I see at least makes me more optimistic.

Watching Arekkz's SA video. It got the "fade slash" attack from Frontier (both modes) as well as a new horizontal sweep for the x-button combo and double rising slash on the a-button combo and "Heavensward Flurry", basically the hack-and-slash combo for sword. The overheating is called "phial awakening". As for the mounting discharge, if you the initial lunge to the animation connects with the monster while in the awakened state it happens automatically (could be a bit tricky, as you don't always want it to happen).

The awakened elemental discharge isn't a mount, it doesn't topple the monster unless the damage would have anyway.

I don't think styles ever needed to be "balanced". It's not a competitive multiplayer game where balance is important. A lot of the different weapons aren't really balanced, but that's what makes them so great. Some are good at doing one thing while others are good at doing another. Some have way better damage per second. And styles are the same way- it's just a variety of play styles for you to choose from to play to your preferences. If you love mounting then the arial style makes sense. If you love evasion then the adept style makes sense. If you love fearlessly dealing damage, brave style makes sense.

And of course you could always just go with the guild style for your straightlaced, classic approach. It's not like the game was forcing you to use some strange style you didn't want. It was just more options for the people who wanted to use them.

The arts on the other hand, I never used much. And the reason I never used that much was because of the hardware I was playing on. It was kind of awkward to try to tap the touch screen- only recently did I learn there were button shortcuts. I'll definitely try using my arts more in MHXX. But they're really just a powerful move once in a while, nothing more.

@JaxonH The problem with guild style in Cross was, while you could play Monster Hunter as it's intended without swathes of your weapon's combos locked away, you were just playing 4U with hunter arts and didn't have access to a lot of the really cool new stuff. Moreover, I couldn't choose what I actually wanted, which was to just play long sword and have access to all of its aspects, old and new.

For instance, World's long sword incorporates all of the styles of play from Cross in a more elegant way without extra meters and cool downs (it's kind of difficult to visualize all these animations so I recommend watching Arekkz' LS video). Aerial... well the aerial attack kind of underwhelmed and didn't do much damage, but there's a new sliding aerial attack as well as the ability to run up and wall jump off of vertical surfaces with footholds at the base. Compared to that game's sort of blunt vaulting the spirit thrust sends hunters running up the monster's side to attack from above if it connects. The spirit thrust costs a color level of the spirit gauge if you connect and miss with the drop slash, but rewards a regenerating spirit gauge if that final attack hits just like unhinged spirit did.

The somewhat overpowered adept style will always be there in the form of evade+. However, critical juncture and the brave style evade are both in in the form of the foresight slash. The foresight slash is an evade-counter that costs the entire spirit gauge (not sure if it's the full thing or just everything you have at the moment), leads into a counter slash that refills the spirit gauge if it connects, which in turn leads into a standard spirit combo round slash.

All of these powerful attacks and evades are managed without requiring extra gauges on top of the existing spirit gauge and color level. Moreover, the weapon has never looked better. Since Monster Hunter 4 there has been a thick glow effect on the blade that made it impossible to look at all of the elaborate swords you had crafted if you were actually using them well — it was just an ugly lightsaber. Now it's just a subtle colored gleam on the blade that indicates your charge level (as well as your spirit gauge which is also conveying that information). And the evade has a subtle blue particle effect on it that reminds more of Final Fantasy XV warping than the virus-like effect overlaid over Double Cross' brave style sheaths / evades which obscured the view of your character.

@Haru17
I mean, I don't really disagree. I like how World does it better myself.

I just don't dislike Generations' style of doing things. It might not be as good as the new game coming out, but it's not actually bad to the point I ever once thought of complaining about it

We can talk about animations and hitboxes all day, but the real question is: Will the Barroth armor look good this time?

http://www.strawpoll.me/13781265

No. The real question is whether we'll get more Male Kirin Quality Armor or not. That's what really matters.

@-Green- Fair. I think Kirin has a very good chance at being in game since Rathalos is seemingly the flagship and the game is making similar callbacks. Which is good, because that horse needs a remake. I wonder if it will look like a weird spikey lizard monster still.

What's interesting is you can see blast coatings in Arekkz' bow video, so perhaps Brachydios still inhabits the end game. I wonder if we'll ever get any new slime monsters.

Welp, we found out why they murdered the OST: they made it dynamic.
This is easily one of the biggest disappointments so far.

@CrazedCavalier
Zelda did the same thing. And we all know how that turned out...

@JaxonH On the plus side, there's a special animation for carving rare materials: https://twitter.com/Arekkz/status/900844099254841344

Also, Blast is confirmed back (due to the bow in the demo being compatible with the coatings).
Speaking of returning monsters, I kinda hope they don't overdo it. For WW, we've seen four monsters; two of them are returning, and Diablos is at the top of the food chain. Rathalos is also at the top in the Ancient Forest. Every top monster we've seen so far has been an old one.

The Anjanath / Ancient Forest and Barroth / Wildspire Waste tracks sound excellent, it's only Jagras that has sounded underwhelming so far. Most of the music we have heard from World is in another league compared to Breath of the Wild's sparse overworld music.

I hope World's list of returning monsters is a short one too. Granted, with the standard of quality it's keeping and with how 4U did minimal effort ports of almost all the bad or outdated monsters from old games, it would be difficult for this not to be a step in the right direction in that regard. But for reference, so far the large monsters are (bold is old):

• Kulu-Ya-Ku
• Great Jagras
• Unnamed Bird Wyvern (the tongue one)
• Anjanath
• Rathalos
• Rathian
• Jyuratodus
• Barroth
• Diablos
• Unnamed Elder Dragon

So that's an effectual 3, since Rathalos and Rathian share so many animations. They and Diablos are in ever Monster Hunter game except like 4, randomly, so the only additive returner is Barroth.

BotW's music 'issue' is that it shifted greatly in general style, to something that most people likely wouldn't enjoy as much. For what it was, BotW did a fine job. I forget what the name of style of music BotW used. It's similar to elevator music.

@-Green- Ambient music I think. Or instrumental.

@-Green- The thing is Breath of the Wild still had Zelda music in it — it occasionally scored the ~8~ hour main quest. The problem was that the other 200 hours exploring the open world had dull nothing piano music. The answer for modern open world composition isn't Witcher 3's endlessly looping dreariness, it's not Xenoblade Chronicles' endlessly looping cheeriness, and it's definitely not Breath of the Wild's auditory giving up; it's obviously Skyrim's blend of traditional and ambient sound. It found a way to unobtrusively incorporate a long soundtrack with dozens upon dozens of traditional songs into the world along with about 40 minutes of different ambient melodies, all of which perfectly match this cold northern world with beautiful night skies and deep caverns. Not to mention the subtly to the point of subconsciousness audio cues for entering a giant room, discovering a location, clearing a dungeon, and of course the more noticeable ones for raising a skill or leveling up.

Of course that doesn't have huge degree of relevance to World because it's not open world. It's ambient soundtrack basically breaks down to a main combat theme (and probably discovery themes like in the past), a retreating theme, and a theme for entering stealth. Those are the ones we know of, and it's not clear yet whether the stealth and chase themes differ between monsters / areas. Personally I think the chase theme will but stealth won't, and I really hope they have a unique song for each new monster and not just area or deviant themes. The music still fades into ambient noise if you move away from a monster or exit combat, that ambient noise is just a lot more detailed now.

@SMEXIZELDAMAN I don't think it's ambient music. I think it had another name, but its been a while.

@Haru17 Sadly, I wouldn't know much about Skyrim since I barely played it years ago.