Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

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@Spoony_Tech
Ah, good. I haven't heard anyone really talking about the game and we're getting pretty close to release now. It's about that time to start up the hype train ( although it hasn't helped given the fact Capcom hasn't really done anything to build excitement for this game yet- no news, no demo, nothing).

Glad to hear you'll be there with us ready to hunt day one!

@bluemage1989
Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate will be pretty similar to MH3U on Wii U, just to give you a general idea of what to expect. As for what's changed- a lot of quality of life improvements- no more underwater battles, you can now press and hold A to gather instead of repeatedly pressing it, custom item sets so you can simply equip a load out of items you made before each hunt (make one for capture, one for hunts, one with hot drinks for cold climates, one with cold drinks for hot climates, etc) as well as custom equipment sets. MHGenUlt is also the only game in the entire series to feature transmog, where the armor that you have equipped to provide your stats can be hidden under a separate cosmetic armor from a different monster. #FashionHunter4Life

There's also the mounting mechanic, where you can actually mount the monster and topple them. MH4U introduced this mechanic, but one of the things people didn't like was that if any other person attacked the monster while you were mounting them it would knock you off and ruin your mount attempt. They change that in this game so that if anyone else attacks the monster while you have mounted it it actually helps contribute to you toppling them over! A much appreciated change, because new hunters would never stop attacking even when you mounted, so there was a tendency for new hunters to constantly ruin your mount attempts in MH4U.

And with mounting came verticality. No more water, but in its place there are a number of vertical maps featured from MH4U. See, MHGenUlt is a celebratory title, a mash-up of sorts with content cherry picked from all the previous games in the series to make one massive compilation. Instead of one village as your home base, you have four homebase villages you can travel between whenever you want. Instead of 1 game's worth of maps, you have maps from 4 different generations of games combined. It also has more monsters than any other game in the entire series, and more quests than any other game in the entire series. There's also lots of other QoL improvements but, if you never really played a previous entry in depth you honestly probably won't notice them. But you will benefit from them nonetheless.

There's also the addition of 2 new weapons since the last game you played- the Charge Blade and the Insect Glaive. Both of them extremely robust and complex weapons. Awesome stuff. This game also added what many of us referred to as "The 15th weapon" aka prowler mode. Where you can actually play as a felyne cat. This is the only game in the entire series that allows you to do this. This is also the only game in the series that has hunting styles and arts. So there are 6 hunting styles, depending on how you want to play (guild style for traditional gameplay similar to previous games, adept for evasion based play, brave style for risk-reward play, aerial for air-based gameplay, etc). And each style and weapon in that style has arts- super powerful moves that you can unleash by building up a meter which increases as you attack the monster. There are all kinds of arts and depending on the style you have picked, you can have just one art, or as many as three different arts. And the best part is, if you prefer not to use them and stick to more traditional gameplay, you can do so. It's all up to you.

As for which is more enjoyable, MH is unique inasmuch that it's really an even 50/50 split. You could treat the game as a purely single player off-line experience and it could end up being one of your favorite games of the generation. Likewise, you could play the game online with others and never touch the single player, and it could end up being one of your favorite games of the generation. But if you're like me, you'll do BOTH, and it'll end up being one of your favorite games of the generation 😁

The multiplayer quests are kept separate from the single player off-line village quests. You make progress in the game by hunting monsters and using their parts for crafting armor and weapons with better stats than your previous set. So any progress you make in the game carries across both single player and multiplayer. However, because the quests are separated, you could make it all the way to 6 star quests in single player, but you'll still be on 1 star quests for multiplayer. So your progress starts from the beginning for each of them separate from one another. The best way to do it imo is make your way through a few star ranks of single player, then hop over to multiplayer and hunt with others to farm what you need and have fun with others doing it. Then hop back over to single player and make a little more progress, then jump back to the multiplayer quests and hunt with friends again. I like to keep a balance like that so that I am progressing both of my single player and multiplayer together. Some people will do one and not the other, or they will focus on one until they get it all done, and then they will start on the other. But I don't recommend that because if you finish the single player quests completely before you start multiplayer, then you're going to be starting your multiplayer one star quests with high rank armor and weapon and it's really not going to be a challenge at all until you catch up to the later quests.

Something to note though is that you can play the multiplayer quests, IN SINGLE PLAYER OFFLINE. You don't have to play with others when you play the multiplayer quest and you are not required to be online to play them either.

Personally, I love playing the game by myself and I have a total blast. But I find it much more enjoyable when I am hunting with others- and while this is one of the few video games I will actually play with random people online, I do prefer playing with friends or family or people from this website. The MHXX forum (which still has the MHXX name from the Japanese release) will have numerous members of this site playing together and hunting together. So all you would need to do is hop onto that MHXX forum on this site and see who is available to hunt with you whenever you want.

As for vibrant world, do you mean online? It will be pretty packed online. Even the old games still have a small online community that play to this very day. It will be poppin for months after launch. After a few months a lot of people leave because they've played for 600 hours and had their fill but there's always a small group of people that continue to play for years and years to come. Even after people here have mostly finished playing you will still see random people in the lobby is that you can join and hunt with probably all generation long. Can't guarantee there will be a lobby for the specific monster you are looking to hunt three years from now (this is even more true given the incredibly large list of monsters in the game- which spreads out the online player base thinner) but the more popular monsters should typically have one open usually. Of course you could always create your own lobby and see if anyone else wants to join you.

As for the actual world in the game itself, I find the world of MH games to be incredibly endearing with immaculate attention to detail. There is this felyne cat in the game that sleeping on a bookcase and if you stand in the room without pressing a button for five minutes he actually falls off the ledge while he's sleeping, and it's just funnier than heck to see. And that's something that most people probably don't even know about and will probably never see because most people don't sit there not pressing a button for five minutes. But it's that type of attention to detail that really charms me and sells me on the world of the game.

Now keep in mind it's not some big open world you go exploring- quests take place in individual maps which consist of a dozen or so areas. You will have maps in the frozen tundra and in the volcano and in the desert and in the swamps and in the Highlands, all sorts of maps in all kinds of places. But you will explore these maps as you hunt for resources and learn where certain plants tend to grow and where certain small monsters tend to graze, and where the large monsters dens are located. And there is a butt ton of maps in this game because it is a celebratory release.

But this is a game where once it clicks, it sinks its claws into you and doesn't let go. But you really need to get a decent grasp on the gameplay hook in the basic mechanics at play. And admittedly the older games did not do that good of a job explaining this to the player which is why there has been such a high barrier of entry historically up until the release of Monster Hunter World. For people who are already into the series though we already understand the game play hook so we see the appeal right away. But for people who have not yet progressed in the game far enough to hunt the big monsters and craft their first armor set and their first weapon and do their first upgrade and cut their first tail off a monster, etc, that's when people are at the biggest risk of putting the game down and forgetting about it. So I would recommend committing to learning the game and committing playing through and definitely playing with friends to help you learn the ropes, and if you do that I think you will find one of the most interesting and addicting video games ever made.

The appeal of this version specifically is the fact that we finally have a portable Monster Hunter game that's 720p HD (as opposed to 240p) with rumble (which we've never had for a handheld version before) and not only that but 1080p console for TV play, tabletop mode with detachable controllers for luxurious TV style play anywhere, and most importantly local wireless multiplayer where you can play with a friend who is right next to you, each on your own system without even needing Internet. So for me that means when my brother comes over to visit we can hunt together face-to-face. Something we couldn't do when playing World. And doing that in Splatoon 2 Salmon Run was some of the most fun I've ever had. Local wireless co-op in a deep, rewarding and skill based game is amazing.