An interesting thing I saw was how the hammer and other weapons bounced off or didn’t smash through a monster on standard hits. Part of me is wondering that since you cut down on the follow through animation on that bounce you might recover quicker than if you had missed and hit the ground. If so, that sounds like a neat reward to land your hits and not miss them to get more hits in. But it’s also a great way to add some verisimilitude of hitting another object are reacting natural off it instead of going through like it was empty space.
i remember playing lost planet 2 and they had rathalos armor as one of the costume options and it looked so good. and i was like, “why can’t they make a monster hunter game that looks as good as lost planet 2?”
well it took like a whole lotta years but finally man
(also it’s kind of cool to see M2 framework is still kicking it, i have a odd fondness for these weird proprietary japanese engines even more these days)
i hope “early 2018” means january 1st and not march 31st
XX demo is also out and it looks like pretty much any other of the HD versions of the handheld games, which is to say, looks like a PS2 game running at 1080p and the UI assets weren’t even redone
Barroth is a curious choice of upbringing compared to a lot of flagship monsters, but the mud gets to look oddly nice and having one at all before Anjanath is a lot better off than 4/U was about Brachydios and Deviljho. presumably realism is the reason the substance-encasing effect that got so much mileage by XX (mud, snow, spider webbing, tar, mantis webbing) was out, but slowing mud globs left on the ground make lead-in sense for fires post-fireball anyway.
Diablos has been in all but two games at this point and both times she was skipped for a game she got an extra high vaunted position in the next so it’s kind of tiresome at this point even if I’m kinda fond of the fight. I’ll admit it made some sense to carry her up in the third generation, between the limited + controlled flying wyvern set to contrast to and the minimal degree of high-tier desert-themed threats, but honestly I’d prefer it if Seregios was just made desert queen or something instead. at least between Apex Diablos and Massacre Demon Diablos there’s probably a bunch of room to make a generation-jump base scarier. there’s a specific pressure-sensitive Diablos nest that becomes an area-linking sinkhole, which is great ecology at least.
…
mud-Lavasioth (Jyuratodus) is interesting because the piscine wyvern model was always inordinately tall and using Lavasioth’s groundswimming attacks is a good way to avoid mask this, and it has immediate ecological competition + shared slowing-mud with Barroth. of course, with adjacent landswimmers like the irritatingly-avoidant Cephadrome and the gimmick-focused Nibelsnarf, it might not work out too well. at least it provides lead-in for Diablos.
the tetsucabra-esque rock-holder raptor (Kula-Ya-Ku) is great because it immediately implies a little more variety to a raptor than the lunge/tail whip/body slam/spit or the jump/bite/spit of the last two raptor sets, continuing in Maccao’s footsteps
hopefully the chameleos-bird implies a new retake of the four-plus trickster birds in 4 / U / Gen / XX, by showing off invisibility and theft, as Kut-ku was nostalgic jank and Garuga became weaponized jank and Gypceros is a bad name. Malfestio and Seregios and Astalos show good possibilities still present in the manipulation of those well-worn chicken bones yet.
there are small creatures reminscent of Remobras called Noios and they fulfill the Qurupeco role by calling in large monsters with their cries, and while I’ll miss Qurupeco that’s a great way to provide environment-establishing not-directly-annoying small monsters
…I should make some “review every monster in the main series” list at this point, I suspect. I love some of MH World’s evident remixing.
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apparently at Gamescon there’s a more open demo to the public, and paired with a different trailer yet more info is trickling in
weapon trees are traced out (if not fully revealed) in-game, downgrades are free
like wystones, there’s a limited-slot cooldown-use item roster for “Mantles” (non-combat camouflage, air-gliding, earplugs + wind res + rocksteady, monster-luring) and a copy of the Hunter’s Oasis arte, which is… all really strong and a nice decision-space.
stones now have actual targetting (from a slingshot)
nobody mentioned it earlier in the thread, but- there’s an endless expedition mode available post-quest-completion that preserves the map (and uncapped intruders), so paired with equipment changes at base camp and the flares one can just hunt monsters with friends until someone runs out of potions
one has infinite farcasters to base camp (riding ptereofriend) and there’s a cooldown-based access to stat food for a second try after the first cart
whetstones are usable with unsheathed weapons
charms can be upgraded
it’s just so jarring to me how so many details are being redone for a series that has previously kept itself hard to a specific formula format for a decade, even if I’ll probably find things to grumble about when I start playing it next year (probably that the Handler is so dang chatty)
fluffy bat wyvern, pseudo-wyvern flying-squirrel+skink, chameleos the bird, more gimmicks being provided to starting raptors with flashbombs…
a kinda weird “generic-devil” elder dragon flagship. considering it’s seen near the crags of the standardized titanic glacier fight (volcanic rock edition), if the two are fought simultaneously for a final boss it might justify them both.
also a January 26 global release date for consoles, no word on PCs?
normally I would think “Japanese online game, definitely get it on consoles while the community is still there because even if they don’t botch the PC release it’ll probably be hacked to heck and deserted anyway” but I have still never actually paid for PS+ and idk if I want to start now
Maybe I’m late to the party and they showed this off before, but a AAA-style story with dubbing? They really are trying to appeal to the western market. I can’t help but respect how they appear to be full-assing this.
That character creator looks snazzy. To bad I hate starting games with a character creator so I hope they will let you access it after the start and maybe let you change gender so I can see all the armor sets without having to have a stand by character to see other armor set designs. Saints Row 2 was probably the only game I cared enough to play dress up with my character once I got a feel for the game and how I wanted my character to look. (Like Terry Bogard.)
