🎮 Get.Set.GAME! 🎮 My First Impressions of Monster Hunter World...

Those of you who have been following me know that I've been streaming my Monster Hunter World gameplay on @DLive since the game was released on Xbox One. Thank you so much to @DLive for running the #DLiveGaming campaign, by the way! They provided us gamers with such a great avenue to share our gaming experiences with the world, and I have been so stoked to play Monster Hunter World and share it with everyone on the blockchain. It's been such an amazing game and I've had so much fun playing it, but it's not without its downfalls, for sure.

I've probably logged close to 24 hours of gameplay by now, but I'm still stuck at Hunter Rank 5 at the moment, because that damn Anjanath fight took forever due to several failed attempts to complete the quest with different parties involved. Speaking of the Anjanath fight....that's one of the "criticisms" that I have for this game...it's meant to be a beginner quest (as in it's one of the earlier quests in the game), so you'd think that it'd be fairly "easy," right?

Wrong.

I don't know if they did it on purpose to show players just how hard these monster hunts can be, or if they just spaced on the fact that it's supposed to be a "beginner" quest...but all I know is that the stupid Anjanath fight was the cause of many outbursts of rage, not just from me, but from several other people who I played the quest with (and like I said, I played with several different groups, and we all still couldn't take it down for the longest time.

My final tally for how many times I did the quest until I finally, finally won, is 17. Yes that's right folks, SEVENTEEN TIMES. Of course, it could just be that I just suck at this game...but I swear to you I tried just about everything and used every combination of weapons and ammo and food, etc. to try to win. Finally, my group and I beat the damn thing early this morning, right before I ended up having to go to work for the day. And what a victory it was! We were all just so exasperated by that point that we couldn't even believe our eyes when the screen told us that we had succeeded in the hunt, finally.

Needless to say, we were all feeling quite proud of ourselves for finally achieving what we had previously thought was near impossible.

The next point I'd like to address is that Character Creation appearance and "real world" appearance do not match/are not really the same in quality. What I mean by this is that when you're creating your character and getting everything perfect down to the height and shape of your eyebrows, or the positioning and thickness of your lips, etc. everything looks amazing.

You develop this idea in your mind of how your character will look and how majestic it will appear in the "real world" of the game, only to stare mindlessly at your created character out in the world wondering what went wrong, and why the majesty of the character you created did not quite translate over from Character Creation mode into the "real world" of the game.

I made my character look so cool and so perfect in Character Creation, only to be sorely disappointed by how uncool he actually looks when I'm playing the game. This matters to me because I'm the type of RPG gamer who takes forever in Character Creation mode no matter what game I'm playing, because I like to go through all possible options and experiment until I get what I consider to be the perfect looking character. So naturally, I'd hope that the perfect character that I created would also look perfect out in the world I'm playing in, but unfortunately that is not the case with Monster Hunter World.

The next thing to go over is the Multiplayer mode itself. The Multiplayer mode is set up kinda weirdly, in my opinion. You have to be in the same online session as the people you want to play with, if you would like to embark on a quest together with your friends. I don't know if I just missed it in the tutorials, but as far as I remember, there was no real guidance on how to link up with your friends.

It was pretty frustrating for me and my friends at @GSGaming to have to figure it out on our own, but once we did figure it out, we were happy to finally be able to see each other in the game. Also, there is a "Matchmaking" mode which is supposed to link you up with other random people also looking for a party, but every time I have tried it, it has always returned no search results, which leads me to believe that perhaps that mode isn't quite ready yet.

Another problem in Multiplayer mode is that if you want to have friends join you in a story quest, every player has to have watched all the cutscenes in the quest before they can join up. The main character can't even send out an SOS Flare until the cutscenes are over and the fight with the monster has begun.

Speaking of SOS Flares, that's another aspect of the Multiplayer experience on Monster Hunter World that doesn't quite work as expected. Theoretically, other online players should be able to find your SOS Flare and join your game when you're having a difficult time beating a monster on your own. However, as with the Matchmaking mode for Multiplayer, no matter how many times I search for an SOS Flare, I never find any, and any time I send out an SOS Flare, no one ever comes to join my game. I'm not sure what is going on here, but perhaps it simply isn't working properly yet.

Something that I really love about this game, actually, is the crafting system for both items and equipment. To craft items, you will need to go around certain maps picking up items from collection nodes all over the map. Likewise, to craft more powerful weapons and armor, you will also need to collect materials, but instead of collecting materials from collection nodes, you will have to collect materials from killing monsters and collecting their body parts.

It makes it seem like much less of a grind, since you're still having fun finding and slaying the monsters that you need in order to develop better gear. In a way, the game levels up with you in that sense because some of the items you need for the stronger weapons and armor are pieces you can only get from beating more powerful monsters (like that stupid, stupid t-rex Anjanath lol). It's quite easy to run out of materials quickly, so the gathering part adds a whole 'nother layer of gaming experience. There is never a dull moment in Monster Hunter World!

All in all, I really love this game so far. I'd probably give it an 8.5/10. Despite how pissed off I was getting at the whole Anjanath ordeal, the game is still pretty solid and there is so much to explore and enjoy. I'm really looking forward to logging in countless hours on this game with my friends. Be sure to check back often for my live stream posts so you can watch me playing this breathtaking game! Also check out Hive account@bambam808 and Hive account@sirlunchthehost, fellow @GSGaming folks who also play and stream Monster Hunter World!

Thanks for reading! If you liked what you read, please consider clicking that Upvote button, and perhaps even that Resteem button! Feel free to leave comments below and let me know what you think of Monster Hunter World! Have you been experiencing some of the same problems as me?