Video Gamers Podcast - Deep Dive: Monster Hunter World - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: September 20, 2021

Gaming monster hunters Paul and Josh are back with another incredible gaming deep dive episode. It may be a case of better late than never, but we’re diving into Monster Hunter World. Nominated by RangerMiller we’re slaughtering innocent beasts in the Monster Hunter world and giving our thoughts on everything from weapons to monsters to quest. Is this entry into one of gaming's iconic series worth picking up if you’ve never played? We break it all down in our usual goofy fashion!   Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: Jake and RangerMiller   Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/multiplayerpod/ Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/MultiplayerPod Subscribe to us on YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q Visit us on the web: multiplayerpodcast.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I really want to support these guys. Head over to multiplayer squad.com. That's where you can help support the show. You do get some awesome perks, but more importantly, you get our eternal gratitude. All right. Now enjoy the episode and we'll see you on our Discord server. Hey, what's up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. We are a couple of dads who love talking about gaming, and since today is a Monday, we have

a very special deep dive episode for you guys where we are going to be breaking down Monster Hunter World. And we'd like to remind you to leave us a review and rate our podcast five stars in your podcast app. And if you like what we do here and you would like to help support the show, you can do that by subscribing in Apple Podcasts for a couple bucks a month, or you can head on over to MultiplayerSquad.com, which will go to our Patreon page where you can become a supporter there as well. And either way, you will get access to two extra Quick Take episodes every week. And we would also be very grateful to be able to keep the show running because of your guys' support.

I am your host, Paul, and joining me, he is out of breath chasing a puke-puke all around town. It's Josh. I don't know how to respond to that, Paul. That stupid puke-puke is a pain in the bouquet. Yeah, yeah. And when you and I were playing together, we kept calling it the Pukei Pukei, but I think it's technically Pukei Pukei.

No way. It'll always be the Pukei Pukei, Paul. Oh, goodness. All right. So we are covering Monster Hunter World today. We've been keeping it somewhat under wraps, but this is the game that was selected by legendary supporter Ranger Miller. So anyone who becomes a legendary supporter of the show, even if it's just for one month, they get to pick any game and then Josh and I have to cover it on the show. And Ranger Miller selected Monster

Hunter World, which I think you and i were both appreciative of because this is the kind of game that you and i have been interested in but we have never pulled the trigger and ranger miller just kind of you know took away any excuses left we had to pick it up and play it for the show we did mention that initially he picked viva pinata yes as the game for us to play we can't no longer playable in 2021 and then thankfully i kind of laughed at that pick and i was like touche good sir touche uh but then he was like when we told him like hey we can't find this game it just doesn't exist for pc anymore he was like okay um i pick monster hunter world and i've had that wish listed for like two years now

and i've seen it drop in price from like $60 down to I think the cheapest it got was like 18 bucks. And there's been many times where I have almost pulled the trigger because I have never played a Monster Hunter game ever. And I see some of these crazy monsters in the fights and I go, oh man, that seems really, really cool. So when he picked it, I was very excited because it was like, now I have no excuse to not get this game and try it out. Yeah, so we dove in to Monster Hunter World. This is one of those games that there is so much content and so much stuff to do. And we only have two weeks between every deep dive. So there's only so much that we are

able to dive into. We did our best to learn as much as we could about Monster Hunter. But before we start jumping in and talking about it, I think you've got a couple of reviews to read here for the show. I do have a few. They're rolling in now, man. We had a little bit of a lull. And I'm not sure if that was just Apple just queuing stuff up or whatever, but we're over 250. We are super grateful to everybody that's left us a review. And this first one, I don't know how I have not read this guy's review because he has been, I think, honestly, one of our OG listeners. He was the first person to join our Discord. I think he was our first patron to sign up um super cool guy but this one comes in from that cat gaming and it says who says you can't buy happiness

for only five dollars a month i met some of the most amazing people in my life this discord server is amazing and the podcast brings a smile to my face. Then they open the server to the public and the little family that they created. I have three podcasts that I cycle through, but this one is always on the top of the list. If I had the money to give away, I'd definitely go for being a legendary supporter.

100 out of 10, would recommend. Oh, thank you so much, ThatCatGaming. Yeah, definitely one of the OGs. Definitely has been around for quite some time. Yeah, and so, sorry, we didn't read your review till now. Yeah, at some point, I just assumed we had read his review, and then we noticed on Discord that he had said that we never read his, so we're like, all right, we better just go back,

because he's been around such a long time go back i was just wrapped with guilt instantly so i went hunting and i was like oh man like oops that's on me so oh nice yep seriously thank you that gaming it's uh it's awesome to have you with us and we appreciate you being one of the ogs as well this person i don't know if they're an OG, but I love their name. It is DJ Revan. Darth Revan, you know, but I like it. And it is titled Great Podcast. And it says, you guys are so good. What can be better? Although I'm not part of your Discord server, I've heard some pretty good things about it.

And I might get Discord soon. In the meantime, I wish you guys would revisit destiny 2 again and please send me a bungee friend request uh i'm at and he gives his username which i won't throw out there to the uh to the world and i don't know the numbers overall though keep up the great work so dj revan thank you very much yes thank you. Although I can't imagine Josh diving back into Destiny unless someone was a legendary supporter and made him do it again, because we all know how Josh feels about Destiny 2.

I famously love to troll Destiny 2. I get into it with a few people on our server occasionally. It's just a fun pastime of mine to say all of the reasons that I don't like Destiny 2. Secretly, I think it's a fine game. I just have issues with it, and I like to just blabber about those issues. Exactly. Right on brand for you, Josh.

Exactly. Yeah, I'll pick an argument. Anytime somebody wants to pick an argument with me about something, I will dive in head first and then just sit there and giggle the whole time. I saw a video on Reddit earlier today. It hit the front page and I almost sent it to you, but I forgot. But they said that gibbons like to live dangerously and it shows nothing but gibbons yanking on like lion's tails, like just trolling lions. And then the lions would turn and like try to hit them and they'd go back up in the trees and i'm like oh this is just josh this is total josh is a gibbon just yanking on

tails oh absolutely i think i've seen that is that the one where they keep like diving down like swinging and then taking a swipe and then they yeah one of those gibbons is gonna get eaten at some point but it's it's a glorious life until then. Yeah, I felt like that was just you doing these little drive-by shootings on Destiny 2, even though it's completely a fine game. All right, well, we have so much to talk about for Monster Hunter World, so let's just jump into it and let's deep dive Monster Hunter World. All right, Josh, I've got the description here from Steam and it reads, Welcome to a new world. In Monster Hunter World, the latest installment in the series, you can enjoy the ultimate hunting experience using everything at your disposal to hunt

monsters in a new world teeming with surprises and excitement. All right, I think that's a pretty good description of the game. And maybe in like 20 seconds or so, Josh, like what's the elevator pitch? What's the overall idea of Monster Hunter World? 20 second pitch. Monster Hunter World, smash gigantic monsters in the face, or more likely the legs or the tail. Cause I don't like facing them head on with a plethora of fantastical weapons that I don't think you could even lift off the ground. If you were actually human, um,

dodge out of the way, a whole lot, get roared at, and then get, get body parts, harvest body parts from the monster. get cool monster gear, fight bigger monster. Yeah. I mean, that's the cycle, right? It's hunt monsters, use their parts to make better gear and then go hunt bigger and better monsters, which will then let you make bigger and better

gear. And it kind of just keeps spiraling upward as you fight these magnificent monsters. And to kick things off, I've got a couple of facts here about Monster Hunter World. I was doing a little bit of research, and I thought that I would just kind of buzz through these and see if you have any opinions on a couple of these. So first of all, this is not called Monster Hunter 5, but it is the fifth installment in the series. And we're going to talk a little bit about why they abandoned the numbers. Because we had Monster Hunter 1 through 4, and then they named this one World. This is Capcom's all-time highest-selling game. What?

Did you know that? I know. Capcom made Street Fighter 2, Josh. Yes, that's what I'm saying this game outsold street fighter 2 do you know how many copies this game has sold uh it's got to be in the the the thousand billions 7 000 billion copies no it has sold over 17 million street fighter 2 comes in at a paltry 15 million so yeah this is Capcom's out of all the Resident Evils, all the Monster Hunters, all the Street Fighters, all of those titles. This is the best

selling one. I do not think I realized how popular this game really is. I had no idea. I did know that it was a popular game. Like I said, I had a wish listed for quite some time. It's always been in the back of my mind as a game that I wanted to try out. I had zero clue that this game was that popular. Now, I have to imagine that a lot of that is the Eastern. I know that China and Japan are probably huge into it. It seems like one of those Eastern type games. That's insane to me, man. That's a lot of copies.

Now that's just Monster Hunter World, not the entire series. Just Monster Hunter World. Yeah, 17 million. Now you're definitely on top of something there because the game has always been most popular in Japan. So a lot of people don't know this, but the earlier Monster Hunters are almost entirely on handheld portable consoles. So the previous titles sold by far the most copies on the PSP and on the 3DS. So this series was known as a portable console series, and they decided to make the change here with Monster Hunter World. They decided to make it more open world. They decided to make it more friendly to people in Western society like us. And they thought that

they would lower the learning curve a lot for Monster Hunter World, which is very funny because this game is incredibly complex and a very high learning curve and they thought that that would bring in more sales in the west and they were right because this ended up selling by far the most out of the whole series it ended up being a smashing success and that is why they did not call it monster hunter 5 they knew this would be the very first entry that most people in the west played they did not want people to think you had to go back and play the old ones. So they just called it Monster Hunter World almost as like a soft reboot. And so you said this is the first Monster Hunter that you've played, right? It is. Yeah. I'll be honest. I think I've maybe seen at most a minute or two snippets of gameplay

from Monster Hunter games. And honestly, those may have all been from Monster Hunter World. I've never played one of these. I know they're very popular. And I do know that they started off on portable handhelds. I don't know what the prior ones were like. So this was my first experience with anything Monster Hunter. Now, famously, we talked about Monster Hunter Rise, or what was the... Yeah, where people were taking off of work to play that. I don't know if it plays similarly. I don't have a clue. This is all I know about Monster Hunter.

Now, funny enough, I actually bought Monster Hunter 3 on Nintendo Wii. And I don't think I had mentioned that to you, but my brother-in-law, Jason, loved Monster Hunter 3. He told me that if I bought it, he and I could play it online. And so I went to GameStop. The game was already a few years old. I bought it, I want to say, for like $4.99 to buy the disc. And it sat on my shelf, never played it once, ended up trading it back into GameStop. So I did own the third entry, but I did not play any of them until just a couple weeks ago, starting World. Wow. So this was brand new for both of us. Okay. That's kind of cool, actually, because I didn't know if you had any history with this or not either.

Yep. Yep. So I bought one, but no time invested whatsoever. All right. So we fire up Monster Hunter World for the first time. And what were your initial impressions in playing this game? Now, I want to preface this entire episode by saying you had touched on something. The Monster Hunter World is a gigantic game. I have seen people that have put in thousands of hours when I was perusing the reviews for this. I've seen people with like 3,000 hours in this game. I have seen people that have put in thousands of hours when I was perusing the reviews for this. I've seen people with like 3000 hours in this game. Like I thought I play Rocket League a ton and I'm up to like 1400 hours in that game. And so to think like twice that amount of time. So this game, it's one of those I think you could theoretically play almost forever.

You and I, we, you know, we did put in a good bit of playtime, but a lot of what we talk about in this episode is going to be from the perspective of noobs. I think I have about eight hours total playtime for what we did over the couple of weeks. So take that with a grain of salt. If you are a Monster Hunter expert, we are going to talk

about a lot of things but it is going to be from the perspective of new players and players that did not make it into like the end game or the you know the the later parts of the game so to speak so i just i want to make that clear to people because i don't want to say something and then people are like well you didn't even play it all the way like we know like we just don't have the time to get 100 hours into it yeah so we definitely did not play any of the dlc i think it's called iceborne yeah yeah so we did not touch that but we did kill an awful lot of monsters we ran a lot of quests funny enough even though this game is multiplayer we barely played any together we largely had to play separate. We'll talk a little bit about that toward the end of the episode about how multiplayer

works in this game. But I think the first thing that stood out to me are the tutorial screens. Oh my goodness. Josh. Josh, the first three hours of this game is reading tutorial screens. Every time you talk to someone book here comes a tutorial page page one of five press d to turn to the next page and you are because there are so many vendors there are so many blacksmiths and crafters and commanders and uh there are There are so many things in this game.

You spend hours reading tutorials. So the tutorials, I wrote down in my notes, I wrote, these tutorials are out of control because there's just so many. But they're necessary. You have to have them. Paul, you said, I started laughing inside

when you said that they had to simplify this game a little bit for the Western audience. What were the last ones like? I don't, I can't imagine. Paul, we're pretty smart guys. Like, you know, I'd like to think that we're intelligent people. And I know that you had the same issues I had where I was just like, I'm reading these hundred tutorial screens that are popping up and I am going like, what am I getting myself into right now? Is there going to be a test on this? Why are there so many tutorials? I just want to talk to the vendor. Like, guess what? You talk to the vendor, you buy things, you sell things. This vendor has a tutorial screen

about your inventory and management and selling stuff and everything else. And then I'm just like, oh, look, a quest board. Okay, sure. That's where you grab quests. You go to the quest board and six different tutorials pop up. And I'm just like, why? Yeah. Tutorials for bounties.

Why is this so complicated? Oh, man. It was wild. Like, I'm not even kidding i mean you have to have them but this is kind of like if you've ever bought a complicated board game where it's a 40 page manual and you got to read it all and then you have to explain it to someone and now you've been hanging out for two hours and you haven't even started the game there's definitely a little bit of an element of that to monster hunter World. You have to put in the time

and the effort to learn the game, and then it can be very rewarding once you get past that. But the learning curve is still very high, despite the fact that they dumped it down. I mean, I know it's kind of stereotypical for us Americans having short attention span and not having a lot of patience. In the beginning, I was doing really good. I was reading every tutorial, a bunch of them. You even can press the R button on your keyboard and it'll play a video that will accompany and show you what they're talking about. But after the first 28 tutorial screens that I went through, I just started skipping them. I was like, I don't even care. I'll just figure it out on the fly. I just got to get into this game and play it because at the pace I'm going, I'm not even going to fight

anything and it's going to be time to record. So I eventually just kind of jumped right in. I felt like I was back in college, man, where you're just, you've got seven different subjects and you're trying to remember everything from every class. And it was just like, okay, so the blacksmith, I can upgrade weapons, but I can craft weapons, but I can also do this with weapons and infuse weapons and do this. Oh, and then wait a minute, here's an armor. Okay. But the armor is different.

Oh, okay. Now I have to go get food before every mission. And so I talked to these little cat chef guys. Oh, wait a minute. But the food gives me stats. But then if I get lucky, the food will give me bonus stats. Even though they have names and titles, I have zero clue what they actually do for me. And there's spheres.

Right. Okay, but now I have spheres. Oh, and by the way, go talk to the researchers because I earned research points in the last mission. And if I spend enough research points, I get to do something. I don't even know what. Let me come back to that class. And it literally is. It's just like every system is so complicated and so in-depth.

And I remember you and I, it was an initial impression. And we were just like, what? Like, why? Why is this so complicated? And it was frustrating, man. And we were just like, what? Like, why? Why is this so complicated? And it was frustrating, man. Like, I do remember getting frustrated because I was just like, I don't understand why this game is so convoluted. I think, yeah, I kind of think in part, it's a little bit like what we experienced with Destiny 2, where we first played it when the game had already included so many DLCs, and game had added all of these components and it felt very bloated. And I wouldn't say Monster Hunter World feels

bloated. It just feels just very complicated. And it's absolutely an investment to learn how the game operates. But let's jump in and talk a little bit about the story of the game. All right, so I'll tell you guys a little bit about the premise of Monster Hunter World, and then Josh, I kind of want to get your take on what you think about the story. So basically, you are part of the Fifth Fleet. You are leaving from the Old World, and you are arriving at the New World, which is basically full of all of these monsters because the world's not fully developed yet. And basically, your purpose is to follow and study Elder Dragons. And so these Elder Dragons basically will migrate from the old world to the new, and they've been doing this every 100

years, but lately it's now been happening every 10. And so they call this the Elder Crossing. Something's going on, and so you're basically investigating it. And so they call this the Elder Crossing. Something's going on, and so you're basically investigating it. And while your ship is on its way from the old to the new world, you basically encounter this Elder Dragon, which is covered in volcanic rock. It's the size of a mountain. These Elder Dragons are no joke. It's literally bigger than anything you could imagine. It crashes your ship. You basically arrive safely to shore, and then you end up making your way to what ends up being your home base,

which is this town called Asterra. And then basically from that point on, you are working with all the people in the town, going out on quests and expeditions, learning more about the New World and trying to uncover what's happening with the Elder Crossing. All right. So what's your take on the story of this game, Josh? Did you find it interesting? Did it have you wanting to find out more? What was your thought about the story? So today I learned that I worked for the Fifth Fleet.

I learned that I was moving from the old world to the new world. Okay, you did not know this. I mean, there's a story, but basically the story is... To me, all the story does is give you an excuse to slaughter the next creature. I joke around, but I did keep up with, hey, you've got to go establish this base camp and oh look there's a creature so you need to kill that so the space camp can be safe and oh now we discovered the wastes and so we need to go uh do some research there uh you know

and and so on and so forth but really the story is minimal at least for for me, it was. It was really just, this is why you have to go kill this monster. There you go. Yeah, the story is absolutely not central. I don't think you even really necessarily need a story. I've played games like Shadow of the Colossus, where there's literally not really any storyline to speak of in the beginning. You just start fighting giant creatures. Dauntless, I think, is somewhat similar. The story definitely takes a backseat. This game is absolutely about the monster hunting, hence the name. But the story's there. I didn't find it particularly interesting. I didn't really care a whole lot, but I also didn't really understand the context of the world. Maybe if you've played Monster Hunter 1

through 4, it makes a little bit more sense and you care a little bit more. I didn't really care about the characters at all. I just wanted to go fight big monsters. I will say that I did start to feel like my guy was kind of a badass, for lack of a better term. You start out fighting these little raptor things, but term, you know, like you start out fighting these little, little Raptor things. But then before you know it, you're getting into these serious set piece fights with these gigantic creatures and your guy doesn't back down at all.

And so it's one of those things where I was kind of like, man, my guy is bad. Like he's starting to, I'm starting to jive with this guy a little bit, you know, and, and I'm taking on these creatures

that are just phenomenal looking. And so from that aspect, I was invested in my character, I guess. But like I said, the story, I wouldn't even say the story is secondary. For me, it's just tertiary or quaternary. Sure. Pull pulling out those numerical uh vocabulary words huh yeah yeah the story's there we don't really neither of us really ultimately cared but let's talk about what what does matter the most which is the the monster hunting of the game and so that's the absolutely the bread and butter of what you do. You basically get these different quests in the town of Astera, which I found to be a very peculiar layout. I don't know who designed this town, but there are twisty staircases. There's multiple levels. It takes even a little while just to learn the layout of your home base. I don't want to be too nitpicky, but the first hour or two of this game, I was constantly running in circles around this town trying to figure out where to go, even though it's very small. Maybe that just speaks more to me and my lack of direction, but as Tara is kind of a

confusing home base. You must have a bad sense of direction, Paul, because I didn't have any problems finding my way around the town. I realized there was three levels. The chef was on the direction, Paul, because I didn't have any problems finding my way around the town. I just realized there was three levels. The chef was on the top, the blacksmith was in the middle, and everything else was on the bottom. So I just kind of went with what I needed to go. And then I just learned the landmarks. And all I knew was I had to find the one big staircase, and that took me to where I needed to go. It's a very large staircase. All right. So basically, you pick up these quests, you post them to a board, and then basically it allows you to depart on a mission. So while you're on the mission, and we can kind of set aside specifics about weapons or combat. We'll get into that in a minute. But as far as

what it actually entails from the time you leave for a quest, trying to find the monster, how does this work? What are you doing on your way to finding the monster? Running around completely aimlessly. Yep, pretty much. And looting so many things in this world. There are stones, piles of dung. I was continually wondering, do I really need to pick this up? I once kicked a frog because you just start clicking everything, right? And so there's this paratoad on the ground. And I'm like, oh, let me grab this toad. I'm sure it's used for something. And my guy kicks this toad.

And then I get paralyzed. I slump over on the ground. And no lie, for 30 solid seconds, my guy is laying on the ground paralyzed. And I am like, yo, that toad's mean, man. Like, don't kick the paratoads. Oh my goodness, that's too funny. But you're right, man. You're not completely aimless because you do have the scout flies that do help a little bit.

Oh, okay. Let me tell you about them scout flies. The scout flies are useful when they actually point you to where you need to go. They are completely distracting when they're like, hey, there's a mushroom over here. There's a plant right here. There's old bones over here. There's a puddle of muck over here.

And then I'm just trying to go like, where am I supposed to go in this game? Because there's, I mean, you do have a mini map, but the first level is this really thick jungle with multiple layers of elevation. And there was a point where I got so lost, Paul, because I had climbed down these vines into these tunnels, but then I could climb up trees and there were cliffs and I could not get to anywhere I wanted to go. And I wound up just running around in circles for like 20 minutes and getting frustrated because I was like, I don't know where I am.

I can't just set a waypoint at this point. The scout flies, which are these little green glowing bugs that are supposed to kind of show you things in the area. They're super helpful when they work. But if you don't have a target, then they don't lead you anywhere. And I was very frustrated for a little while in that very first level because it was not kind to a newcomer. Yeah, I'll go even as far as to say, I think it was the very first hunt, they do hold your hand and they show you where to go and what to do. I think it was maybe the second monster where you're just more on your own. And I did not realize that you're just supposed to run around the zone until you start finding footprints, or maybe the animal has a certain kind of droppings, or leaves mucus

on cave walls, or whatever it might be. I did not even realize that that's how the game functions, so maybe that's me skipping too many of the tutorials, but the flies will point out the closest thing that you can loot or the closest sign of a monster. I did wish that there was a setting so you could just say, just lead me to signs of the monster. The beginning zone's not even all that big, but it is very vertical, so it's a little confusing. But ultimately, you end up finding some kind of trace of the monster. And as you study those things, whether it's like footprints or whatever, it'll actually give you some insight into the beast that you're going to fight.

It'll tell you a little bit about its behavior. They might teach you about its strengths or its weaknesses, because this game does have a lot of different things that you can use in the combat. And so if you can get extra information about what you're about to fight, it actually does help quite a bit. So there is this element of looting along with locating the monster, and then you actually end up fighting it. And that's kind of like the thrill of the hunt, right? It is. And I'll say this to the game's credit, and this is just me being stupid, is that ultimately when you find enough clues, your scout flies will take you towards the monster at that point. It's like you had to

discover enough about it to know what you're hunting, and then they will take you there. And the monsters are constantly moving. It's not like this monster is hiding in its static. So a lot of times when you're actually tracking it down, it's moving around the map at the same time. And so I think that was one of my frustrations is i couldn't find the monster because the monster was moving and i think we were literally just running circles around each other yeah you know it gets a lot better i'm not trying to slam this game you know at this point but it's like it does get a lot better but this was part of the complete noob to monster hunter world frustration. I found that after the opening area,

because there's a lot of different biomes in this game. And so once I finished the first one, I got to move to the second one, which is a little bit more open and has longer sight lines and stuff. It really became much more enjoyable for me at that point. Part of that might just be that I started becoming familiar with the game systems and so all of that stuff that's being thrown at you i was starting to understand and and you know make sense of and all that maybe it was just the first zones kind of blah or something the second zone was the desert right yeah right yeah yeah i liked the desert a lot more as well because it was just a little bit easier to navigate the world when you weren't worrying about and when i say that the first jungle zone i think there's a total of eight

in monster hunter world but the first one is so vertical it's not just like two or three stories there's just multiple layers every 10 feet that you can climb up to and there's you know vines some of them might be 10 feet tall, others are 20 or 30 feet, and you can easily fall. And then you kind of lose track of where you were at. So I think once you run around the zone for a while, you do actually learn the layout and that helps as well. But like everything in Monster Hunter World, nothing comes terribly intuitively. You just have to experience it and learn it on the fly. Despite the fact that they throw all the tutorials at you, you still have to learn the layout of these things.

Yeah, you can try to teach somebody, but until they're actually doing it, it's not going to make a lot of sense. Yeah, you can read tutorials on swimming, but until you get tossed in the pool, you don't know what it's like. So let's talk a little bit about the combat. And let's just start simply with the time. So fighting these monsters is not a quick task. I would say most of these monsters you're fighting for, I don't even know. I'm really bad at estimating time. But I would say there's monsters here that I probably fought for 20 straight minutes. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I was going to say 10 to 20 minutes, I feel like is the actual combat time from when you first encounter them to when you finish them

off. I mean, this is what this game is about, in my opinion, at least for me. I know there's a lot of people that like the gear grind and the tracking and stuff like that. But for me, coming across this immense... And these monsters are huge, man. This game is... There is a certain wow factor when you come across these monsters and you realize, I'm about to fight this thing. They do a very good job of making it feel very just incredible and fantastical that this is about to go down. Yeah, I mean, you've run up to it and you start wailing on it. And it gets mad because you're hacking on its legs. And every monster feels very different to me. So they do a really good job of each monster feeling unique. I do not handle them in a unique way. I was just straight

up button mashing. I picked the weapons that allowed me to do that. I know we'll talk about weapons here in a little bit, but the combat is where the adrenaline's at in this game. It is a 10 to 20 minute fight, which is like no other game that I've ever played. I can't think of a game, and I've played a lot of melee combat games, but there's none of them where you're going to spend this long fighting a specific creature without dying. Don't get me wrong. Dark Souls, I might have tried a boss fight for 20 hours and failed and thrown my controller through my TV. But in this game, you're fighting the same monster for 10, 20 minutes, and maybe you don't die, and maybe it's not dying.

Yeah. and maybe you don't die and maybe it's not dying yeah one thing that did make me laugh is i saw a comment on reddit where someone was complaining that the fights are too short in monster hunter world and they said they they said what happened to the 45 minute fights in the earlier games and i was like oh my goodness like this game there's no uh pause screen so that's another thing is that you cannot pause the action because these are games that you're playing uh more or less it's like an open world online and so you cannot pause the action and you're engaging in these very long fights hopefully you are not like drinking a giant 44 ounce diet coke like i am often to do while playing as soon as you

defeat that beast you're running to the bathroom because it's been such a long time. But the fights are also broken down into multiple phases. And so as you fight these creatures, eventually you might remove the tail off of the beast after you hit it enough times, it'll fall off. Or maybe you remove a shell or something like that. And they all behave a little bit differently. And so some of the monsters will run to protect their young. Some of them will get more aggressive the more their HP is lowered. Others will just try to run away and eat food and start to regain more health. And so all of the monsters fight in different ways. You have

to learn how they fight, what kind of elements they use, because some of them might hit you with lightning attacks, or they might poison you, or whatever it might be. But the combat is very much dodging, rolling, using your weapon the way it was designed. Some of them are more range, some of them are more short, and so you have to get up into the action. But you can also either flat out kill the monster, or you can actually set traps, and you can actually capture the monster as well. So there's actually multiple strategies and things you can do. And from what I understand, generally speaking, you're better off capturing the monsters. The fights are a little bit shorter, but then you can also fight them in the arena and things of that nature. But that's kind of the short version of what the combat looks like. Yeah. And every monster has different moves. They have different

telegraphs and stuff like that. And I do know, and again, we did not make it that far into the game, but I do know that later on you have to be very careful because a lot of the tougher monsters can one-shot you. There's even various levels of the tough monsters and stuff like that. So you might have like a silver version of a monster or an enraged version or something like that. And so I know that it does get a lot more tactical and you have to prep a lot more before you try to take it on and you probably want a group of people and so on and so forth. I did find that the combat was super fun. To me, this game was at its most enjoyable when I was just hunting this gigantic beast. I think I broke its leg at one point. It got scared and it started running away. And I'm watching this thing crest over a hill and it's got this severe limp now.

And it's hobbling around and I'm like, I'm kicking this thing's butt, man. Look at it. It's run away. It can barely move. And I'm running after it. I'm sliding down this hill. I'm throwing rocks at it. I'm talking trash to it as it's running from me. And then it turns around and it knocks me down and then I die and then I have to run all the way back. Yep. Oh, man. All right. Well, let's go ahead and take just a quick break and know, we love our listeners. So it's time to help them out. You see that guy listening? Yeah, that guy plays games using his ear pods from his phone. I know it's a travesty. Well, we're here to help out. Head over to multiplayerpodcast.com slash Logitech and see what you've been missing out on. From mice to keyboards to headsets and everything in between. They've got something that's sure to improve your gaming experience. The best part is they won't break the

bank. And since they're extremely high quality, you know they're going to last. Do yourself a favor and improve your game over at multiplayerpodcast.com slash Logitech. All right. So Josh, continuing to talk about the combat here, one of the things that is really unique to this game that I thought was really fun to play with is using the environment to your advantage. So there's a lot of things you can do in this game that are pretty clever. You can actually unleash water out of a dam, and that way it'll come damage the monster. You can lure one monster over to another, and they'll start fighting each other. You can even throw the dung that you can loot that I mentioned before. You can throw that poop at the monsters, and they will run away

because they don't like it. Of course they will. Who wants poop thrown at them, man? So here you are running around chucking poop at these giant beasts and they'll actually run away from you. So there's little things you can do like that. And some of the things are pretty clever. If you're fighting a monster that has mud armor, which you can learn about, well, guess what? If you hit that monster with a bunch of water, that's actually going to wash that armor away and they're easier to fight. So there are a lot of really clever things with the combat that I can really appreciate about this game. It's not simply just a button masher for 20 minutes until this thing dies. Sometimes you can play that way in the beginning with some of the easier mobs, but especially as it goes on, the combat gets a little bit more complex you can also jump and

mount the monster and then you can start like stabbing it with your dual blades or whatever weapon you're currently using and so you can actually jump on top and do damage that way you can also stun monsters if you hit them with blunt weapons in the face. So the combat is actually, it looks very simplistic in the beginning, but it's actually very complex where, especially with certain weapon types, the skill ceiling is actually very high. And that's not even to mention the fact that you can use stealth and camouflage. And I mean, there's so many things in this game. Yeah, there really are. The combat's super dynamic. I think it's one of those things

where there's so many options to play this game the way that you want that I think there is a reason that it has such mass appeal to so many people because I mean, I played it the button mashing way. We'll talk about weapons here in a second, but I went with the dual blades because I just wanted to be a little

Tasmanian Devil Whirlwind. But I know that there's very tactical weapons where you can charge them up and then unleash, you know, a very high DPS attack. There's, like you said, blunt weapons that maybe they don't do a ton of damage, but they'll stun the monster and knock it over so that you can then go to town and just attack its belly and do a ton of damage like that. There's ways to mitigate a lot of damage. So you can almost have tank classes to

where you can just face to face this thing. It's probably going to be a long fight because it's not really doing a lot of damage to you and you're not really doing a lot of damage to it, but you can play that way. There's all kinds of crazy ranged weapons and stuff too. So I think there's a broad appeal to people that you don't have to button mash this combat if you don't want to. Yeah. The last thing that I'll say about the combat in general terms is that I did find it a little bit annoying to have to use the wet stone in the game oh it's that's the worst thing ever yeah i i don't i i understand why they would put it in the game and kind of make it more realistic if you're bashing something with this okay

sharpened sword it's gonna blunt over time you're fighting gigantic monsters. Where's the realism there? That's true. But you literally have to run away from the monster and pull out this whetstone, grind away at your weapon for, I don't know, five or six seconds. And now it's sharp. And then you can run back into the combat and the fights are so long.

You might have to use that whetstone multiple times. And I found that to be one of the things that just took away from the action i i would rather just be able to keep fighting i found the the wet stone mechanic to just take more off the table and i didn't find it to add anything to the table to be honest i'm with you there there are some annoying things potions for instance if you and you gotta heal because you're gonna you're gonna take a beating so to heal you have to put your weapons away so that you can pull out an inventory item to drink a potion and which takes forever yeah it takes forever and then you got to pull your weapons back out and now you're ready to fight

again well the whole time you're doing that this beast is charging at you and and it's like you have to figure out a way to try to heal without getting trampled it's i i don't i did not enjoy that aspect dude your guy like sips the potions he doesn't take it like a shot he's literally like sipping this potion until he drinks the whole thing it's it's so slow and i i don't i'm not even complaining about that that's fine whatever i i did find it funny because in most games like like whatever, Diablo, you just click a button and your health's straight up and the potion's gone. But in this game, yeah, you sheath your weapon, sip your potion for five seconds,

pull your weapon back out, run up. It's a whole to-do in order to heal yourself. Yeah. I don't know if they were going for a combat flow because it's like you're fighting the monster and there's that combat portion. Well the monster runs away right so now you're in this like chase scene where you're chasing this monster down so maybe they wanted it to be the other way around where it's like you retreat a little bit so that you can yeah use your wet stone and use your potions and kind of regroup and the monster's coming after you at that point but i'm with you i just found it to be, it really ruined the pace of combat for me, and I found it to just be straight up annoying. Yeah, I would not mind it as much if playing in groups. But when you're playing solo,

it's just slowing down the action. If it was where I've got three buddies still wailing on it, and I can just quickly use my whetstone without having to run too far away, then it's probably not as annoying. But yeah, it is a really interesting process. All right. So I think it's time now to talk about the weapons. And I think this is the most important part of the game because there are 14 different weapon types. They're all the exact same as what was in Monster Hunter 4. They did not add any new weapons, but these weapons are very different from one another. And the game actually feels completely different between these different weapon types. And I think this is the main reason for why you'll get people playing this game for 3,000 hours, because you can swap up these weapon types and the game feels completely different.

It does. I spent probably the first hour of this game once you're in the town and you get to the starting point in a practice room trying all 14 different weapons because they let you do that. You can just go to this practice area and you pull a weapon out of the chest and you get to play around with it. And I'll tell you what, man, there's so much variation there that it was just staggering to try to wrap my mind around. And then what's crazy on top of that is you have a sword that turns into an axe. You have an axe that turns into a sword once you charge it up. You have a lance that turns into a sword once you charge it up. You have a lance that's the biggest lance you've ever seen. It's like, you're just poking it at this thing.

Like, why would I want to use that? Then you have a sniper rifle. You know, you have a sword and shield. You have dual blades. You have a bow and arrow. You have a gigantic bagpipe. Okay, wait, wait, wait. You're blowing through all of these weapons so quickly. We have to bow and arrow. You have a gigantic bagpipe. Okay, wait, wait, wait. You're blowing through all of these weapons so quickly.

We have to stop and talk about, if nothing else, the hunting horn, which is the bagpipe. All right. Yes. This is, I have never seen a weapon remotely close to this in any game in my life. I haven't either. This is the most unique style of combat because all the others, for the most part, you're still hitting the enemy

and maybe you unleash some kind of ultimate if it charges. A lot of games have that kind of mechanic. But the hunting horn is like a bagpipe on the end of a huge, I don't know, eight foot bow staff. And it's a giant bagpipe, by the way. You use this thing to beat on monsters. But depending on the type of attack, it'll play a different note. So on the top left of your screen, you've got these musical notes being played depending on what you're doing.

And there are three note melodies that you can create and then unleash with the bagpipe and they give your team different bonuses. So this is almost like a bard, except you are literally playing music by smacking the bagpipe against the monster. So you'll play, you know, a certain note and then another note and then another note.

And now if I activate this melody, maybe it increases attack speed for everyone in the party. And you can actually play and store three melodies and then just unleash them all at once if you want. I mean, this is, I mean, that's a completely different experience than running around with your two daggers just beating on this monster button mashing. I mean, these are completely different games. Yeah, they really are. And that's the thing. I think you touched on it. If you have 3,000 hours in this game, it's because you want to master all of these different weapons and you're going through and fighting these monsters over again so that you can get familiar with these and every weapon has a different move set

so when i talk about button mashing you know if you hit light attack light attack strong attack that's going to do a certain combo versus strong attack strong attack both button attacks so you've got that whole like fighting game aspect built into every single weapon in this game it's like i said it's staggering it's It's actually a little intimidating. And when I was trying out all these weapons, they're trying to give you this gigantic move list and this list of combos and stuff. And I tried some of them, and then I just went,

dude, this is bananas to me. And I found the twin blades that you can dual wield, and you can just sit there and just slice and dice your way. I did learn some of the combos and you can kind of transform forms in that using those weapons. So I found those to be very fun for me. But yeah, I think that's one of the huge draws of this game is you can go from a little whirlwind with dual blades to a guy with a gigantic warhammer, where you're just trying to hit this thing in the head. And maybe they're these very slow attacks, but if you connect with it, you're going to stun the monster and it's going to fall over.

And then your team can go to town or something like that. So there is a ton of tacticalness to this. And you and I did not get to experience a lot of that because we didn't get to play a whole lot of multiplayer and we didn't really have a lot of time to explore all of the different weapons in there. Yeah. The weapons that I disliked the most simply from a thematic standpoint were the bow guns. They've got the, I think there's definitely a heavy bow gun and the other one might just be a light bow gun or it might just be called the bow guns. There's definitely a heavy bow gun, and the other one might just be a light bow gun, or it might just be called the bow gun. But having firearms that can shoot like machine guns in the fantasy setting, that just did not compute for me, where I did not have any interest in playing with those weapons. Everything else seemed to kind of make sense being high fantasy,

but the bow guns I had zero interest in playing simply because I just didn't think it fit the style of the game. Yeah, I didn't play any of the ranged weapons. I mean, I practiced with them a little bit just to see what they did, but I'm with you. I wanted to be up in the thick of things, you know, going to town. I didn't want to sit back, and I'm not sure that those would work out so well if you're playing solo anyway. Solo. Yeah. Because that might be a lot better in a group situation. But yeah, I mean, there's something for everybody in this game weapon wise.

And there's even really weird ones. Like, did you play around with the scarab staff thing? Oh, the insect glaive. The insect glaive. Dude, the insect glaive is wild because you use it like a pole vault. So you jam it into the ground, fling yourself into the air. And so there's actually like an aerial class with the insect glaive where you can get up on top of the monster and you start fighting it from the air. And I thought that was such a cool, innovative idea.

You really have to hand it to them. These weapons are very inventive. They really are. It's just. And they're bananas looking too. And that's one of the things that is a little bit daunting, but is going to add a ton to the replayability of this game. Or I don't even say replayability, just the playability of it, because you can change up at any time. I mean, it's kind of like Overwatch, right? If you get tired of one character, you switch to another character, you feel like you're playing a different game.

Yeah, absolutely. And with Monster Hunter World, you play with the sword and shield, and then you go to a gun or the insect glaive, you feel like you're playing a completely different game. Yeah. And you know what? If you just want to use the great sword, which is

like this 25 foot, 7,000 pound sword that looks comical. I mean, it's very stereotypical Japanese, but as soon as I saw the great sword, I was like, of course that's in this game. But if you just want to swing around a giant sword, you can do that too. I mean, it's 14 options in this game. You're not going to like all of them. No one I think is going to like all 14, but you know what? You play around with it, figure out which ones you like. Some monsters, certain weapons are going to work better than others. So by nature, you might have to switch around a little bit, but there's a lot to mess around with there. All right. So obviously,

this episode is going to go long. We knew that going in. There's just so much to talk about. I don't know that we really need to break it down in any kind of detail, but there is the whole crafting system that we've kind of mentioned. You can upgrade weapons. There are multiple trees for what kinds of materials you use to upgrade the weapons. That in and of itself is a pretty complex system. I mean, is there anything that you would add with the crafting and upgrading?

I mean, apparently cooking is huge in this game. You can spend hours developing recipes and cooking to get bonuses and stuff like that. It goes back to what we were saying, that every system in this game is super complex. And it's not that you have to fully understand every system to be able to play the game, because I know I sure didn't. And I was able to play the game and get a lot of enjoyment out of it. But it's there if you want it. And I feel like if that's your thing,

whether you love cooking or crafting or weapon theory or combos or tracking and trapping and things like that, there is so much content there for you that this game may wind up being just one of your favorite games ever. It's kind of like Destiny 2, right? You mentioned that earlier as well. There's so many systems in Destiny 2 that if that's your thing, you're going to absolutely love Destiny 2. And I feel like Monster Hunter World is very similar in that regard where if you like a lot of complexity and you like being able to be distracted for hours and hours at a time with one thing over this thing you could live in this world and not even hunt monsters

and probably enjoy everything that you're doing. Yeah. We do need to talk a little bit about the multiplayer aspect of this game. Now, you and I only had our schedules aligned where we could get on together, I think, two nights. The rest we played totally solo. But the multiplayer system is very goofy. And it's very particular. And certain things are not always obvious there are some quests that you can party up and and play together there are other quests that you cannot

and the game does not tell you whether or not you can play this mission with multi people but the game will still allow you to invite them to your gaming world. So you're connected to their world, but you can't go out on the quest. And I found the multiplayer to be very, very convoluted and hard to use. It was unnecessarily difficult. Paul, it was so comical to see two old guys trying to figure out how to party up.

You had to pull up a tutorial, like to, like to, to try to figure out how to party up, you had to pull up a tutorial to try to figure out what we were doing wrong. And that's not a joke. I mean, literally, it took us 30 minutes of reading the internet to figure out like, oh, we just can't party up on this one mission. We're not doing it wrong. The game just didn't tell us that this mission is not multiplayer. Which was so frustrating because we did party up and it all worked the first time. We invited, you invited me to your world. It said I was connected to your world. And then one of us posted the quest and then we're like, oh, did you get that? Yeah, I did. I'm going to click that I'm ready to depart. And then you fly out and we did the mission. And then the very next one, we just couldn't see no matter who posted the quest.

And finally, we figured out after all this help, oh, actually, that one quest you can't do. And a lot of the story missions you're going to do by yourself. But then on these bounties, you're going to party up more or, you know, I don't even remember the details. But just some quests you can party, some you can can't and you just don't really know until you try but you know you can also throw up these sos flares in the middle of a game and maybe someone will join you there's like multiple ways to connect to other people it's just like everything in monster hunter world There's like eight ways to do things and none of them are really user-friendly. You kind of have to just learn it by tinkering with it for countless hours. Well, and we didn't even touch on the menus

because the SOS flare, which is basically a way of saying, hey, is anybody out there want to help me with this? You have to go eight menus deep to even find the menu that says SOS Flare on it. While the game's not paused. So yeah, it's kind of crazy. This game's very unique. There's a lot to like. There is just a lot of stuff that's really hard for the noobs.

And so that's kind of where we spent an awful lot of our majority of our time until we started learning things. I remember I spent so much time, Josh. I was supposed to be fighting. It was very early on. Maybe it was the Puke Puke, which is what? Maybe like the third monster that you fight? Third, maybe.

I started tracking the Anjanath, thinking that that was what i was supposed to kill and i spend and so i'm not even geared properly because you fight the anginath later and i found out that this is actually like the first wall that most people hit where they have to start crafting and upgrading things i spent like 35 minutes fighting this anginath and i use all of my potions to heal i have used all of my i think i i don't remember whatever kind of damage it kept doing i had used all of those potions and i just wasted all this time and then i realized oh that's actually a different monster that's not even the thing i'm here to fight happens to be wandering around such a noob moment but it was like i just wasted so much of my life yeah and i've used all my items

i've got nothing left it felt real good to kill that engine f later though didn't it yeah yeah absolutely all right so uh you know that's almost a full hour here of us talking about our thoughts josh you've got a couple of community reviews to read. I do. I will say this. A lot of the negative reviews, which I filtered out most of those, had to do with the PC port and how bad the multiplayer connectivity issues were. Oh, really? Yeah. So it was not just, we were not alone. Apparently there was a ton of server issues, very difficult to form a group and stay in a group and stuff like that.

But okay, so the first review, this one's recommended. 275 hours on record. And they say, before I played Monster Hunter World, I had a small bleep. No friends, no girlfriend, depression, and absolutely no life. These things haven't changed but the game is pretty good very nice yeah i saw i saw that one coming a mile away but i like it all right this one says not recommended 43 hours on record for a game that excels at playing cooperatively and is advertised as such the actual execution of its multiplayer is a cruel joke

if you're planning to play the game with friends be prepared to explore every single area of the and is advertised as such, the actual execution of its multiplayer is a cruel joke. If you're planning to play the game with friends, be prepared to explore every single area of the game solo before you can enjoy it with your friends. Every story mission requires you to start it solo and progress until a cut scene plays. So for every story mission, you have to start it separately and play solo until that point, then abandon the quest and restart it together.

Now, this is exactly what happened to you and me, which is why I pulled this one. It's just, you don't understand and nothing tells you. There's nothing that says, hey, by the way, you can't group up right now. It's just you're grouped. You can't join. You can't join the quest. Like, why can't we join, Paul? Nothing pops up and says, oh, because of this or because of that. And, you know, it's frustrating. And this guy has 43 hours on record. That's more playtime than we had, you know? So it's just, I think that's an inherent thing in the game.

Okay. The next one recommended 248 hours on record before playing Monster Hunter. Why are we killing them? There's no reason to do such a cruel thing. This is genocide. After playing Monster Hunter... Hoooo! You Anjanath! Wait till I make some armor from your fairy skin! Oh, man. Yeah, especially if you've played games like Shadow of the Colossus in the past, where you've kind of learned that you're the bad guy hunting down all these big peaceful creatures but yeah monster hunter definitely brings out that like tribal inner

yeah you know violence that you just have to unleash i do think it's funny that these monsters are just living their lives but they happen to be where you need to build a camp sure you know or your caravan has to go through so they're're like, hey, Hunter, go slay that beast. And I'm like, dude, that beast is just living his life out there. Why do I got to go kill that guy? Yeah. All right. Last one, not recommended.

509 hours on record. This game. He really hates it. This game is a complete waste of time. You don't feel awesome and cool when fighting and killing these monsters. It feels like a chore and makes me want to hang myself when I even play this game for 10 minutes. Now, if you have 509 hours on record, how do you wind up leaving it a negative review because it takes a while to kill the monsters? Maybe he left it open, went on vacation, and then came back a week later and just left it open. I'll say this. We talked about it. The fights take a long time. And so if you're looking

for a quick little thing, this is not the game for you because these hunts are not quick. You've got to invest some time in it. I think, I think one night I actually had a few free hours. I managed to kill two monsters, and I think I played for a solid two to three hours at that point. And so it's not a fast pace in the sense of progression. Yeah. Yeah. That's a very good point. Yeah. All right, Paul. So that's some reviews. I purposely picked those so you have no idea what everybody thinks overall on this. But we're going to play a game where we try to guess the actual overall Steam reviews

for this game on a scale of 0 to 100. What do you think? Yeah, and I'm on a losing streak here. I've lost a couple in a row. This game, immensely popular. We had a lot of people suggest it for the show. I think you and I are in the minority by having a lot of frustrations with this game.

I think most people love it. I think it's going to be somewhere in the mid-90s. I'm going to say 93% or 94%. I'm going to say 93%. 93%. Okay. I already regret it. I already wish I went 94%, but I'll stick with 93%.

Okay. All right. You sure you don't want to change? Yeah. Final answer, 93%. All right. 93%. I think that there is a ton to enjoy on this game.

I feel like it's not going to be for everybody. If it's your kind of game, you're probably going to be one of those people that spends a thousand hours in it and gets completely so much entertainment value for the money that you spend on it. I do think that there's some issues with how complicated it is. And technically, it's not completely sound and stuff like that i guessed 88 oh oh 88 okay yeah before i forget i kept having my game crash with escorting that stupid cart in the desert i sent you a print screen where i would get all the way what was that monster called like Like the Baroth or something like that.

And it's like a full, I don't know, like 10 minutes of escorting this cart. And every time that the Baroth would come out, I would get a GPU error and my whole game would crash. I had to do it three times in a row. And I messaged you and I said, if this crashes again, like I'm not playing any more of this game.

Like I am not doing this again and that did the trick because then it did run through just fine but every once in a while i did have graphical glitches especially in astera i would get it looked like 700 snipers with green laser pointers oh all over oh yeah i was having a lot of problems and this game is a few years old. I've got updated graphics on my 2080 and I was having a lot of issues with the graphics and even having the crashes. So I don't know what was up with that, but I definitely had some technical problems as well. It's not super technically sound. Um, it works. It's not, it's not completely bug ridden, but it's just not, it's not real strong in the technical department either.

So I guessed 88%. The actual is 90. No, I'm just kidding. It's 86%, Paul. You lose again. Wow, 86. I'm surprised it's that low given the fact that it's sold over 17 million copies. That's kind of crazy. low given the fact that it's sold over 17 million copies a lot crazy a lot of the negative reviews

were technical issues pc port uh multiplayer connectivity issues there wasn't a ton of complaints about the gameplay itself yeah you know but a lot of the hard feelings on this were people bought it and it didn't work very well for him for a while yeah i think as far as multiplayer goes sea of thieves was still the hardest game to party up oh but i would say monster hunter world is second second worst trying to party only because of xbox game pass too but yeah you might be right we spent hours trying to party up and see a thieves maybe we are dumb paul or maybe see if thieves is easier now i don't know but yeah the xbox game bar and the xbox app and xbox for pc oh man it was so confusing it really was all right all right you're on a hot streak i am and uh speaking of hot time to introduce this next segment, Paul. Hey, Pukei Pukei.

You want to come back to my nest and then I'll kill you? Oh, you're going to prank Mantis, huh? My brain went one route and then I was like, I cannot go down that route. Family friendly, Josh. And that's when I was like, i just gotta go i gotta pivot to

the killing the monster thing there oh man sorry it's fine you can get your praying mantis on josh that's true that's yeah i'm sure that's that's in monster hunter world somewhere all right time for make love marry or murder um this one's tough, man. Honestly, I'm struggling a little bit on this one because you and I, there are certain things. Our lives got very, very busy when it was time to play this game. So I know that we struggled to put in enough playtime to be able to talk about it. We did get the playtime in, but I do know that there were times where it felt a little bit like a chore, nothing to do with the game whatsoever, just, hey, life got busy. There are some very great things about this game that I want to be able to say, hey, I recognize and I think people will love it. But I also have to recognize that there were times where I was playing this and I was not having fun.

You know, most of that was in the beginning. Once I started getting going, I actually found that my enjoyment level went up a lot. But man, those first couple hours were just brutal, man. It's rough in the beginning. Like it's not, it does not leave a good first impression at all, you know? And so I'm part of me wants to murder this game because of that. But as a professional, I got to say, Hey, there's a lot to like in this game. This could easily be at the top of somebody's merry list. Like it's that kind of game. It's not for me. I'm

going to say it's a make love because there is an awful lot of enjoyment to be had if you can get through the first few hours of absolute frustration. All right. So that's funny that you say make love. That's almost like a compromise because i was gonna say you really can't rate this game make love simply because you're either gonna hate it or you're gonna sink hundreds of hours into it there's not really any middle ground i think for anyone who starts playing this you're gonna know pretty early on whether or not this is your cup of tea. It is not my cup of tea at all. All respect to Ranger Miller and everyone out there who loves Monster Hunter World. I get it. Kind of like Rocket League, right? I totally get why people love Rocket League. It is just not my personal cup of tea. Monster Hunter

World is exactly the same. Here's the thing. And I've said this about books and I've said it about video games. Whenever anyone says, oh, it's totally great, just fight your way through the first 100 pages of this book or through the first six hours of Monster Hunter World, my response is always, why? I have unlimited games I can pick up and play that aren't hard to learn that I can jump in and have fun right away. And so because of that reason, I'm going to say it's a murder for me personally. If I put in another 20 hours, I think I would have fun with maybe 10 of those 20 hours. I just don't think it's worth the investment. If you love games like Dauntless and Shadow of the

Colossus and you're into this, you're really going to love it. If you don't like those kinds of games, you're going to hate this one. It's a no for me, dog. Don't get me wrong. Like I said, there was part of me that wanted to murder it, but I do want to try to take a step back and say, I, there's a lot to like about it. I'm with you in the personal aspect of like, I don't think I will honestly ever play this game again, but I want to at least like recognize that there's an awful lot of game there to like for people, you know what I mean?

And so it's like, it's a very tough decision in that regard, because I get that there's a lot to love, but I think there's a lot to hate too. Yeah, the game is absolutely an achievement, right? It's very well thought out. It's very innovative. There is so much that I can respect about the game. But for me, having a 20-minute minute fight no matter how inventive the weapons are that i'm gonna be bored by minute four and that's exactly how i felt playing the game it was like really i'm still fighting this thing i figured out all the mechanics you know slice slice slice dodge slice slice dodge and i kind of figured all of this out. And I'm doing that for 10 minutes until I enter phase two. So just simply because of that, I just found the fights to be too long.

The learning curve is just not really worth it to me if I can play something else. So yeah, it was a little bit lower for me, but I can definitely appreciate what it does. All right. Well, Josh, let's go into our last segment here. Let's go to our leaderboard and see where this game stacks up. All right. If you're new to the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast, Josh and I have our overall leaderboard. Anytime we deep dive a game, we have to, sometimes we quickly agree, sometimes we have to argue and fight our way through it. But as a duo, we have to agree where we want to place it on our overall leaderboard.

So it's kind of like an order of what we would recommend to play, what we have enjoyed the most. It's a very subjective ruling. It's also going to build in some things like how many hours will I get out of it? How much does the game cost? How fun is it? All of these things are going to come into play. Our leaderboard currently has 55 games. And as we think about Monster Hunter World, just to throw out a couple of titles here, we've got games like Satisfactory at 6. We've got Resident Evil Village at 18, talking about Capcom. We've got Vermintide 2 at 27, The Cycle at 41, The Forest at 50, Hood Outlaws and Legends at 54. What are you thinking for Monster Hunter World?

I am thinking right in the low low meaning like closer to 40 30s okay so you'd put in the late 30s i i'm looking at like cuphead it takes to phasmophobia payday to thecle. I'd rather play Monster Hunter World over The Cycle. I'd rather... See, this is tough because I could see a group of people that all have 100 hours in this game that are grouping up to fight this monster. And one guy's using the big bagpipe gigantic weapon. You've got a tank. You've got a ranged guy like i can see that being a lot of fun for people in that coordinated multiplayer environment we didn't get to experience that so again you know we're we're approaching this from people that have played it for eight to ten

hours i think i mean i would probably put it just under well well, maybe I'd put it at 40, like just under Phasmophobia, just above Payday 2. Yeah, I think you're right around the right area. I was going to say I would put it below It Takes Two. I really enjoyed It Takes Two. I did too. If you want to put it even above Phasmophobia, I would be fine with that or right below. So I was thinking in that 3940 range also. So kind of interesting that we both kind of went to the same spot. But I think you like Phasmophobia more than me. Would you want to put this one above or one below? Phasmophobia is a lot of fun with friends if you can get into it.

I still play it with my daughter at least a couple times a week. And I find myself actually enjoying phasmophobia. So let's put it one below phasmophobia. Okay. Question. Is this going to go down for what people would say is our worst take? I think so. I think so too.

There are 100% going to be people that go, how on earth do you have Monster Hunter World 40 spots down on your leaderboard? I'm not listening to you guys ever again. And you know what? Different strokes for different folks, right? It's just personal preference. This didn't really do it for us. It's why we do the leaderboard, though. Honestly, we don't come out and say, hey, our leaderboard is the end-all be-all of all video game lists, right? Like, we do it to force ourselves to put these games into a spot on an arbitrary board that is completely subjective to two old guys, you know, that have different gaming takes. But you and I differ in game takes sometimes,

but then in this instance, like, we, I mean, we're dead on with each other for the most part. Yeah. This is one that you and I were both kind of like, I want to like this game, and I'm close to liking it, but I don't want to play, and we would have to kind of force each other. You tried to jump the gun a full week for this episode, which I thought – Are you going to tell me? Are you going to tell me? Are you going to tell me? I am 100% going to share this story because I thought it was so funny. We were due for a bonus round episode, and you were so sure that we had already put in a full two weeks of Monster Hunter World that you're like, yep, I pulled reviews, Paul.

I'm all ready to record. I'm like, that's great, but we're doing a bonus round, so we need to figure out a topic. Yeah, I was like, no's great, but we're doing a bonus round. So we need to figure out a topic. Yeah. I was like, no, it's not. It's mine. And then, and then it was funny because you went, no man, Monster Hunter World's next week. And then I went, I'm not playing anymore.

Your first words were actually crap. Does that mean I have to play more Monster Hunter World? And then it was like the next day you were like, I'm done with it. I'm not playing anymore. I'm ready to talk about it. man so funny so yeah you you felt like one week of monster hunter world was a full two it yeah it did feel like it but we wanted to like it we really did i don't think we're being unfair to it i just think this is one of those games you really love it or you just it has nothing for you and i i wish i liked it more uh apologies to everyone out there who loves it because 86 of you all love this game

yeah well you know we're the minority in that regard and and you know this is funny like i said ranger miller thank you number one for supporting the show thank you for picking a game i have always wanted to try monster hunter world and now i'm so glad we played it yeah i like honestly i am very glad that i can now know what this game is like i'm glad that i know that it's not 100 for me but there was some enjoyment to be had there um and you know it's like with legendary supporters there's there's there's like the, you know, people say, Hey, we're going to make you guys play Fortnite. And it's like, go ahead. Like that would be fun for us to trash Fortnite for an hour, you know? And then there's people that'll say, Hey, you know,

I want you to try this game. You guys have never heard of. It's not always about like, I want to pick a game that is like the greatest game ever or something like that. So, you know, thank you to Ranger Miller for, for picking this game for us, because I don't think we ever would have actually picked it up on our own. I am glad that I played it. I'm glad I had the experience. I apologize to people that love this game that we don't, but there you go. Yep. Yeah. Like I said, I think this will go down as the one that people will bring up and say, how could you both trash my favorite game monster hunter world? If you're still listening at this point now,

you know why? Yeah. And you guys know that we're not just going to say we like something simply because it came from a legendary supporter. We're always going to be truthful about what we think of these games. And, uh, I'm glad that we played it.

I don't think I'll pick it up ever again, but I'm, i'm open to the idea of a future monster hunter game you know i would not say never but i will say never again for this one i feel like i experienced enough of it and that chapter of my life is over all right well those of you who are curious to, our next deep dive in two Mondays will be The Forgotten City, which is not at all like Monster Hunter World. Could not be any more different, but we have covered a lot of time loop games, and Forgotten City is one of those, and it's a little bit more story-driven, and so I know that you and I are looking forward to talking

about that. You and I have both already beaten forgotten city. So we are currently working ahead a little bit. We would love to know what games you guys would like us to cover. So come let us know on discord. Use that link in the episode description. Our discord is free and open for anyone to join. Come let us know there or on social media at multiplayer pod. I think that's it.

That's all we got for today. This may be our longest episode ever, Paul. It's going to be very close. After we edit it, we'll have to see. I think it's going to come out to be about an hour 23 or hour 24, something like that. Yeah. But that's it for here today.

We'll see you guys on Thursday for This Week in Gaming. All right. See you, everybody.