Monster Hunter: World is one of the best games available to buy, period. This fact is as true in the icy bowels of December as it was almost two years ago. It’s a franchise that had been so refined, over previous incarnations, that it was in a position to tackle a whole new market: Western home-console gamers. Not only did it tackle that market, but it succeeded in creating a gratifying gameplay loop worthy of just over 240 hours of my time. This figure isn’t an estimate, it’s the amount of time played on my hunter as I load up the Iceborne expansion for the first time, and adamantine-strong proof that the game is a masterpiece.
This year, 2019, could go down as a banner year for expansions. As we approach December and bloggers and journalists start thinking about Game of the Year contenders, one of the games I’d throw into the mix is Final Fantasy XIV’s Shadowbringers expansion, and I was ready to usher Iceborne into the same category.
The expansion follows on from the main story in Monster Hunter: World. You need to reach a point in the existing story before you can access Iceborne content, but you don’t need to be at the point where you’re farming Tempered Elder Dragons. In many ways, this is a very accessible expansion. In particular, two of the hardest ‘gateway’ hunt missions have been lifted and any player who has downed the original game’s story boss can walk straight into Hoarfrost Reach.
As with any expansion, there is a plethora of new content. This includes, most notably, new monsters, a new hub area, a new field area and new weapons and armour. Of course, there are other new elements, but these are the big five you should actually care about. The major difference is that most games that have expansions feature a level cap that gets bumped up. Take World of Warcraft’s Burning Crusade which moved the cap from 60 to 70, or the aforementioned Final Fantasy XIV, which lifted their own cap from 50 to 60 in Heavensward.
Monster Hunter’s progression system isn’t strictly measured in levels, more so, progression is linked to gear. Like that moment where a cap of 50 becomes a cap of 60, what you had previously devalues greatly, and Iceborne is no different.
The fully upgraded Elder Dragon gear most players had at the end of World pales in comparison to gear available just two hunts into Iceborne’s main story. Not only does your gear become obsolete, but your Hunter Rank does too, with Master Rank replacing it as a rough reflection of skill and progression. Along with Master Rank, comes new life to old monsters, who now become tougher and have new gear sets featuring their parts to acquire. Take even the game’s weakest monster – Great Jagras. The Master Rank gear from this monster puts some High Rank Elder Dragon gear to shame. For want of a better phrase, Iceborne resets the bar, and all hunters who are eligible for Iceborne content, regardless of previous experience, have to start by obtaining a ‘Rarity 9’ weapon of their choice.
All of this is part of the plan, as you can start the addictive gameplay loop and the climb back up to gear superiority all over again. Toss in improved armour aesthetics and some amazing weapon designs and the game really does feel like new life has been breathed into it. The new hub area of Seliana helps too. It’s icy ‘Viking’ feel is a good contrast to Astera’s tropical port, and all the functionality you had previously are now conveniently in one place. Gone are the lifts and levels, Seliana is Astera with a quality of life upgrade and a grandma palico to cook you dinner.
Then there’s the field area of Hoarfrost Reach. This snowy biome is designed to make even the cold and compulsive farmers warm up to the idea. The attention to detail, the feel of the snow and ice and the monsters who live here all fit in perfectly. Wading through waist-deep snowdrifts to tackle a new monster gives hunting a fresh feel, it gives a well-worn JRPG biome a new standard to live up to. No one, save for Rockstar (Red Dead Redemption II) has quite mastered the frozen tundra like Capcom have here.
The cast of added monsters is solid, and without spoiling anything I can say that there are some old favourites that return and some newcomers who leave their mark. Appearance aside, all of these monsters are designed to be, at the bare minimum, end-game content. One of the ways Iceborne separates itself from the plethora of expansions that have complimented games in the past is that it never throws you an easy pitch. The difficulty curve you were on in the original World content hasn’t been reset, this is just a continuation of the climb. To get down to what you’re striving towards, it also appears that the development team worked on their endgame grind, designing a whole new area to help give players options as they once again enter the endgame of an endgame experience.
I was about ready to just call the game perfect and walk away.
However, there are some not-so-minor flaws. Iceborne introduced a few changes to combat, notably the addition of the clutch claw. Most of the other combat changes are weapon specific and very minor, while the claw itself sees the slinger go from being a hunting accessory to a mandatory component. This is an issue.
No matter how you wanted to play the original game, or with which weapon, there wasn’t a fixed way you had to take down a monster. You were never required to use a specific item or feature. Yes, some people will argue that certain weapons and builds are better than others, but no weapon wasn’t viable nor was a single weapon so powerful that not using it made you irrelevant.
In Iceborne, that’s no longer the case. Let me say right away, that weapon balancing still isn’t a problem. Someone using a Great Sword has no major advantage over someone using the Charge Blade or Sword and Shield. There may be situational advantages, if used by talented players who know the ins and outs of each weapon but there is no clear ‘advantageous weapon.’ That said, I would still rank the Hunting Horn as a poor choice for solo hunts.
With the addition of Master Rank and the clutch claw, that balance has been disrupted. I played most of the original game without using many items outside of potions. I didn’t really bring flash pods, dung pods or traps with me on hunts. I’d just use my (Insect) Glaive and potions. I could take down a Teostra or Nergigante on my own without many problems, and had been killing Tempered Elder Dragons solo for quite some time. What I liked was the option to use items to get me out of a bind, rather than relying on them as an everyday part of hunting. Using bombs or support items was nice, it would have made the encounters marginally easier, or marginally faster at the expense of the cost of those items, but it was never in doubt that you could bring down a monster without them.
When you’re in Master Rank, you are hamstrung without the clutch claw. Yes, I know that all hunters have it and it doesn’t cost anything to use or use effectively, but due to the sheer amount of damage you can get out of it – and the inflated health pools in Master Rank hunts – not using it makes you useless. A hunt that would take 15-20mins with the clutch claw takes 30+ without. No weapon is a ‘good choice’ when placed against it. Even the hard hitting Great Sword can’t do the 700+ damage you can get on a monster when you use the claw to drive the creature into a wall. Clutch-claw-forced damage is now second only to Turf War damage in terms of ‘burst’ output.
Sure, the enrage mechanic is there to prevent the spamming of this ability, but every hunt now becomes focused on using the claw whenever you get a chance, rather than using your chosen weapon or laying traps or the environment. The gaps open to use the claw are moments in the past you would have used to wind up for a massive combo or slam. These Master Rank hunts are so clearly designed for players to use, and abuse, the clutch claw system that they don’t function as ‘hunts’ in the way that players are used to if you ignore the claw.
I understand the need to add a new gameplay element with the expansion, but the clutch claw is mandatory for successful farming. What I’d like to see to help balance things out is a 20% reduction in the damage done by the claw (and claw-forced environmental effects) and a 10% decrease in the health of monsters of Master Rank. This should make the traditional form of combat more viable without making the clutch claw useless.
In particular, the weapons that benefit greatly from the claw include the Great Sword, Charge Blade and Switch Axe. These are are slow, heavy hitting weapons that are difficult to mount the monster with using conventional means. The claw lets you open a weak spot on the monster and perform a type of ‘half-mount’ which allows you a free hit at the monster. The claw’s utility is not the problem, rather how it trivialises the use of some of the more difficult weapons to master.
I can see the claw being a hotly-debated topic between players on Reddit and the forums, but overall it doesn’t hurt the game as a multiplayer experience, but it does need some balancing when it comes to solo hunting. Four average-skilled hunters can turn one monster into a giant weak point within seconds and then pound it into oblivion in mere minutes. A better-than-average solo hunter needs to time their claw usage perfectly and play a flawless hunt, expending items and explosives at the perfect times to even stand a chance of coming within 5mins of that time.
The claw throws off the balance of the game, and it was fine previously.
Other additions to combat include new items, decorations and environmental hazards that can be exploited to deal damage, but the major improvement in Iceborne is the addition of around 10 new monsters. That feels like a small number, and is certainly not what the game advertised. The truth is that a lot of the monsters are the same type of reskin that is akin to Azure Rathlos v Rathlos, Pink Rathian v Rathian, Lavasioth v Jyuratodus and many others. I’m fairly new to Monster Hunter, having jumped on board with World, but this still feels a little lazy to me. There’s an entire globe of real-life animal and insectoid creatures from which to draw inspiration, and almost a century of cinematography to help with some of the weirder and wackier aspects of designing a good monster. It strikes me as somewhat unusual that there aren’t more ‘original’ monsters here. This game has been really good at adding new monsters via events, such as The Witcher 3’s Leshen, Kulve Taroth and Deviljo. I was expecting more of the same in Iceborne. We get that… kind of. But most of the ‘variant’ monsters fight similarly to their existing counterparts, you just change up the element you defend against and attack with.
I will say that despite being re-skins, it’s the mechanics behind Nightshade Palomu and Ebony Odogaron are some of my favourite changes. They might look like palette swaps, but do fight in a unique and different way. It’s a shame that can’t be said for all of the colour-rush monsters.
The base game was very good at introducing threats to you, and in Iceborne they’ve doubled down on the process. The way that every monster is introduced to you is 100% bad ass. The little cutscenes as each creature arrives are done to perfection and do what a lot of games fail to do in this day and age: create the feeling of adversity.
I genuinely can’t remember the last time I saw a bad guy arrive on screen and had to quiet my internal monologue of ‘Oh, crap… this thing is going to kill me.’ Perhaps you have to go back as far as Bloodborne. The arrival of Velkhana as it emerges from the icy smoke is brilliant, while Tigrex’s appearance made me want to run in the opposite direction. Each of these introductions is made all the more meaningful because in many of them these creatures tear apart monsters you spent hours hunting in the original game. To an outsider something mauling an Odogaron in a few seconds is cool and deadly, but to a hunter who struggled to bring one down it serves as a warning – this is a challenge beyond what you’ve done before.
That, in essence, is Monster Hunter’s brilliance.
Conclusion
Iceborne is somewhat difficult to summarise, because your experience with it is entirely dependent on whether or not you liked the base game. Anyone who found Monster Hunter: World to be a fun and appealing game will be easily enamoured by an expansion that adds so much to the experience. Those who likened the original game to Dark Souls, and were hoping for Iceborne to be a tonic for them will leave sorely disappointed. From my standpoint, I really struggled to find something wrong with the game. The more I play it, the less bothered I become about the clutch claw and the monsters. The armour sets are spectacular – not only aesthetically – but functionally. The Velkhana set genuinely made me want to start using more elemental weapons. The higher-tier ‘part farm’ also started to feel like it meant something again. No longer was I just reaching into this seemingly endless bag of Elder Dragon parts that I had farmed at the end of World and dipping into a bank account that never seemed empty. There’s something new to collect and more powerful gear to craft, and that’s the rewarding gameplay loop players look for in a Monster Hunter game.
It’s beyond unfair to try and review Iceborne as an individual entity, so I refuse. But if you were to absorb its content and ask me to give my opinion on Monster Hunter: World, there is no denying that this is as close to gaming perfection as this type of game can get at present. Capcom’s 2019 has been spectacular, with Devil May Cry V, Resident Evil 2 and this all stacking up to make the penultimate year of the PS4 one to remember.
It’s a real shame that they messed up the PC release so that ‘Master Race’ players had to wait until January. In fact, the only reason I’m fighting 1080p resolution in arguably the prettiest game of the year is because the PC version of Monster Hunter: World did not come out at the same time as the console version.
I’m not even sure the team behind the game had any say in this decision, but it’s one that we (as gamers) shouldn’t have to tolerate in 2019. In reality, this is the only blemish on a slate of gaming perfection.
Fatelighter 