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"Are you gonna re-boost this every day until the game comes out?"

Me:

Less than twelve hours now

Stayed up until 2:30am playing

'sgood

sleepy

more later

just straight up showing off with the food animation now :P

Okay, initial impressions:

-It does feel like the first couple of monster fights are a little easier than you'd expect. Maybe it's because there's no gathering or small monster quests to start you off? It feels like the Balahara quest is where the first large monster fights were in previous games. It does ramp up pretty quickly after that, tho.

-I love the variety in monsters, your first fights are all incredibly different, it's great :D

-The plot feels like it rockets ahead without much regard for what you want to do. There's not much chance to stop and improve your armor and weapons, or gather freely.

-That being said, the plot is LEAGUES better than anything we've seen in a MH game before. Like, someone actually understands rising and falling action and what a plot beat is. Holy shit.

-Speaking of variety, can I just say I *genuinely appreciate* how many black and brown people there are in this game? And the variety in physical builds, gender, and things. Like, I appreciate that this game can be normal about people who don't fit the Buff Hunter Badass stereotype.

-And there hasn't been ONE meathead alpha male character, it's great! The stolid hammer user is a butch lady, she's awesome.

Anyway apparently the armor with Wide-Range comes from the goddamn TICK WYVERN so I've got a little ways to go before I get really set up. Whee! :D

Oh also, check out the most dangerous monster I've found so far; the dastardly camping tent! :o :o :o

Cactuar Joe

There we go, got my first Wide-Range set. Now I can be an actual support character :D

So when you take a picture with the in-game photo mode -- since there aren't any cameras in the world of -- a Palico comes in and *paints* your picture instead. :3

The Jin Dahaad fight is pretty great, it's like beating up a living radiator :D

Stupid octopus won't give me its brain fluid >:(

So the mainline story is only about 20 hours long. Honestly I don't know what people were on about when they said it "feels unfinished," that felt like a solid ending to me.

Would you believe I saw someone complain the story was too similar to Lord of the Rings? I want to watch the version of LotR THAT person was watching :P

Also I like that Alma, your Handler, specifically has to authorize you to hunt things. Points up that you're not there just casually wiping out species because they looked at you funny.

'Course that does create a little friction later in the game when you're just seeing what pops up in a given environment and running off to kill it for a new pair of shoes, but :P

Minerva's taken to sitting next to me while I hunt. Nice to have an IRL Palico :3

I think Xu Wu may be my favorite new monster. A leech octopod with extendible needle-like blades at the tip of each arm that it can fire off at you, plus it's got a mouth like a big glowing blue W and a nice hat :D

Ha ha oh man the best post-hunt victory screen yet :P

Anyway that's a three-hour session and no crashes, I'm calling that a win. Hopefully no further annoyances crop up.

Mark my words, they're gonna add Rajang to and have an arena quest with all the great apes at once. They're gonna call it A Barrel of Monkeys. I'm bookmarking this toot, I am absolutely 100% right about this.

Okay, I've got all the farms unlocked, finished most of the plot stuff so we're not getting weird weather lockouts, so I'm getting a constant stream of Herbs and Bitterbug Broth and Adamant Seeds and Might Seeds. Now I just need to find a consistent source of Nourishing Extract and I'll have my support build's item pipeline totally sorted :D

The Quematrice quest is short and sweet. Nice source of a solid ingredient, too. It's fun to see if I can paralyze the monster twice and cut the tail before the fight ends :P

Man I don't know whose idea it was to put actual tiny little timers on buff emblems on the buff bar, but I would like to open mouth kiss them on the observation deck of the Seattle Space Needle on New Year's Eve, while I nervously finger the engagement ring I'm about to present to them in my off-hand.

We shall have a spring wedding.

@xerozohar More games need cat artists that teleport in to craft your screenshots by hand :D

@CactuarJoe the ole' narrative-gameplay balance. It's tricky.

@CactuarJoe cus like, it'd be tedious to be like "need new shoes, plz authorize hunt"

@CactuarJoe yeah i loved this too. its nice to finally see this aspect of the worldbuilding in game

@CactuarJoe I’ve been lucky I guess and haven’t had one crash? About 12 hours in so far.

@ezwal Oh, yeah, I was getting crashing because I accidentally put the PC in standby while playing. Had to do a hard reset and reinstall to fix some corrupted files. Thankfully stable now :P

Before that, I had a grand total of... I think two crashes. And none during the mainline quest. The game has its problems, but it's been pretty stable for me, outside of my own comedy errors :P