Monster Hunter World: Iceborne (2024)

So, Monster Hunter World! Again! Last year I made the review for the base game, promising I’d check out the DLC on its own, and here I am! After calling quits right by the end!

Yeah, the game won. I was able to finish the main campaign of the DLC and go a bit into the extra content before the grinding ground me to dust right at the gates of the final super extra boss. I have more than enough material for a review and frankly killing the final boss or not won’t change my overall impressions, but I will return after a while to finish what I started.

SO WHAT IS IT ABOUT?

After beating Xeno’jiiva and saving the world, the Sapphire Star Hunter and… ugh… the Handler realize that there is something else amiss in the new world: Once more, monsters are being dislocated from their habitats causing chaos, but this time, there is more than it meets the eye, for the mysterious song that heralds devastation is linked with The Handler’s grandfather’s past and the precursors of the fourth fleet… and a new are in the new continent, the Hoarfrost Reach!

What lies within this snow covered region? What’s the link between the glowing crystal, the Handler’s grandpa and these new monsters? And what is the singer of such a song that heralds destruction?

Monster Hunter World Iceborne is a DLC pack that basically overhauled World, giving new mechanics and moves for nearly every single weapon, introducing a heap of new monsters and two new areas: Hoarfrost Reach and The Guiding Lands (its a bit of a spoiler, but its immediately revealed as soon as you log in, because every time someone goes to Guiding Lands, the game announces it for everyone in the server… thanks Capcom!).

VISUALS

One of Monster Hunter’s strongest assets is its visual identity, and here nothing changed much. There is the new village of Seliana to serve as a Hub, taking cues from Astera and adapting it in new ways. If Astera was an old settlement made from the remnants of a fleet, Seliana is a new village made from spit and desperation that slowly evolves as the campaign progress. If Astera had the Meowscles Chef to cook your meals, in Seliana there is the Babushcat- I mean Grammeowster Chef, and speaking of which, the cats are still as adorable as ever. You get a new room, and this time you can not only customize it a lot more, you can let people visit it! And show how much you spent in cosmetic microtransactions for a new rug!

Armor designs still range from ‘meh’ to ‘oh my gods this is awesome’, and an insane level of customization has been added: Now you can change how your armor and weapons look like… if you finish the main campaign of the DLC… and go through another heap of grinding. Sure, this was available in World, but only for specific sets, and now you can add nearly ANY armor and weapon design provided you suffer and be lucky enough!

On the topic of weapons, sadly their design will be just the usual ‘club with x monster pattern’ or ‘bone/steel sword with x pattern’ which is lackluster. There are still some really cool pieces (like the Ice Wyrm weapons), but those are a few and… most of the time you won’t be able to use their designs in your own weapons, what the hell Capcom!?

Hoarfrost Reach is an interesting map with a good variation on the snow theme: From snow forests to snow fields and gorgeous glacial caves and geyser areas. Sadly on the other hand, the Guiding lands at first look interesting and then… it just devolves into a mishmash of already seen biomes. They could have done something more original than a Frankenstein map.

On the Monsters to be hunted, there are some really good designs (I really loved the design of the Everwyrm) mixed with bleh and repetitive designs. I got tired of just seeing reskin of dragons over and over. But on the good news, the cinematic direction is still as sharp as ever. They are still really good at amping the tension and showing, not telling, details about the environment and the monsters you’re gonna face.

GAMEPLAY

Its undeniable that Iceborne brought a heap of new content. Some of it was good, some of it was bad, and some of it was hella ugly. Starting from the HUB section, Seliana is more interesting than Astera. Since its a village that was just built, its simply easier to go around from corner to corner to find the correct person to give you food or upgrade your materials. Astera was quite visually interesting, but it was a pain to always use the elevators to get anywhere or worse, climb looonng stairs. Now there is the option to help the Steamworks in a game of ‘guess the order’ to win prizes, in the new gathering hub you can frolic on the pools, sauna or feet pools, and talk to the butler right next to the researches to get to your room, training section or deal with the palico squads, but sadly, the animation of the cats running to explore was axed.

The difficulty was ramped up with monsters taking and dishing a lot more damage than before, their movements are faster and more lethal, so if properly gearing up for a hunt was a suggestion in World, now its a demand. This by itself would be at most a nuisance, since now it takes three times more for you to deal with a target… if it wasn’t for the insane grinding.

I gotta deal with this first and foremost since its the DLC’s worst and most glaring flaw: Grinding came back WITH A VENGEANCE. Hey kids, why not fight all the monsters you fought before AGAIN? And with DIFFERENT COLOR PALETTES!? Now there is ANOTHER rare ingredient to get from the monsters that is even rarer than gems (mantle)! And after the main campaign is done, MORE GRINDING for levels! yaaaay! Yes,while this expansion welcomes you with a batch of monsters (like Banbaro, whom you’ll soon learn to loathe because he spawns EVERY MAP), you’ll have to hunt again the same crew that you hunted at least three times, before finally giving us the Variant Monsters and the new ones. At least the new armor sets are still quite cool.

Seriously, if there is an element that didn’t just break the camel’s back, but downright smashed it like a piledriver, it was the grinding. In World, it was boring, but manageable, but here (after the main campaign) it’s completely off the rails, more details in the Spoiler section, but it got so bad, you have to grind for grinding. Yes, you read that right. With the new monsters and their variants coming about, the need to get better gear increases exponentially, soon you’ll end up hunting the same monster again and again to make armor that will last at most two ‘tiers’, whereas in World a specific set of armor could help you four or more. Need a specific decoration? You can go to the melder for a new gacha game where you exchange tickets for a chance of getting the gem you want. Need to meld a specific rare monster part that is insanely hard to get through grinding? Oh hey you need a specific ticket for that! How do you get the ticket? Grind weekly missions! Is your defense too low? You’ll need more armor spheres that you can get by…

Every new layer of this game has some sort of grinding attached to it. The furnace recharges over time, but if you really want the chance to get those juicy tickets, you’ll have to mine for extra coal to burn. Want to change the visual of your armor? Grind. And remember, you have to grind through enormously strong monsters. This means going several times against a meaty beast that will take at least half hour to take down. Sure, you can get better equipment and come back later… but why would you? If you can beat a big beast in five minutes, it means you’re grinding for peanuts, and to advance further you need to grind somewhere else.

In a better ‘grinding balance’, either you have tough monsters that you only need to beat two or three times, or weaker monsters that can finish faster, because having both ends in an extenuating grinding cycle. It happens here, viciously. To make things worse, the grinding progression is forced for specific tiers. This means that, unlike World, I can’t ‘skip’ a tier or two by being crafty and beating stronger monsters, because to craft their gear you’ll need a bone or stone that will only show up far later. Later tiers are even worse, demanding you to gather one or two specific monster tickets per piece of gear, and you can only get one (two if you’re lucky) ticket per try in a specific event.

And the more you advance, worse it gets. Tougher monsters will demand specific builds that need specific materials, get to grinding! And specific monsters will have timed damage caps, as in, ‘if you don’t do X amount of damage in five minutes, you fail’. Hey what happened to ‘take your time and planning’? Lots of these new beasts feel unbalanced, either by damage output, lack of weaknesses except in dangerous moments (looking at you Stygian Zinogre) or they are just way too fast for the character to follow. As in, they demand faster reaction times that your character, not you, the player, will have. It starts feeling less of a challenging awesome battle (like fighting Nergigante) to a chore (like waiting five minutes of Furious Rajang attacking nonstop for a tiny window of retaliation) to downright frustrating (‘If you don’t deal X elemental damage to a monster in Y time, it will escape/nuke you’ fights).

The final nail in the coffin is that the weapon balance is awful. You have first-tier weapons that will vastly surpass weaponry made with top elder dragon material. This may seem a bit of a pet-peeve, but games like Monster Hunter live by rewarding the players with better material after a grueling fight. If the weapon I can make after killing the Obliterating Beast of a Thousand Laser Eyes is actually worse than the Stick-Of-Ice made from Ice-Floppy-Fish scales, why bother? The end tier weapons need extra grinding tied to time-limited events! And since now lots of monsters are insanely fast or will attack non-stop, users of slower weapons like lance (or the three people that use gunlance) were royally shafted.

But honestly? I wouldn’t have lasted this long if it was this awful all the time. The new monsters are fun additions, adding new mechanics and forcing new strategies. The variants even caught me unaware with new moves! Some monsters are immune to specific traps, through specific moments, forcing the player to adapt on the fly. There are new tools to use and new ways to explore the scenario. This will be more of a personal pet peeve for some, but I actually enjoyed being pushed to learn how to use other weapons more suited for specific monsters (its just that grinding to get good versions of said weapons is what kills it) its part of ‘learning how to be a good hunter’ means, though I understand that some people like to use one weapon only and will be miffed by the idea. If you liked World, you’ll just find that fights are now tougher, and you can explore the first part of the campaign up to the Everwyrm boss without much of a hassle, and downing tougher monsters do offer a nice sense of satisfaction. Kirin can still rot in hell though.

The new grapple mechanics were a really good addition and now there are awesome moves for weapons like the Charge Blade (I can turn it into a CIRCULAR SAW AXE!) and each new mechanic is properly explained this time (up till you get to the Grinding Lands, which then turns into a clusterfrag, or the event weapons, info on them still sucks), so the amount of time needed visiting a wiki isn’t as grueling. I also have to admit that the Guiding Lands was an interesting addition to remind folks of older MH games, where you just stay in a single map hunting monster after monster without coming back to the main base for a long while. This ‘new’ mechanic (at least to me, since I starter MH properly with world) was quite refreshing, especially since you can tailor it to your needs by luring specific monsters after properly researching them (and researching doesn’t take that much grinding) except the extra mechanics, but more on the spoiler section.

WRITING

This will be a weird one. Judging the story of Monster Hunter is like judging the story of a Rockman game. Its the same beats: Dr Wiwy- sorry, Dr. Wily is threatening the world and you need to fight eight robot masters? Here a beast is threatening the balance of the region and you must go through a gauntlet of other beasts till you find the source of the unbalance. So its less ‘what’ is being told and ‘how’. And here, Iceborne at the same time follows the same steps of World, to the point it gets not only predictable but silly, and tries something new in a scattered way. Sometimes it results in a stupid moment, for example trying to defend what’s behind a wall (Akin to the Zorah Magdaros stage)… from a FLYING wyvern.

To the chagrin of many, it sort of focuses on the Handler and her grandpa’s story. Luckily she got a bit wiser and less annoying, but will still run towards danger from time to time. The story tries to put her up in a mystery alongside the Tracker, an old lady researcher, as if both were bonding over the loss of the Handler’s grandpa, but its so scattered that I downright forgot about it sometimes. Or what’s the purpose of this story, or what’s this even about. Handler’s grandpa was researching the same song that is making the monsters crazy, but it keeps giving hints of a mystery that isn’t there, it just… goes on.

In fact, by trying to go their own tangent, yet following the same formula of World, things get downright bizarre at times, like: “Hey, we found a new species! Its huge and gorgeous!” “Is it the responsible for the song?” “No.” “Then move on.” which contradicts how World treated every single new monster with reverence and awe. There is also a small substory about the grandson of the chief becoming the leader of Seliana, but it also doesn’t go anywhere relevant. Although, pretty much like the plot in Rockman game, the story is secondary to smashing a gigantic electric dragon’s face with an axe made of the claw of a water beast. What’s important is that A- Everything still works like an organism with everyone acting in tandem B- Even then your character is treated like a badass that can not only punch Cthulhu in the face, but make an armor and weapon out of its tentacles and C- Grammeowster is adorable and will hit you with her ladle if you go to hunt without properly eating first. The final fight against the everwyrm is quite good as well, both in presentation, threat and a violent bombastic struggle, making it worth go that far.

Then you finish the main campaign… and things bizarrely repeat themselves. Suddenly there is another threat that is unbalancing stuf- wait, there is ANOTHER one, off you go! But wait, there is more! Yes. The game keeps repeating the same storyline within the same expansion. In the end, it’s the same as the gameplay. Don’t take everything at once. Finish the main campaign, then give a break, return after some weeks or months, and take the next part. Its not bad, its fun Monster Hunter style (just not as good or well-done as World) but its repeating nature will burn out people fast.

SOUNDTRACK

While the quality didn’t change much, the style of the music of Iceborne did. If in World most monsters (up to the Elder Dragons) had more of an ‘escalating’ soundtrack, now every monster has their own theme. They’re good, nothing superb, but good! Varied with themes that range from rampaging and bombastic to… jazz? Yeah, you read it right. Out of the tracks, I still like Teostra/Lunastra’s themes and the Everwyrm’s best. The voice acting keeps the same level of quality without many changes.

Final Thoughts

This is definitely a fun game, but for the Sapphire Star’s sake, do not try to finish it all in one go. This is one of those rare games that its better to be done either with a bunch of friends, and/or with pauses. Kinda like Helldivers 1. Take your time, if you feel that the grinding is making things feel like a chore, don’t be afraid of uninstalling it, play something else then return when you’re clear-headed. If you’re interested in playing this game, (and/or if you enjoyed this review) you can get it by clicking the image below! _{Though a reminder, these are affiliate links from Amazon, from which, as an associate, I will earn from qualified purchases.}