After playing it since its release, it's time for a review. At first, the game didn't leave a good impression because we started stuck with a Sword and Shield at the beginning until we hit HR 15 (Our level), and the rest at Chapter 2 completion. Luckily, I ended up using the sword and shield as my main.
📖 Storyline: The story is a basic visual novel style. It's decent but not enough to keep players invested too much in it.
🎨 Graphics: Realistic and satisfying animation. Sadly, even with low resolution and optimization, the game will have a few lag spikes and FPS drops for mid-range phones which will hinder gameplay.
🎵 Sound: Great choice of music. The sound effects were also realistic and immersive. Never get bored of the loading screen music.
🕹️ Controls: Simple but immersive if you're mainly a mobile gamer. But even with its simplicity, it will surprise you with a few attack combinations, rewarding perfect dodges and charges. It was mind-blowing.
👥 Multiplayer: Most players here prefer to solo but they'll notice having a party of equal strength will make hunting more easier and fun. The co-op feature was great but its flaw is you can't be friends with the random player who helped you from dozens or hundreds of meters away like a mysterious hero lol.
🛍️ In-game Purchases: It's 100% possible to F2P (Free to Play) in this game but I see a lot of ways this game can urge players to pay up.
1. Potions: healing is terrible. Players have to play carefully if not, they'll have to wait for 15mins for 30 HP or 50mins to full HP or use 1-2 Potions to heal up. Rushing players to buy them during their grind day.
2. Wander Items: When your movements are limited an important monster spawns too far from your reach. Therefore, players are forced to use these items to hunt for better/required monsters.
3. Multiplier: Hunting for material is going to be harder after fighting against 5-6 star monsters which will greatly stunk the player's progress. This is the perfect time for them to start spending on it.
🦸 Character Diversity: It's possible to win with any equipment build. But some require more effort and practice to work. The player has to make sure they researched it and won't change their mind using that build because our materials are limited to only 1 or 2 builds.
💖 Overall Experience: There are a lot of limitations. That's what I expected when Niantic was involved in developing this game. Players living in rural areas such as myself will get stuck far behind in progress because rare materials don't spawn here forcing rural area players to travel in the city. But I'm still motivated and invested enough to keep playing this game as this is my first monster hunter game. I even coped with the terrible progression. This game could use some more polishing but that's going to be difficult with Niantic around.
I have mixed feelings about whether I should recommend this game. Overall, it is great!