Monster Hunter World: Iceborne In-Progress Review

Monster Hunter World: Iceborne is an expansion for last year’s Monster Hunter World. Following the base game’s story, you explore the new area called Hoarfrost Reach, it expands the core experience with the new Master Rank, which is similar to G-Rank from previous entries in the series. In essence, this is hard mode following the normal and easy mode, High and Low rank respectively. Being an expansion on World, a lot of comparisons will be made for you to understand what sets it apart.

Previously, Monster Hunter games that were brought to the West were the Ultimate editions, which means a lot of people that started playing in previous games had all three levels of difficulty. With World bucking that trend as a mainline entry, giving us only Low and High Rank similar to Generations, some longtime fans found the core loop to be slightly lacking. Fortunately, Iceborne delivers big-time. Whereas before, the game had a very slimmed down experience, with very streamlined content for a point A to point B experience. Iceborne takes an entirely different route, allowing you to wander around and really experience everything. It offers you the cake with an entire buffet of content to consume at your leisure, with Optionals giving you lots of multi-Monster hunts and even some gathering quests to break the monotony and take the sights in.

I'll take 20 of them, no, your entire stock please.

Where World took its time to set up the universe of Monster Hunter and its ecosystem, with a string of random events that create a narrative. Iceborne takes an express lane story approach, with the most consistent narrative seeing you chase after Velkhana(the game’s flagship Monster) as it threatens the ecosystem, and being part of the Fifth Fleet/Sapphire Star, it’s your goal to avert such a catastrophe. It’s one of the better stories in the series, but that’d be like saying it’s the best flavour of crisps, it’s still a packet of crisps.

But the reality is, like World, you’re there to kill Monsters for your new pair of hot trousers and skinning them to make your weapons look cooler. That’s honestly what counts, if you’ve spent 500hrs+ in base game, you’ll probably have everything considered meta or run some form of it and until mid to late game, you’ll probably breeze right through it, with that gear lasting until mid to late game. The main story itself is a 12-30hr experience depending on the player’s skill and experience with the base game/series.

The new clutch claw mechanic, whilst met with heavy skepticism from the community for being potentially too much of a useless gimmick that’s used once every so often. Is remarkably not so, where the mad people at Capcom made something that could’ve been a meme and joke for the community into something incredibly usable, that without it, would actively ruin the experience. Having a very low skill floor, it easily has a high skill ceiling weapon that can make the hunting experience more dynamic. Allowing players to be even more creative and inventive with the use of crowd control, where being in groups can lead to a lot of team synergy and is even more rewarding than ever before.

Unfortunately bad monsters remain the same as they were.

As for the core gameplay loop, it’s more Monster Hunter but the Ultimate edition. The game demands the best from players with all Master Rank Monsters having new moves and being a lot tougher to face in general. The addition of the Clutch Claw helps feed back to the dynamic of a hunt, where both sides try to be that dominant force. Gone are the days of trip locks directly with Monsters, in is the struggle for survival of who’s the mightier force. If you’re a new player, this will prove challenging and is potentially a turnoff for those looking for a clean/short experience. Whilst not for everyone, if the core loop of the base game World didn’t tickle your fancy Iceborne won’t change that. But, if you’re someone who felt World was significantly lacking in the endgame department, Iceborne is a welcome return to form with previous Ultimate entries.

As for the gear side, they can be considered an upgrade for the most part, if previous Monster Hunter games fashion sense was a baseline. With a large portion of the armour harkening back to previous designs, but still bring something new to the table. The layered crafting system also got a makeover, being more user friendly and giving you more customisation with building fashion sets that can also be tied to armour sets. However, the current iteration of weapons in Iceborne is still arguably lacking. With some of the iconic weapons being either omitted or removed (looking at you Nargacuga Dual Blades and Tigrex Light Bowgun). Whilst there is a rule the weapons follow, it’s gutting to know a few weapons didn’t make the cut for one reason or another.

A true mark of a good, no, great Monster Hunter game is the end/postgame. So until part 2 comes out, happy hunting hunters.