I’m going to guess that next month we will get a final presentation where they will finally reveal details on what the rampage entails and show off the new volcanic area.
I really hope that they don’t end up showing too much, however. Everything they revealed so far is amazing and the new monster animations, in some cases even moves, all of this is very exciting but I know how Japan seems to be with spoilers (a.k.a. most of the time they don’t care about spoiling anything — look at the Nier: Automata b-roll before even pressing start, it shows you pretty much everything in the game).
I’m expecting around 50 monsters at launch, it may seem like a lot but they already have all of these skeletons in the game and it wouldn’t be farfetched to assume they’re gonna try and go all out to push this game further. I just hope they keep a bunch of surprises until release.
As for the demo – god, this game looks and controls fantastic. I haven’t tried it on my TV yet but handheld it runs very well with no hiccups and everything is colorful and vibrant. It’s just fun to move around, as I thought the mobility in this game does feel very good, I think it would be very difficult going back to something like Monster Hunter Gen U. I also think it’s ingenious to link the skills system to the mobility. Wirebugs being the limit on using the special moves means that you can’t just abuse skills and dodge out of the way at the same time. It took a little getting used to the controls but I already killed Mizutsune a couple times with different weapons and it sure feels great. I also love the customization in the options and shortcuts, there’s so much freedom for the player to set everything up as best as they can and the new animations are so pleasant to look at. I was a little worried that this world would feel kind of empty when running through it, but no, around every corner there is some endemic life or some hostile creature to find. It’s not just you against the big tough monster, there’s a lot of things everywhere to collect and climb. I like the whole Breath of the Wild mentality where if you climb a high hill, there’s probably something there to reward you. It’s not going to be like it is in other games like Assassin’s Creed where you climb something and get nothing for it.
Overall I feel very good about this game, and it has potential to be the best Monster Hunter yet. They keep improving on the formula with every entry and it’s very impressive just how solid the vision of the developers are and how well they realize them. There aren’t many developers I can say the same about (CD Projekt Red is one recent example of the opposite).
These presentations are perfectly paced and I hope to see many more like this in the future, just not specifically about this game, please leave some surprises. I think the next game I want to see shown off in this format is Monster Hunter Stories 2, but it’s a little more difficult since that one is a full blown story-based RPG.
