When the executive producer of Monster Hunter Now, Kei Kwai, opened his presentation on Monster Hunter Now by talking about what the franchise meant to him — his cousin marrying someone they met at the Monster Hunter table in the cafeteria — it struck a chord. My brother and I would always try to hide from the harsh Spanish sun on our family holidays by sitting under the biggest palm tree we could find, so that we could get the most shade and best see what we were fighting on our PSPs.
So when Kwai spoke of his vision of seeing people on the street playing Monster Hunter together, that too struck a chord. While that is feasible in Japan, where the Now community is biggest, it hasn’t yet happened here in the UK. Part of that boils down to the franchise’s popularity in the Japan, and part of it lies with the game itself.
In our review I wrote: “Monster Hunter Now could grow into a true successor and companion to Pokémon Go, but only if Niantic listen to their audience make rapid improvements to the game.” Niantic has been listening, and the events and patches since launch have certainly moved the needle. While my biggest gripes are yet to be addressed — smoothing out the difficulty curve and sorting out the Potion economy — the big winter patch is a big step in the right direction.
Fulminations in the Frost
The new season in Monster Hunter Now — an actual three-month season, as opposed to the monthly seasons that are the backbone of keeping Pokémon Go alive — is a bit of a mouthful, certainly. Kwai admitted, to much amusement on my part, that this is a translation from the Japanese idea they latched onto in design. Having lived and worked in Japan, I this is something I totally grok.
‘Frost’ may make you think that this brings a new Tundra biome, but don’t be fooled. When asked whether new biomes would be coming with the new season, which kicks off on December 7th, we were told that the winter vibes that we’re about to see are purely cosmetic. Think of it like Halloween in Now or Christmas in Go — pretty, but just pretty.
What isn’t cosmetic, however, is the new weapons that you might have spotted in the game’s fancy new loading screen: Dual Blades and the Lance, and the whopping great Zinogre they’re being levelled at.
New weapons and monsters
Our hands-on session gave us a great opportunity to try these new weapons against a bevvy of monsters, from the mainstays we’re used to, to the seasonal additions of Banbaro, Radobaan, Barioth and Zinogre. You’ll get a chance to encounter some of them as part of a seasonal set of special missions. They all felt pretty well designed and balanced, and each felt like a genuine representation of the monster you’d fight in the main series, which was exciting to see.
This update brings 46 new weapons and armors, which is great to see. Yes the armor comes with new skills and yes, Radobaan entering the fray means that the Sleep element is coming to the game. Status balancing will be coming to the game soon too, since these weapons are massively outclassed by the elemental ones, rendering them all but useless at high levels.
The addition of Dual Blades and the Lance are pretty huge for the game — the Dual Blades being one of the most heavily requested addition, according to Niantic. These have long been a fan-favourite weapon, and we’re happy to report that using them in combat is buttery smooth and using them was incredibly satisfying — like Sword and Shield but turned up to the max, as you might expect. Demon mode and its special attack were equally fun to use.
Lances, meanwhile, are what you’d expect. Slow and cumbersome, with a huge focus on defence, this weapon has long been part of the main-series games. However, the console games come with a 50-minute timer per mission, not the 75 seconds you get in Now. We managed to win within the timeframe using the Lance, but it was a lot more tense and lot less satisfying. Relative to the Dual Blades, the Lance feels unbalanced.
Nerfed weapons
Speaking of balance, the devs have rebalanced the weapons in Monster Hunter Now, penalising the long-ranged and buffing the short-range, where the risk–reward ratio was a little off kilter.
You can read the full breakdown on the Monster Hunter Now blog, but TL;DR: huge damage with the Bow and Light Bowgun is now better linked to your accuracy, the Hammer and Great Sword got a slight buff and the Longsword was left alone. The Sword and Shield got slight tweaks that basically even out.
We can now expect similar balancing acts every three months. Hopefully each will add new weapons, armor and monsters in the process, since there is a phenomenal depth of material here to pull from, but time will tell on that matter.
Future fixes?
Niantic was never going to fix everything in one fell swoop; like with Pokémon Go, updates, features and fixes will be rolled out in a slow and steady fashion. The way things are moving is encouraging, certainly, but more needs to be done.
Having played the game daily since launch, and having unlocked stronger versions of the same monsters with each lap of the story, the issues haunting the game have only become more start.
The economy is terrible, especially when it comes to potions. You get five freebies per day (with each restoring 50% of your max health), but after that you’re looking at 60 gems per potion. 300 gems is £1.99 in UK money, so each potion is worth roughly 40p. The difficulty curve as you complete laps is intense, and even at my level I’m getting one-shot by certain monsters.
If you want to keep playing without a time penalty, those 40ps add up very quickly. The fact that there is potion crafting in the main-series games but not in Now leaves a lot to be desired.
This brings us to the loot drop system, which is half of the difficulty problem. The biggest joke in the Monster Hunter Now community is that the rarest drops are actually the Tier 2 rarity, not Tier 5 or 6. When you need 30 of these for a single upgrade (and you have to upgrade weapons and armor five times to level them up), the potential for feel-bad gameplay mounts very quickly. The game desperately needs an Elder Melder (also in the main series games) so that rather than disposing of the literally hundreds of Tier 1 drops, I can put them to good use.
Assuming fixes for these issues are on Niantic’s radar, along with the addition of the new biomes, Now could still easily become a much bigger game than Pokémon Go, and Kwai’s vision of people walking around London slaying AR versions of Rathalos may yet come true.
