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Monster Hunter World: Iceborne Master Edition

Discover breathtaking environments and battle titanic creatures in this collection that includes Monster Hunter: World and its massive expansion, Iceborne. As a hunter, you'll take on quests to track & slay monsters in a variety of living, breathing habitats.

Role-playing (RPG)Hack and slash/Beat 'em upAdventure

Time to beat: about 120 hours

Overview

Monster Hunter: World is a 2018 action role-playing game developed and published by Capcom. The fifth mainline installment in the Monster Hunter series, it was released worldwide for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in January 2018, with a Windows version following in August 2018. In the game, the player takes the role of a Hunter, tasked to hunt down and either kill or trap monsters that roam in one of several environmental spaces. If successful, the player is rewarded through loot consisting of parts from the monster and other elements that are used to craft weapons and armor, amongst other equipment.

Monster Hunter: World is an action role-playing game played from a third-person perspective. The player takes the role of a player-created character who travels to the "New World", an unpopulated landmass filled with monsters, to join the Research Commission that studies the land from their central command base of Astera. The Research Commission assigns the Hunter to track down and either kill or capture large monsters that roam outside Astera, both to protect the Commission and to study the monsters themselves. The player's character does not have any intrinsic attributes, instead these are determined by equipment.

In an unnamed high fantasy setting, humans and other sentient races have set their eyes on the New World, a separate continent from the populated Old World. The New World is an untamed wilderness where many powerful monsters roam free, and where researchers have been drawn to uncover new mysteries. Several ocean-bound Fleets have been sent already to establish working bases, safe from monsters, and operations are led by the Research Commission.

Monster Hunter: World is considered the fifth installment in the Monster Hunter series, as reported by the game's senior producer Ryozo Tsujimoto and director Yuya Tokuda. Along with executive director Kaname Fujioka, Tokuda served as a director for Monster Hunter 4 and Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. Development of World started about three years prior to the E3 2017 reveal, following a year of brainstorming on what the next core title in the series would be. With the series more than a decade old, Capcom re-evaluated where they wanted to take the series, and concluded that with the hardware capabilities of the new consoles, they could realize a different vision compared to the handheld entries.

Announced at E3 2017, Monster Hunter: World was released worldwide for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on January 26, 2018. In addition to digital and normal physical releases, the game was shipped with a Collector's Edition that includes an art book, a CD with the game's soundtrack, and a statue of one of the monsters from the game. A limited run of PlayStation 4 Pro consoles emblazoned with Monster Hunter: World art was released in Japan on December 7, 2017. A three-disc original soundtrack of the game's music was released in Japan on February 14, 2018, composed by Tadayoshi Makino, Zhenlan Kang, Akihiko Narita, and Yuko Komiyama.

Monster Hunter: World received "universal acclaim" from critics on Xbox One and PlayStation 4, and a "generally favourable" reception on PC, on review aggregator website Metacritic.