About the game
Monster Hunter: World is a 2018 action role-playing game developed and published by Capcom. It is the fifth mainline game in the Monster Hunter series. It came out worldwide for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in January 2018, with a Windows version following in August 2018. You play a Hunter who tracks down large monsters and either kills or traps them. The loot becomes weapons and armor, which let you take on harder monsters.
It is played from a third-person perspective. Your character has no stats of its own, so everything comes from equipment. There are fourteen weapon types, such as the long sword, bow and hammer. Astera is the hub where you trade, craft and pick up quests, and the New World is split into six large regions with connected zones and no loading screens between them. Scoutflies help you follow a monster's tracks.
You can hunt alone or in a group of up to four players online. There is no local offline multiplayer. Players gather in servers that hold up to sixteen people, post quests, or fire an SOS flare for others to join. Palico companions help when you are one or two hunters. Play is limited to the same platform, with no cross-platform play, and you need a console network account to use the multiplayer features.
The Fifth Fleet travels to the New World to study Elder Dragons, which cross over every ten years in an event called the Elder Crossing. On the way the fleet meets Zorah Magdaros, a volcanic turtle-like Elder Dragon the size of a mountain, and the expedition has to deal with it and with Nergigante, a spiked Elder Dragon that feeds on other Elder Dragons.
Development started about three years before the E3 2017 reveal. Director Yuya Tokuda and producer Ryozo Tsujimoto wanted to remove the separate zones of earlier games and give monsters more complex behavior and physics, using the power of the new consoles. Sony helped support the shift toward a more global release. The game shipped on January 26, 2018, and it also had a Collector's Edition with an art book, a soundtrack CD and a monster statue.
Critics gave it universal acclaim on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 and praised how it kept the core formula while becoming easier for new players. Capcom said it had shipped over five million copies three days after release. It was the top-selling game in the United States in January and February 2018, and it became the best-selling Capcom game of all time, passing 30 million copies shipped by June 2026. The Iceborne expansion followed on consoles in September 2019.
The text above is adapted from Wikipedia and licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
What critics said
Metacritic 90 out of 100 from 17 reviews (Xbox One). Metacritic 90 out of 100 (PlayStation 4). Individual reviews: IGN 9.5/10, Game Informer 9.5/10, Famitsu 39/40, Destructoid 9/10, Edge 9/10, Electronic Gaming Monthly 9/10, Polygon 9/10, VideoGamer 9/10.
Extra content
Iceborne is a large paid expansion with Master Rank content and the Hoarfrost Reach. Apart from Iceborne, the paid DLC is cosmetic items such as gestures, stickers and character options. Capcom also ran free event quests and crossovers.
- Iceborne expansion: Master Rank content, the Hoarfrost Reach and the Guiding Lands, plus 49 more achievements worth 1,000 gamerscore.
Good to know
- There is no local offline multiplayer. Co-op is online only, and only with players on the same platform.
- A prototype of the seamless open map took about 18 months and a team of 50 to 70 developers, and it had no combat system at first.
- A PlayStation Plus demo ran December 9 to 12, 2017, and a final beta period ran January 19 to 22, 2018.
- Pre-orders came with the Origin Set armor and the Fair Wind Charm talisman.
- The Xbox One achievement list holds 98 entries, the base game's 49 plus 49 more from the Iceborne expansion, worth 2,000 gamerscore together.
- A Japan-only three-disc soundtrack was released on February 14, 2018.
Made by
Director Yuya Tokuda, Producer Hironobu Takeshita, Producer Shingo Izumi, Producer Kazunori Inoue, Producer Ryozo Tsujimoto, Designer Teruki Endo, Designer Yugo Togawa, Programmer Yuuki Ooi, Programmer Kota Fukasawa, Artist Kaname Fujioka.
