Is this game anything like World of Warcraft or any other big MMORPG?

[Sonny Fontaine]

I know it's not competitive multiplayer game and you can complete everything in offline but are there some similarities with WoW or Guild Wars 2 lets say? For example, are there weapon/gear builds, class system, raids, perk and skill system? And is this game rewarding? For example if I defeat some really hard boss, will I get properly rewarded for it with some really good (not trash) items like in MMORPG?

Also how about the grind in this game? Is there anything to strive for after you reach endgame?

Thx.

[cklambo]

Its not a mmorpg, its an action rpg

[Daffi]

It's not an MMO so no

[!?!]

There are 2 4 man raid bosses and one that involves the entire session.
Each weapon is kind of a "class" I guess and builds consist of armor pieces that give points in passive skills with sockets for jewels that can add more points.

The gameplay is much more action oriented and you're not really playing piano with 10 cooldowns.

Bosses don't drop loot, they drop parts out of which you can then craft gear and there's only 1 exception to that, a boss that drops weapons directly.

The endgame has lots of things to strive for, mainly special armor sets and decorations and the game keeps getting supported with new content.

[Suzaku]

The weapons themselves are sort of like the "classes". They determine how you fight, so everyone that picks up a greatsword will be slow and clunky but hit like a truck, dual blades are weak but fast hits, etc.

Armor is mostly for defense, and everyone can wear all pieces, but all armor also comes with skills, which are passive buffs ranging from increased health, increased crit chance, faster item usage, longer invulnerability frames, and tons more. These pieces can be further customized by placing decorations in them, which are gems that can be inserted and removed at will as long as they fit into the decoration slot.

All fights are 1-4 players. All fights are scaled for solo play, but will increase the monster's health and resistances when more players join the hunt. Only 3 non-story hunts are always set to multiplayer levels.

While there is a monster called Kulve Tarroth that is referred to as a "raid" of sorts, it's still a 1-4 player fight. There are no traditional raids in the sense you're thinking.

Fighting monsters rewards parts. Use those parts to craft tons of unique armor sets with a large variety of skill combinations. The hardest monsters offer some of the more "meta" pieces of gear, but the armor setups still require mixing and matching pieces.

The grind is long. Obtaining weapons and armor isn't too difficult, often only requiring a couple of fights to get what you want (unless extremely unlucky), while the majority of your time will be obtaining a large amount of decorations from fighting the harder monsters, and augment stones to further improve your weapons and armor.

[Keefmonster]

Only thing that would be close is having different gear sets for different situations. I think this game series in itself is super rewarding and defeating any monster will leave you with so much satisfaction because you took the time to track it down and learn its move sets. For endgame you will want to get lots of different sets of armor and weapons to make your hunts easier killing monsters for parts so you can forge the armor you are wanting. Now would be the perfect time to learn the game because once you reach end game the Expansion will have come out and they are bringing tons of older monsters from the series back as well as new ones. I could go on about how fun this game is but it isn't everyone's cup of tea. I say give it a chance you wont regret it! ill even help you if you wanna add me, i find it fun bringing more people into my addiction of MH. Hope this helps

[Seamus]

Where the hell do people keep getting the idea this is an mmo?

[Malfeasance]

No this game is not like WoW at all. The only similarity really is armor set bonuses, similar to how tier gear used to be. The combat is entirely different, closer to Souls (but still quite different to that as well).

If you're looking to scratch an itch with an MMO style game I wouldn't recommend World and would instead say to take a look at some Generations Ultimate videos from over on the Switch if you have one. There are different fighting styles with build/spend abilities more in line with an MMO, although the rest of the gameplay aspects are old school MH and far less streamlined than World's.

[lexilogo]

I'll go point-by-point here in a long post.

Originally posted by Gunsmoke:

weapon/gear builds

Absolutely. Weapons and armorsets can be mixed and matched with no limitations, though some Weapons prefer different skills to others and some skills are completely useless for some weapons. Almost all armorpieces have these "skills" attached to them as bonuses, such as ones that increase overall weapon damage, or weapon damage with a specific element, or let you charge up charging attacks faster, or enhance specific ammotypes, or so on.

You can create specific builds with this as you want, and while there is very much a meta in what armors to use like in any game, you can use nonmeta armor builds and still be very much viable and even create weird gimmick builds if you so choose.

Originally posted by Gunsmoke:

class system

Nothing like in a traditional MMO where you're presented with stuff like "ranger", "rogue", or "mage" that appeal to certain fantasy elements, and certainly not a choice as major as it normally is in an RPG.

The closest thing MH has are the 14 weapontypes that all pack their own movesets, (you can't switch weapons on the fly, you take one into the environment and need to go back to base to switch) but it's not like an MMO where you have some characters that go invisible, or some characters with an arsenal of spells to use, or so on. There ARE dramatic differences between weapons (hell, bowgunners are basically playing a different game altogether) but each weapon is essentially a moveset to attack a monster with and no more than that.

Originally posted by Gunsmoke:

perk and skill system?

There is no exp or levelling system in Monster Hunter, all the progress of your actual player character is determined by what gear you have equipped. There are some things that slowly level (Eg. your Hunter Rank which is a determination of how experienced you are with the game, or your Palico who is your little buddy who helps you out if you're playing solo or with only 1 friend) but do not expect a skilltree or perk list.

However that doesn't mean it's 100% without this kind of thing. Like I mentioned earlier armorpieces have Skills attached to them, but you can also stack several levels of a Skill (if the skill supports that) to gain extra bonuses, or equip multiple armorpieces in a set for Set Bonuses, and the Decorations system you unlock later in the game means that all mid to lategame armor pieces (and some weapons) have a certain number of Decoration Slots you can use to insert your own extra skills into those pieces of equipment, as long as you have the related Gem with that skill. The game starts out fairly simple in this department but gets more complex as things go on.

Originally posted by Gunsmoke:

raids

Kinda. No WoW style Raids with a capital R with things like the ultra-intricate boss mechanics, the huge playercounts, the uber-high difficulty settings where the world's top players need to spend weeks before they can beat the fights, or the large mix of gameplay styles but there are three fights commonly referred to as "Raids" by the community (that being Behemoth, Ancient Leshen and Kulve Taroth) because they are specifically designed around multiplayer, their health values are static and don't scale for solo. Behemoth and Ancient Leshen in particular have certain mechanics that revolve around having multiple players in the fight, like Leshen rooting you in place and requiring other players to save you.

I think I should stress though that once again, these are not RAIDS, these are just "raids". Think of them like if a Dark Souls boss was designed around having a bunch of friendly Phantoms helping you, not like an MMO where you need literal commanders for a squad of 40 people.

Originally posted by Gunsmoke:

And is this game rewarding? For example if I defeat some really hard boss, will I get properly rewarded for it with some really good (not trash) items like in MMORPG?

Whether or not this game is rewarding is subjective, but based on your description I'd say yes without a doubt.

Monster Hunter works on a materials system, not really random drops (with two exceptions). This means that, for example, if you kill a Great Jagras, you'll get Great Jagras materials. Exactly what materials you get from Great Jagras is random, (eg. you might get a Scale, a Hide, a Claw...) but you'll get an assortment of materials and there's plenty of stuff you can do to manipulate the odds and squeeze more materials out of each hunt. You then use those materials to craft your gear after the fact, and each piece of gear has a specific list of Materials you need.

This means that for the most generally important pieces of gear, RNG doesn't factor into it much. RNG can still be cruel or kind to you when it comes to rare materials (especially Gems) but it is still not particularly harsh, with certain methods (specifically Gold Investigation Rewards) you can get around an 18% chance to get a Gem from those which is pretty damn good for the rarest category of materials currently in the game. (plus the Elder Melder, that allows you to get guarenteed rare monster parts but requires items that only drop via a real-time quest rotation, so you can get a gem a week, or a gem a day during special events)

Materials are generally considered a lot fairer than pure random RNG drops as a system. The reason why they aren't actually more common in MMOs is because ironically the perception is that they don't feel rewarding (see: Firefall, if anyone remembers Firefall) but IMO Monster Hunter does a good enough job communicating what Materials are for that it feels rewarding. Killing a new monster and getting its mats, knowing you'll have a new armorset to play with is a really satisfying feeling.

I mentioned two exceptions, though:

Decorations. All Decorations are obtained by doing quests, randomly recieving some (probably) bad ones simply for playing the game later on in the progression curve, with certain lategame activities like Tempered Hunts being specifically tailored to getting a bunch of them. Decorations essentially come in a few Rarities and then you appraise them so RNGesus can tell you which ones you got. Of course, some Decorations are rarer than others and when it comes to the rarest few Decorations, you would likely have get a playtime of around 2000 hours before you got ALL the Decorations you needed to theoretically max out any Skill on any build you wanted. (this is vastly unnecessary though and is complete overkill)

Kulve Taroth. Kulve Taroth's armor works like any other monster with materials, but her weapons (of which there are hundreds) work off an RNG drop system. Kulve Taroth drops some of the best weapons in the game and her grind is infamously decried by the playerbase, but you can choose to ignore the fight if you don't wanna deal with that. While a lot of her weapons are some of the best in the game, there are still a good number of crafted weapons that can match or exceed hers in power.

Originally posted by Gunsmoke:

Also how about the grind in this game? Is there anything to strive for after you reach endgame?

This kinda goes hand in hand with Kulve and the Decorations system. While they can be frustrating thanks to the fact that you would need to play this game for a long time to get absolutely everything they have to offer, the flipside is that you can play this game for a long time and still have goals to work towards, even if that goal is "do Kulve again and hope for that one R8 weapon I still haven't had drop" or "do more Tempered Hunts and pray to all the gods I can name for an Attack Jewel".

However, TBH there are other, fairer goals you can work towards that will take you ages. I've been working on getting every weapon fully upgraded in the game and THAT can carry you for hundreds of hours on its own.

[Sonny Fontaine]

Originally posted by Seamus:

Where the hell do people keep getting the idea this is an mmo?

Correction, I wasn't even stating that this game is MMO. I was just asking if this game has any similarities with MMORPG games like builds, classes, skills etc. But apparently some people like you only see the word "MMORPG" and get triggered...

[IrisMachina]

this is not an mmorpg. if you need to know what the gameplay is like, there are tons of reviews and gameplay videos on youtube. you get more in dept info from your own research instead of asking in a thread. if you look it up yourself, you get information right away instead of waiting for people to post a reply.

[DancinTeaCup]

Eh, it's like this: Go beat up a monster for parts and/or special rewards -> dress yourself with the blood and intestines of the monster converted into armor -> find a new monster to beat up -> repeat.

There are 14 weapon classes but you aren't restricted to just one and can go ahead and play with all of them.
Oh I think a story is in there but that's not the point.

The only similarities it has from an MMO is the grinding + reward mechanic.