Considering buying the game. Why the sudden review score drop lately?

[ZachBunn]

At some point around the 1st or 2nd of this month, I saw a sudden drop in the review score. I've always wanted to buy the game, but still, money is a hard thing to come by, so I just want to be sure the developer didn't do anything shady and the game is still in good state.

[Suzaku]

Most of those reviews just seem to be angry at the new fights that came with the update. Seems like it's just salty players upset that they're getting their ass kicked.

[Kyota]

Hi, I have played the game quite a bit.

The negative reviews are fairly valid.

The game is very grindy and there's alot of padded content.

What do I mean by "padded".

There are certain end-game items in this game that give your characters alot of "power" but are very difficult to come by, because they are locked-behind pure RNG.

Meaning, in theory, even if you grind an excessive amount of time, as I have, you might still not be able to optimise your team, because you just might be "unlucky" and simply not acquire those items in question, ever. I am still personally missing a few for my team after hundreds of hours of playing.

By this measure, the game does not respect your time as a player/consumer.

Even if you put in the "work" or the "hours" you might never be rewarded for it.

Which is terrible game design. Skinner's rat is supposed to have a treat after the experiment. You should never leave it unfed - since it will most likely either, die of starvation, or seek to escape the enclosure.

[Om3ga-Z3ro]

Also the latest update only brought in 1 new enemy and the other new quests are just the same enemies you have been fighting throughout the entire game but buffed. Even the big bad Lucillius gets a new quest fight where you just end up fighting him in his ZERO form (2nd phase) at the start.

It's just really grindy against the same enemies but just buffed and you being handicapped with a much shorter Critical Bar so going down is much more punishing.

[ZachBunn]

Originally posted by Kyota:

Hi, I have played the game quite a bit.

The negative reviews are fairly valid.

The game is very grindy and there's alot of padded content.

What do I mean by "padded".

There are certain end-game items in this game that give your characters alot of "power" but are very difficult to come by, because they are locked-behind pure RNG.

Meaning, in theory, even if you grind an excessive amount of time, as I have, you might still not be able to optimise your team, because you just might be "unlucky" and simply not acquire those items in question, ever. I am still personally missing a few for my team after hundreds of hours of playing.

By this measure, the game does not respect your time as a player/consumer.

Even if you put in the "work" or the "hours" you might never be rewarded for it.

Which is terrible game design. Skinner's rat is supposed to have a treat after the experiment. You should never leave it unfed - since it will most likely either, die of starvation, or seek to escape the enclosure.

Thanks for your detailed reply. Do you think it's still worth the price on sale right now? And should I also obtain the DLC character? As a huge fan of Monster Hunter, I think I can somewhat tolerate the RNG grinding part since decoration farming in MH World was pretty much RNG based, too.

[ZachBunn]

Originally posted by Om3ga-Z3ro:

Also the latest update only brought in 1 new enemy and the other new quests are just the same enemies you have been fighting throughout the entire game but buffed. Even the big bad Lucillius gets a new quest fight where you just end up fighting him in his ZERO form (2nd phase) at the start.

It's just really grindy against the same enemies but just buffed and you being handicapped with a much shorter Critical Bar so going down is much more punishing.

As a newcomer, do you think it's still worth the purchase? If yes, should I also get all the DLC characters?

[Xspy70]

Originally posted by ZachBunn:

Originally posted by Om3ga-Z3ro:

Also the latest update only brought in 1 new enemy and the other new quests are just the same enemies you have been fighting throughout the entire game but buffed. Even the big bad Lucillius gets a new quest fight where you just end up fighting him in his ZERO form (2nd phase) at the start.

It's just really grindy against the same enemies but just buffed and you being handicapped with a much shorter Critical Bar so going down is much more punishing.

As a newcomer, do you think it's still worth the purchase? If yes, should I also get all the DLC characters?

As a newcomer I just asked that and a player replied:
"Buying the special edition, emote expansion sets, and color packs 1/4/5 will get you all content that isn't farm-able.

Everything else, including the character expansion sets, can be obtained through in-game methods."

[ZachBunn]

Originally posted by Xspy70:

Originally posted by ZachBunn:

As a newcomer, do you think it's still worth the purchase? If yes, should I also get all the DLC characters?

As a newcomer I just asked that and a player replied:
"Buying the special edition, emote expansion sets, and color packs 1/4/5 will get you all content that isn't farm-able.

Everything else, including the character expansion sets, can be obtained through in-game methods."

Didn't know I can unlock characters in-game without paying. Thanks for the info my dude, I almost paid for those sets.

[Suzaku]

Originally posted by ZachBunn:

Originally posted by Xspy70:

As a newcomer I just asked that and a player replied:
"Buying the special edition, emote expansion sets, and color packs 1/4/5 will get you all content that isn't farm-able.

Everything else, including the character expansion sets, can be obtained through in-game methods."

Didn't know I can unlock characters in-game without paying. Thanks for the info my dude, I almost paid for those sets.

The game's initial characters are unlocked through natural progression through the game. Post-launch updates added 3 new characters which are either unlocked by grinding some late-game quests, or can be unlocked early with the character expansion set DLC.

[Xaelon]

If I was to guess the negative reviews are probably related to how Cygames locked the final new character behind an insanely difficult fight. Or you can just pay $5 and unlock him.

The two previous characters only required grinding a somewhat difficult fight that was perfectly doable with the AI.

Lucilius Zero, the fight required to unlock the newest character, on the other hand has too many mechanics for the AI to deal with.

I feel like it was a mistake on Cygames part to lock the OP character behind the fight where he would probably be very useful.

Free content is free content though and besides the last round of very difficult quests, the game is very fun.

[Kyota]

Originally posted by ZachBunn:

Originally posted by Kyota:

Hi, I have played the game quite a bit.

The negative reviews are fairly valid.

The game is very grindy and there's alot of padded content.

What do I mean by "padded".

There are certain end-game items in this game that give your characters alot of "power" but are very difficult to come by, because they are locked-behind pure RNG.

Meaning, in theory, even if you grind an excessive amount of time, as I have, you might still not be able to optimise your team, because you just might be "unlucky" and simply not acquire those items in question, ever. I am still personally missing a few for my team after hundreds of hours of playing.

By this measure, the game does not respect your time as a player/consumer.

Even if you put in the "work" or the "hours" you might never be rewarded for it.

Which is terrible game design. Skinner's rat is supposed to have a treat after the experiment. You should never leave it unfed - since it will most likely either, die of starvation, or seek to escape the enclosure.

Thanks for your detailed reply. Do you think it's still worth the price on sale right now? And should I also obtain the DLC character? As a huge fan of Monster Hunter, I think I can somewhat tolerate the RNG grinding part since decoration farming in MH World was pretty much RNG based, too.

Three things, as a fellow MHW player:

1. I like the combat - it's very different from MHW, because it's faster paced - it is anime after-all. Think of this game as MHW - lite. Heavy emphasis on the "lite" part.

2. I would say there is more diversity in how to play the game because you have over 20 characters to chose from.

3. this one is important. Because this game's population is nothing compared to MHW - do not expect much online Co-Op play - at best you could find some peeps for the end-game missions, but anything below that, forget it - the population can't sustain healthy match-making (if you play with friends, this third point is moot). However if you don't, that would require you to gear up four characters instead of just one, which ultimately quadruples the grind for you.

[Slithy]

Originally posted by Kyota:

Hi, I have played the game quite a bit.

The negative reviews are fairly valid.

The game is very grindy and there's alot of padded content.

What do I mean by "padded".

There are certain end-game items in this game that give your characters alot of "power" but are very difficult to come by, because they are locked-behind pure RNG.

Meaning, in theory, even if you grind an excessive amount of time, as I have, you might still not be able to optimise your team, because you just might be "unlucky" and simply not acquire those items in question, ever. I am still personally missing a few for my team after hundreds of hours of playing.

By this measure, the game does not respect your time as a player/consumer.

Even if you put in the "work" or the "hours" you might never be rewarded for it.

Which is terrible game design. Skinner's rat is supposed to have a treat after the experiment. You should never leave it unfed - since it will most likely either, die of starvation, or seek to escape the enclosure.

Damn... thanks for saving me money on this game. Have some awards as thanks.

[A2, Brute?]

Originally posted by Xaelon:

If I was to guess the negative reviews are probably related to how Cygames locked the final new character behind an insanely difficult fight. Or you can just pay $5 and unlock him.

The two previous characters only required grinding a somewhat difficult fight that was perfectly doable with the AI.

Lucilius Zero, the fight required to unlock the newest character, on the other hand has too many mechanics for the AI to deal with.

I feel like it was a mistake on Cygames part to lock the OP character behind the fight where he would probably be very useful.

Free content is free content though and besides the last round of very difficult quests, the game is very fun.

You don't need to beat Lucilius Zero to unlock Sandalphon. You can get the items to unlock the character by doing the normal version of the quest "the final vision".

The other two characters have two options to unlock them. Either you do the mission in hard mode against the Ariman (it's really easy to do) or face the Behemoth in Proud mode (More challenging but not necessarily difficult).

[vatto.dev]

After a few hundred hours people realize that this game is designed to stretch the content with RNG. The content is amazing, and I love it, but they exaggerated in how many times you gotta repeat the same fight to get anything done. Repeating a fight a hundred times with nothing new is just bad.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

You only have to do the base difficulty Lucilius quest to unlock Sandalphon, right? I would not consider that "ridiculously difficult". I am not an action game player because I have poor reflexes and prefer to play tab target MMOs or turn based JRPGs, and yet even I was able to beat the Lucilius quest. You just need to do your farms to get your Terminus Weapon and fully awaken it, get your Warpath sigil from Behemoth, equip your four damage cap sigils, equip guts/autoattacks/potion hoarder, and then off you go. You only have to learn to dodge or guard three attacks. I was playing Vaseraga so I used his immortality ability to survive the intermission phase with the lasers that case you. I killed Lucilius several times I got my Alpha and Gamma sigils. Now the final four quests are out of my league (I managed to get the final Bahamut Versa down to 25% HP when the timer expired, if my NPC party members had been targetting Bahamut instead of Id then I would have won) but that's okay. Those are for the best of the best.

[True]

There is really no endgame so yeah this game is good for casual they design for that