Recent reviews by Bell

Abysmal. no other word for it

On Normal mode, combat balancing is through the roof. It does not exist.

The only game I've ever used Cheat Engine to beat.

Honestly annoying level design, but great shooting once you get used to the mechanics and controls. I've yet to master everything

I had no expectations about this game, thinking it was just overhyped and avoiding anything related to it, but someone gifted it to me a year ago and it couldn't hurt to try it out.

I was close to throwing in the towel a couple of times. It wouldn't run on my machine despite my specs, when I first tried to play, and I went to the point of reinstalling Windows after confirming that was the culprit of my technical issues in games that have released lately. And then, I couldn't wrap my head around the mechanics at all and the way information about gameplay was conveyed, which led me to a lot of frustrating deaths and dumb choices.

The strongest point is the story, even if it has its flaws. I imagine they wanted to do even more with it than what is currently available right now, but that comes with rushing out the game along with everything else I'm about to talk about. The city itself I honestly wouldn't remember much about, it all looks pretty samey to me. But the characters themselves put on an incredible performance, and it is further strengthened thanks to the animation quality and overall graphical fidelity of the game.

The gameplay is alright, even if it's janky at times, if only for the freedom of movement and action. It took me some time to get used to, and due to my ignorance I ended up with a messy character build, but it's still ended up working out for me thankfully. I've never even bothered really doing stealth or hacking at all, and I don't think I missed out on anything. I find the way saves / checkpoints are handled to be very old school, but you get used to quick saving whenever possible, I just wish you could retry faster and that load times were shorter.

In general, the attention to detail in this game is formidable, and it's very easy to get lost into it, but it always falls apart very soon one way or another, due to random bugs. They range from harmless funny physics glitches, missing / misplaced scenery, or just NPCs being as dumb as a brick in general, to save-tainting issues like quests getting stuck and refusing to complete, or something specific like a line of dialogue that repeats every time you load a save and keeps a subtitle stuck on your screen.

It needed more time. Having been 8 years in development, and currently working on seeing most of the endings, I can see they were truly trying to do something amazing with this, and it's a shame they had to cater to the masses. Less crunch, more time would have been more beneficial for everyone involved. I'm just hoping the patches coming next year will help it redeem itself, and that we'll get DLC to fill any remaining gaps. Maybe we'll get a plethora of mods too, who knows?

If you haven't got it for whatever reason, wait a while. The experience will be worth much more if you can sit through it all without having to deal with the release clunkiness. It's going to take some time.

The most accessible Monster Hunter experience yet, but far from the easiest. The DLC is more than half of the game and a damn masterpiece, so don't skip out on it. It's a long journey to become the most skilled, fabulous and well geared hunter... But it's pleasant. Pay attention to everything carefully, and you'll be fine.