5/5 ★ – oldultan's review of Monster Hunter: World - Iceborne.

World got me into Monster Hunter. It’s a fantastic balance of the old home-base, exploratory, gathering of the earlier entries and the greater action focus it had always been building toward. Iceborne is World tuned to a razor sharp edge. Master rank quests have always shown off just how tightly designed both the RPG and action elements of MH are. And with 14 weapons to balance around, it really shouldn’t be this tight. All the new monsters and subspecies ask a lot of an average player like me, but conquering them solo means you’ll be forced to engage deeply with every aspect of the game. I knew where every powerful slinger ammo on each map was, I built a good rhythm of farming and progressing. In short, this is exactly what a Master Rank expansion should be. Sparring Ruiner Nergigante solo with Greatsword, leveraging everything I’ve learned: that’s gaming perfection. I haven’t found an MH game I like revisiting as much as this one. The environments and monsters stand the test of time. With Wilds in sight, the slower pace and more deliberate RPG elements in World, the way it asks you to engage more deeply with its environments and mechanics, show that Monster Hunter is just as much about the downtime as it is the uptime. I hope Capcom keeps that in mind going forward.