Monster Hunter: World

Monster Hunter: World is an action role-playing game played from a third-person perspective. The player takes the role of a player-created character who travels to the "New World", an unpopulated landmass filled with monsters, to join the Research Commission that studies the land from their central command base of Astera. The Research Commission assigns the Hunter to track down and either kill or capture large monsters that roam outside Astera, both to protect the Commission and to study the monsters themselves. The player's character does not have any intrinsic attributes, instead these are determined by equipment.

This includes a weapon, selected from the series' fourteen archetypes (such as the long sword, bow, or hammer), which defines the combat moves and abilities the player can use; and pieces of armor, which can lead to beneficial or detrimental combat skills if matched properly. The majority of equipment is created from loot obtained by hunting monsters, rewards from completing quests, or items gathered in the field. This creates a core loop of gameplay in which players defeat monsters they are currently capable of handling to collect materials needed to craft better weapons and armor—to in turn challenge stronger monsters and earn access to even more powerful equipment.

In an unnamed high fantasy setting, humans and other sentient races have set their eyes on the New World, a separate continent from the populated Old World. The New World is an untamed wilderness where many powerful monsters roam free, and where researchers have been drawn to uncover new mysteries. Several ocean-bound Fleets have been sent already to establish working bases, safe from monsters, and operations are led by the Research Commission.

Characters of this game are Handler, Commander, Admiral, Field Team Leader, Seeker, Second Fleet Master, Third Fleet Master, Huntsman, Analytics Director, Tracker, Excitable A-Lister, Provisions Manager, Chief Ecologist, Tech Chief, Captain and Serious Handler.

Monster Hunter: World is considered the fifth installment in the Monster Hunter series, according to the game's senior producer Ryozo Tsujimoto and director Yuya Tokuda. Along with executive director Kaname Fujioka, Tokuda served as a director for Monster Hunter 4 and Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. Development of World started about three years prior to the E3 2017 reveal, following a year of brainstorming on what the next core title in the series would be. With the series more than a decade old, Capcom re-evaluated where they wanted to take the series, and concluded that with the hardware capabilities of the new consoles, they could realize a different vision compared to the handheld entries.

According to Capcom Europe's COO Stuart Turner and marketing director for the Europe, the Middle East and Africa Antoine Molant, the divisions of Capcom outside of Japan had suggested for Capcom to embrace a Western release with full online gaming support. The Japanese teams had been wary of this, since the series normally assured them of three to four million sales within Japan and they would risk those assured numbers by making the game more global. However, the risks of taking a more worldwide approach were embraced when Sony said they would help support this approach, since they believed this would also help to boost PlayStation 4 sales. Additionally, the sheer scale of the project also used a large budget which they deemed necessary to "go up against Hollywood movies", and cost-cutting measures had to be adopted throughout Capcom.

Monster Hunter: World received "universal acclaim" from critics on Xbox One and PlayStation 4, and a "generally favourable" reception on PC, according to review aggregator website Metacritic.

Reviewers generally praised the game for being able to retain and not sacrifice the core Monster Hunter formula while opening it up to be amenable for new players to the series, being able to take advantage of the higher processing power of consoles compared to handhelds to make the game's worlds feel more alive, though still noted that there are elements of learning the game mechanics and the difficulty curve that can still be somewhat daunting to inexperienced players.