Monster Hunter World on PS4: First impressions

It was free for some reason and I had heard the name of the game for quite some time so I figured I'd give it a shot. It is my understanding that this game is quite popular as an MMO of sorts but after 5 hours or so of playing, I don't see what appeal this game can have for people. Maybe I am just the wrong sort of person to play it. Anyway, here is what you can expect in the first few hours and I am not going to be nice about it because I found the game more irritating than anything else.

So i simply blazed through the character creation screen and took the defaults for everything. Normally I would make a female character and try to make her as slutty as possible but I didn't yet care enough to do that and honestly had no idea what I was getting myself into when I started playing. For someone that enjoys a tremendous amount of customization when creating a new toon, this could probably be a big plus.

_{there is so much you can do, some of it is silly too}

After this extremely long process the game finally begins, well, kind of. A long cinematic sequence filled with kind of silly dialogue that suggests to me that the game wasn't properly translated (or rewritten) from Japanese in the first place. The scenario is certainly very Japanese feeling, especially the cutesy little animals everyone has trailing them.

After your boat is attacked and sunk by a dragon, you go through some sort of introductory sequence teaching you the controls and then you make your way to the first city, which I forgot the name of.

This is where I nearly turned the game off as there is such a tremendous amount of dialogue thrown at you, most of which has no bearing on the game, how to play it, or really anything for that matter. It droned on and on to the point where I wasn't even listening anymore and just wanted to get on with it. I wanted to hunt a monster or two before I delete the game out of frustration

The game is called Monster Hunter World but at least in the beginning it should be called "Monster walking around in a field for ages trying to find said monster....World"

Considering this is a massive game in terms of the geography, the detail on areas is very impressive but I found after getting my first kill that I go back to the town and then need to go kill another one of the exact same thing... and unless I am missing something that's pretty much the game. You are meant to repeat this process over and over in order to acquire certain ingredients to make new weapons and gradually be hunting bigger and bigger stuff.

Yeah, I'm not gonna do that. I can understand why a lot of people would like this because the game technically has no end but to me this is a big indicator that it is going to end up being very similar to every other MMO that exists: It's going to be a grind-fest and I'm not going to get involved with that.

Upon searching, the game seems to never really consist of anything other than stalking your prey, killing it or it killing you, and maybe teaming up with pals in order to take on bigger hunts and that's it! No dungeons, no puzzles, not really even much of a leveling system.

This game is not for me but I am not going to complain because i paid nothing for it.

If you like this game, and it is my understanding there is a very dedicated group of fans out there, don't take what I said personally - It just isn't for me.