Monster Hunter Now

App Store Editors’ Notes

Best mobile game I’ve ever played

I’ve been playing since September of last year which was a year ago and I’m so close to HR 150 I have 3 grade nines 2 of which are one upgrade away from grade 10 which I already have one of so I’m doing pretty good. But unlike most players I actually started playing Monster Hunter games with this one this game is really fun I play it with my dad every day and it’s a great way to bond with him. A few more things I have nine star enemies now but sadly I have trouble soloing them so my dad and brother help I’m the best out of them but I stared before them and I carried my dad until he got to grade fours then he could do his own but my brother got to be carried by me and my dad and my and him already had grade 8s so he got to grade 5s instantly but I’m the only one with 9 stars so I basically am the best. Lastly I love each update and appreciate each one and I’m fine with the dimensional links being in my circle but I got a lot more sixes but that wasn’t as fun because I love grinding in this game and first aid meds aren’t a problem if I die I wait to heal. If you are still reading this just know that no matter how much hate this game may get I will always love you guys for making so much memories for me I will always support your work and will always be positive about everything you do for it. PS: I now play Rise and 4 ultimate and I think that you guys should add switch axe as the next weapon thank you goodbye have a great life. :)

Amazing Game, One Issue.

I love this game. I’ve always loved games like Pokémon GO, they’re just fun to me. However, unlike Pokémon GO, this game doesn’t just warn you about playing while driving, it entirely restricts your gameplay if you’re moving too fast. The idea is to stop people from playing and driving, but in reality, this only hurts passengers. Even if you hit the “I am not a driver” prompt, your gameplay remains restricted. Drivers can just be jerks on the road, holding at a light longer than they should just to continue playing. But passengers have no control over whether or not they can play the game at all. Please, for the sake of everyone who plays this awesome game, change this. I’d rather the speed warning appear every 5 seconds and annoy me repeatedly than not be able to play at all, especially because, also unlike Pokémon GO, when you sit still, there’s no way for you to do anything, you have to just wait until a monster spawns on you. In Pokémon GO, there’s incense. In JW Alive, there’s scents. In MH Now, there’s nothing, no way of attracting monsters to you more often. I rarely walk anywhere because I don’t have the freedom and time to walk, so I’m always either unable to play because I’m sitting still and there’s nothing to do, or unable to play because I’m moving too fast even though I’m just a passenger 95% of the time.

Great but not without its flaws

I’ve been a fan of the series since Tri. I was skeptical when I heard there was going to be a mobile game by the people who made PoGo, PB and Ingress. While I play a lot of PoGo, the combat in the game is some of the worst I’ve ever played. Since MH is even more combat basedI was nervous. Needless to say, I was surprised at how intuitive the combat was for a game you play with one finger. The game has a lot of potential. The issues I have with the game are: neither of my main 3 weapons are in the game. The difficulty spike happens suddenly, you’d think gathering points would be 1 to 1 with pokestops, but they aren’t and it takes forever to gather what you need. If you live in rural areas, don’t even try this game, you’ll drop it after a week cuz you’ll have an inventory full of monster parts but no plants, ore or bones. They try to remedy this with random scattered materials but it’s not enough and chances are you won’t get what you need. They almost definitely put less processing power to this game. It thinks I'm in a car when even my avatar is standing still. Items are hella expensive and there’s not much of a selection. They could absolutely add more and they could also have added other materials to collect so you can craft your own items like potions instead of buying them or just hoping you get them from rank ups. But I digress. I’m giving it 4 stars because, again, it has potential to even surpass PoGo in gameplay. But it has a lot to fix

Love the game but there’s work to be done

I’ve been playing monster Hunter since 3U. It’s my favorite game franchise and when this was announced I was so stoked! The game is a lot of fun; being simplified for mobile, but still keeps plenty of mechanics in tact despite that. It looks really good, it plays smooth (only ever having minor lag hiccups), and hunting with friends is awesome. There’s also isn’t a lot of monetization which is nice to see for a Niantic game. But after the first two days a few cracks peeked through. For one, spawns are slow and your search range is pretty small. With the way it is now there’s a pretty decent chance you’ll just have to miss out on some hunts due to them being on property you can’t access. Second, the health is really slow to regain. In the later quests, where things hit like a truck, you really begin to feel how slow the regen is, and the lack of healing items other than your daily potions. Last, the speed lock. I understand they don’t want people driving and playing, but why have a confirmation notice about “being the passenger” if it’s going to lock the game completely? I feel like this should be adjusted in some capacity. Other than those it’s been an awesome game with so much promise for the future! Happy hunting!

True to source material and very fun… however

This game is very fun, and you can clearly tell a lot of love was put in as a lot of the same move-sets and animations of both the weapons and monsters are present. I have enjoyed my time with the game (for the most part), but there is room for improvement. For instance, right around HR 30+, this is when the games artificial grind becomes very apparent. You start to become gated from completing main story mission hunts, for instance, the drop rates of a lot of the higher rarity materials are so bad, you will be spending A LOT of time just trying to kill a specific monster to get a material that isn’t super rare, but just seems to drop way less than those of 2 rarities higher than it. This causes you to have to wait to build/level the necessary weapons to even be able to do enough damage to kill the main story monster to just even progress, regardless of if you even get hit at all since you’re timed and will run out of time before doing enough damage. This issue is a lot worse too when you figure out that they have a premium currency in the game that allows you to double those parts you “just can’t ever seem to get enough of”, which sort of relates to gacha in a sense. The only other issue I have is some of the hit boxes on monsters can be extremely dumb as you’ll be on the side of a monster attacking it while it’s doing a frontal attack that shouldn’t hit you, and somehow does. Regardless of these issues, the game is still extremely fun to play (hence the 4*s) and it will be interesting to see how it progresses from here on

Great Callback to Mainline Series

MH:Now is an awesome interpretation of the mainline games, cutting a few corners to make it work as a mobile game. The inclusion of multiple weapons is a must, but Niantic should’ve included all 14 weapons from the start, or at least at HR15 like they did. Only having 6 to choose from is a bit of a disappointment. The weapons we do get include many of the mechanics that the regular series does, requiring directional swipes of your thumb to execute. However, not all weapons feel as robust. The Light Bowgun, without a manual reload or even a melee attack, feels like an after thought. For the weapons that do have these mechanics held over from the mainline games, the lack of a Training Dummy means you can’t practice or learn them. This feels like another oversight. The last mention is the lack of an online party. I’m not sure the requirements behind this, but many of my friends are states and countries away. It would be nice to hunt with them and vice versa, as this would allow us to benefit from each other. As it stands now, the friends list looks more like competition between friends rather than co-op. Aside from these few complaints, I was delighted with how much they did add to the game. With enough marketing, it might even pull in a bunch of new players. I hope it does, so that when the new title releases after MH:Rise, more people will be familiar with it.

Surprisingly robust but …

Also unsurprisingly stingy, and not even in a way it needs to be. I get it is a mobile game and in fact bought a pass already for it to support it. The two biggest issues by far I have with the game are the material drops from monsters and not being able to freely travel between biomes. The reasons for this is the game artificially imposes nonsensical goals on you (slay “x” number of monsters in Forest habitat, for example). I have no problem walking all over the place, but unless you happen to walk where the game geographically demands you walk that triggers said Forest biome, you’re not completing that goal and thus advancing your campaign. You’re effectively stuck. Second, material rarity is tied to monster tier, i.e., tougher the monster, the higher (rarer) the material that drops from monsters after a successful hunt. The problem with this is you can target a high tier monster (since you need that monster’s material to forge stronger weapons and armor) yet upon defeat of blue tier monster, you’ll instead receive basic tier 1 material at a disproportionate rate than what you would expect, even from a mobile game. I shouldn’t hunt rarity 6 monsters, only to commonly receive rarity 1 and 2 material. It’s insulting and doesn’t respect player commitment to the game. Throw us a bone here. Tweak the drop rate and allow the player to more easily complete their campaigns and this game gets an EASY 5 stars.

Let’s go hunting!… just don’t be over 10 feet away

A little about myself first, I’m a huge monster hunter fan, I would consider myself a veteran in the community, i’ve been playing since 3 ultimate, and I can safely say that this is a “ ok MH game “ first off, I live in a rural community (a population of 2000 people ) and it’s pretty impressive that there is still stuff to do while walking around. walking down my little small street with only one traffic light, I can get about 10 hunts in a day, about 20 gathering materials, and I have four people to hunt with. I am at the game at first started, that’s honestly pretty impressive! is the biggest compliment I would give the game however, grinding for weapons, armor etc. it’s pretty tedious. do you need a lot of materials to get armor at the appropriate level, can’t even really upgrade skills until you’ve had the same monster like 15 times. there is no real online multiplayer only local play which my opinion is a HUGE problem! This is one of the biggest core identities to the franchise is being able to hunt with friends and easier to grind from materials everything you need, they might add something into the future but as of now it’s not here. Also would have the ability to craft healing items as well no way you can do that yet. But the positives are that this game still captures the same fun combat that the series is known for. overall, it is a fair Monster Hunter mobile game, with a much slower grind than usual, lack of a online multiplier, in a lack of grinding for materials for healing items.