Monster Hunter World by Steamforged Games - Should you back the kickstarter? (Patreon)

As a part of this patreon's remit towards being one of the main places for discussion about the CABB (Complex AI Boss Battling) genre of games it is time for a discussion about Steamforged Games (SFG)'s currently active Monster Hunter: World (MHW) Kickstarter.

Whilst I am confident that the vast majority of you are at least familiar with the Monster Hunter franchise in at least some capacity, just in case you are not, MH is a Japanese originating video game from Capcom. It originated on the Playstation 2 with its first release being in 2004 and it has been a mainstay of video game culture since. It is also one of the four main inspirations for Kingdom Death: Monster alongside Warhammer Quest, the manga Berserk and the works of Junji Ito. 

Monster Hunter World, released in January 2018 was the first time the franchise reached PC and remains the biggest selling version of the game, in part thanks to the PC port, but also because it is the best implementation of the game for the multiplayer experience. 

In a fun way of coming full circle Monster Hunter spawned Kingdom Death: Monster which has now spawned Monster Hunter: World The Board Game. The newest member of the CABB family has arrived on kickstarter and it now stands alongside Aeon Trespass: Odyssey, Oathsworn, Sankokushin: Five Sacrifices and Townsfolk Tussle in this growing genre of cooperative board games where players get together in order to take down a complex AI boss.

Steamforged Games: Past Performances

It is no secret that SFG do not have a track record of critical acclaim amongst the board game community.  Dark Souls when released was a bit of a hot mess, and while it has settled into a decent game with great boss fights, the reputation damage was already there.  Other video game tie ins have also had a lot of varied responses; Resident Evil 2 and Bloodborne have reasonably well received, but Horizon Zero Dawn has had some severe critical panning. You can have a peruse through their list of game ratings here. Just bare in mind that expansions are always higher rated, because people who do not like the core game are unlikely to go play/rate the expansions - expansions tend to have more fans rating and less critics, so their scores creep up (usually by around a whole point).

Personally I have experience with Guild Ball, Dark Souls and Horizon: Zero Dawn - I did not much care for Guild Ball, Dark Souls was backed by my brother and became a good game with expansions and updates but Horizon: Zero Dawn is the game I adore the most. I agree with many of the criticisms surrounding the game's bizarre 'semi-cooperative' design, but as someone who played the game almost exclusively solo or cooperative I have come to adore it. There's a host of clever and innovative mechanics built inside it that still thrill me - mechanics that have been borrowed by other games since. You can see my rating on BGG and I talked about why I love this game despite the general opinion in the second episode of The Last Standee podcast (follow us on BGG here or on soundcloud here). It's not perfectly balanced, but if we loved only balanced games we wouldn't be here talking about CABBs in the first place.

So yes, SFG are an erratic company who have released designs that seem to lack polish and vigorous playtesting (especially external); but that should remind you of another company we buy products from *ahem ahem* so it's okay. Especially when you consider that they seem to learn from each previous stumble and seek to improve based on feedback, everything I've watched and read from them makes it clear that they really care about their games and love playing them. That's always a huge positive.

However, they didn't reach out to me with a sample product, so they're not that well researched into the genre... Just sayin' 

Sculpt Designs

There isn't much to say here except that the monster designs in MH are absolutely iconic and the stars of the show. So SFG have not held back on that front, creating large sculpts that are detailed and dynamic. Just look at this Anjanath captured in the middle of one of its iconic roars.

One of the main problems I had with Primal: The Awakening was how unprofessional and weak their monster sculpts were (the other main problem was that it is straight up just a pure card game with miniatures for no mechanical reason, it's not a CABB) but I cannot say that here, every single sculpt looks like it has crashed straight off the shores of the new world, through our monitor and is now screaming a tiny roar on the desk. 

As for the three Elder Dragons in the Kickstarter, man I want them just as a painter, I've been eyeing up MH miniatures for a long time now, but never pulled the trigger in the hope that something like these three would be released in a board game.

Honestly these creatures excite me in ways that few other monsters in board games have done. It's knowing what they've been like to fight in the game that brings that extra element. You can just hear Nergigante's scream and it brings you right back to the first time you fought that monster and experienced its insane divebomb. 

But the Hunters as well just look fantastic, I love the armor set design in Monster Hunter, but the 'meta' tends to result in using the same sets over and over. While layered armor came along to fix this problem eventually, for the longest time you couldn't use these weird and cool sets except while levelling up along the way.

While we are not going to get true WYSIWYG miniatures in this, I honestly think they're not needed. They've proven to be one of the weaker parts of other games, resulting in sculpts that are generic, bland and if you try to magnetize them, they tend to 'droop'. The detail level on this is just fantastic and I can say from experience that the plastic quality that SFG use holds sharp details and crisp edges. I don't much care for the use of 3D in game asset renders that the art has used, but I love the sculpts and I adore the decision to stick to the traditional monster hunter art style for the iconography. 

Speaking of which...

AI Updates

This is the single biggest element of MHW and one of the reasons why I think it is a game which warrants serious consideration. One of the most interesting and skill based portions of monster hunter style games is understanding the 'signals' that the monster gives out just before it attempts to hit you. This gives you an opportunity to position, dodge roll, dive or block and ensure that you can avoid that hit. While the standard AI of Kingdom Death has a variety of different attacks and cleverly programed behaviours that make each monster feel different - without a form of AI scouting/manipulation the monsters can still feel very random and arbitrary. One card looks much like the next when you are considering a deck of cards, so all of the 'skill' element of the game is put on either perfect information via scouting or hunches gained via experience and bisection of the monster's AI behavior into a general 'cloud' of targets and types. It's actually quite a high skill floor, but a very low skill ceiling mechanic - which is why newer players get horribly mauled and find the game 'too random, too hard' but experienced players complain about how easy things have gotten and ask for nerfs to the various deck scouting mechanics.

Monster Hunter World changes that by printing information on the backs of the cards.

This is the back of one of the Great Jagras cards and the symbols on the left and right give you some limited information about what is printed on the front. 

This exceedingly clever decision which you can read more about here. Is one of those things which I've often spoken about in respect of how excited I am about the games which follow and innovate on the basic mechanics displayed in KD:M. KD:M is just the beginning of this journey, the best game in the series is still yet to come - and while I doubt it will be MHW that takes the crown overall, this change here is something we should see adapted into ALL future CABB games because of how it increases the potential for knowledge and skill to factor into decisions made. It is an incredibly exciting use of the AI card design and it's the kind of thing which would solve so many issues in KD:M (but it is almost impossible for APG to now course correct on this one). 

This card indicates on the left that the attack will originate from the monster's torso area and the right is a targeting symbol that indicates it will attack the hunter who is furthest away. The front side of this card looks like this:

That's so amazing, because it means you know exactly what the monster's next target is, but you also have indicators of which move it could be. You can eliminate any claw or bite type targets on the bases of the indicator and as a result you narrow down the list of possible attacks. Even new players who don't know the full suite of moves will know at least who is getting attacked, if not how. That's a perfect change to the skill level involved in the game, that's the signaling that KDM creatures lack and this is the main reason why I personally am backing the game. I want to play with this new AI system and see how it feels on the table, in theory it is the next big change to happen to CABB games, we just have to see if it is as fun as it looks.

Other Stuff

SFG have been very transparent with their game on this one; not only does the kickstarter (link at top of this post) have plenty of good updates (and based on past history, they also keep backers updated on progress, delivery dates etc), but they also have a really interesting blog series on their site located here. There's so much information that to go through it all in detail would take me ages, I've just grabbed some of the things which excite me the most.

So Should You Back?

That's not an easy one to answer, this isn't Aeon Trespass, Townsfolk Tussle or Sankokushin: Five Sacrifices; all of which were/are a slamdunk YES. This one, despite the incredible license is a bit more of a quandary. 

All I can really tell you is that if you do decide to back, go all in. Every single one of SFG's kickstarters seems to be constructed around having all the expansions, the experience in HZD's core game for example just isn't deep enough, it takes the expansions to give you enough content, difficulty and depth to keep you coming back. 

But this game is pushing for full coop, it is staying very true to its source materials and at a minimum it's going to give you those Monster Hunter miniatures I've always wanted. It is the first genuine CABB game release of 2021 and I think it is looking like it is a fine one.  It also fits in the space between Townsfolk Tussle's 'done in one evening' design and the 'spend half a year playing' design of AT:O/S5S/KDM - there is room in this genre for a short length campaign that takes place over a month or two of sessions and I think that MHW is a strong candidate for that slot.

So; here's what I think you should do if you're at all interested, but not sure. Go to the kickstarter page, click 'Remind Me' and then 48 hours before the final date you'll get a reminder email, then you can scroll through all of the updates, see everything they're offering, all of the stretch goals and even dig through the blog site I linked above. If you're still excited and can afford the ALL-IN. Go for it. Otherwise don't bother, this is one where you should get everything or nothing. Oh and don't bother with split shipping if they offer it either, just get it all in one go. This game is not going to be satisfying if you just have 3-4 monsters to hunt, trust me - I'm still climbing the walls waiting for the HZD expansions due to arrive this summer.