Monster Hunter games pre-World

Finished Village LR and now I'm doing Hub LR (mainly for that sweet, sweet Readiness). Crafted a decent LS to play more with Guild/Striker, but in general I don't like the Spirit gauge mechanic. It was perfect in FU and didn't need another bar to charge up imo, but it is what it is.
The beauty of this game is that if you find a monster too spazzy, just equip Valor/Adept and laugh in its face. Did this with Garuga since he doesn't fucking stand still in this game.
Valor Hammer is garbage, how are you supposed to charge three times in a row without the possibility to evade (except at the very beginning of the charge) in order to do damage (since there is no golfswing and superpound)?
Aerail Swaxe is nice, I like how the vault does good damage in Sword mode, but I have to practice more with it. In general I'm getting the hang of Swaxe a bit, but you need to be very on point with your evades in order to punish the monsters with the sword attacks. Or I could just play Valor and say fuck it.

Beat Hub LR, mainly with Guild LS and the weapon is pretty nice, love the sideways Fade Slash.
Nakarkos was a decent final boss, if not a bit confusing at first.
Still bashing my head trying to git gud with Swaxe. The problem is that Sword Mode is the only sustained DPS weapon that also has a slow walking speed (and no block also). With GS you get in, sheathe and run away, but here you can't do that, you have to stick to the monster (and the weapon is also slow as fuck to sheathe). Also I wonder if the Valor dashes SA gets have more iframes than a normal roll, but they prolly don't.

>where to start
Concur on FU, an obtuse game so look up guides when needed.

>Guild LS
One of my favorites, great fundamentals weapon. The meter is also pretty lenient in GU.

>Valor Hammer
It's extremely good, the dodging and charging is fast enough that you can kinda spam it, bullies head-weak monsters extremely hard. Don't play it much though

>Glavenus
I love this fight, the key insight is that he always moves his head to where his tail slammed the ground. Great one for GS, almost like a duel.

>Cheesing
Yeah it's nice to have a safety valve. As mentioned, Adept DB is extremely braindead and broken and will get the job done for pretty much anything.

>obtuse game
To be fair that's every pre 5th gen game, but every post FU game has a significantly easier early game, so you can do well even if you don't know shit.

>meter
Especially with Sakura Slash. Hunter Arts are good but not as broken as I thought they would be. Love the evasion arts because they enable a lot of aggressive plays, much more interesting than using them just as a panic button (even if you can just do that).

>Valor Hammer good against head weak monsters
Thought so, you'd have to take advantage with every stagger in order to charge the other moves.

Barioth is cancer, had to dust off the Adept DB. Very small openings, moves around a lot and is super aggressive. Fortunately the stomach takes some good damage, so you can camp under him without too many worries.
Now onto Valstrax. Didn't beat him yet but holy shit is this a hard fight, way harder than anything else I beat until now. I like how he has a move that hits only directly below him (so you can't just hit the stomach forever). The comet attack is definitely flashy but its timing feels natural. I hate that when you die you have to walk accross like 4 zones to get to him but whatever.

EDIT: Beat the damn thing, used Adept LS (first time using it in a quest). Took like 30 minutes and 2 carts. Of course he killed me while he was one hit away from death, oh well. Fun fight overall(?). Have to fight him more and then decide, but in terms of difficulty and spectacle he was a worthy final village boss (much better than Rusted Kushala in 4U lol).

Was Deviljho always this fucking annoying fucking piece of shit why the fuck has the guy so much health. Staggers, chip damage, tremors, debuffs, health sponge, shitty spazzy movement, variable hitzones and trash design to boot. Why is the portable team so much better at designing monsters? When the main team does it you get trash like Jho and Najarala, with the portable you get Tigrex, Glavenus and Zinogre.
Rant over.

So, what are you supposed to do about Valstrax exactly? Tried to farm him but I don't understand his fight. You're obviously rewarded for getting close (since his wings attacks won't hit you), but the quick bite attack and paw slam are super fast and punish you... for being close. There's something I'm missing.

Kinda figured out Valstrax but still have to practice him, as well as lots of other monsters. It's incredible how you can play these games for hundreds of hours and still be shit at them.
Anyway, just wanted to say that whoever decided to make the arena multi-monster quests to have two mons at the same time is a moron. These games simply aren't made for fighting two monsters at the same time (except for a couple of cases) and it all boils down to using dung or smokebombs.

Currently grinding weapons in G2. I've played enough and seen/read enough to get an idea of the game in its totality. The combat with the vanilla styles (Guild, Striker and Alchemy) with Arts is great and basically fixes a lot of the bad in the MH4U combat while also not breaking the game. Despite the fact that the game is unbalanced as fuck at least is unbalanced well, with the top options being disgustingly OP while the rest is mostly good (in contrast to MH4U where the top weapons where just good and the rest was trash).

My biggest gripe is the grinding. For whatever reason this game decided that you can only create lv.1 weapons, even if you have High and G rank mats. This means that if I want the Lagi DB for example I have to grind LR and HR Lagi, instead of offering me an options to create the HR o GR version immediately instead. This grinding nonsense also extends to the armor and the deviants. Apparently if I want to fight the hardest version of a particular deviant I need to fight them FIFTEEN times. What the fuck. Fortunately some of the best weapons are from deviants which are exclusive to G rank, which only require 5 quests total.
Finally the armor. Why do armor now require monster parts to upgrade instead of just Armor Spheres? If I want to upgrade every armor piece to the max I'll require FIVE of the rarest drop the monster has. When the time comes I'll surely use a save editor to cut down the grinding. A game with this much content doesn't need it.
At least this is the only big problem, otherwise it's a fantastic experience.

Started a new save in GU, running Hammer. I had intended to swap around between all the styles, and I may still do that later, but for now Valor Hammer has stolen my heart. The stance+X attack is like a golf swing but not locked behind a combo and easier to aim, casually oneshotting small monsters like Bullfangos with it is great. In Valor mode I never have to let off the gas. I'm not one to pay attention to hunt times but they are ending noticeably earlier than I'm used to. Definitely getting more KOs and flinches than I ever did with 4U's Hammer. I stunlocked the 2* Cephodrome to death, lol.

Valor Hammer feels great to use but it's effectiveness is a lot monster dependent. Mons that have their head sticking out a lot like Narga and Valstrax get demolished by it, but the skill ceiling remains pretty high. Don't like the pseudo golf swing you get since it's super slow and the only reliable way of building the meter.
Fortunately the other styles are also pretty good and decently balanced (except maybe Aerial but I haven't messed with it). I use Striker Hammer against Royal Ludroth since I found it inconsistent going for golfswings or uppercuts on his turns. The Superpound is much more reliable and deals a lot of damage in Striker. Wonder if it's also good for other mons.

The way I've been using Valor Hammer is constant damage output, and thus less head-focus than usual for Hammer. It's a bit like SnS mentality, repositioning to continuously attack from whatever angle is safe at a given moment. Narga is the first monster that's given me a lot of trouble, because its movement naturally creates gaps where I can't attack it at all. I get better results maximizing the limited openings with golf swings and superpounds. Now when you can successfully chain several headshots in a row with Valor it's awesome, but I'm definitely not good enough at Narga to do that consistently.

>Aerial
The double pound is pretty strong, and you can choose the direction for each swing in case the monster moves underneath you or you just got a bad jump angle. I hunted Narga half a dozen times to make the armor set, and I had the easiest time when I used Aerial.

I don't like using Valor Hammer for constant non-head DPS compared to other weapons (which are more effective thanks to the cutting hitzones and more usability in general), but it still works.

>Narga
I found headsniping easier with Valor compared to the other styles, since he loves to do the 360 tail spin, making golf swings unreliable. Maybe Striker can work decently in this matchup too.

>Aerial
Interesting. Never really used it all that much, can't get used to the vault, but I'll have to try it at some point.

been a few years since i first dipped my toe in the Monster Hunter waters, i'm ready to get back into it and dive into the "old gen" games for the first time; i've only played World/IB, Rise, and a little bit of GU. i thought World/IB was much better than Rise but i haven't played Sunbreak yet, maybe i'll check it out if word on the Stinger streets is that it's worth playing-- HotPocketHPE seemed to think it was pretty good (at least according to a post of his from 2 years ago).

as for GU, i found it to really not be a great entry point into the old games; GU has every monster the series has had until that point so i was endlessly inundated with monsters i didn't know and at some point, my mind just... broke. it was very odd, i've never had this happen before and it's never happened again, but i eventually hit a point where i genuinely could not learn anything new; it was like the learning part of my brain overheated and it shut down as a safety measure and that's when i took a break from these games.

i think i'll start with P3rd, seems beginner-friendly, but i'll eventually make my way around to all of them except for the pre-FU ones. my questions for the MHeads here: what are your favorite MH games and what are the ones you think are sub-par?

GU is definitely too big for newcomers, both because of the number and complexity of monsters and weapons (plus styles and Hunter Arts). Some aren't too bothered with it but it's better to start with another title.

>fav MH games
I've only played FU, 4U and GU. FU is definitely great but the monsters are a bit too simple and easily optimized, but since your weapons are also simpler there is a fun dymanic there, especially regarding positioning. Definitely recommended and great for a newcomer.
4U I didn't like and I basically found it a lesser version of GU. GU has the same monsters plus the ones from 2nd and 3rd gen, better weapons and it gives you tools to adequately deal with the powered up monsters. Playing with the evade arts already is a huge improvement imo, since the 4th gen monsters are too unpredictable without it.
3rd gen I didn't play but judging from the 3rd gen monsters from GU and from what I've seen, Tri and 3U don't interest me. P3rd does but it seems too easy (which also makes it good for newcomers).

Is world the black sheep for more veteran players?

>Is world the black sheep for more veteran players?
There's a definite divide between pre-World and post-World MH, so it's only natural that there's a divide in the community. My personal opinion, as a veteran of almost every game in the series, is that World is easily the best. Hopefully Wilds can top it.

>favorite MH games
World and GU. I think the series has tended to get better over time. 3U is my next favorite after those two, 3rd gen had my favorite monsters until World came along. Barioth is still my favorite monster of all.

>GU
My GU advice is not to attempt to do everything or even close to everything. Trying to 100% this game is the road to madness. There's simply too much content. It's something you can nibble on and savor for a long, long time. The final boss is really damn cool and worth seeing, but you don't need to rush to get there.

>sub-par
4/4U suffer from balance issues. Mounting was introduced here, and it's obvious that it was introduced here because it's really wack and sucks the fun out of the game something fierce. All the way until late high rank, every monster can be solved by just jumping on it over and over like you're Super Mario, never once using your brain. The Charge Blade and Insect Glaive are awesome weapons, but like mounting, they were really not balanced well in their first appearance. The difficulty is fairly high relative to other MH games, but unfortunately this serves to draw your attention to the balance problems. 4/4U are also 3DS games, which is a big problem in itself.

The more controversial take is that I have a low opinion of MH2 and gen 2. The weapons introduced in MH2 were the long sword, bow, gunlance, and hunting horn, and I'm not gonna be shy about saying that these are the 4 most poorly designed weapons in MH. Not a fan of the monsters either. The two most iconic monsters from MH2 are probably Tigrex and Rajang, and IMO these are two of the worst monster designs in the series. Tigrex is basically a Bulldrome with a superiority complex, and Bulldrome, also introduced in MH2, is THE worst monster design in the series. Having said all that, it's not like MH2 erased MH1, the fundamentals are still rock solid, and the gen 1 content is still around in gen 2, so FU is a great game despite my complaints. But if all the gen 2 weapons and monsters were suddenly erased from the series, I would not see that as much of a loss.

>Hopefully Wilds can top it

have you played Rise/Sunbreak?

>GU no rushy

got it

>jumping on it over and over like you're Super Mario

wahoo!

>4U

so neither of you think very much of 4U. GU covers its playstyle and basically all of its content, right? in that case i think i'll skip it. i had booted it up and did the first 3 tutorial quests to make sure everything was running smoothly (never used Citra before) and man, that first map was a bad omen. big, convoluted, and filled to the brim with uneven terrain and shit to climb-- those huge cliffs that take forever to scale, ewwwwww... love the super colorful art style though.

Rorc, would you say 3U is worth going back to or does GU make it obsolete as well?


P3rd first impressions:

great entry point into classic MH, very easy to get into, only a few QoL or obscurity related issues. one is that there's no "take all items"/"deposit all items" option, you have to manually take or deposit items one-by-one. just one of those little things that's completely needless; it doesn't add anything, just makes a basic action slower and more effort than it should be.

another thing is that they don't tell you what the "Urgent Quests" are, which are the mandatory quests you have to complete to get to the next rank; playing non-Urgent quests does absolutely nothing in regard to your rank progress. thankfully i already had this knowledge from my experience with other MH games so it's just a matter of pulling up a page on the internet with the info, but if you didn't know about that then that's gonna cause problems until you figure it out.

lastly, the big thing is obviously the slowness of the gathering shit, but this is where PPSSPP saves the day; i'm fast forwarding, i'm right analoging for camera control, i'm on top of the world.

small monsters are such a menace in this game, jesus

been using the Hammer so far, what is the point of the moving version of the level 3 charge? it's inaccurate as hell, long as hell, and you could fall asleep to the recovery (if you weren't stressing out about the monster hitting you during which). just seems like it's only there as a punishment for moving when releasing your lvl 3 charge but maybe i'm missing something.

>have you played Rise/Sunbreak?
I've played Rise, I just got Sunbreak yesterday because of the big World/Rise sale going on right now.

I unfortunately think Rise is a big step down from World. It's a haphazard mishmash of elements from World and GU, which in theory is good but it's exactly the wrong mix to where it feels like the worst of both worlds. IMO GU's styles and hunting arts were much better realized than Rise's switch skills and silkbinds. There's also the issue of the survival sim and hunting aspect of the series. That element is very important to me, and in Rise it seems like that was a very low priority for the devs compared to just making big flashy fight scenes. I think the maps have too much wide open space, but also a lot of awkwardly designed verticality that makes getting from place to place really annoying.

>so neither of you think very much of 4U. GU covers its playstyle and basically all of its content, right?
Yup. The two big bosses of 4U, Gogmazios and Dalamadur, have not appeared anywhere else AFAIK. Everything else important is available in GU (including the maps, for better or worse)

>would you say 3U is worth going back to or does GU make it obsolete as well?
Absolutely worth it, but you're already playing P3rd, which is mostly interchangeable with 3U. The big difference is that 3U has the underwater gameplay and P3rd doesn't.

>what is the point of the moving version of the level 3 charge?
It's kinda bad. The basic 3-hit combo is almost always better. The multi-hitting spin has niche utility for applying status, and the special finisher when you press Triangle on the final spin is the strongest single hit the hammer can produce. Just not worth the effort to get to it.

>I just got Sunbreak yesterday

nice, i picked it up as well

>mostly interchangeable with 3U

ah okay

>special finisher when you press Triangle

...i didn't realize it had the finisher, jesus christ no wonder  


Sunbreak first impressions:

my 2 big problems in the base game were the monster difficulty and the weapons. while Sunbreak brings the monsters up to your level, the weapons are still a huge barrier for me; there are at least 6 weapons that have had a filthy shit taken on them and unfortunately for me, that dookie covers my favorites (Greatsword, Switch Axe, Hammer). i mained (married) Switch Axe in Iceborne, it was absolutely perfect in that game and it's all i've been using in Rise/Sunbreak because GS/Hammer are unusable here, i'm very comfortable with it, and don't know what else to use (haven't gotten into any weapon other than those 3), but i desperately need a break from Rise's Shit Axe.

Rorc, do you have a recommendation (other than ranged weapons, i'll never use those)?

>recommendation
I think the Rise version of Sword'n'Shield is the best incarnation of the weapon yet. I also think it's the weapon that best fits with Rise's wirebug/silkbind mechanics.

Charge Blade seems fine in Rise too, although I can never stick with Charge Blade for long because I don't like dealing with the phials. And if you like Hammer maybe give the Hunting Horn a go, I don't like how Rise gutted the recital mechanic, but that does make it a lot easier to use.

>Sword'n'Shield

you read my mind with that and CB, i already had my sights on those and begun dabbling. me enjoying CB is no surprise-- the heavy resource management, heavy risk/reward of going for big damaging shots, etc. is all extremely up my alley-- but SnS is, obviously i tend to gravitate towards heavy-medium weapons but it's really fun. Rise's Gunlance seems great as well, i'm gonna check that too. i spent way too much time with a sunk cost mentality on Rise's Switch Axe trying to enjoy it as much as Iceborne's.

i'll check out Hunting Horn on your recommend, but yeah that was one of the weapons i was referring to having been fucked with. i don't have experience with HH so i can't compare it but i figured it wasn't a good thing. what are you using in Sunbreak?

>Hunting Horn
In past games, each buff was tied to a song, a specific sequence of notes you'd have to play to trigger that buff. In Rise, each buff is tied to a single note instead. It's much easier to use, because you don't have to worry about memorizing all the different songs, and you don't have to worry about stringing together specific sequences of attacks to play the songs, you just play a note and get a buff. The problem is that this makes the HH feel a lot less like a unique playstyle, and more just a "spicy Hammer."

>what are you using
Made a new save, chugging through low rank with Lance. Once I get to the new content, gonna try and see if the new moves can make me like Rise bowguns. Also interested in that combo-focused thing they gave GS. If that stuff doesn't wow me then probably back to SnS for the endgame.

enjoying Rise more now that i'm not using Switch Axe but my other problem with the weapons here is the feel of them, they're wet noodles; the audio-visual design is vastly inferior and so is the amount of hitstop, basically all hits from any move from any weapon has significantly less hitstop. how satisfying it is to hit enemies in an action game is very important to me and that's one of the things that MH in general has been insane at, so it's a real shame.

>combo-focused GS

lemme know what you think about it. i only tried 1 hunt with it but it just seemed like a generic fast-paced combo weapon and that's not what i play GS or Hammer for, i'll use one that's good if i want that. i just think alternative playstyles is a bad idea, on paper it sounds cool but in practice it's just "the original moveset of X weapon gets completely ignored in favor of a moveset that has nothing to do with the weapon". classic GS and Hammer got zero love in base Rise or Sunbreak and i don't see weapons like Dual Blades getting alternative GS/Hammer-esque playstyles, it only went one way.

>wet noodles
Oh yeah, combat feels so wimpy in Rise. I wonder if there's mods to try to address this on PC. Even just better sound effects would help.

>alternative playstyles
I like having options to tweak weapon movesets. Every weapon in MH is a couple changes away from being a favorite for me. Okay, probably not Gunlance, I think I will always prefer regular Lance. Of course, like I said before, I think GU pulls this off much better than Rise, and one of the reasons is that GU still has Guild style if you want the normal moveset. As an example, after I tried it out, Valor Hammer quickly became my favorite version of Hammer in the series. Rise has Courage Hammer, but Courage is like a cheap knock-off of Valor, and I ended up preferring the Strength version instead.

In the case of Greatsword, I've never liked the heavy emphasis on Draw Slash. I feel like my giant sword is going to waste if it spends most of the fight in the sheathe. I love the tackle that World added because it lets the GS fight for longer stretches without needing to sheathe. Plus, I always wished that the side slash and upward slash of the GS were more useful. So the idea of doing a whole combo each time I unsheathe is appealing to me.

>i don't see weapons like Dual Blades getting alternative GS/Hammer-esque playstyles, it only went one way.
I mean, I also wish the SnS switch skills were more interesting. They very slightly change one attack; what is even the point? Give me switch skills that actually change how the SnS plays. Again, GU did alternate movesets better.

>I like having options to tweak weapon movesets

nah i'm with you for the most part, i was referring to Surge Slash Greatsword; i consider that to be less of a "tweak" of the moveset and more of a tweak as in "man, i'm fuckin tweakin because i could have sworn i picked Greatsword". i agree that Tackle, and TCS, were excellent additions, but they added to the playstyle/weapon rather than fundamentally changing its identity, and that's where i'm at in Rise; they give me the option to choose between original GS (which is, in my opinion, inferior here) or SSG which doesn't play like GS at all.

and it's not that i mind SSG as an option, my greater concern (beyond normal Greatsword being not so great here) is that this kind of shit is threatening to my interests; i don't want the influence of what they did with the weapons here to extend to future games, at least for the most part. the last thing i want on this Earth is for Wilds' Switch Axe to be like this one instead of Iceborne's, or SSG to be the future of GS, etc.

>wish the SnS switch skills were more interesting

for sure. i mean, i understand it's in the nature of 'customizable movesets' to be scattershot to a degree in terms of quality, that's the downside of this sort of thing, so i can forgive it to a point but even taking that into account i think way too many of the options that are in Rise are not very interesting at all. the fact that you can swap between 2 movesets on the fly in the middle of combat is also extremely questionable, it's a little too DMC when i can only imagine the way GU does it making a hell of a lot more sense for this kind of game.

>side slash

it's useless for damage but i feel like that has underrated positioning utility, it puts you forward quite a bit without having to sheath-- maybe the amount of forward momentum is nerfed in Rise though, i can't recall. Upward Slash is inarguably a joke though, i don't understand why it sticks to that weapon's heel like shitty toilet paper.

taking a break from Sunbreak, probably permanent. first of all, i regret getting it on Switch; i got Rise when it was only on Switch and so i got Sunbreak because my save was there, but i forgot how garbage the framerate was to begin with and it's even worse now with the new monsters being a constant visual effects assault-- perhaps tone down bullshit like that to achieve a playable framerate you fucking hacks. and it's not that 30 fps is the problem, it's that it isn't 30 fps that's the problem; in combat it's always chugging substantially below 30 frames and i can't fully concentrate because i'm so hyper aware of the horrendous, sloppy controls/input lag and slow-mo slideshow i'm witnessing. i doubt i'll get it again on PC because i don't think this game is good enough for me to restart, i'm just not very fond of how it plays.

anyway, i see where you're coming from about Gunlance, Rorc. it's a disastrous abomination of a weapon and needs to be either scrapped or given a complete overhaul, anybody who says otherwise is a paid shill.

finished P3rd and replaced that & Sunbreak with GU and Iceborne. P3rd is great but i will say i definitely prefer GU, it's just too powerful; the speed (P3rd is a tad on the wrong side of slow for me in terms of both combat and gathering, GU is just right), multiple styles and moves, more fleshed out weapon movesets, insane amount of content that covers almost everything in the series, a farming mini-game that's quick and fun, small monsters not being a nightmare, etc.

>Sunbreak
The new maps are a big improvement imo, they picked good returning monsters like Seregios and Astalos, Malzeno is probably the best actual new monster in Rise, the Sunbreak final boss is absolute trash though. A nice improvement from base Rise, but not enough to raise it in the MH standings for me.

>Surge Slash GS
As I was hoping, I liked this quite a bit. It's got some issues, like the loss of basic Charged Slash, and the fact that horizontal slashes are way better than vertical ones due to having hyperarmor, so I can't say I'm satisfied with this implementation. But looping Strong Charges is super cool, and it's reasonable with SSG to stay unsheathed almost all the time, which I love. I'd really like to see this idea worked into the standard GS moveset. Just tweak the side slashes and rising slashes to behave a bit more like the SSG. If the Surge Slashes have armor, they could even replace the tackle.

I also like the Switch Axe skills in Sunbreak. Still not as good as Iceborne Switch Axe, but it at least addressed my main complaints with Switch Axe in base Rise. The Bowgun stuff on the other hand was disappointing. As a Bowgun fan, it's hard for me to understand how LBG is so popular in Rise when Rise has the worst LBG implementation in the whole series, and ALL of its switch skills either do nothing or suck so bad you wish they did nothing.

>nice improvement from base Rise but not enough

that's where i'm at too; yeah, you got the new monsters/re-tooling of the existing monsters and the removal of the Rampage mini-game, but it's still Rise. i mean, not to call a guy out when he's not even here to defend himself but just using this as an example, i recall HotPocketHPE in the Rise thread saying something along the lines of "Sunbreak fixes a lot of Rise's issues" and i just don't see that at all. beyond the exception of removing Rampage, all i see is a doubling down.

>Sunbreak monsters

i agree, and the consistency of quality in terms of the monsters here blows away any other MH, it's probably the best thing about the game. monster quality is extremely hit or miss in the others but there's nothing to dread here. i guess the closest you'll get to that are just the simplest monsters like Volvidon and the gimmick story 'final boss' monsters, but those are a tiny minority and not even remotely to the level of brutality that the other games are littered with.

>SSG

yeah i agree with everything you said there, other than obviously you enjoy it more than i do. i find that it's in an awkward gray zone right now where it's not quite substantial or unique enough to stand on its own but also too different to actually work as an alternate version of GS. but if they come
up with a moveset that merges that together with GS, and not nerf the charge moves, then that'd very nicely round out the weapon.

>Switch Axe

unfortunately, Sunbreak didn't change what i think about it at all. i consider what they've done to my beloved Switch Axe to be nothing less than a controlled demolition of the weapon right after it finally grew into its own and i could type up an encyclopedia-length post explaining every single thing i despise about Rise's SA down to the most insane, excruciating minutia (and probably will at some point to get it off my chest)-- hate it. i didn't even notice or can recall anything that was changed or added other than the obligatory parry and iframe dodge.

as a matter of fact, Sunbreak didn't change how i feel about any of the weapons and i didn't really notice many significant changes or additions Sunbreak made to the weapons at all; it all felt quite slight and certainly didn't rectify anything, in fact they largely doubled down on the shittiness. that's a very disappointing part of Sunbreak for me and a reason why Iceborne feels like a much more substantial expansion, the additions and balance changes overall were very significant and amazing.

obviously they have an extremely different (i.e. fucked) idea of makes the weapons, and the combat in general, good than i do, and that's what it comes down to for this game, it just doesn't play the same. but everything they did outside of the combat i'm cool with other than the Switch version's dumpster performance and the Weaponsmith's looping cheesy dialogue-- i'd really appreciate not having to ride the mute button on my remote whenever i'm there.

still a fun game though and i would have picked it up again on PC if there was a save mod that could get me back to where i was (which is in the endgame), but there's obviously some technical reason preventing that because there's no mod like that available, and having to work my way back... yeah, i don't know about that for this game.

Rorc, i'm very interested in why you consider Courage Hammer to be Dollar Store Valor. i gave Courage another try in Sunbreak before i dropped the game and it turned out to be one of the few weapons i like in Rise, not sure why i didn't like it before. it seems exactly like Valor but with a few bells and whistles added, which i thought were nice additions that made the moveset meatier (like the integration of a further developed Power Charge from Iceborne), and the removal of the Valor meter, which is the one aspect i'm really not crazy about with Valor. it just feels very pace-break-y/no fun allowed/wet noodle-y/chore-y for my fun moveset to be taken away from me to earn over and over, particularly for Hammer because that's the most brutal one to charge; Valor Golfswing is brutally slow and the fast side smash attack has brutally short range. i still use Valor Hammer because i like the moveset, could just do without that aspect.

speaking of Valor, Valor seems to give consistently engaging movesets, i've really liked it for every weapon i've tried so far and i really like the Styles in general. the only Style i don't get is Aerial, the dodge is as slow as balls drowning in molasses and always gets me fucked up, my mobility is hampered, and it's all in exchange for jump attacks which i don't really get the appeal or usefulness of. but maybe i've just yet to crack the Da Vinci code on that, i don't know.

>Valor vs Courage Hammer
It's the little things, really. Courage Hammer is balanced around lower damage and faster attack chaining, which makes it feel less impactful. By contrast Valor Hammer's level 3 charge is the strongest Hammer attack in GU (except for Spinning Meteor). And while Courage Hammer attacks faster, it's not as mobile because it doesn't get the Valor quickstep. Last but certainly not least, I'm a huge fan of the Valor golfswing, which Courage doesn't have.

The one change I would like for Valor Hammer, and Valor in general, is for the stance attacks to fill up the Valor meter by the same amount whether you're in powered-up state or not. That way you could keep the meter up all the time, instead of having to let it empty and then refill it.

>Valor movesets
Most of them are very good, the only one that stands out to me as bad is Valor LBG, easily LBG's worst style. It loses evade options and gets a long sheathe time, which kinda turns it into a worse HBG, and the bonus it gets from filling the Valor meter is both awkward to use and quite weak. Not remotely worth the severe drawback.

>Aerial
When you successfully vault off a monster (or player, or barrel) you get invulnerability on the way up. The ideal sequence is that you dodge into the monster before their attack, fly through/over the monster attack, then fall down with a strong attack to punish. Even without much timing, simply jumping off the monster a lot will dodge many things because most monster attacks don't hit directly above them. You get a lot of mounts with Aerial, which wastes time because of the minigame, but makes hunts considerably easier because they are free knockdowns.

Charge Blade is considered the best Aerial weapon, because Aerial AED is even more powerful than grounded AEDs, while also being safer to perform.

Aerial Lance/Gunlance have a unique dodge that's significantly faster than other weapons. It feels much closer to a traditional roll, which is funny since normally Lance doesn't have a traditional roll. It doesn't vault as high off the monster, but it has autoguard until you land or attack.

>Valor vs Courage

i can see where you're coming from

>Valor Hammer's level 3 charge strongest Hammer attack in GU

did not know that, interesting. i've not yet achieved my PhD in GU, for the most part i've just been playing and figuring stuff out on my own.

>stance attacks to fill up the Valor meter

yeah that'd be perfect

>Valor golfswing

don't get me wrong, i love golfswings in general-- i cum in my mouth every time i land one. but with Valor it really changes the context of it. question: is it still worth using even once you get access to your full moveset?

>Aerial

ah okay, i only tried it like once or twice and i was playing normally, didn't know i was supposed to let loose and treat monsters like Goombas


anyway, i'm having a lot of fun in GU. it's interesting to see the differences in the weapons between the newer games and old gen; some are better in 5th gen, some worse. i hate the counter-centric 5th gen Longsword but old gen LS is great. i'm very fond of Insect Glaive in Iceborne but i don't like it here, extracting seems excruciatingly clumsy/imprecise/slow and the effects short-lived. maybe that'll improve as i upgrade my Kinsect but it's boring how grounded you are here; you have a substantial aerial moveset and movement in IB but old gen IG has just 1 shitty attack and no movement options. Rise IG is like the opposite of this-- seemingly designed around "the floor is lava"-- which i'm not a fan of that extreme either.

i'm surprised that i like Switch Axe here-- it's beyond me how Rise's SA is a regression to not just pre-Iceborne SA but pre-GU as well. the Tempest Axe art is a serious buff that alone saves Axe mode and therefore SA as a whole because shitting on half of the weapon, and really the entire point of it (keyword: "Switch Axe", not "Sword"), is an automatic F grade in my book (see me after class, Rise). GU SA is not at the level of Iceborne's-- for instance, one of the things that really completes Axe as a distinct weapon with its own utility from Sword is that it's a lot better at part breaks/flinches/trips and that's absent here-- but overall, very enjoyable. as for Sword mode, i like the horizontal-vertical slash and especially the vertical double slash; the surgical precision and rhythm of it feels really nice.

>golfswing in valor mode
Situationally useful. The best time to do it is right after a level 3 charge attack. You can stance cancel the level 3's recovery, then you can charge cancel the golfswing's recovery to start the charge combo over again. The hitbox is very large, which can be good for part sniping or if you want to keep your distance. For example, if you stand in the right spot, you can hit a Khezu's head through its electric barrier.

>insect glaive extracts
I know the IG players recommend going all in on Speed when leveling the Kinsect in GU.

>longsword
In the older games, I hate it because spirit gauge management is miserable. In the newer games, I hate it because it is spammy nonsense. In all the games, it feels privileged and overtuned. I guess the 2nd gen version was the least bad, where the spirit gauge did not level up. Back then you used Spirit Slashes because they were good attacks (gasp) and not just because they turned on a stat buff.

>Valor Hammer cancels

thanks for the tips, will implement that in my play

>Khezu

hate this stupid thing. only neat thing about it is that the music doesn't trigger when it becomes alerted to you because it's blind, but otherwise it's just one of those monsters that cause a cold dread to set over me like a blanket whenever i'm forced to fight it (did Gammoth have to have so many required quests? fuckin hell).

>gauge hate

i'm a big fat sucker for gauge/resource management mechanics, what can i say. are there any you like? because you also mentioned you don't wanna deal with CB phials if i recall.

>Khezu
Below average monster design, but not the worst thing in the world. I think Gigginox is a better Khezu, but apparently the devs disagree, since it never came back.

>Gammoth
Definitely the weakest of the Fated Four, not surprised it's the only one that hasn't returned. But it's got potential, if they work on its moveset a bit.

>meter management I like
Bowguns. The reason is that I have perfect control of the meters. None of them are time-limited, except the new 'special ammos'. Reloading is always available at a single button press, instead of a convoluted attack sequence like LS/CB.

Also, I love the Dual Blade Archdemon mechanic. Instead of maintaining one buff, you have two buffs that each fill the other's downtime. Very elegant. Shame I don't really enjoy the DB movelist.