Monster Hunter World Ancient Forest

A huge beast charged at me from behind a cardboard box! I wanted to avoid its attack, but my stamina bar was full. So, I did nothing for two turns…

…because it turned out to be my cat, who was just demanding to be stroked.

I invite you to my review of Monster Hunter World: The Board Game.

Monster Hunter World is an action-packed, cooperative board game for 1 to 4 players where we’ll be hunting giant plastic miniatures! After defeating these monsters from their corpses, we will create better equipment to fight even stronger beasts. We’ll keep repeating that until we finally defeat the beast from legends.

That, in a nutshell, is the gameplay of Monster Hunter World. To prepare for this review, I played the game on my PS4 to better prepare myself for the topic.

I almost didn’t write this review because I was too busy waving my pad and watching animations of cooking cats…

A cold trail

In order to fight the beast, we first need to track it down. This whole process will take place in a quest book. Like in a paragraph book, we will walk through various locations and make many ‘important’ decisions. Although it all comes down to how many crafting ingredients we can collect and how much time we will waste on this. In a board game this option is really limited, but maybe that’s a good thing. Because when I saw those flying sprites on the console showing me something new every now and then, I couldn’t help myself. Who could resist that?

However, it doesn’t matter what we choose because all roads will still lead to encounter.

A familiar beast

The monsters will charge, breathe fire, roll on their backs and lay on their sides like seals on a beach. We will simulate these attacks by making strange noises while moving around the map with circles. The sounds of the attacks are optional, but without it there would be no atmosphere.

Each monster attacks a little differently and has quite distinctive movements. Jagras is the kind of oversized lizard that puffs up its belly and spits water. Tobi-Kadachi annoyingly teleports across the board and wiggles his tail vigorously. Anjanath is a large T-Rex that tramples everything in its path and occasionally breathes fire. Rathalos does what a dragon likes to do best.

Most importantly, we always knew who we were fighting as we drew their attack cards. They also do a nice job of mirroring their console counterparts. Although in the board game, at least I knew where my hunter was, and the giant tyrannosaurus head didn’t obstruct half of my screen.

In terms of enemy variety, it’s good, although I wish there were more beasts in the box. They could even do like with Rathalos, which has 2 versions but with 1 figure.

Stamina to strike

Once the beast is activated we will move on to our hunters. As is common in games like this, we’ll be faced with dealing 1 to 2 blows and dramatically dodging with an X so as not to get a beating. Of course, both dodging and attacks will use up our stamina.

Here I have to say that the board game has implemented this system very well. Because each player will get such a thin cardboard board that likes to bend. On it we will play our attack cards. We’ll use them to launch blows, move around the map and dodge beast attacks.

The trick is that we can only play 5 cards on the stamina bar. Cards will remain on this bar until the end of our turn. Where as a rule we will remove one card, so you have to ask yourself ‘do I feel lucky’ and bring out as many strikes as possible or maybe leave room for dodging.

In addition to damage, our attacks will allow us to impose various states on the beast such as paralysis, stun and poison. Something we know from other games. In addition, we will be able to destroy individual parts of the opponent’s body. Which will be able to weaken its attacks. 

I really like the stamina management in this game and what we can do in our turn. It’s tight and you have to know when to attack and when to circle around your opponent waiting for our stamina to renew.

Most importantly, the combat is dynamic and it feels like this plastic is alive on the board. Hmm, as if I’ve written this somewhere before….

We also played ourselves with the changes from Iceborn and I have to say it’s even better. The change is that we can remove one card from the stamina bar or the 2 face down ones that are used for dodging or moving. The game then becomes a bit easier, but I feel it results in less empty turns. From now on they will only play like that.

Non stop grind

Having defeated the monster, it’s time to move on to looting corpses, a standard of RPG sessions.

Killed beasts will give us the ingredients we need to craft new armour and weapons. Newly crafted weapons will allow us to change the composition of our attack deck and modifiers. Don’t expect big changes, though, as there will usually only be few cards. It’s a bit of a shame, but at least the power of our attacks will increase thanks to the change in attack modifiers. This is something like in Gloomhaven, but here at least we will hit every time.

Each weapon has completely different attack cards and mechanics. The bow shoots from a distance and allows you to cover your shots with special effects. Sword and shield combat allows us to constantly be on the move and strengthens our defence. The greatsword is slower but hits very hard. The dual blades bring out fast slashes. Each weapon fights a little differently and this is great. Although we can’t change them as freely as we can on the console, because that would require collecting different components.

Armour will reduce damage from beasts and offer us passive abilities. It’s worth forging several types of armour, as each type is useful against a different enemy.

Overall, the whole crafting experience is a good one. Maybe there are not as many options as in another game about hunting monsters, but at least there is this progress.

Although here also enters such a slight grind as it happens in MMO games. Because after winning a battle, we’ll roll dice hoping to drop a particular body part of a given monster. Sometimes you will have to fight the same opponent several times to succeed. Therefore, it is worth destroying individual body parts of the beast so that it is easier for us to forge something.

Time cards

My biggest complaint about this game is the time cards. We are given a set amount of time to kill the beasts. Before the hunt we will find out how many cards our timer will consist of. While tracking the monster, we will lose cards from this deck without resolving their abilities. However, during combat at the end of the hunter’s turn we will draw one timer card and read what event it will offer us. These events are a bit of a S. Because they are so random and could be anything. My favourite is the one that can deal 2 damage to us or our opponent 5. We have a 50/50 chance of that happening and it’s all decided by a dice roll. Twice now this event has stolen a frag from me. It was hardly satisfying.

Here we also played with the official changes and increased the chance of a negative effect for the Beast to 2/3. A seemingly small change, but a satisfying one.

Manual

The instructions for the game are well written and have many examples. There are even pictures. For that a big minus for the lack of prompts as to what statuses we can sell to monsters and what they can present to us. I had to print myself such player aids from BGG. I recommend that.

The game rules themselves are simple and for a game about hunting big beasts it’s pretty light, but that’s a good thing. Almost beer and pretzels.

Quality and components

Monster Hunter has great monster figures. They have loads of detail and are very impressive on the board. It’s just a shame that there was quite a big problem with assembling the wings of the dragon. Because they just didn’t fit the input. Therefore 40-50 seconds of soaking in warm water and there we have it. I definitely recommend this method rather than scraping the plastic with a modelling knife.

In the box we also get dice, tokens and hundreds of cards. There’s quite a lot of that. It would be nice to store it somewhere. Remember how I wrote a while ago about the dragon’s wings? In order to store it in the box you have to disassemble those wings. Ideally for people who like to paint. By the way, the cards in the sleeves don’t fit in the insert either. This is probably my biggest complaint for Monster Hunter in terms of components. Oh wait. Because we still have the stamina board, which was quite bent in my copy. I also specifically didn’t write anything about the illustrations on the cards. Because they simply aren’t there.

Player count and gameplay time

I’ll throw in the important info straight away that Monster Hunter on the board works well solo. This was quite important for me, as I was just looking for a game about hunting big beasts that works well for alone time. We then play two hunters at once and it’s really easy to handle them.  Even my wife can join me at any time without doing any special preparations.

For two players, the Palico cats come to our aid. They are such cute little helpers that will offer us a one-time ability during a clash. Some of them can be really powerful. Especially the one with destroying parts of the beast’s body.

A huge plus for Monster Hunter is that the preparation for gameplay is very quick. We lay out the board, set up the monster, count down the time cards, take our decks and we’re ready to play. The clash with the beast itself is also very quick. A pleasant surprise considering the other boss battlers.

Summary

Monster Hunter World is exactly the kind of game I was looking for. Because it offers me quick co-op battles that I can play at total ease. I sit down to the game, quickly set it up and literally play. The biggest plus, of course, are the various beasts I can face.

My wife also really likes the game and that’s the most important thing for me. She even asks me when we will play it again.

Final verdict: Beast found and wife satisfied

Pros

• Living plastic
• Dynamic and fast-paced battles
• Developing weapons and armour
• Cute Palicos
• Simple rules
• Works well solo

Cons

• Time cards are quite random
• We won’t develop our attack deck too much
• Cards in sleeves do not fit in the insert
• Fold it yourself wings
• Lack of player aids