Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin

I think this game was kind of disappointing when comparing it to Monster Hunter Stories 1 to be honest. However I think you will enjoy this game if you haven't touched the first game. Well to be frank, the story is not good, even if it was longer (around 40-45 hours long). First game's story was fine, your typical power of friendship pokemon flavor of the week. There was some charm to it and the characters. This game takes place 5 years later, and its utterly devoid of any and all charm. It's like the writers wanted to add more edge to everything, so characters are a lot more mean, there's more antagonists, and a bigger scarier final boss. However, if you played the original game every character from that game behaves like they forgot their arcs in the first game. They act like a bunch of rude clueless idiots who contradict actions or statements they made before, and Navirou has gotten even more insufferable. Also what the hell happened to Debli? He appeared in one flashback and was gone this whole game. Is he just dead?! Everyone also acts like the protagonist from the first game didn't exist, they barely mention them and when they do they act like they died. The new characters in this game all antagonize the main character immediately upon meeting them, but gas up their grandpa every other sentence. It's just not entertaining or fun to sit through, and was very mid compared to the original game's story which is crazy to say. Gameplay wise, it's pretty much identical to the first game. You had 3 attack types. Head to head is rock paper scissors. You have kinship meters with kinship attacks. I will say I think this time around they made monster movesets less random, which I actually respect because of how RNG this game's combat is because they just added two massive additional layers to the RNG: weapon types and part breaking. So now, you have to guess the right attack type, the right weapon type, and if attacking a part will topple the monster. Honestly, the moves for each weapon are unique and neat, but really this mechanic just seemed kind of annoying and most of the time it didn't make sense what weapon they wanted you to use for each monster part. All it amounts to most of the time is you need to make 2 more weapons than you did in the first game. Also: monster parts are mid. The whole appeal of breaking monster parts in monster hunter is forcing monsters to change move-sets or be unable to hit you with some attacks. I can count on one hand the amount of times breaking a monster part mattered in this game, it's very disappointing and just serves to give you more materials. Also what is up with the UI in this game? How is it somehow worse than the 3DS game? Am I dumb or why do I have to open two menus to swap my lead monster when it was a quick pop-up in the previous title? Why do quests organize by difficulty and not by completion like EVERY OTHER RPG? Why do we need to individually choose each material to grab after quests unlike the first game (theres a select all button but why is it even an option)? Also holy moly, the text display speed is atrocious, maybe even the slowest I've seen with zero options to change it. You will have to mash dialogue constantly if you are above a 1st grade reading level. Besides the core gameplay adding weapons and part breaking, the single biggest feature in this game is the follower system. I'm making a whole section about this here because followers suck. They are bad, they are not a good addition, and they ruin most fights in this game. What are followers? NPCs you can't control, sort of like old Persona 3. Probably around 70% of the time you get into a fight they will constantly lose head to heads and waste healing items because the AI is programmed to choose random actions rather than the right action after finding the best attack type. They only use level 1 kinship attacks, they lose head to heads, they steal double attacks by attacking with you instead of you attacking with your monster, and if they faint 3 times YOU ALSO LOSE! You will also be stuck with an NPC for... 90% of the main story! Awesome! Truly a horrendous addition, thankfully when you hit endgame you can choose not to take one. Now onto content. Building monsters is pretty much the same as the first game, you find genes, you transfer genes, you upgrade genes to make the best monsters. However, they removed element changing for some reason so building is more limited in this game. In terms of roster, my favorite additions from 1 like Brachydios and Stygian Zinogre are back. The new additions I liked were Pukei Pukei and Nergigante. They also have deviants of the fated four as title update endgame fights which is cool. My biggest problem still remains: my favorites are mostly in the end of the game so you basically never get to use them in the main story unless you take the time to grind and level them up. In the endgame they have an area called the elder den which is just a high rank and master rank area where you walk around hunting the same monsters you've fought the whole game to get better gear and genes. After that there's the title update monsters and more elders like Teostra, and a superboss. Around the same content as the first game. Personally, I find genes to be way too RNG to farm, talismans are more RNG, and building a team that is really good will take a long time. If you're into that, you're into that. I'm not. In conclusion, this game feels like one step forward one step back. It's more of the same, with a slightly worse story, and less RNG in fights. If you liked 1 for it's gameplay you'll enjoy this game but storywise it's jarring and frustrating. If you're looking to pick this game up, avoid the first game and in a vacuum this story is okay. I'd honestly give it a lower rating of 6/10, because I expect sequels to improve experiences in a large way. This game feels like they didn't learn much of anything from the first game besides adding a few bells and whistles to combat.