It's a good game, but it's a bit disappointing as a follow up to Monster Hunter Stories 2.
Mechanically almost everything in the game is the same. The battle system, monster dens/eggs/hatching, the gene system, the field monster skills, shop system, equipment forging, graphics, menus, it's all ported over pretty much untouched. So if you liked the previous game you will certainly like this one.
The major additions they did add in the monster restoration system are fairly good though. In previous games you'd end up with tons of just junk monsters that would sit in the bank and do nothing after you pillage whatever good genes they had. In this game, you establish bases in the parts of the large overworld maps, and then you can release monsters into that area. The more you release of a specific type the higher rank that monster gets in that area, which then boosts future eggs of that monster as well as having more of that monster show up in the overworld itself. Also depending on the region's monster makeup you can trigger monster mutations and alt versions. It's a very nice system allowing you to stock monsters that you want to farm and then finding them to fight to gather their parts, as well as thematically seeing more of the monsters wandering the world.
Every other change is basically for the worse though. Flying was nerfed into the ground and now you can only glide. The story is mediocre. I'm not even sure why you still have a forced Ratha in your party anymore because he barely matters to the story (until the very end) and he's just....there, taking up a party slot. The biggest travesty is even though the battle system is almost unchanged, they actually ruined combat.
The combat is based around a weapon triangle and then attack type triangle (red > green, green > blue, blue > red) and memorizing enemy monster attack patterns and using the right attack color to gain an advantage against the enemy's attack. The devs thought this was too easy or something, and so now enemy monsters barely use colored attacks, instead using untyped yellow attacks constantly. This wouldn't be that bad if they didn't also introduce bonkers level scaling. Monsters slightly higher level than you will be yellow flagged, and monsters higher level than that will be red flagged. You basically have zero chance against a red flagged monster because every attack they use will one shot you even through defense buffs. In previous games you could use a variety of tricks to negate the few untyped attacks they would use and scrape out a win, but now it's impossible as they spam yellow aoe attacks constantly that one shot your entire team.
The game has plenty of tools that you're supposed to use to deal with these attacks, yet they are inadequate. Traps are super effective when they work, but many monsters are immune. You could use accuracy down debuffs and dodge up buffs, but now you're trusting RNG. You could topple/stagger enemies by running out their wyvernfell gauge, but you often cannot control when this happens because your AI teammate will choose to attack or not on their own. You can break specific monster parts often stunning the enemy or preventing specific attacks, but again not entirely controllable as the AI team member might break them early when you don't want to yet. You can use your monster synergy skill while riding to cancel an enemy's turn, but riding has been nerfed through a big reduction in kinship gauge gains, and kinship isn't shared if you frequently switch monsters because stamina regen has been (surprise surprise) nerfed. You can use certain weapon attacks that guarantee dodge or counter attacks, but these often have big stamina costs so can't be done repeatedly. You can try status ailments like blind or sleep, but again, RNG.
The entire system was based around routinely winning head to heads before (stamina gains, kinship gains) but without them, everything is an unbalanced mess.
As a result you get fights where you just get wiped out with seemingly nothing you could do, and then on the next attempt win easily because favorable things happen. It's beyond frustrating.
The devs even know they ruined things, because your AI team member will randomly use one of the rarest items in the game that restores a heart for free as an extra action at the end of their turn on you. They have an unlimited supply (you don't of course) and this was clearly added by the devs after playtesting showed how unfair their changes to the combat system were, so they threw this in as a desperate patch for the difficulty.
The only real solution is just to overlevel. Eventually enemies stop outscaling you and suddenly the attacks that were oneshotting you don't one shot you and you win easily.
The game isn't ruined by a long shot by this, it's just less of a strategy/puzzle game now and more of an RPG where overleveling trumps all. But they really need to fix this if they're gonna make another one of these games.
