3 hours was all I could stand of this game. From the very start, it became clear this is a VERY Japanese game, written and produced in Japan meant primarily for a Japanese audience with a half hearted attempt at making parts of it suitable for western audiences. Dont misunderstand, I've played a lot of Japanese made games that I loved. But this game takes every Japanese/Asian cliche and mixes them with every Western cliche's to make this game just so....irritating.
Game is filled with horrible, tired cliche's. Seriously who wrote this garbage?? Your girly sidekick's voice is irritating, high pitched, dumb and giggly and sounds like an 10 year old girl... and she wouldn't SHUT UP the whole time. You can easily make great female characters, like Alloy from Horizon Zero Dawn, without resorting to these ridiculous characterizations of girls and women. Yes I know it's only a game but this is just stupid. The other characters are equally irritating with their tired "American" accents and stereotypical characteristics. Seriously this game is meant for 10 year olds.
Game is riddled with either glitches or, if it was done on purpose, incredibly sloppy, inexcusable audio. I can't count how many times a character would be saying something and the dialogue just stops cold... their mouths are still moving but there's no dialogue and the only way to figure out what's happening is if you have subtitles turned on. This happens over and over. Sometime the character will utter one word from the dialogue in the middle of a sentence and that's it. Sometimes what you see on the subtitles isn't whats actually being spoken. This is unacceptable in any game, period.
The gameplay itself is mediocre at best. The monsters are pretty cool and beautiful but the battles are just ho-hum... same mechanics as you always see in every single game, making it seem like you've already played Monster Hunter World. The characters are slow like they're going in 3/4ths motion speed. The controls are quite often sketchy (I couldn't hide in a bush no matter how many times I pressed triangle.) The weapons are not engaging, not new and very uninspiring. The scenery is lush and beautiful but there's SO MUCH stuff everywhere it becomes very difficult at times to find what you're looking for on the ground. And don't get me started on "cooking" stuff either. The environments themselves were just ok. Not stunningly beautiful like Horizon Zero Dawn or The Witcher 3 which is a head scratcher because the monsters are pretty amazing, unique and colorful.
Seriously cannot understand why this game gets a lot of the reviews it's getting.
I can't WAIT for God of War so I can get back to gaming with fantastic dialogue, great story and stellar gameplay meant for adults.