The Monster Hunter World board game, based off of the video game, allows you and your friends to hunt monsters in this cooperative game by Steamforged Games.

Pros

• Theme/known IP
• Entry Level Pledge Price
• Known company
• Great Minis

Cons

• Entry Level Pledge Contents
• Previous video game adaptations from the company
• Stretch Goal structure

The Page

You are going to see one comparison made pretty often and that’s going to be with with Primal: The Awakening, which is another monster hunting game. But looking at this page, I think that it looks pretty solid. I like how they have everything laid out in terms of explaining what is in the different pledge levels.

But I am going to knock the pledge levels some. It looks like it could be solid with the entry level pledge, but you get zero daily unlocks. I get that they are trying to keep the price point low, but it is 4 monsters and 4 heroes. Not every campaign needs to have a million different options to play, but that isn’t much. And that is one of my cons, their previous video game adaptation, Horizon Zero Dawn, might be a great game, but you need stretch goals. The basic box provides way to little content, and from the looks of that entry level pledge, it will again.

Otherwise, I like the page layout and they spend a fair amount of time on the game play. I’ll get into that in more detail in the next section. They definitely highlight the size of the minis on the page as well, but this, like Primal: The Awakening, is always going to have giant minis. The only thing look wise that I don’t like is the board. In one picture you see it close-up with a bunch of a white circles on it, and it just doesn’t look as put together as it should.

The Game

Game play seems interesting. You level up your characters and characters are unique which I really like. The monsters even level up as well. Three different levels per monster to the point when you defeat any of the monsters as four star monsters you win the campaign. Or you can play one-shot arena battles against a monster. I like the fact that it has those combos.

I also like that much like Primal: The Awakening, the game play seems to be based around cards. In fact, looking at everything, I’m not sure I see any dice. And a game like this could easily have just been a dice chucker. That gives me more faith, like I was saying about Horizon Zero Dawn, that this will be a solid game mechanically.

The leveling up system looks interesting as well. It appears to give you some options as to how you can do that and how you can branch. When you have the option to level up, I don’t want it to be just one fixed path. I don’t believe that Monster Hunter World will give you that.

Back or Brick

So let’s dive into this. Is this a Back or Brick for me? Right now, this looks like a Brick for me. If the daily unlocks were coming to the entry level pledge, I’d probably be in on it. But it feels like this is a limited pledge level that is mainly just going to make you wish you’d gotten more and then pay larger numbers over on Ebay later. Also, if I hadn’t already backed Primal: The Awakening, I’d be more apt to back this as well. I think that Primal: The Awakening might be a simpler game to play and easier to get to the table. Will this be a bad game, probably not, but I wouldn’t get the Entry Pledge.

How about for you, is this a back or a brick?

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