Review for Monster Hunter: World Iceborne. Game for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 26/01/2018 The version for PC came out on 09/08/2018
Months later, Capcom has finally brought the Iceborne expansion to PC, thus allowing its now, almost entire fanbase to enjoy hunting the new frozen continent. A long-awaited and loved title deserves the best possible treatment when it comes to porting, especially after the excellent support given by the fanbase towards the first actual Monster Hunter to land on PC. Sadly, Capcom hasn't been very far-sighted in converting its best-selling title ever, and Iceborne makes this version of Monster Hunter World worse off.
This review will focus more on the quality of the conversion than discussing the content. For a more in-depth discussion of the wonderful gameplay offering represented by Iceborne, we advise you to refer to our review of the console version, where we go into the details of the great work of adding and refining Monster Hunter World that Capcom has brought with Iceborne. As for this review, however, as you may have guessed, the tones will be much less enthusiastic.
Our adventure with Monster Hunter World: Iceborne on PC started in the worst way, but with an event that immediately makes clear the rough work done on this port: loading the game we discovered how the game data had been damaged, and trying to manually restore the savedata from local files the title refused to recognize the saves, crashing continuously during startup. Fortunately, having been able to deal with the post-release game, unlike what usually happens, we were able to confront the community that was facing the same problems as ours. Once we gave up all hope of being able to recover the savedata (for reasons that we will specify later), we started a new game and restarted the journey in the lands of Astera.
Starting over the title, we could see how the gifts provided by Capcom with Monster Hunter Icerborne are a fantastic way to allow players to rushare the main adventure, to then dedicate themselves to the expansion and / or the endgame of the base game. A consolation for the problems related to savedata, consolation, however, immediately attenuated by a double realization: the performances seem to have significantly deteriorated and the game seems to use much more resources than it should, with CPU at very high percentages. The game has not deteriorated to the point of being unplayable, on the contrary, with our hardware we have kept the maximum settings with a framerate higher than 60 fps, but this deterioration is still impressive and we wondered why the title could have gotten worse so much, especially in pre-Iceborne areas.
The mystery is soon revealed. The reason for both of the serious problems encountered is none other than the PC consumer's worst enemy, a thoughtful (and unnecessary) use of poor DRM and Anti-Cheat systems. With Iceborne, Capcom has decided to treacherously insert additional systems into the software against piracy and hackers, but impacting the performance of the game and the use of computer hardware resources. The restoration of the save data was interpreted as a way to load a hacked save, while the weighting of the title is due to the DRM which, as often happens, turns out to be more of a disadvantage for those who buy than those who pirate the software, given that this is circumvented by crack. Despite the many cases against DRM and the evidence to support its uselessness, certain companies can't do without it, and it's a shame to see Monster Hunter World: Iceborne plagued by this anti-consumer software.
The situation is even more serious when we consider that performance has deteriorated more within the zones contained in the basic package than in the new ones. In addition, the mandatory update to the Iceborne version has also included these systems in the software of all those who only own the basic version of Monster Hunter World, effectively worsening the gaming experience for everyone. As mentioned above, the situation, although negative, is not so serious as to prevent you from being able to take advantage of this excellent title with many merits, however it is important to highlight cases like this, to avoid the often bad treatment of the PC community by cross-platform publishers.
It hurts to see a much-loved and long-awaited title being mistreated to such an extent due to exaggerated and unnecessary protection maneuvers. It hurts even more to think that it was Capcom, the publisher that has given its best in recent years, to have succumbed to these invasive DRM and Anti-cheat. Monster Hunter World: Iceborne is by no means a bad title and remains absolutely playable even on PC, but it's a shame to see unnecessary limitations applied to a fanbase that has had to wait months for the title, and now has to endure limits that does not deserve to have.
► Monster Hunter: World Iceborne is an Adventure-RPG game developed and published by Capcom for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 26/01/2018 The version for PC came out on 09/08/2018
