Tabletop Review - Monster Hunter World: The Board Game

Designer: Mat Hart, Sherwin Matthews, Jamie Perkins

Artist: Russ Charles, Thomas Lishman, Doug Telford, Holly Woolford

Publisher: Steamforged Games Ltd.

Monster Hunter World: The Board Game is a complex RPG board game based off of the video game Monster Hunter that was created in 2004 by Capcom. In the board game, players will quest and battle against their choice of different monsters, to gain experience and loot dropped from the defeated monsters. The game can be played either solo or as a team of up to four players. Included in the box is up to four different monsters, four figurines to represent the players, and tons of different card decks for the players to use throughout the game. Players also get a character sheet, which can be used for multiple quests and additional game sessions. This means that the player can build up their character, similar to that of the video game, and can accumulate loot, gear, weapons, and spells. But the game can also be played as a single quest too, making the game quite versatile. This means a player may have one single quest with a specific group of friends, while also holding a character sheet to be played with other friends on a more continuous, character-building, multisession campaign.

While the game is quite intricate, and the setup is a bit tedious, Monster Hunter World: The Board Game is quite fun to play! Once all players understand the rules and how each turn is taken, the game can move quite quickly, and monsters can be defeated in quick succession. The big downside to this game is that with the box only including four monsters, campaigns have a very limited lifespan before monsters must be reused. This is offset by each monster having a small deck of cards to predicate its actions. So while players may use a monster more than once, this does not mean the monster will do the same moves or damage the second time around. Another game-extending point would be the “choose-your-own-adventure” aspect of the game, where players will make moves or do certain actions, and the specific quest will lengthen or shorten due to those actions.

Gameplay and Phases

The gameplay is separated into three phases:

1. In the gathering phase, players will use the choose-your-own-adventure style gameplay to find small loot, gear, or upgrades. This phase can be quick or long depending on how players choose to move through and how much they want to search for the monster. But be warned, the monster can appear at any time during this phase, and thus move players into the next phase!

2. The next phase is the hunt phase, where players will approach and hopefully slay the monster, and gain the boon from its corpse. Once the monster, or players, are defeated, the next phase is triggered.

3. The last phase, base camp or HQ phase, is where players head back to a safe area and can restock, upgrade, exchange, or otherwise level up their characters after the battle.

All three phases are very similar to how the video game would play out for each quest: gather resources, fight the monster, collect rewards, and upgrade gear to then head out for the next quest!

During each phase, players are allowed to make choices. These choices will affect when the actual encounter will happen, and how the encounter will play out. Players must work together to draw the monster off of the weaker damage dealers, while also finding ways to break armor and bring down the monster, and gain the most loot! Positioning matters, yet there is always a small bit of luck in every situation because your attacks and defense are done through cards, and will also depend on the monster’s movements and attacks.

Pros/Cons

There are a ton of cool aspects to this game, but there are also some setbacks that made this game a bit more complicated than it needed to be, plus there are some stuff that just seemed to be lacking when playing through the game. As always, pros will come first!

Pros:

The game plays out similarly to a lot of TTRPGs. This means that there is a lot of discussion, some chance aspects, some monsters players must strategically beat up, and someone that is similar to a Game or Dungeon Master.

The game can be played in a quick play version and can also be played in a long, possibly multi-session way too. As stated earlier, the game can be just a single monster to beat, and the encounter can be done relatively quickly by just tracking down the monster without looking for anything else. But the game can also be taken much slower, additional monsters added, GMs can make their own quests so that players do not have to follow the quest booklet, and players can keep growing and upgrading their character sheets while reusing the same character for multiple games and game sessions. There are also expansions to this game, and one would imagine that more are to come, that all have different monsters, new boards, new quests, and even more choices of champions for players to play.

Monster Hunter is a well-known video game, and this board game plays out very similar to how the video game progresses. Monster choices may be limited, and the game may stagnate, but the monsters do get harder, the quests can become more difficult, and the players have the ability to keep growing and upgrading throughout. And if a player decides to drop out, or gets bored with their current character, a new character can be quickly added, or certain aspects can be changed, and all it takes is just switching cards out of the decks or just starting a new campaign. And just like the video game, there can be quite the grind for gathering materials to get the upgrades players want, so this means quests are done multiple times to hopefully get the loot drops from the monsters that the players need for their upgrade!

When it comes to design, this board game knocks it out of the park. While the figurines may be just a gray coloring, the details and poses are amazing and definitely look exactly like their video game counterparts. Even the player character figurines are detailed even though they are much smaller than the monsters. The cards seem to be fairly durable, and the other marker pieces and life counters are all very sturdy and feel like they will stand quite a few campaigns.

While the box is slightly larger than most board games, it is also quite complete, in that everything one needs to play for hours and hours is all within the box, without needing anything else. There is also enough to be able to enjoy many game sessions with many different groups, and while there is a limit of only 1-4 players to be able to quest together, it still stands up against a lot of other games that need expansions, extra items, dice, or other such extras that might not be planned for when opening the box to play!

Cons:

Monster Hunter is a very complex board game, and with complexity comes the need for tons of directions, pieces, and lots of reading of rules. Setup for this game took almost an hour to get all the pieces right, figure out what each piece was called, make sure all the cards were separated correctly, and figure out which cards and pieces we needed to play, and which we did not need because we were doing the easier version of the game.

The rulebooks are a bit lacking in direction and helpfulness. Not only is there a quest book, but there is also a how-to-play book too. Our opinion was that we wanted a single book to be able to flip back and forth between our quest and the rules on how to play, rather than having to have two different books that we had to leaf through when anyone had a question or needed to make a move. But this also allowed for one person to read and explain the encounter, while someone else checked the rulebook for information or how things were to be working.

The box is rather large and complicated to fit all the pieces back into when finished. With the figurines, all the pieces/tokens, and all the cards, the box had to be a bit bigger. But the problem is that if things are not returned to the box perfectly, the box will not close and everything must be removed, shifted, and then everything replaced to then check if the box will close. Luckily, there is a small slip of paper that comes in the box with a guide to putting all the pieces back correctly. We did not notice it at first, and one of the players almost threw it away. This would probably be something to place on the back of one of the books that are in the box so that it does not get accidentally discarded.

The game plays well enough, yet is very limited in the replay value. There will be a point when the game is overplayed and nothing can be done. Players have three options: spend more money on getting an expansion, put the game away for a while before playing it again, or create their own monsters and quests. In the review game box, there were only 4 monsters, and the quest book was rather small. This means players will replay missions against just these 4 monsters unless they spend more money on expanding the game themselves or by purchasing more from the developers. For some players, this will turn them away pretty quickly, because there is a lack of fun in playing a board game that feels like a tough grind. Players walk away from video games for the same reason. This game will be played while having fun, but then put into a closet or on a shelf, and left to collect dust. The game might be brought back out, but only if new players are found, or the original players feel the need to go back and play their old characters again.

While this game is quite fun to play, players should understand that these pros/cons are not a complete list. These are just a few that were very glaring problems or really cool aspects of the game.

Speaking to the Creator:

When attending Gen Con, I was given the amazing opportunity to speak with the creator of this amazing game, Jamie Perkins, and a few others who had a hand in the development of the game. All of them understood the cons described above, but once I saw the vast amount of other figurines, and noticed that all of them were on the larger side, it became apparent that more would not have been feasible to place in one box.

Past that, Jamie went on to explain how the quest book is more to get started with, and his hopes are that people will expand upon the base game that he has created. His excitement and passion were visible when explaining the possibilities that the game holds. He spoke about the expansions, but that his thoughts were also to allow players to bring in their own figurines too, make those play similar to the monsters that were in the game, and that making their own adventure based on his game would be his greatest achievement.

Jamie also explained that, while the game is complex, it is also meant for a bit more experienced board gamers, yet also appealing to those who loved the game, and further being appreciated by those who are more TTRPG fans. The grind, though not something I look for in a game, is one of the fun parts of the game for more experienced players, especially with the added cards that bring a bit of chance which makes each encounter unique.

Final Thoughts:

In conclusion, Monster Hunter World: The Board Game is quite a cool game to play and really has some awesome aspects to it that make it fun for even players who have never played the video game before. It may have a bit of a daunting start and setup, but it still is enjoyable even to a more casual board gamer.

If you are a fan of the video game, or a fan of TTRPGs and a bit of grind:

MONSTER HUNTER WORLD: THE BOARD GAME IS A MUST BUY.

But if you are not as experienced of a player in board games or TTRPGs, and you do not have that nostalgia for the old video game, it would still be a HIGHLY RECOMMENDED game to play!