Sonicrida

FFXIV RP Venue

Why are people upset about the Manderville Weapons?

Heya! I'm starting to make full length Final Fantasy XIV commentary videos! This one's about the recent Manderville Relic weapons and why they've been so controversial.

The problem speaks to the lack of things people feel they have to sink time into between patches and I have some thoughts on that haha

If you have thoughts, leave them in a note here or join my discord to chat with me about it. I'd love to grow a community that loves the game as much as I do.

I really wanted to cover a lot of the systems in a very brief yet helpful way to set yourself up for enjoying the game without missing important things.

Learning everything at once can be off-putting for a lot of neurodivergent gamers and I've seen people dropping the franchise because of this. It's such a fantastic game and I hope that this video can help people to get past the information hurdle to really have fun with it!

So I know that most people don't care about the story in Monster Hunter but it's something I actually enjoyed a lot of in Monster Hunter World.

in Monster Hunter Rise, I was a bit underwhelmed with the presentation of the story/narrative/lore in the world a bit. Don't get me wrong, I love the game and will prob put in just as many hours if not more but there are some things I wanted to rant into the void about.

Things I miss:

- In World, each monster has a unique intro with you where you would go find them on the map. Compared to the (still amazing) intros of Rise, you first had to find them in a habitat or scenario that made sense. The picture of the monster in the quest selection was also hidden in World. This made experiencing the monster for the first time much more exciting to me. No intro in Rise compares to say, the first time you see Rajang in Iceborne

Now on the bright side, multiplayer is much more seamless in rise but they could've met in the middle by having the intro cutscene while also letting people join before the host triggers the intro. There is a middle-ground here

A big part of the excitement is that your character is in all of the scenes. Sometimes other characters too which leads me to another issue.

- In World, you had your handler and other NPCs showing up both in the world and throughout cutscenes at various points in the story. You're almost entirely alone outside of the village in Rise (with the exception of Rampages and one other moment). It's just a very lonely game in comparison especially if you're going through village quests.

All of the moments where you'd have more dynamic cutscenes involving talking to multiple people compared to world are just basic text conversations for the most part in one of like two locations in Rise: In front of the temple or the waterfront eating area in the hub.

- In World, the village music changed to reflect notable hunts. Now this one wasn't that special but it was a nice touch that Rise could've improved on. Imagine if before you fight a certain storm themed monster, the whole town was stormy and with cloudy skies similar to the arena. A minor complaint but I did enjoy it haha aside from hearing certain songs a little too much when they became optional quests.

All in all I really enjoy both games but I feel MHW did a lot of things to really immerse me in the world and convincingly show me that these monsters lived there. I would've loved to see Khezu establishing the same fear that Vaal Hazak was able to in both of its intros and having that directed at me when I encounter it.

I was also expecting to be able to fight Rathalos or some other flying wyvern on top of the highest mountain in the Shrine Ruins. It felt like every monster belonged in their respective environments in World whereas Rise somewhat felt more like "well this thing is gonna be here".

I expect a lot of this to improve with updates as new monsters and special arenas are added. The Final Boss in Rise was incredible and I can't wait to see more of that style in future fights because it really pushed the boundaries in making a cinematic hunt just as Iceborne did with the final update hunts in that expansion.

Gonna start posting some guides here that I've been posting on YouTube and tiktok in case it helps other hunters out there since I know that this game is confusing for people.

Here are some early game armor tips!

If you're confused about how to approach armor in rise, I recommend trying to upgrade whenever you can improve a piece by 6+ points of defense. Smaller numbers don't matter that much. Make sure you check the smithy after each hunt to see what's available.

Early on, you probably won't need to go out of your way to farm armor materials but feel free to if you're having a hard time. Defense is very important.

Ignore skills and any other stats like elemental resistances for now. Once you get to high rank, that stuff will matter a lot more.