Last time I made a ‘Returning to Monster Hunter’ post, it was for Monster Hunter World: Iceborne’s release. No such release this time. In fact, if anything, all major releases for Rise are now complete.
However, I never finished the Sunbreak expansion. Barely even started it truth be told, and while I didn’t enjoy Rise quite as much as I did World, this has still been something of a regret for me. One I mentioned in the Blaugust Discord perhaps a couple of weeks ago, and one Magi responded to with an offer to play together.
Our time zones don’t exactly make this easy, but I’d also been slow on jumping back in to shake off some of the rust.
Sure, the last time I played, I beat Valstrax, but that was a long time ago. I remember going back to World being initially difficult as well. Not just relearning the controls — muscle memory can, and did, help with a lot of that.
I wanted to relearn their application as well. Now, a lot of this is monster-specific, sure. In Rise, I play Bow, where one of your moves can see you leaping into the air and launching several volleys of attacks. Timing it right can see you leap over enemy attacks. Timing the volleys even better can keep you aloft for the specific amount of time you require to then plunge with an arrow in hand, gouging it through your enemy as you fall.
Of course, get it wrong, and you can see yourself bodily slammed by the very attack you were attempting to avoid.
At last though, I had done a hunt or two on my own so that I didn’t feel like I’d be complete dead weight in any given hunt — although of course I’d still have longer to go before feeling like I’d started optimising damage output again — and managed to line up Magi’s availability with my own, and…!
…!
…!!!
Steam decided it was time to play silly buggers with connectivity. Haha. Ah well.
We did at least get one hunt done — we took down a Master Rank Rathian together, and it was glorious!
I think I’ll still be prioritising Black Myth: Wukong for finishing first, but thanks to Magi’s prompting, I’ve at least done enough to know I can jump back into this and finish it off in the, what feels like, still altogether too long of a wait for Monster Hunter Wilds.
This was posted during Blaugust 2024, the annual blogging event hosted by Belghast. Blaugust is an event aiming to welcome new blogger blood into the fold and revitalise those who’ve been at it a little longer.
The Blaugust Discord is still available to join in, year-round!
Sounds like y’all are just using silly games to avoid the serious work of blogging, to me! 🤣
Kidding of course, but I didn’t know you folks talked about games in that Discord!
” I didn’t know you folks talked about games in that Discord!”
It is interesting you say that. The origin of Blaugust was with gaming blogs, so many of the ‘old timers’ participating in the event are focused on gaming content. In fact, that was one of the things that made me hesitate before participating: I haven’t written any gaming related blog content for quite a while, so I I was concerned my posts would be ‘off topic’ for the event.
Blaugust is now of course much more a general ‘blogging’ event than specific to any particular topic. Even so, it could really be argued that Naithin’s post is a return to Blaugust’s roots ;)
Oh Pete has been around for yonks, longer than I — although not always in the Discord to be fair.
Certainly posts of this nature, that dive into the events of specific play sessions (even if this one was a little light in that respect) is certainly a type of post I want to get into a little more, as one of my key reasons for doing this whole ‘blogging’ thing is to keep some idea of my own gaming history, and I’ve been doing a pretty poor job of that over the last couple of years, and will no doubt form a bit of a basis in rebuilding toward the habits I want to refocus on it! :)
Haha, there is a ‘Gaming Together’ channel, but it goes through spits and spurts of activity. A fair bit lately of Monster Hunter related stuff though, that’s for sure! :)