Understanding the Charge Blade can turn you into a freakish killing machine, effectively stun-locking monsters and eviscerating them in minutes, in both MH4U and MHW. There's much to play with, but no clear sign of how, or when. Without much of an explanation, the Charge Blade starts off as a clunky and needlessly complicated weapon.

And nearly a thousand hours of gameplay later, not one of the other weapons in Monster Hunter gives me as much satisfaction to use effectively.īut therein lies the key. It's a fluid, cyclical weapon with outstanding damage potential and incredible defense, alongside a very high skill ceiling for beginning players.Īfter a hundred hours and several hundred uses of the Charge Blade, it clicked with me. It's mechanic revolves around charging energy in the sword through attacks, then storing that energy into the shield, and using the axe mode to discharge said energy back into the monster. It's an over-sized sword and shield, with the ability to morph into a giant double-sided axe, the shield serving as an axe-head. In MH4U, there are few melee weapons more complicated than the Charge Blade. But when I began to get bored of it, I decided to dabble with some of the more complicated weapons. I eventually landed on the greatsword, because of its simplicity and sheer killing power. I read up and watched videos, and took the time to go through each individual weapon to find something I liked to play. It took a few months until I was reminded of the game again when looking for something to play with a friend. I tried a handful of weapons, eventually landing on the Insect Glaive, and after bumbling my way through a few quests, I hit a wall and gave up. When I first picked up a copy of Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, I gave the game a shot without any previous knowledge or tutorials.

Mh4u auxl