The release of the expansion “Iceborne” for PC is not going well for Monster Hunter World . The Steam reviews are at 40% positive, while Monster Hunter World has 80%. The reason is severe performance issues, including freezes, and the loss of save files. Hunters are said to suddenly have to start over after hundreds of hours.
This is the situation: On January 9, Iceborne was released on Steam, the major and supposedly celebrated expansion for Monster Hunter World.
The expansion has been playable on PS4 and Xbox One since September 6, 2019: Fans and critics generally agree: Iceborne is a really good thing that expands Monster Hunter World with a lot of new content. Not a big revolution, but a welcome evolution.
Yet the Steam reviews for Iceborne stand at only “40% positive reviews” after 2 days – that’s really low.
After all, the main game Monster Hunter World has 80% positive reviews – in the last 30 days, even 89% have had positive things to say about Monster Hunter World.
Iceborne turns MHW into a slideshow on PC
Why so much criticism? Some Steam users complain that Iceborne runs poorly. Many who write negative Steam reviews attribute performance issues to poor optimization.
One user with 600 hours in the base game says about Iceborne:
My PC is well above the minimum requirements, and I get 1 FPS at 100% CPU usage. I’m not exaggerating: The game runs like a slideshow.
Negative Steam review of Iceborne
Other Steam reviews echo this sentiment: “The winter experience of Iceborne is surreal, it even makes your PC freeze.”
Capcom has already admitted that there are problems. Players should get in touch.
According to Capcom, the issues are related to DirectX12 API. PCs with “slow CPUs” are said to be particularly affected – also, NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards with less than 3 GB VRAM are prone to freezes.
Go back to the start – Save file not found
What are the other problems? In addition to the performance issues, there is another annoying point with Monster Hunter World Iceborne that Capcom has already acknowledged.
Iceborne deletes existing saves from PC players. There are reports from players who installed Iceborne and then received the message that the game could not find a “compatible save file” when it started.
Afterwards, the game simply starts over: The hundreds of hours of gameplay progress are gone.
According to PC Gamer, theories circulated that mods were responsible for deleting save files. But others say their saves were deleted even though they had not installed any mods.
Capcom has since admitted that the problem exists but has not yet presented a solution.
