in theory the Monster Hunter games sound great for me because they have combat similar to the Dark Souls games, except you avoid attacks with positioning instead of precisely-timing your iframes. which is exactly what I’d want (I never liked iframe-based dodging - especially in Soulslikes)

but then I look up Monster Hunter stuff and hear phrases like “tear open the wound to extract blood” and “at low health it will start limping” and like no actually I’m good. I don’t want any part of that

@ellaw I love that you wait for them to strike first! I do this in games too and I love when it turns out that an “enemy” is only an enemy-coded creature that is actually peaceful unless you attack them

like, there’s a point in New Vegas where you encounter supermutants, who are generic enemies in Fallout 3, but here they’re only hostile if you shoot them. they’re actually just another quest hub full of characters to talk to and quests to do. and I kinda loved that - it felt great to be rewarded for giving them the benefit of the doubt