The Great Sword is an iconic weapon that has been a part of the Monster Hunter series since the very beginning. It featured prominently in early promotional material for the upcoming movie as a result. It’s also a popular pick among Hunters (highly advised for those diving into the Monster Hunter Rise demo), for obvious reasons: it’s implausibly big and intimidating, with tremendous damage potential.
It’s a simple concept to grasp: slow, heavy, powerful swings are this weapon’s forte. Still, there’s much more to it than that. Its mechanics, as with most of the franchise’s arsenal, were tweaked somewhat in the transition to Monster Hunter World, and there are now more bizarre little details about the Great Sword than ever before.
10 Its Sheer Size
To address the enormous, Chrysler-Building-sized blade in the room, there’s one simple fact to address first: Great Swords are gigantic. Final Fantasy VII fans often joke that enigmatic hero Cloud Strife could never wield the Buster Sword with his thin PS1 arms, and that goes severalfold for Hunters and Great Swords.
In the Monster Hunter universe, bigger weapons ‘extend’ somewhat when drawn, so that they can practically fit on a Hunter’s back when sheathed in the first place. Hunters are incredibly strong and resilient, largely thanks to their armor, but they don’t have any actual superhuman abilities. How can they even support the weight of one of these things, let alone effectively wield one in combat?
9 Blocking With The Blade
Clearly, then, the Great Sword is far, far more than a typical blade. It’s one of few weapons in the series that comes equipped with a block move, akin to the shield of the Lance or the often-underrated Sword and Shield. As formidable and substantial as the Great Sword is, though, there’s really no way this would work against the average towering Wyvern.
Holding a Great Sword in a defensive stance against a projectile attack, or a devastating slam from a raging beast? Shields wouldn’t realistically have a chance, and the blade of a sword certainly wouldn’t either.
8 The Block Is Usually Best Avoided
Practical or not, the blocking function of this weapon is a very well-known part of its kit. As experienced players will know, however, it isn’t a feature to rely on.
While the Great Sword’s sharpness doesn’t degrade very quickly compared to weapons like the Longsword or Dual Blades (it’s the complete opposite of their combo-heavy nature), blocking with it causes sharpness to take quite the hit. It doesn’t mitigate damage as effectively as it could, either, meaning that taking evasive action is usually the preferable course of action. The iconic block is actually quite sub-optimal in most situations.
7 They’re Surprisingly Complicated To Use
At first glance, the Great Sword looks like it would be a simple enough weapon to use (practical considerations of wielding it aside). Swinging an enormous blade into foes and hoping to cause as much damage as possible in the process isn’t the most complex of battle strategies, after all.
Surprisingly, though, there’s an awful lot more to its usage than that. Monster Hunter combat is often criticised for being slow and clunky, and while World took great strides to improve here, the Great Sword is very technical in terms of charging and aiming its most devastating blows. This is not a weapon to try to simply smash with on auto-pilot, regardless of appearances.
6 It’s Tough To Target Tails With Them
While solo players will still have hundreds of hours of fun with a Monster Hunter World, the game has always shined in multiplayer. Co-op play with up to three other hunters opens the door for all manner of team strategies that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. Players tends to adopt a role on the team, and tail cutting can be a vital one.
Those who have mastered the elegant ways of the Long Sword will frequently take this role, as the weapon’s wide vertical sweeps lend themselves well to damaging this part (eventually severing it for the valuable carve it offers). The Great Sword’s cutting damage and similar range on its attacks may make it seem like a natural fit here too, and it can be effective. With very mobile monsters, though, it can be surprisingly hard to consistently target a tail.
5 They Can Be Frustratingly Slow
It’s certainly true that Monster Hunter World is a great deal more accessible than the titles that came before it. In many ways, this was key to the game’s success. The combat is still slow and deliberate by design, but more fluid movements and mobility options went a very long way.
By virtue of its trademark charged attacks and heavy swings, though, the Great Sword was somewhat left behind in this regard. New players who pick it up and those who try out the dynamic Dual Blades first will have an entirely different experience, an unfortunate truth that perhaps doesn’t do the former justice.
4 The Brilliantly Silly Tackle Move
Slow it may be, but this formidable weapon got a very nice boon in the transition to Monster Hunter World: the fantastic tackle. This move, as the name implies, is a physical tackle performed by the Hunter (like a Wyvern’s hip check on a tiny human scale). It may seem entirely unimpressive when you’ve got an enormous sword, but this new move should never be underestimated.
With this move, the player can armor their way through monsters’ attacks and proceed to unleash their own attack from there. With practise, a Great Sword Hunter can become all but unstoppable, but there are two important things to note here: damage is still taken from the initial monster’s attack (albeit reduced) and the Hunter is somehow dodging into a full-force attack without even flinching. Super armor is a strange thing.
3 Its ‘Best’ Armor Skill Can Be Very Counterproductive
Those who are well-versed in the franchise will often reiterate one important tip, when it comes to Great Sword use: the Armor Skill Focus is very important. This skill reduces the time weapons such as the Great Sword and Bow take to charge their attacks. In a series where every attack counts and every mistake could be fatal, Focus has historically been very valuable indeed.
In terms of both offense and defense, this Armor Skill can still be powerful. The difficult thing for experienced users of the weapon to grasp, though, is that the rules have really changed in World. Reducing the time full charges take still leaves them very slow, while also limiting the player’s access to the ever-valuable, ever-ridiculous tackle.
2 They Don’t Really Work Well With Elemental And Status Damage
For the majority of weapon classes, elemental damage is a big consideration. Hardened Hunters often switch to a fire- or water-imbued weapon before tackling a foe weak to that element (and adjust their armor accordingly to mitigate their own weaknesses). It tends to be the best way to ensure more efficient and faster hunts.
Statuses can be tremendously useful, as poisoning a monster or temporarily incapacitating them can also work wonders. Both elemental and status damage is applied per hit, however, meaning that the speedy Sword and Shield or Dual Blades are great at inflicting them. The likes of the Hammer and Great Sword, meanwhile, are almost exclusively all about the raw damage, missing out on this huge part of Monster Hunter play in that sense.
1 As With All Weapons, There Are Some Very Silly-Looking Ones
This inexplicable aspect of the Great Sword is probably best: some of them are designed to look as ridiculous as they can. Each of Monster Hunter World’s 14 weapon types is unique and brimming with potential, but in this action RPG franchise, the super-serious is always tempered by the silly and slapstick.
Certain ‘joke weapons’ have been added over the course of the series as a result. There’s the Pizza Wheel Charge Blade, the Sharq Attaq Lance and, perhaps most infamously, the Wyvern Ignition. This rocket-powered Great Sword is the epitome of everything the Great Sword stands for: impossible, impractical yet still very strong. As is the Frozen Speartuna, pictured here.