i am pretty much finishing gathering hub alone. i am at 6 stars and imho i have love hate relationship with it.
Pros:
- Kamura village is comfy as hell. Best village after Poko.
- After bleh world weapons finally each weapon is different instead of iron/bone variations + rare unique weapon
- Music is fucking great and themes are amazing. Much better than abomination Astera one and still way better than Seliana
- I like theme
- New monsters are pretty good but pretty easy at the same time. Only titular monster is awesome.
- Finally you can see people in village aside from gatherring hub and design of village forces everyone to interact.
Cons:
- Rampage is garbage. Everyone always hated those scripted fights and now you have even more cannons and other crap. It is just not fun to play.
- Game on paper is bigger than base World. But half of monster literally are trash mobs from other mh games. Moreover monster like Ludroch which always was basically Great Jaggras of previous games is supposed to be "hard monster". Instead of porting really good ones like fan favorite Seregios or Gore Megala they ported fucking Lurdroch.
- Clearly there is divide between new monsters and old ones (non world ones) because old monsters didn't get basically any new moves aside from slight modifications to their old moves and upped speed. Even world ones got new moves and they were already pretty awesome.
- Maps are just plain garbage. Basically if you don't use dog you are forced to run everywhere and maps are simply not designed with running in mind they are way too big and flat unlike World in which you can reasonably get anywhere quickly if you knew map. If they didn't want to commit to World like design with layers and shitload of stuff in between they should just do area based for now or just tighten map by reducing its size by at least 25%.
Final problem. Game is really fucking easy. Only main game monster gave me some trouble but not that much
I think your issues with the difficulty are because you haven't done 7* hub yet. Hub 6* was the first time I even carted, but I like the current difficulty, though i haven't built a new armor set since Jyuratodus as soon as I hit HR, but I have been upgrading it. It's always been true in MH if you actually use traps and consumables, fights can become vastly easier. That's compounded in this game with all the endemic life that essentially give you free tools on every map, and they're everywhere. The wirebug I was hating at first, but once you hit hub 6* I feel that the monster mobility goes way up and the wirebug gives you a chance to hang with them even if you're not doing the bowguns or a fast mobile weapon like Longsword/the fastbois (IG/SnS/DB, etc). It's an easy-ish game compared to old MH but you're never getting that again where you have to wrestle with mechanics just to win.
A handful of old monsters got some good upgrades, but it seems like they threw darts at a wall to see which ones they picked. I agree there are a lot of -ggi's in this, but that's basically free for them since they have similar movesets with different spit. I don't mind them being there for new players, and I love the Wroggi armor so I was happy it was back. I don't know how you can say that Rathalos isn't a shitload more fun to fight in this one. He's the best he has ever been. I thought HR Mizutsune was pretty tough this time around. He almost never sits still and his bubbles are actually annoying enough this time to make you bring cleanser, at least for me.
Rampage I agree, worst addition by FAR. I'd rather the usual big monster gimmick fights instead of tower defense. It also annoys me that they basically expect you to get down to the last gate in every apex encounter, no matter how effective your strategy is.
As far as maps, I don't think you've spent enough time unlocking great wirebugs and sub camps. Traversal on foot feels great in the world, and I don't feel out of place when I leave my dog at home except for not being able to move and sharpen at the same time. That said, I vastly prefer dogs to cats unless I'm hunting rare mats, then the cats ability to snipe extra drops is helpful.