Monster Hunter: World is a 2018 action role-playing game developed and published by Capcom. The fifth mainline installment in the Monster Hunter series, it was released worldwide for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in January 2018, with a Windows version following in August 2018. In the game, the player takes the role of a Hunter, tasked to hunt down and either kill or trap monsters that roam in one of several environmental spaces. If successful, the player is rewarded through loot consisting of parts from the monster and other elements that are used to craft weapons and armor, amongst other equipment. The game's core loop has the player crafting appropriate gear to be able to hunt down more difficult monsters, which in turn provide parts that lead to more powerful gear. Players may hunt alone or in a group of up to four players via the game's online multiplayer.

Announced at E3 2017, Monster Hunter: World adopts the series' standard formulas from its older home console roots and recent handheld games to take advantage of the higher processing power provided by modern consoles and computers. Changes made in Monster Hunter: World include creating environmental spaces that are fully connected and removing the "zones" that were necessary for the PlayStation 2 and handheld games, more advanced monster artificial intelligence and physics, a more persistent cooperative multiplayer experience, and a refinement of the game's tutorials and user interface to help with bringing new players into the series. These changes led Capcom to plan for the game's simultaneous release worldwide, since Monster Hunter as a series has generally languished outside of Japan partially due to disparate release schedules. Capcom also opted to support online play between these different geographic regions for similar reasons. The delay for the Windows release was attributed to Capcom seeking to make sure its first entry into the Windows market was optimized for players on computers. By April 2020, updates to the game were synchronized among all platforms.

Monster Hunter: World received critical acclaim upon release. Critics praised how Capcom was able to make the game more accessible to new players and to Western markets, without detracting from the series' core gameplay elements and enjoyable difficulty, and fully taking advantage of the computational capacity of modern consoles to create living ecosystems. Monster Hunter: World is the single highest-selling game in Capcom's history, with over 23 million copies shipped by January 2024. A DLC expansion pack, subtitled Iceborne, was released for home consoles in September 2019 and for Windows in January 2020, and reached 10 million sales by December 2022. The next installment, Monster Hunter Rise, was co-developed alongside World and announced for a worldwide release on Nintendo Switch in March 2021, with a Windows version released in January 2022.

Monster Hunter: World is an action role-playing game played from a third-person perspective. The player takes the role of a player-created character who travels to the "New World", an unpopulated landmass filled with monsters, to join the Research Commission that studies the land from their central command base of Astera. The Research Commission assigns the Hunter to track down and either kill or capture large monsters that roam outside Astera, both to protect the Commission and to study the monsters themselves. The player's character does not have any intrinsic attributes, instead these are determined by equipment. This includes a weapon, selected from the series' fourteen archetypes (such as the long sword, bow, or hammer), which defines the combat moves and abilities the player can use; and pieces of armor, which can lead to beneficial or detrimental combat skills if matched properly. The majority of equipment is created from loot obtained by hunting monsters, rewards from completing quests, or items gathered in the field. This creates a core loop of gameplay in which players defeat monsters they are currently capable of handling to collect materials needed to craft better weapons and armor—to in turn challenge stronger monsters and earn access to even more powerful equipment.

Astera serves as a central hub where the player can buy and sell goods, manage their inventory, craft new equipment, and obtain new quests. A core facet of Monster Hunter games is the construction and upgrading of armor and weapons at a forge using monster parts and resources obtained through combat and exploration. As the player defeats tougher monsters, they can craft armor with higher defensive values or specific elemental resistances, or upgrade weapons to be more powerful and deal elemental or debuffing damage. Weapons and armor also carry various skills that grant a range of effects to the player; World introduces a new streamlined skill system compared to previous games, where each weapon or armor piece has one or more ranks in at least one skill, and the total effect of that skill is determined by adding up all ranks across the player's equipped items. Additional services in Astera include a farm to grow quantities of flora while the player is out on quests, training areas to practice weapons, a gathering hub to take on special Arena challenges against one or more monsters, and a canteen where the player can order meals made from specific ingredients to provide buffs and special effects while out on the field.

After taking a quest in Astera, or after choosing to simply go on an open-ended expedition, the player is taken to a base camp in one of six large regions that make up the New World. Each region is made up of numbered zones, but unlike previous Monster Hunter games, these zones are seamlessly connected, and there are no loading screens when moving between them. The player must traverse zone to zone, though they can quick-travel to any of the base camps in that particular region when outside of combat. From camp, the player can acquire limited provisions, rest to restore their health, and new to World, have a meal at a canteen functionally identical to the one at Astera. The player sets out to track down monsters, which in World is aided with the use of Scoutflies, which hover near tracks and other signs of large monsters, or highlight resources that the player can collect such as flora, ores, bones, and insects. Investigating the traces of the monster leads to improving the Scoutflies' abilities for the quest, eventually enabling them to lead the player via their glowing flight path towards the monster they seek. Further, investigating these will increase the research level towards the monster, granting insight on its strengths, weaknesses, and behavior.

Once a monster is located, the player can take several approaches to either slay or capture it using traps once sufficiently weakened, using a combination of their weapons and items they are carrying. As a monster is weakened, its tactics will often change, frequently becoming more aggressive, or fleeing to a lair to rest or find food to recover. The player has additional tools within World for combat. Each player has a Slinger, a tool that can be used to fire small projectiles such as rocks at the monster to damage it or cause other debuffs, or can be used as a grappling hook to reach higher elevations. Environmental hazards such as boulders can be shot or grappled down with the Slinger to damage the monster. A new type of tool called a Mantle can be used for a limited amount of time; these cloak-like objects provide a buff to the player, such as negating a fixed amount of damage taken or reducing the chances of monsters detecting the player. Furthermore, the player has opportunities to use the environment strategically against the monster, such as bursting a natural dam to flood out a monster, or leading a monster into another monster's den to cause them to fight each other. The game includes a dynamic weather system and day-night cycle, which can affect the behavior of some monsters mid-quest.

In combat, the player must watch their health—if it falls to zero, they faint and are taken back to camp. They can set out again at a reduced reward, but fainting more than usually three times will fail the quest. Additionally, the player must manage their stamina, which is consumed from dodging and certain other attacks and actions; stamina will recover quickly while the player is not taking intensive actions, which can be difficult during battle. The player can carry various restorative items for health and stamina; unlike previous games where the player was forced to stand still to consume them, World allows the player to do so while walking, though the player must not be interrupted for a few moments to gain the items' full effects. With an aim to reach a wider audience than past games, Monster Hunter: World also provides more information to players, such as a companion that will warn the player when they are running low on health, and more details on the advantages and disadvantages of weapons and armors against specific monsters. The player must also be aware of various debuffs that monsters can inflict on them, the sharpness of their weapon or the quantity of ammunition for certain weapon types, and the limitations of items they can bring on a quest that restricts how much they can recover while in the field. If the player successfully completes the quest, they gain reward resources, often consisting of parts from that monster along with zenny, the in-game currency. The distribution of rewards from a quest is determined by rarity, so obtaining certain rare parts may require repeating a quest several times.