There's no demo so it's actually capcom's fault if you pirate it to try it out
Have you played any other MH? It's a big departure and that made it shorter-lived for me, but it's definitely good. On the other hand it's by far the easiest one to get into if you're new to the series.
It's always hard to give a simple yes/no because MH is kind of niche by nature. If you enjoy the dark souls sort of heavy-slow combat and farming boss fights for parts to craft equipment builds, MH consists almost entirely of those two things. I love it, bludgeoning dragons to death with a 200lb bagpipe in order to give my team buffs and then making pants out of their scales to hunt stronger stuff
Yes, but to get the full experience you should absolutely not use the Defender Weapons or Guardian Armour unless you get really stuck, because they completely shatter the base game's progression.
You should try a bunch of different weapons to get a feel for what you like early, because once you start progressing it's a pain in the ass to farm back up to where you were.
As for Iceborne, I personally think the base game is better, but once you finish that, it's worth getting if you're hungry for more. For a comparison, in the base game I completed literally every single quest and had crafted every armour + every variant of Longsword, Greatsword, and Hammer. In Iceborne I only beat the base game, did the first Arch-Tempered, and then burned out on Safi. Came back to try Alatreon with some friends but burned out on that quickly too.
I had never played a MH game and I had a ton of fun playing in a group and solo. I only used the insect glaive, and only vaguely understand how it works, but I got a ton out of getting different elemental gear. And I was flippy-dippy!
I got way into it early in the pandemic. It's a good game
