Finished the main story over the weekend, it was ehh, okay. I took my time with it, crafted a lot of the weapon and armor sets, although I've read it will become redundant post campaign fairly quickly. Took me about 20-ish hours. Now I'm exploring the biomes, taking side quests, fishing and progressing the story a bit more. I quite like the game, the difficulty is very forgiving so I feel relaxed most of the time. Fought so far 2 tempered monsters with random people, and sometimes with the AI companions, and I'm happy its nowhere near like fighting in a raid.
I feel like I'm able to appreciate the open world more after the campaign, you start to notice smaller details they included in the world, which adds a lot for me. For example my Palico swimming in a small boat when I run in deeper areas of the river, or how lighting strikes can actually kill the crocodile monsters during storms. I even got booted from a tent because a Quematrice attacked it while I was inside. I'm not sure how much grinding this game will have, I have the impression that Capcom made it less grindy than before, but I can see myself playing this for quite some time. Really looking forward to the updates.