lets goooooo, my favourite franchise of all time! Techbically, my first monster hunter game was tri on thr wii, when I was a wee bab. I say technically because I was a tiny idiot and I did not know how to do quests so I just spent hours wandering around moga woods in free roam, just hanging out. I still had an absolute blast doing it though!
The game that really got me into the franchise though, and my favourite game, would be world! I just love the incredible attention to detail, and the clear love that went into designing everything! I have more hours in rise because that’s the game my friends all play, and it’s a phenomenal game no doubt, but I always find myself creeping back to World.
The next game, Wilds, is looking like it will far surpass World for me though, the 2025 wait is killing me! The gamescom previews really showed that they have been listening to thr community, and are making the monster hunter game we’ve all dreamed of.
That’s one of my favourite things about the monster hunter teams in fact, that they clearly know how to learn from their previous works! I would readily argue that every generation has been an overall massive improvement over the previous one. I say generation rather than game, because comparing Rise and World is rather unfair. They’re two different games made by different teams for different hardware with different goals in mind, and if you ask me they both achieved their goals spectacularly, no matter what some nerds will say about Rise… Grouping them both into 5th gen and looking at the series by generation, each one has so far been an improvement in nearly every aspect, and I think that’s an amazing track record. That is why I am willing to put my wholehearted trust in the monster hunter teams that they will absolutely deliver with Wilds and any games after that.
A friend got me into Monster Hunter and now I have nearly 5000 hours split across various games, the bastard. I guess I won’t be doing cocaine or gunpla or toy car collecting anytime soon! XD
It’s a really great experience, I often say good MH games (that is, MH games in general: bad games are a rarity in this franchise) bring out my three preferred Ms: music, monsters and marvels, the latter one meaning the landscapes, the maps, the exploration. You haven’t experienced what kind of comfy immersion can game developers go for until you wander about the Sandy Plains at night to bbq up some Aptonoths and Rhenoplos into steak, and you watch the shooting stars in the night sky. And then you get distracted from the bbq serial griller and you end up with 2x Burnt Meat instead…
Started out with 3U. Underwater is great btw, don’t listen to people who say it shouldn’t return. The first time I tried the game I just Didn’t Get It and thought it was not for me… but man the music was so cool (the Sandy Plains battle music!) and the monster designs (Barioth!) insisted that I should make another try. Grabbed it back after a long break, followed the instructions this time, found a weapon that was to my liking (switchaxe, or as we call it, the Swag Axe), and haven’t really stopped much since then. I take good care to backup my saves often as well, juuuuust in case I don’t really like to grind hundreds of hours for the most random rewards on the double. By this point the only gen I have not played is Gen1, I’ve played Dos, FU, Tri, P3rd, 3U (1400 hrs), 4U, XX, Gen, GU (1200 hrs), Rise, Sunbreak and Stories 2 (800 hrs). Nowadays I can sometimes be found on the LanPlay network on MHGU and MHRS, and I’m waiting to get a better computer so I can try Frontier and maybe Iceborne.
Now, everyone has an opinion and so do I, so I’m clear on a number of things. Starting with World the game has casualized so much. Some casualization is fine, as a treat, and I like some QoL such as the tree view for weapon upgrades as much as the next person. But sometimes a game can be casualized to the extreme, to the point even TDS and NCH have taken jabs at it at points, like getting you infinite Ancient Potions, or the loss of most technical inventory management or environment management in Rise. It’d be nice to see Monster Hunter come back to form, with a properly numbered game (Monster Hunter 5, maybe call it “Quinto” or smth!) and fights that are more about besting a monster in its own turf rather than simply hiding under a beast’s legs (or far away at a ledge) and spamming X or R (hey, gunners!) to win.
But the music… oh, the music! And the ambience SFX. Now that has never faltered. Despite its many mishaps, World has some of the best and comfiest music in the series.
I don’t always pay attention to the deep lore in games, and that sometimes hits me all at once. I’ll find myself thinking, “Wait, why did I come all this way down a giant tree full of monsters to kill this lady? What the heck did she do to me to deserve that?”
My favorite??? Thats tough, started on the PSP with with the three up to MHFU, and have played just about all of them since. The best would probably be MH4U, I’m a big fan of the older style gameplay. World and Rise are fun, but they feel a lot different, a bit too many changes for my taste
Because of the lore I know why we fight Maliketh. But also because of the lore I don’t know why we fight Maliketh instead of just asking for Destined Death.
As someone still playing through vanilla Elden Ring, none of that means anything to me. And if my first 80h are any indication, I’ll finish the game and still have no idea.
That is the beauty of these games; you only get told the story if you go looking for it. You can still play the entire game and even all the extra content and not have a single thing straight told to you that’s out of your control. Every time I go and play something else, the biggest frustration for me is that I’m just there for the game part, but it takes control away a lot just to give me half an hour of exposition to a story I’m not paying attention to.
This might be a shit complaint on my part because these games are specifically for those type of people but I’m playing ff14 atm and they fuggin make me go across the world to talk to someone through a cut scene then make me go across the world again to rinse and repeat and that’s the game. I understand repetition is to be expected in mmo questing, I played wow for 17 years but at least for wow there’s some actual world exploration to be done to some degree and it isn’t usually forcing you to cross the world constantly. Ff14 doesn’t even have proper world exploration, they have teleport stones everywhere so you don’t truly get to see what’s up beyond following the quest lines. Glam, posing and rp saves that game.
I’m usually that person as well. BG3 was the first game in probably 8 years that hooked me on the story. If I sprinted through it, I would have probably saved like 80% of the time I spent playing it, but I enjoyed it. Maybe I’m simple, to me it felt like the decisions mattered.
I think they just mean that it’s not necessary for playing the game. It isn’t like if you know the lore then you can find a secret cave, that gives you access to extra content. It is there for its own sake.
The value add that it gives is entirely dependent on the individual. It would be nice if there was some gameplay reward for reading it.
I’ve started the serie with MH Freedom on PSP. Too overwhelming for a first play (timed mission, needing to find the monster, weapon sharpness?) , I left it aside.
Few years latter we started MH 4 on switch with a friend. Beeing more motivated to play it as we were two, I took more time to understand it and play with the various weapons and Oh god it clicked ! The combat system is so deep, you have so many options, then there is the monsters, majestous beast giving you a tough battle !
From there I followed with MH World and it’s improvement on about everything and finally Rise. Battle in rise are so fun, you can play on the ground or in the air or both, every one of the 14 weapon type has sub choices in how you want to use it, making your own way to play the game.
It is definitely one of my favorite franchise and I’d really like to try wild when it comes out :)
“But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.
MH4U on the 3ds was my first introduction and I actually kinda miss being able to quickly tap the items that were up on the touch screen to use them. World on PS and Rise on the switch scratch the itch but I was visibly upset that tracking didn’t make it into Rise; it was just a great mechanic and it felt extra satisfying to build out the monster knowledge, and it added some wonderful depth to the gameplay.
I’m not really all that crazy about the fort defense mechanic in Rise, I’d genuinely skip it if I could.
As much as I enjoy the series and still play it, there’s a certain amount of ennui that I’m experiencing when it comes to hunting Jaggis and the rest of the same monsters every time. New mechanics help to make up for it by having the hunt be slightly different, but wow what I wouldn’t give for a totally new experience playing Monster Hunter.
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