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 :)
Ive put hundreds of hours into monster hunter portable 3rd with the english patch. Also played a decent amount of Rise and will be playings Wild when it comes out
I started with World, and put hundreds of hours into that and Rise, plus their expansions. I tried the GU demo on Switch, but it felt too clunky.
The thing that hooked me was the first large monster you hunt, Great Jagras. He’s a pushover for any hunter with even a slight amount of experience, but for me as a new player, it was an epic battle and I certainly didn’t expect that much intensity that early in the game. I also liked how even after you had a monster on “farm status” a hunt could still easily go from good to bad if you weren’t careful. It emphasized that these monsters were incredibly dangerous, and even seasoned hunters could be in trouble if they get too cocky. It also helped keep farming more interesting as you needed to pay attention if you wanted to be successful.
Overall, I like the… world, in World more, but the gameplay mechanics and combat more in Rise. In World, the maps were larger, with more detail and felt more alive. I also liked the tracking aspect, and was disappointed that aspect didn’t make it to Rise. It felt like you were actually hunting your target, instead of just sprinting to their location on your doggo friend and beating them up like in Rise.
I’m definitely looking forward to Wilds releasing next year.
I liked world most too. It has several things rise is lacking. One of which is a serious threat imo. Like, the first time my party ran into anjanath. It just exploded out of some shrubbery and most of his attacks were insta kill. Just having this random threat helped with the world building, suspense on hunts and also gave a clear milestone when you finally get the hunt to take him down. Then there was blood puppy or bazelgeuse, they are all super memorable because of how much of a passive sorta threat they were.
I’ve never played these games. It all just feels extremely overwhelming with the large amount of menus and systems. I’m also unable to focus on long games (I also have issues with long open world games like Breath of the Wild for example), so that is another thing that pushes me away. But the idea of a cosy grind while listening to podcasts does interest me.
However, I have seen the film: an absolute masterpiece in the “bad film genre”. Just beautifully brainless action, similar to the amazing Resident Evil films of the same creator.
I’ve only played a bit of 4 and lots of worlds. I really loved the additional stuff to do in worlds. I was enthralled by the exploration and little collectible stuff as much as the actual combat. I do feel like it’s a lot of fun with friends. Playing with Randoms feels scary lol.
I’ve been trying to finish iceborne at some point but I hit a brick wall at frostfang barioth for a long time and then got distracted with other games. I’ve been meaning to go back and finish but u have a feeling the next title will come out before then. I haven’t even gotten around to rise yet lol!
One thing I kind of like about monster hunter is you don’t need to commit to the long term, a hunt will last at most 50 minutes usually closer to 25 or less. You can boot the game up do a hunt and shutdown, and still feel like you did something in it.
Similar boat. I’ve tried with friends on numerous occasions and it’s never clicked for me. I will say MH rise and the wolf mounts and weird grapple shot thing got me the closest to getting into one. The movement those 2 afforded made the game feel better to me.
A single play session isn't actually all that long, as others have said. It's about 25-50 minutes depending on how familiar you are with the monster. You also don't have to interact with all the systems at once initially, pick one thing and try it out. There's no real penalty for failing besides having to re-do the mission that you failed.
I started with 3rd and I completely agree with you. It’s so confusing and shit to get into, I technically started with the first PSP game but I played for like 40 minutes. Then I met a friend who became be first friend and he taught me how to play, and I ended up LOVING the games. They’re all some of my favorite games now. GU is my favorite. World is second. 4u is third.
That’s totally fair, Monster Hunter is infamous for its utterly terrible onboarding process. If you ever decide that you want to really figure out Monster Hunter, there’s two options I always recommend.
The first is incredibly simple: get someone who knows the game to play with you. They can walk you through what does and doesn’t matter, and help you get used to the game with someone there to keep you engaged.
The second option, if you don’t have a MH friend or don’t want to play with other people, is a simple process you can follow which I’ve found tends to work for getting people through the early game confusion:
First, ignore the constant tutorial popups. They’ll be there in the hunter notes in your menu at any time, and most of them don’t matter until after you figured out how to literally play the game at all.
Second, find your weapon. Every weapon type in Monster Hunter plays very differently. The weapon that sounds the best to you might not be the weapon that feels the best to you. Once you unlock the training area (I think it happens before your first quest even) just go in there and pick a weapon from your box and start slapping shit. If you don’t like that weapon, pick a different one and rinse and repeat until you’ve found the one that speaks to you.
Finally, just start playing! I find things make way more sense when you actually experience them rather than just reading about them or watching someone else experience them. Just start playing and eventually all those complicated systems will click and you’ll wonder why you ever had a problem!
A common joke in the Monster Hunter community is that everyone loves monster hunter, they just haven’t played it long enough to realize it yet! I hope you give the series another chance someday because it’s really something special!
Regarding the movie, as a terrible movie fan I agree, it was a fantastic watch! As a Monster Hunter fan however, ohhhhhh boy was I screaming at my TV! WHY did they give gore magala a beard?!?!?
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 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?”
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.
“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.
Wow everyone seems to love P3 but I actually liked P4 better. I mean I really enjoyed both, but P4 was a more immersive experience for me. I should reboot my vita and play it again.
I really felt like P4 had deeper connections and relationships between the characters. It felt more real, and that made the tension in the game more exciting. I love every second of it and am still trying to find a game like it.
Don’t get me wrong, P3 was great also. The gameplay was superb and the characters were all great. But P4 still has a special place in my heart.
One of my favourite series. Started with vanilla P3 back when it was released, during the golden era of PS2 JRPGs, then put hundreds of hours into P4, P3P, P4 Golden and P5, both royal and original. Also went back to check out the first Persona and two P2 games.
P2 and P2 aren’t really “Persona” games, they are “Shin Megami Tensei: Persona” games. Dungeon crawlers with random battles. Unlike more modern Persona games, you don’t go to school in these games, you go out of it by beating the shit out of demons. No school life simulator, no social links, just good ol’ 10% story + 90% battles. I love P2’s story, though. It’s the most… entertaining, I’d say, and definitely feels different compared to other Persona games. Probably because the characters are mainly adults. If you decide to give it a try, beware that it has two games and the second is the direct continuation of the first. Hope it gets remade as well someday. It’s also the best Persona game in terms of demon negotiation. The player can choose one or several members of the party and make them do a comedy act, play violin, tell jokes etc. to acquire persona cards. It’s a lot of fun to explore these little scenes, as they change with the story’s progression. P5 sort of added demon negotiation back, but in its early SMT form of “answer the question right”. It’s not even half as fun.
New Persona games are more or less similar, the main difference is the theme and the mood. P3 is blue and depressive, P4 is yellow and fun (but also a bit unhealthy), P5 is red and adventurous. P3 was a true revolution, as it added school life simulator aspects to an existing SMT formula. P4 and P5 use the same formula that was invented for P3, and it’s my main issue with Persona series. It doesn’t progress anymore. P4 being the same as P3 was understandable, as these games are a couple of years apart and were released for the same system. P5 being the same as the two previous games isn’t exciting at all. Yeah, it has better UI, QoL features, of course, better graphics, animations and everything else one might expect from a newer game. However P5’s core is the same as P3 and P4, and this core is immersion. At which P5, imo, is worse than P3 and P4. Can’t really pinpoint why, maybe its aesthetics are the reason, or the less believable, too grandiose setting. It went from “we are saving the world behind the curtains, but nobody knows it” (P3) and “we are solving a crime case and saving the world, but nobody knows it” (P4) to “we are defeating all sorts of evil people and saving the world and everyone sort of knows it” (P5). P5 felt less immersive than previous games to me. Compare Joker to P3’s MC - a chad Arsène Lupin who happens to go to school sometimes vs. a sad emo boy always with headphones on. I liked more down to earth and realistic approach of P3 and P4 in that regard. School life in P5 felt as an honestly unneeded afterthought. Another thing that broke immersion in P5 specifically for me is social links, pardon, confidants mechanic that was too centered on gameplay. In P3 and P4 you could do a run without some social links just because you felt like it, but in P5 your freedom of choice is severely affected by passive abilities gained by meeting with certain confidants. I dislike the game dictating me which confidants I have to prioritise. Don’t get me wrong, P5 is a very good game on its own, it’s just some things about it rub me the wrong way when I compare it to other games.
btw, I always thought that P3 OST is so unusual because it was composed with the idea that it’s the music that the MC listens to first and a game soundtrack second
P3 is one of my favourite games ever. Story, music, characters, art, gameplay - everything is stellar. Haven’t yet tried the Reload version, because Atlus taught me to never buy their games before the definitive edition is released. I’ll probably wait until the female MC is available. Anyway, I like it more than other Persona games due to how deep and immersive it is. It’s the only modern Persona where relationships within the party felt natural to me, where party members didn’t instantly become bff just because they shared the same goal. I liked the tension between Mitsuru and Yukari, Junpei’s ambitions, Ken’s animosity and so on. I enjoyed that the characters were wary of the MC at first and slowly opened up to them. P4 and P5 are a bit more “nakama power” in that regard. Notice how party dynamics remain unchangeable in P4 and P5 - once you get a new character, their story is more or less done and they behave the exact same way until the end of the game. And it’s always “one dungeon - one new party character” policy. P3 has less predictable structure.
Didn’t say much about P4, but it’s also an excellent game, with the best humour in the series.
Thank you for writing all of that. I’ve been avoiding the Persona series because I played some of P1 back in the day and didn’t care for it. P3 sounds much more enjoyable to me.
Huh didn’t know P1 and P2 were SMT games. Good to know. I’ve tried at least one entry in the SMT side and just could not get into it. Don’t even remember which it was. I get they’re both dungeon crawlers, but I don’t think I’m a fan of the more old-school SMT-style games.
I love this series. First played 4 Golden on the Vita, and it was really something that connected with me. I loved the combination slice of life and intriguing mystery, and the characters and voice acting really drew me in. It took me years to actually finish that game, and I'm about halfway through 3 Reload and 5 Royal as well.
However, biggest thing we need to mention here? The soundtracks. Holy fucking shit, these games have the best OSTs I ever damn heard, as someone who plays bass and loves acid jazz and other adjacent music every game hits the spot in different ways.
I’ve only played P3 Portable and Persona 4, on PSP and Vita respectively (though I also have these on Steam now). I have Persona 5 (also Steam), but I’ve yet to start it, since I have quite the backlog to get through. Including P3 and P4!
I got fairly far into P3P before stopping, while I didn’t get as far into P4 before stopping, then restarting, then stopping again (though I got a little further than the first time). My last attempt must’ve been during the pandemic, so not that long ago. It’s not necessarily that I didn’t enjoy them; I just have a thing with JRPGs where I intend to take a short break…which often turns into years-long breaks.
P3P was more enjoyable than P4, IMO. P4 just seemed really slow at the start, while P3, I felt had much better pacing. If I’m remembering the correctly, the latter just dropped you straight in to the weirdness, and it just kept going, where I felt like P4 had more lulls in the action.
I don’t mind the school stuff, though I’ll admit it’s not my favorite thing in the world. I do try to make an effort, rather than just breeze through it. I do hope to one day complete both of them and then get to P5. I very much enjoy their visual styles and music. I also like games that take place in the modern world, so the series is right up my alley.
I keep trying to get into the games but never finish :/
I got very close to the end of p3p way back when that was a new game. I got past the second palace in p5r but fell off again. I feel like I get fomo in games where I try and do everything when I play a game but that’s just not really feasible in persona. Same reason baldurs gate intimidates me.
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