The format of these posts is simple: let's discuss a specific game or series!
Let's discuss the Monster Hunter series. What is your favorite game? What aspects do you like about it? What doesn't work for you? Are there games that gave you a similar experience? Feel free to share any thoughts that come up, or react to other peoples comments. Let's get the conversation going!
If you have any recommendations for games or series for the next post(s), please feel free to DM me or add it in a comment here (no guarantees of course).
Previous entries: Persona, Monkey Island, 8 Bit Era, Animal Crossing, Age of Empires, Super Mario, Deus Ex, Stardew Valley, The Sims, Half-Life, Earthbound / Mother, Mass Effect, Metroid, Journey, Resident Evil, Polybius, Tetris, Telltale Games, Kirby, LEGO Games, DOOM, Ori, Metal Gear, Slay the Spire
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.