When I first played Monster Hunter it was at a time when the only game I really played was Pokemon. It was a natural enough progression I suppose. Going from catching monsters to BATTLING THEM TO THE DEATH.
But anyway I’m a big fan of Monster Hunter and I felt the need to write up some reasons why you should start playing it right now if you haven’t already. You could call it a friendly introduction to the franchise out of the goodness of my heart. A kind gesture done at the expense of my own time …. and I also need help defeating Devlijho so hurry up and buy the game.
What is Monster Hunter?
Monster Hunter is an action/adventure role-playing franchise that takes place in a fantasy setting. It is published by Capcom and was originally launched on the PlayStation 2 in Japan. Since then Capcom has released multiple games and spin-offs for various platforms.
Most games have you start off as a novice Monster Hunter, fighting weak monsters that inhabit the world and gradually moving up to fight the stronger ones. There are tons of varied habitats. You could be fighting a flying, fire-breathing wyvern in a nest at the very top of a cliff for one quest or you could be fighting a giant sea monster underwater.
Why is it so fun?
What makes Monster Hunter so fun is that the progression of the game depends entirely on you. You can’t passively gain experience whenever you take on quests or anything like that. There’s no “leveling up” after fighting a really strong monster, in the traditional sense. Your stats come from the gear you equip. Gear that you can only obtain by crafting materials you harvest from different monsters. So if you’re annoyed that you aren’t doing enough damage, you have to go out and work on a newer and stronger weapon. You can go on quests as many times as you want, by the way.
The flow of the game boils down to: Fight monsters > Harvest materials > Build stronger weapons and armour > Fight stronger monsters > Harvest higher grade materials > Build even stronger weapons and armour > Rinse and repeat. The whole process feels surprisingly rewarding. There’s just enough work involved to give you a sense of accomplishment after finally completing that new monster set. Not to mention the feeling you get when you absolutely decimate a monster with your new Great Sword after said monster kicked your butt over and over.
But it’s not just the weapon forging that makes the game so fun – it’s hunting huge monsters!
That was one of my favourite commercials before I played Monster Hunter Tri.
There are so many monsters in the newest game and they all fight so differently. Part of the fun is learning each monster’s behaviour and attacks. There were so many times when I would fight a really tough monster over and over only to have it pull out some unexpected attack from up its sleeve. The Elder Dragons – the “boss” monsters of the games, are sometimes so massive that it’s just not possible to fight them head on right from the get-go.
One of my favourite Elder Monsters, Jhen Mohran, must be fought while riding a moving sand ship for the first phase of the fight. And during this phase you basically have to fight off Mohran and prevent it from destroying your ship completely. Once you make it past this phase, you can then fight Jhen Mohran face-to-face, but even then if you don’t finish the fight soon, it’ll destroy the city and you’ll fail the quest. You’ll have to keep mistakes to a minimum as soon as the quest begins.
And that’s a common theme with most of the monster in the game. Because your stats come from the gear you equip and not your character, you have to pay close attention to the bonuses you’re getting with each piece of equipment. Heading to the volcano environment to fight a monster that coats its skin with lava? Might wanna equip the armour with fire resistance.
But you can’t relax either. The exception being if you were to stroll into that Low Great Baggi quest while rocking that High Rathalos armour set. Then yeah, maybe you can afford to tank some hits. But with the majority of monsters that are on the same rank range as you or higher, you’ll have to make sure you’re paying attention to the monster’s movements. Ensure that you’re dodging and blocking when you need to. If you slack off then you’ll start losing health fast, trust me. To add to the chaos, during high level quests you can expect to find monsters that are ranks way higher than the monster you are hunting prowling around. You’ll have to always be on your guard.
Fighting a bunch of monsters all the time sounds dull. Where’s the fun in that?!
You don’t have to just fight them! You can capture them too!
But in all seriousness, expect to hunt a lot of monsters in these games. Hence the name Monster Hunter. So if that doesn’t interest you then I would not recommend this game to you. There are things you can do besides hunting for sure. Fishing, catching bugs, having barbecues, etc. But then again, these are all things help you work towards fighting more monsters…
If you’re worried that the monsters themselves might start to get repetitive, you can rest assured that that won’t happen. There’s such a huge difference in how each monster fights that it’s jarring at times. For example, Volvidon is a rather slow monster that normally resides in the volcano areas while Nargacuga is an extremely fast monster that can jump from one side of the map to another when its enraged. Certain monsters are based off of other monsters (like Barioth pretty much being the winter Nargacuga) but in a lot of these cases there are more than enough differences between monsters to distinguish them completely.
In the end, if monsters aren’t your thing then you shouldn’t play this game. If they are, you’ll have fun with the variety of them in Monster Hunter.
Okay I’ll try it out, but where do I start?
Any game is fine! Each game in the series is separate and has a self contained story (the games are loosely driven by story anyway).
I would suggest picking up one of the recent installments though, because online play is what drives Monster Hunter and is best enjoyed when played cooperatively with others. Even so, a single player mode is also available. You can hunt almost all monsters alone in the single player campaign. A lot of times there are monsters that you can only hunt with a group because the difficulty level is just too high for the single player mode.
I don’t wanna play with others! I wanna go solo!
You can enjoy the game just as much in the offline single player mode. All monsters are available offline (except for the special event monsters online). I strongly suggest playing through the online campaign as well to get the full experience and enjoy the game to the fullest. Online mode includes high ranked (and sometimes even G ranked) which are basically the same monsters, but with even stronger attacks and much greater health. I personally don’t even think that it’s possible to solo certain G ranked monsters without the highest tier armour. Plus the even monsters are really cool. (Mini urgot anyone?).
All in all, you can most definitely play just the single player mode if you’d like. But you’d be missing out on a lot by not playing the online mode.
Fine I’ll try it out.
Good. Then we’re on the same page here.
Anyway, that’s my little Monster Hunter PSA. Play the game, hunt monsters, the hunting season is open etc, etc.
Scripted Journal 