Monster Hunter is Capcom’s genre-defining “Hunting Action” series of games where you and potentially three pals go out and fight giant monsters to get all their bits and then make clothes out of them. Cats are involved, usually.
The game’s core loop involves taking on quests from a hub town, preparing for your hunt by eating food to get buffs, mixing items to make essential supplies like health restoring potions, and going out to hunt a monster. Anything killed in the wild can be carved to get parts, and “Large” monsters (the boss-like creatures that are usually the target of a quest) can have various body parts broken to modify your chances at getting the rarer parts. You can then take any parts you get and craft various weapons and armor to improve your chances against bigger, meaner monsters.
There are no character levels in Monster Hunter, although individual pieces of equipment CAN be leveled up, improving their defensive capability or, in the case of Generations, powering up a weapon and opening up new upgrade paths. There is an absurd amount of depth in the equipment in Monster Hunter, as your armor determines what “skills” you have and fundamentally change how your character plays.
You can also gather materials from various points in the environment. You can mine from rock outcroppings, catch bugs flitting about, break off wood from fallen trees, gather honey from beehives, and more. Many of these natural materials can be replicated at a farm in your hub, which lets you skip the downtime and go right back to hunting large monsters.
The main series currently makes its home on the 3DS, although previous games have come out on consoles, such as Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate on Wii U. The current iteration, Monster Hunter Generations (or X, in Japan), was only released on 3DS.
So I haven’t played any of the Monster Hunter games since Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, which I really enjoyed. Should I pick up Generations? Does it have good online play like 3 Ultimate? I don’t have people to play it with online so I’d be playing with randoms and don’t want to waste money on it if I’m just playing alone.
Generations has some pretty good multiplayer. It functions pretty much like the multiplayer did in 3U but with some added quality of life stuff carried over from 4 Ultimate like excluding friends from having to put in a passcode and autowords.
Generally I feel like 4 Ultimate is still the better game, but Generations has enough setting it apart from 3U and 4U that it’s still well worth having, and I’m definitely looking forward to Double Cross.
If we had a set date for it, I’d say wait for Double Cross and pick that up instead of generations. But since we don’t know when it’s coming out, let alone when it’ll get localized, You should pick up Generations or 4U. Both are really fun and add a lot to the series. They both have rather active multiplayer, too
I decided to leave Generations to one side for now and wait for Double Cross to come out. Generations is fantastic but I just keep coming back to 4U for some reason.
That reason is finally getting my G3 Permit, you will be mine one of these days G3 Permit, I swear.
That said, the quality of life improvements in Generations are not to be underestimated. Not having to mash buttons to gather/carve/mine is a godsend, as is farming in cat mode.
I too wish the online monster hunters were good. I also wish they’d have more monsters from the online games appear in the main series. I’ll always miss you Hypnocatrice
Dauntless is lookin’ like it might turn out to be a pretty decent online Monster Hunter clone, though.
Dauntless is still pretty early on, though. It definitely needs work in the animations and sound design departments, because maaaan, some of those sounds are just bad. The animations don’t really carry a whole lot of weight, either. I’m hoping it’s something they receive a good amount of feedback on as soon as the first test period goes live.
I think Monster Hunter has been in something of a weird space lately, each iteration is generally an all around improvement mechanically, in terms of weapon design, and in terms of new additions to the roster, but Tri was really notable for being an effective “reboot” and revamping many of the old monster designs into significantly more interesting fights meanwhile 4 opted on forgoing a lot of the newer monsters in favour of bring back their older counterparts that desperately needed updating to stay relevant, and then not really giving them anything. Like I’d be hard pressed to believe anybody who told me they’re glad the 'dromes are back over the Great 'ggis, or who honestly thinks Khezu or Plesioth without underwater combat are worthwhile additions to the roster.
Which puts us in a weird situation where 3U despite being pretty notably worse than the fourth gen games in quality of life and weapon diversity, still boasts the best set of beasties to hunt of any of the main franchise, while the newer games for all their improvements are hampered by half the fights honestly feeling like they should have been left in the last decade. Cynically I’m tempted to suggest that this as much a way to keep 3U a relevant purchase to anyone getting into the series off of 4U or Generations as it is the fourth generation really milking that nostalgia.
I dunno, the fourth generation simultaneously features the best and some of the worst designs in the franchise and I really don’t know how to feel about it, or the way that both 4U and Gens have end games centred around gimmicks that I honestly feel are designed to inflate the difficulty in really arbitrary ways.
In any case I hope XX gets a Switch release, it’d be a great way to introduce more people to the franchise with a lot of new Switch owners looking for something to fill out the gaps in the library, and it’d be really nice to play a new HD Monster Hunter.
The fact that they haven’t already announced a Switch version of XX makes it pretty unlikely, but I’m holding out for a surprise announcement at E3 for either MHXX HD, or straight-up Monster Hunter 5 for the Switch.
Hopping back into Generations on my lunch breaks. Planning to just run through all the Village Quests and I’m currently hitting the end of the 4* quests.
What’s the one where if you get a lance you can just invincibility frame through pretty much 99% of monster bullshit? I played that one and liked it a whole lot.
