I want to see a western take on this type of game. And I mean a full budget AAA title. Not a dinky little $15 Double Fine joint like Brazen, even if Trenched creator Brad Muir is in charge. Then again, if they could pull off the so called "depth and complexity" at a $15 price point, then surely some big time western developer would try and take the genre out of the PS2 era for a full $60 product afterward.

After watching Patrick get into MH, I picked it up a 3DS XL and MH and I really love it. It just feels like a single player MMO with much better battle mechanics and cool armor progression. I am a huge Dark Souls fan and it was no problem at all to figure out the battle mechanics, it's actually much simpler.

Solid advice

(took me 3 bullets -of growing rage- before realizing you are "totally serious" with these nuggets of wisdom)

Great read.

I understood the appeal of Monster Hunter from playing Monster Hunter Freedom 2 on the PlayStation Portable. Getting over the hump involved an instance of quitting from me. However, I picked it up again, forced myself to acclimate and learn, and finally kill that damn Yian Kut Ku (the difficulty wall of this round of Monster Hunter games). Hours later, I was in the loop of grinding monsters to complete my armor and weapon set.

It was an odd feeling when my 50+ hour save was corrupted. Instead of becoming frustrated and sad, I was excited to start over using weapon types I have never used before. I never did get as far in the new save, and I never got that far in to Monster Hunter Tri. Ah, this article makes me want to go back in to Tri. The discontinued online service doesn't bother me much since most of my monster hunting has been solo thus far.

The centipede battle was some horrible designed boss fight, narrow walkway surrounded by lava with you backed up against a wall. When I solo'ed him I got lucky because he didn't do very much and got the ring the first hit I lay on him. A friend my mine didn't get the ring right away when co-opping and was forced to stay on the sidelines when the two of us walked over the lava and bet the hell out of him.

Pro: I love Patrick's willingness to try different genres/experienes in gaming. Diversity is refreshing.

Con: I never like the flow of Patrick's features. It feels rigid (awkward pauses etc.), and I really dislike seeing typos. It feels somewhere between a quick headline write-up and an in-depth article. Most of the information was experienced in the Quick Look anyway. "Brevity is vigor" as my favorite English teacher used to make us recite daily. Or perhaps I'm just spoiled by reading Patrick Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicles series.

Either way, I'll keep checking in. Love this site.

it would be interesting to play one of these games from the monster's point of view. kind of like the monk boss fight in demon's souls.

Patrick: if you keep playing this game, make more videos. Rope in Scanlon and Caravella.
I will evangelize them as if you had hired me to do so.

I've been considering getting into MH, but my only option is playing on my 3DS. So I'm not sure if it's worth it as I don't know any other people who have a 3DS. It sounds like it's not as fun as a solo experience?

I've tried to get into Monster Hunter a couple times before (Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, Monster Hunter Tri) and got to the point in both of those games where I was able to get proficient enough to take down the Great Jaggi and start exploring the joys of transforming your foe's skin and bones into fine clothes and weapons. But since I play a lot of games I didn't stick with them much past that.

But after hearing Patrick's enthusiasm during the Bombcast and the Quick Look I decided to grab MH3U on the eShop, played enough to get to the point of killing the Great Jaggi again, then got distracted by Bioshock Infinite. I'm hoping that always having it on my WiiU will make it easy for me to pick up here and there between playing other games and I'm looking forward to the patch this month that includes Off-TV Play.

I still think that the series could use a controls overhaul. I appreciate them adding a semi lock-on to this version as it makes dealing with fast moving monsters much easier but I'm not advocating that they need to add a full fledged lock-on system to the game. I do think that there is still a lot of awkwardness to the control scheme that seems unnecessary, many buttons pulling double duty with unrelated actions. Still find myself accidentally using items when I didn't mean to. I also feel there is a way to keep the weighted feel that the animation priority brings but not turn the game into God of War. Though it is not as bad as Yakuza 1, which required you to turn the direction you want to attack and then attack, at least with MH you can just hit the direction and the attack button at the same time.

I agree with Patrick that the main problem these games is tutorial flow, probably not going to change with MH4 but at least you can grab onto monsters in the style of Dragon's Dogma right?

I'm one of those who started from 2nd on PSP, and spend about 500 hrs per MHs from there. I'm working for Bandai in Japan, so i guess it makes sense that I'm one of those crazy MH ppls...I've already put in about 300 hrs into 3G(3U in US) alone, it is great to see that a major western gaming site is covering this game, and i guess Patrick is way into JPN games recently(Fire emblem, MH). There is a reason that MH3G won the GOTY back in 2012 in Japan and it's just another good 3ds game that came out here in US. There is a joke in Japan saying that you can conclude western games in just 3 words: "balls", "guns" and "cars". Instant gratification carries a great emphasis in western game development. MH on the other hand gives you the gratification in 2 stages. The more powerful armor sets need more rare stuff from the monsters, and sometimes u'll have to farm the same monster 50 times or more to get that one thing u need for crafting. But sometimes if u're lucky, u can get what u want in just 3 battles. There is a certain probability to it u can only get the data from psp cheats. The tension and the feeling of u will probably not get that rare bone scale before going into the battle and turned out u get it, is very powerful. And u craft more powerful armor in order to at least have a chance battling the monsters from the next tier, after using up all of ur potions and meat and the time is running out, u finally beat it with just a minute left, it is the most glorious moment. There are more complex factors in the game both passively and actively. There are just too many things the game can offer. And u should know there is only ad hoc mode in every handheld mh games before MH4, it seems like that it is more satisfied playing with real life friends than playing online, which is unrealistic in US. At this point, I've already complete every town quests and normal guild quests. I'm on the G quests and it's still challenging. I totally agree with Patrick's take on Fire Emblem, he said those types of grid based strategy games are all about mechanics, no fancy graphics and stories. MH is the same thing, even it is essentially an action game, but it strips down all the unreal fantastical anime settings. It's like a film manual camera compared to a DSLR. U have to do all the work down to every frame of the animation.

MH games are certainly made for japanese audiences, and mainly a handheld game, I personally find it hard to play on the big screen for a long period of times. I dont see it get streamlined in future MH games also. In US, it's just for the hardcore MH fans.

I'm tired of hearing about this. Am I the only one who thinks MH is a just a game and not some cryptic riddle to solve?

Good on you, Patrick, for saying that it was a wyvern, and not a dragon like you did in that Quick Look (though making mistakes whilst being recorded is perfectly understandable).

Also, for the record, it's pronounced "why-vern," not "wi-vern." At least when it's spelled with a y. Spelling it with an i (wivern) is also correct, but not the "preferred" way.

But what do I know?

Edit: I should add that I tried playing a demo of one of the PSP Monster Hunter games, and that pretty much killed my interest in it. Just didn't like the combat. The thing that really killed it for me was the lack of a lock-on. That's the thing that makes Dark Souls work for me, and I would be much more willing to give Monster Hunter a shot if it had that.

Also, great article Patrick. But that goes without saying.

too bad capcom doesn't seem interested at all with elevating the franchise beyond low production cost handheld games, high res ports and expensions. They could do some great things with monster hunter but they prefer to keep the profit margins as high as possible and the innovation as low as they can. I like to call that the pokemon syndrome.

But don't make the mistake of assuming Monster hunter 3 ultimate is lacking in content. There is about 28 completly different big monsters to hunt not counting subspecies with different attacks and behaviors. The Qurupeco is only the third monster you face. Some of these monsters are collossal beasts that really require team work to take down. With 8 completly different weapon types and an ellaborate crafting system for armor and weapons you're looking at 150 hours minimum to get to the end game.

And @patrickklepek: looking foward to the Monster Hunter TNT. I'm sure we can get a bunch of community members to show you more impressive monsters than that little Qurupeco. Also, not to spoil the game but the sea monster that you encounter early on is far from the end boss. In fact, he's only the boss for the first rank of multiplayer quests. There is 8 ranks in total.

Prehistoric Pokemon. Before they invented Poké Balls and befriended the beasts.

I was wondering if u can play ad hoc between jpn and us version 3ds, probably not considering it's technically different games...

@pyrodactyl: oh i wasnt referring to capcom when i say the monster hunter genre seems ready to truly shine next gen.

i meant that i wouldn't be surprised if there is a next gen ip by another studio that streamlines this formula for the masses. something like BRAZEN

i'm glad someone said this. mh isn't the fucking enigma code.

I actually kind of disagree with Patrick's sentiment that Monster Hunter "is" a coop game. Sure there is coop, but I think it loses a lot of its finesse by playing it that way. I felt much the same about the both Souls games. The games kinda break when you are multiple people. You won't master the game playing coop that is for sure. While it can be a blast you certainly don't have to utilize the precise timing and skill that is required when going it alone. In the end you can play it however you want but I think all this talk about it being a coop game at its core might drive people away that don't know other people that own the games. That is not the case, playing it alone is a blast as well.

I tought that Dragons Dogma was a brilliant game. I especially liked the fact you could hire other players followers to help you out in your own adventures.

Am still wondering why no western rpg so far hasnt seem to used this idea of hiring the followers of other players.

I once tried to play the PsP Monster Hunter game Freedom Unite with a friend who had the Japanese version and yeah, it totally doesn't work.

@mrfluke: the only problem with brazen is that it would be developped by double fine as a downloadable game. Half the appeal of monster hunter is the breath of content and the dept of the systems. You can't really get that with a 15$ game. Also, they talked about tuning down the scale/lenght of battle. Not sure if would be able to capture the magic with that kind of game but we'll see.

Good article, Patrick. The learning curve with no real instruction is a really glaring issue. A few years ago, I took up one of the PSP games and had to get over the hump myself, something that took a very long time. I also mentored a friend of mine in the same way you describe it and we had great fun hunting together. He very quickly became a lot better at the game than I was, and even, to my astonishment, got every endgame armor-set in Tri, long after I had lost interest in the franchise as a whole, which happened mostly because it's very time-consuming and also because it gets VERY hard later on. Your QL with Vinny has reeled me back in for 4, so we'll see how that goes.

I've been playing Monster Hunter on an off since the original and I completely agree that Capcom abuses its fans. They refuse to move past PS2 level hardware or evolve the series in any meaningful way. They release the same game over and over and over again with a new monster here and a new weapon there rather than creating an entirely new game. Monster Hunter and its fans both deserve better.

That said, I'm really glad that Patrick gave it a shot and liked it, and I can't wait to hear about his thoughts once he fights some real monsters.

People want games on the systems they own. No matter how much you might think Monster Hunter is worth it, most people won't buy a system for a single game.

With this next generation, I imagine most people will do similar: buy the one system with the best/most games. Which will almost certainly not be the WiiU. So when Monster Hunter 4 is still a Nintendo exclusive, you will have again hear a chorus of people singing the similar refrain.

I've been playing solo for about 50 some odd hours and have been reminded why I fell in love with this series when it came out on the PS2. There are other duders on the MH3U forum that have started a guild of sorts, so check that out. I'm insaneshadow85 if anyone wants to add me to their Wii U friends list.

What do you mean why not? The first 1 was released on PS2, the sequel was canceled in the US. Servers for 1 got shut down fast for US. Then they proceeded to release the games on a handheld that's rampant with piracy without online when it's a multiplayer focused game. Tri had plenty of people giving it a shot since Capcom decided to bring back online aspect to Monster Hunter only to kill it again with Tri G for WiiU. Which is a console that is not as popular (yet, maybe?)

Hell, Capcom even hired people to ban anyone who spoke English on the Monster Hunter Online game for PC.

I would love to hear back from Patrick after he gets to the mid/late game but that requires a ton of hours and I don't think he's willing to do that.

Anyways, the thing is when you starting getting to the bigger, stronger, and more aggressive monsters it gets 100 times more intense than fighting a Great Jaggi or Qurupeco was. You get to the point where killing some of the higher Hunter Rank 5+ monsters takes upwards of 40 minutes to kill depending on your weapon choice. It gets real crazy, because if you fuck up at all you have to do it all over. I would love to see how he fares against Deviljho or Plesioth.

I really hope he moves to Dark Souls after he's finished studying MH, I would love to see him conquer that game now after his experience with MH. I actually found MH a lot easier after having played Dark Souls extensively, so maybe that MH experience would transfer over to Dark Souls a bit for him as well. Would be interested to see/hear about it.

You are a terrible person.

cool article but like, videogames aren't that hard

Great article, I hope this gets some more Giantbombers to play the game or at least look forward to MH4.

also

"We spent 60 minutes in a tug-of-war with the aforementioned Qurupeco. It ended with fist pumping."

Missions have a 50 min time limit.

I would totally play it if it was on PS3. Not buying a WiiU for monster hunter.

I would love to play Monster Hunter, it's my kind of game i love everything about it. It's just that between the systems it comes out on and versions which are only released in Japan, i've never had the opportunity to buy any of the releases.

It's not a unique situation, non of my friends own a WiiU or 3DS, there's a PSP version too but only 1 of my friends has a PSP.

If a Monster Hunter game came out now on 360 i'd get it and i know my friends would too, its odd choices in release platforms is holding it back.

I only recently, finally, completed my first run through of Dark Souls after some 90+ hours of play. The only boss I left undefeated was Manus... Damn you Manus.

It'll be interesting to see how Patrick reacts if he does decide to try Dark Souls. The boss encounters should feel fairly similar to Monster Hunter. They would just be... less forgiving.

I love this website! I love video games! oh and that video plug in thing at the top is super freaking cool!

I played around 40 hours of Tri, not really in the market for playing an extended version of the game that I already played (didn't see everything in the game anyway so I don't need more content).

One nice part of the Wii version was that you could use the IR cursor to see tooltips on stats and such.

Ive ben trying to get into Monster Hunter for years, I bought Freedom shortly after it came out and the Tri special edition with Classic Controller Pro day one, but it never made sense. After hearing Patrick talk about it so much, and honestly after learning from things he was saying, I gave Tri another go and I really see what other people see in it. Im loving playing the game now but I need to get my Friends to try it so I can play it "properly" in multiplayer, though they are quite resistent.

I could have saved you 2000 words Patrick. "Killing monsters is mean, Japanese like doing it". Done!

I guess the rise or resurgence or whatever of really hard, or demanding games really doesn't impress me much because I grew up playing games that were too hard or too demanding. I grew up playing games that didn't explain shit and let you suffer and I don't want to go back. I don't want to relive playing a game all night with no clue of what to do or where to go next and then head out to the playground the next day and hear a lot of speculation from the other kids and then go home and try it. That does nothing for me.

Also, I don't know if maybe I just grew up playing more varieties of game than Patrick, but I don't look at ZombiU, XCOM and 999 as being... I don't know, 'new' experiences. It's a sluggish first person shooter, a turn based strategy game, and a visual novel crossed with an adventure game. Maybe it's just I hew closer to someone like Jeff, in that I already know what I like, and in most cases I can tell whether or not something has the stuff I like from a bit of video.

I just cant help but wonder what this article would of been like if you guys failed and had to walk away with no progress.

Why...

...because Capcom never built a dedicated 360/PS3 version. That's why.

I've spent hundreds of hours in Monster Hunter on the PSP and only 1 or 2 of those was in multiplayer (playing with my son on his PSP). I have no idea why, but Monster Hunter has always been alluring to me even though I never got very good at it (I think the highest level monster I've killed to date is the Blangonga in MHFU). The best way I can describe it is that it's a stripped down single player MMO (the way I play it, that is). The quests in each tier are very simple, straight forward missions that lead to a confrontation with a final boss...then you move to the next tier. Almost everything you kill drops something that you can use to craft armor or weapons or traps or potions or etc. Like dailies in WoW, you can do quests over and over to try and get the materials you missed the first time through. Between missions you can craft the items you need or go to your farm to get more materials for more crafting. And it's all centered on you. I think that's the biggest hook of all to me; the very minimal story centers everything on you, the player. More than any other game I've played, Monster Hunter stars "me" as the protagonist, so I form more of an attachment to my avatar, relishing in it's triumphs over hulking beasts like nothing else. Damn you Capcom/Sony for not releasing MH portable 3rd in the west. Damn you Sony for letting the franchise go to Nintendo (though congratulation to you, 3ds, Wii, and WiiU owners).

Well said. I like those harder more demanding games but I find myself playing them less and less for one reason only.... That worked when I was a kid because when I was a kid all I had to do was go to school, watch tv, and play video games. I have a full time job, responsibilities at home like every other adult, and time is worth much more now than then. I just don't want to spend what free time I have on something "hard for hards sake" very much anymore.

@mooseymcman: If you've got good camera controls you don't really need lock-on for Monster Hunter. (And I don't think it would really help anyway, as the game has a heavy emphasis on hitting specific parts of the monster.) The problem with the PSP versions is that the camera controls suck, so not being able to lock-on is a bigger problem than it is otherwise.

@karkarov: I think that's the biggest misconception with games like this and the Souls games. They aren't just hard for hard's sake. The challenge is an intrinsic part of what makes the games work at all. They also aren't actually as hard as people often make them out to be. They're mostly just unforgiving.

Ditto. Bought MH3 after seeing Ryan and Jeff (?) bumble around for a Quicklook, and I thought it really looked interesting and started to dig around for info. First time I put it in, I played it for 11 hours straight. Went to bed, played another insane amount of double-digit hours. Instantly hooked. I didn't need a mentor, but I swore by this wiki! I always had it up while playing, and I never felt like it took away from the experience either. It just made things easier to understand.

S&S forever!

Peace!

I started with Monster Hunter Freedom for the PSP about five or so years ago without a mentor. Trying to understand the mechanics of the game yourself without a mentor is an exercise in frustration but doable. Hell, I even eventually managed to bag a Yian Kut-Ku with a hammer as my first large monster after being destroyed by it like three times. After bagging that Kut-Ku, I realized what the game was all about and was hooked.

Now here I am with Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate for the 3DS, just hot off repelling a Jhen Mohran by myself with a gunlance (valiant lance users unite!) and still loving the game as much as I did bagging that stupid bird with an oversized home improvement tool all those years ago.

https://twitter.com/patrickklepek/status/317455060869206017

As I said, this is all your fault Klepek! And I thank you for it.

I've always been aware of the Monster Hunter franchise but have never played or gone near any of them. That you were a complete newcomer and managed to figure it out and enjoy it gave me the courage to try it myself. I'm always willing to try new things and Monster Hunter is unlike anything I've ever played before and I love it.

Excited to see you start Dark Souls (something I'm already a massive fan of) and continue down this rabbit hole. Hopefully you'll unearth some more gems I can give a try.

This is going to seem super shallow, but I stopped playing Monster Hunter for very small reasons. I can understand animation priority, but it it doesn't have to be excessive. I literally stopped playing Monster Hunter when I drank a potion, and my character flexes his arms. I'm getting attacked by some large spiky monster! Why would I flex after drinking a potion that barely saved my life?

I've always been interested in playing Monster Hunter (I actually played the first MH before it was released on the PS2 and liked it), but the lack of not being able to play it online has always kept me from getting it. I only have a 3DS and since they didn't add online to that version I'm stuck hoping that MH4 finally has it.