Honestly, the game is perfect for my sensibilities, but I have only played a bit of the original MH borrowed from my cousin and found it hard to solo.  (Admittingly, I was just trying it out and not being serious)

Played the Demo. Tried couple the weapons on the first boss and can kill it relatively well with certain weapons.  (Though I think the gear is pretty good. New characters will essentially be naked.)

I think its more trial and error on boss patterns and certain weapons I'm comfortable with.

I wonder if I can even reach mid-level content alone however. A lot of late game strategies seem to revolve around at least 2-3 players co-operating.

I'd probably try to get my PS3 hardwired, but I usually play handhelds for the solo experience.

So after a long drawn out explanation... How far did you or can you solo the game?

There are actually two different sets of quests that are just for solo play. You have your Elder quests, which are quests you do solo, and then there are the new felyne elder quests which are similar except an AI controlled felyne character fights alongside you. You can get quite a lot out of the game with just these quests.

On top of that, if you manage to beat all of those and still want more you can solo the guild hall quests. They're hard and meant for multiple people, but if you completed all the single player quests you should be able to do them.

All the quests from the Elder are solo quests. So we're talking about at least 100 hours of stuff made for soloing. The guild hall stuff can also be done solo, despite it being open for multiplayer.