So when I play games, I play a series from the very beginning, and I'm trying to determine if doing that with Monster Hunter is even feasible. So...

1. Do these games all have a defined singleplayer quest line with an actual end? Can you actually beat each game?
2. Can I beat them all easily by myself?
3. Which games in this series actually have some local network coop? I think the first two were only online, but I'm not sure.
4. How long are these games? If I don't go around doing every sidequest (if this is the type of game with sidequests) how many hours am I committing to?
5. What happens to the light when I close my refrigerator door?

Don't play the series from the beginning, each game is better than the last and there's no story to follow.

1. No, unless you take the singleplayer qualifier off, in which case yes.

2. No

3. The PSP ones have local multiplayer as does 3U for the 3DS and maybe 4U. The rest are online only.

4. Hundreds of hours per game.

5. It turns off

@slaps2:

1 - I haven't played them all but I can say for sure that you can with tri/3U and 4/4U

2- well... define "easily", you can certainly beat them by yourself but it's definitely a challenge, actually the SP and MP are completely separate, so if you beat the SP it can only be by yourself.

3 - again, can't speak for all of them, but both 3U and 4U have that.

4 - It can take you anywhere between 70 to 100 hours I would say if you just go in to beat it once and not go for the crazy higher ranks and shit, but here's the thing, most of that time will be spent redoing quests to grind for parts in order to get better equipment so you can advance, this game is VERY grindy, as are many loot based games, so unless you're ok with that I'd say you should probably not play it.

5 - it turns itself off.

@corevi So monster hunter 1 is not at all possible to beat solo?

Well the servers have been down for 7 years so you could beat the content that is still accessible but it's not really beating the game as there is a ton of content that is multiplayer only. There's no reason to play it at all though since each game is straight up better than the last. Just get 4U and play that.

I suppose you could, but I can't imagine why the hell anyone would want to.

A few days ago, I popped in a friend's copy of the original MH on PS2 that's been lying around my room for ages, played it for about 5 hours (got to the Kut-Ku)... And my gosh, that game is hard to play. Mostly due to being unable to manage a claw grip effectively. However, I've always been decent at persevering through obtuse, user-unfriendly game design if the meat of the game is enjoyable enough, and I think I would have kept at it if MH4U hadn't just come out.

Anyway, MH is really not a series that there's any reason to play from the beginning, for story reasons or whatever (there isn't really one). I would say that the only two there's a reason play are MH Freedom Unite, and 4 Ultimate.

MHFU because, although I haven't actually played it myself, I understand it to be the biggest and most updated of the old school, "hardcore" MH games. Seems like it would be worth playing to experience a bygone era of the series at its best point. MH4U for obvious reasons: it's the newest, it's the most expansive, and the most polished. It's the most ambitious (I suppose that's not saying much for a MH game), and pulls every new idea off flawlessly. It's a flat better game than 3 Ultimate, and removes virtually any reason to play it, unless you really want to see what the water combat was like (you shouldn't).

So, if you really want to start with an earlier point in the series, MHFU is probably the only one that makes sense. Really, though, MH4U is the best game in the series, and you won't be losing anything by jumping in with the most recent.

Unless you want to spend over a thousand hours playing monster hunter, playing from the beginning is a horrible idea. Just buy MH4U. Or, if you want to play on a big screen, pick up MH3U for Wii U, it's like 20 bucks now.

Fuck it. Grind be damned. I've found a friend who will play every game with me. We're even going to play the first one separately together. Please pray for my soul.

@slaps2: Dear Lord of the Palicos, smite this fool and his friend in their futile errand before their loved ones suffer.

Seems you've already reached your decision, but I'll throw my 2c in.

1. Actually, the answer is sort-of. Monster Hunter games are divided into Village (single-player) quests and Gathering Hall (multiplayer) quests. There is a definitive end of the Village quest progression, and unlike previous games, in MH4U there actually is a decent amount of story that goes along with it.

That said, the Gathering Hall is split into Low Rank and High Rank quests, and Low Rank quests are roughly on the same tier as the Village quests, fighting the same monsters and granting the same loot, rebalanced for multiple hunters. The High Rank quests circle back through the entire progression, fighting the same monsters as Village/Low Rank, but with a significantly higher difficulty for a higher tier of loot. Basically an armor set made from the weakest High Rank monsters will be about as powerful as an armor set made from one of the stronger Village/Low Rank monsters.

So while there is an end of single-player content, in doing it you'll have seen less than half of what Monster Hunter has to offer.

2. Not easily, no, but a skilled hunter can solo any monster. Monster Hunter Freedom 2 is where I spent most of my time, ~1200 hours, and I soloed everything that game threw at me. That said, there's no real advantage to doing it all solo so you may as well take help if you can.

3. I know you said you're going to play every game, but I really wouldn't recommend it. There is no reason not to skip straight to MH4U unless you're approaching it from a purely academic standpoint. The only things that are missing are significantly shittier and more time-consuming versions of the tertiary systems for between-mission materials acquisition (0 gameplay, just menus upon menus and lots of mashing on the action button), and underwater combat which was super shitty and unfun.

Not to mention the fact that the 11 games in the main series are actually just iterations on 4 different games. Monster Hunter Freedom is based on Monster Hunter G which is an expanded version of Monster Hunter, Monster Hunter Freedom Unite is an expanded version of Monster Hunter Freedom 2 which is based on Monster Hunter 2, and so on and so forth. If you do insist on playing them "all" I would just stick to Monster Hunter Freedom, Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, and Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate.

All four of those have local multiplayer.

4. Easily 60+ hours for the most barebones playthrough. At each rank of quests there are a handful of required quests you have to do to unlock the Urgent quest which promotes you to the next rank. It's true you could "critical path" it through that stuff, except for the fact that repetition is the name of the Monster Hunter game. Unless you're a godlike pro (like the maniacs who do naked runs against powerful bosses), you're going to quickly hit a wall where you can't progress because you don't have enough materials to make new armor or upgrade your weapons.

There is no leveling-up in Monster Hunter. The only way you get stronger is by A) becoming more skilled as a player and B) forging new equipment. However, even when making the easiest armor sets with the luckiest drops, you'll need to kill your boss monster of choice at least 3 times. As you progress through the game that number gets higher and higher until eventually you're looking for a 2% drop to make a single piece of armor, and most armor sets have 5 pieces.

There is a real lack of extensive information regarding the questions asked here and I think that's absurd. I know that from personal experience sometimes when I close my fridge the light turns off. But there are times when the fridge door isn't quite shut all the way and the light stays on which is pretty annoying. Well there you go, finally both sides of the story have been told and you can now make your decision regarding Monster Hunter.

You can definitely play "all" of the Mon Hun games in a row.

It's not really recommended, as each game is a iteration upon each other.

Mon Hun 1 in USA for Ps2 is actually Mon Hun 1 G (second edition) in JPN. This version can only be played until the end of offline single player now (village quests). You can hack the game to include the online mode (which has another rank of monsters call high rank) but I'm not sure if you'd want to do that. This game is very broken in that stagger limites for monsters heads were extremely low, making it easy to "headlock" a monster by repeatedly doing damage to their heads.

You can play MH1 for Ps2 NA until the end of village quests, which is about 40% of actual content. The last fight is I believe Monoblos, and after that if you clear every village quest you unlock most of the offline monsters and IIRC 1 high rank quest of 2 main monsters. You cannot complete online only content, which is about 6-7 extra unique monsters and a slew of items and armor. Not worth it IMO.

MHF1 for psp has local wifi multiplayer, and has ALL the content of MH1 and MH1G rolled into a nice package, which can be finished online or offline. This is the version I recommend playing if you're serious about playing the series. Sword and Shields were buffed incredibly in this version and are borderline broken. Headlocking was removed, but the game is overall easier than MH1 and MH1G. It has several quality of life improvements as well.

MH2 (dos) is JPN Ps2 online, and again is offline. Most of the content (almost 70%) is locked behind it. Its also only in japanese, unless you hack the iso to translate it. MH2 gave the game a bunch of new weapon sets and added a ton more monsters, while retaining ALL of MH1 monsters. Bigger better sequel. For PSP, you can get MHF2, which is the same kind of idea as MHF1. All the content MH2 (dos) had, plus more, plus all of it accessible. However, what you should play is MHFU. This is MHF2 G and has ALL the content of the previous games, plus an entire new rank of monsters on top of it all. I've put over 500 hours into this game and have not finished its content. It rebalanced all the weapons as well, and has the largest climb. Like MHF1 is has local co-op and can be beaten solo or with friends.

MH3(tri) is Wii only. It, like all the console MH, lost its online and most of its content. There are active communities that put the missing content into single player, but its requires things not discussed here. It scrapped almost ALL of the previous generations monsters, and included a huge portion of the game dedicated to hunting monsters underwater. It fixed alot of the hitbox issues in previous generations, and had a huge active player base until the servers got shutdown about a year ago. MHP3rd, is the JPN only release of what would be MHF3 if it came out in NA. It couldnt add the underwater swimming to the PSP, so they scrapped that and made a slew of changes to make the game the easiest its ever been. It is really easy to breeze through and see all of the content, and you can buy the PS3 HD version to play it in JPN on your NA Ps3. The psp version is single player and wifi only, while I believe the Ps3 version uses Ad Hoc party to find online players. Mh3U is for 3ds and WiiU, and its a further and final iteration of underwater combat and alot of new and better improvements. It is wifi only for 3ds and has online servers for WiiU which are now very active. You can switch your saves between the 3ds and WiIu version as you like.

Mh4 is just released on 3ds, and is the one you should be playing. It is a amalgamation of the previous 3 games, taking monsters from each and remaking them, while adding a ton of new unique content. It drops swimming alltogether and makes the levels alot more vertical, allowing for huge jumps and chases. It also has 2 new weapon sets, a fairly robust single player (all content unlocked online or off) and has a massive player following on its online currently.

TLDR: Play MH4U, or if you're crazy play MHF1, MHFU, MH3U or MHP3(hd), and MH4U

1. Depends on what you define as "beat". The offline and online modes usually have their own set of dialogue and "unique quests" to play through all atleast once. There are story sequences told in cutscenes and on screen chat dialogue, but none of it is very compelling and often tries to be humorous. You can finish these sets of quests and call it done I suppose, but the real point of monster hunter is to replay and replay fights to improve your technique and times, and craft rare weapons and armors.

2. Yes, all of the MH games are completely soloable. It will be difficult, as multiplayer just makes the game easier in general.

3. All the psp games have all the content and local multiplayer, The ps2 and wii versions of games have no content other than offline, which is little. The Wiiu/3ds version can be played like the psp, all content, local multiplayer for 3ds and online multiplayer for WiiU

4. Alot, probably around 150 hours per full content game, maybe 20-30 on the offline little content versions. I've personally put in about 2000 hours into the series, with 600 alone in MHFU. One thing you need to realize is that one point, you wont have the proper equipment or experience to beat a quest. You will then have to look for its weakness, kill something else to gain access to parts/armor/equip and then finally go back to the quest and beat it. I love seeing people do this, and if you do, you should document it for us!

5. It turns off, just like the one in your heart.

Please don't start with the older games, not even as a joke. They're tedious and clunky by modern standards (mostly referring to 1st and 2nd gen), and while each new iteration brings new conveniences and balance changes, the core gameplay is largely the same. I'd only go back and play them if you wanted an absolutely exhaustive look on the progression of mechanics, and even then most people only go as far back as MHFU.

If you did play them in order, at best you would be able to appreciate the minor tweaks to weapon/combat mechanics and streamlined systems. This might be more reasonable with another series but I don't think it's anywhere near worth the time investment in this case. They do add a lot of the old monsters to 3U and 4U, so there's that too.

Only crazy people on the internet will make fun of you for not starting with the original PS2 game. I actually stepped backwards to play FU after exhausting my time with Tri and even that was a trial in patience, everything felt foreign and byzantine.

@frawrst: @starvinggamer: So let me just verify one more time. Freedom is all the content on MH1... Freedom Unite is all the Freedom 2 Content which is all the jp MH2 content... and monster hunter 3 ultimate has all the portable 3rd content?.. and 4 ultimate is its own deal and is apparently kick ass?... So why does the internet call unite an expansion to freedom 2 and why is their a psp bundle of the two games... if I play those four that you all agree on, I'm not missing anything, right?

@neocalypso: FINALLY, SOMEONE SPEAKS THE PROPER TRUTH! I'm sick of the main stream media not givin' me both sides of the debate! #fridgeLIGHTtruther #fridgeLIGHTSmadeMYchildAUTISTIC ...No, seriously. I laugh pretty hard at that. You made a pretty good bait and switch.

@subliminalkitteh: It's cool, man. Our families left us when we told them we were going to max out every character class in FFXI.

@slaps2: MHFU adds an expansion's worth of content to MHF2, but it also includes all of the content from the original game. MHF2 players could transfer their saves to MHFU, but I have no idea why a PSP bundle would include both games other than to try and rip you off a bit. It's possible that not 100% of the original content carries over (I honestly can't recall), but if there's anything missing it would have to be incredibly minor and inconsequential.

MH4U is the American version of MH4G which is a standalone expansion to MH4 which only came out in Japan.

I'd like to add that when it comes to the meat of the game, the killing of big monsters, MHFU includes all of the monsters found in MHF. You could play MHFU, MH3U, and MH4U and more-or-less be experiencing everything of consequence.

Have either your friend or you considered seeing a psychiatrist? Seriously dude all these replies are needlessly dense and complex. There is absolutely no good reason to play all monster hunter games (even the abridged versions people are posting with only 4 games in it) unless you play on writing your college thesis on monster hunter. Skipping to 4 Ultimate is the only good advice anyone will give you.

This. Jump into MH4U or MH3U if you have a Wii U and prefer to play on a console. MH4U brings the biggest changes to the series though.

(reading this back to myself makes me feel weird only because of all that U)