As more clearly dedicated hunters trickle into our slice of the fediverse, let's take the opportunity this smaller community gives us to share how Monster Hunter found us.
My origin story is similar to many others. Monster Hunter 4U was highly recommended by a friend and I bounced off of it initially, only to fall in love with the franchise many years later. My 2DS was a dedicated Pokemon machine until the release of MH4U. The whole premise was something that interested me, as I already loved anything with cool creature designs. My friend tried to explain everything as we played, which would have been a great introduction to the series if I had stuck with it. The one thing that held me back from any enjoyment was the camera control system. I felt the lack of a right stick made looking around near impossible. I was too stubborn to use the touch screen or willing to upgrade to a 3DS model with the C-stick. Looking back I missed out on a great time in the series.
It wasn't until I bought a new PC in 2019 that I heard about the franchise again. Somehow I had missed the hype and release of Monster Hunter World. Funnily enough, it was Girlfriend Review's video on MHW that reminded me the series existed. I knew there was a good game underneath the "clunkiness" of the 3DS controls, and the video showcased the charms of the series like poogies and palicos in ways I hadn't experienced with MH4U. Since World was on PC, it had completely fixed any issue I had with camera control. No longer able to complain about camera, the slowness of movement was my last hurdle to get over, so I ended up choosing Insect Glaive as my main weapon. I helicoptered my way through high-rank before I started looking into older games in the series. I consider myself a Fifth Fleeter due to it being the first game I connected with. Once I played Generations Ultimate on Switch, I fell in love with the series as a whole, not just for one game. It was there that I picked up Hammer, now my main weapon. It was also then that Monster Hunter had officially replaced Pokemon as my favorite franchise.
Collectively between World, Iceborne, Generations Ultimate and emulating 4U on the Steam Deck, I probably have ~500 hours under my belt, which to me, for any other game or franchise outside of Pokemon would normally be a lot. Knowing that veterans easily put 2-3x as many hours into any one of those games, I still to some extent consider myself new to the series. Although the recent stream for the release of the bonus update did make me reconsider, as Rise: Sunbreak was the first game I had participated with the community during the whole game cycle.
Outside of the games themselves. I've recently enjoyed reading more about the lore, ecology, and the community surrounding MH. There are a few Youtubers I have a lot of respect for, as well as BannedLagiacrus on Twitter. I'm not normally one to collect merch for games, but I have been collecting the Japanese guide books for all of the games through ebay. They're all in Japanese, so I have used Google Lens to help translate specific pages I'm interested in. I've laughed at myself for buying them since I can't read them directly, plus most if not all of the information is available on the wikis, reddit, google docs shared by the community, or asking people on the discord. There are likely translations in communities outside of those places as well. I'd at least like to contribute some knowledge of these books toward this community here, as it took me some digging to find out these books existed in the first place. Once the last package arrives, I can at least make a list of all of the titles and ISBN numbers if anyone else is interesting in purchasing them as well. There's a definitively an aspect of nostalgia at play, as I had spent many hours reading the strategy guides for Pokemon back in the day. This was the first community that I joined on the fediverse. I hope to help make it a welcoming and enjoyable place to chat about a franchise we all love.
Thanks for the welcome. I appreciate all your efforts on getting this community started here. As I said, I have plans to contribute to the magazine soon. In fact, there are a few books that I've picked up that are not part of the guide series that I can list here later today. That does lead me to one question I have regarding rules here. Would it be alright to provide a few sample photos from each book? I have no plans to completely scan each book due to labour, the physical wear, and the fact that it would be piracy to provide too much. A few representative examples would be nice to show though.
I can't think of why that'd be a problem. As far as I'm concerned, if it's Monster Hunter related, it fits here. We'll know when something is inappropriate when we see it, I think.
A friend in college first introduced himself when he saw my PSP sticking out of my pocket saying, "aww shit, you on Monster Hunter?" I said who are you and what is that. On his suggestion, I tried Freedom 1 and bounced off it so hard I questioned whether or not it even counted as a video game, having not even been able to figure out who to talk to to do quests (recall, in the early games the village elder always first tells you where the hub is, they don't offer the tutorial hunts until you talk to them again, so when I went into the hub and could only select the HR lass because the UI sucked, I just turned the game off and walked away.)
He tried again with FU, which I played the tutorials for, but felt like it probably wasn't for me. He said "it's better with other people." Ah, a multiplayer game, not my scene.
Ten years later, World was getting a lot of hype from people whose opinions I trusted, and my old friend tried one last time saying it was much more accommodating to new players than the series had ever been. He was right, I went down the rabbit hole, and now even the older games retroactively make more sense. I've since traveled through time as a filthy Fiver to Pokke, Moga, Yukumo, the lands visited by the Caravan and the endless Everwood, I've served at the Wycademy, Dundorma, Astera and Kamura, even hatched eggs in Hakum and Mahana. My love for these games is now a facet of how I see myself.
I wish he'd tried a little harder to get me into it earlier on, but sometimes it just takes the right combination of factors to make an entire franchise click. The same thing happened with Souls, I didn't "get it," until Elden Ring, and now Bloodborne is one of my all-time favorites, even though I'd bounced off that a few times.
The first time I played MH was all the way back on PS2 in the early 2000s, one of my best friends growing up had bought it and showed it to me. At the time, the Rathalos was the "endgame" monster that was the most difficult thing in the game. There were more difficult monsters, but you had to have the PS2 online brick that had to be purchased as an accessory to the PS2 and an online subscription, but as children we obviously couldn't afford those. You had to use the right analog stick to attack with, which is something they did away will pretty quickly when they started putting out the PSP games.
I've ended up playing every single MH game to come out, except for Rise. I've been a PC gamer my entire life, but always made an exception to buy whichever consoles had the latest MH on them. But, since the release of world I just can't go back to the console versions. They don't look anywhere near as good and feel a lot more clunky. Even though Rise is available for PC, it just doesn't have the same level of quality that World does, so I will continue to wait for a World 2.
Everyone make way for the Grand Old Man of Monster Hunter here. Damn, PS2 and analogue stick attacking, that's impressive. Not too many of your breed out there anymore, or at least severely outnumbered by 5th Fleeters now.
I think it was 2006 in my second year of high school, when I saw Monster Hunter Freedom (Portable) on PSP in the store. I had enough money with me and bought it on a whim, because the cover looked cool. I really liked the game but played it mostly by myself. But then the next year Monster Hunter Freedom 2 (Portable 2) came out and all my friends got it. That‘s when the fascination started. We would play before class, during class, in between classes, during lunch break, after school, on weekends and during holidays, we were unstoppable. There are so many memories of us hunting deep into the night, just hunting and talking with MTV running in the background. My fondest memories include killing Tigrex for the first time (we were a team of four guys, equipped to the teeth with flash bombs and traps, including materials to craft some more during the quest, and we still only killed him like 45min into the hunt), killing Nargacuga (MH Freedom Unite) and grinding Lao Shan Lung for those desirable materials.
MH was different back then, I feel. Not that nowadays MH is bad, but its a lot quicker. Early MH was like a dance, strategic and thought out, whereas powercreep (of monsters and hunters alike) brought a lot more dynamic and fast paced action into the game. To be fair though, MH Rise is my favourite, partly because it‘s on the Switch and my friends and I can still play right next to each other and recapture some of the magic from back then.
Sounds like we're about the same MH age. I also have Rise as my favorite now. Yeah its faster and flashier, but the customization for each weapon from switch skills is indescribably awesome. I've played everything in Rise and even had fun with some weapons I loathed since my start. Fantastic to look back on MHG/U and see the foundation of that system. Really hope it stays. I've switched up my styles on even my mains so many times, and it informs my armor as well. So much replayability. The endgame is also a great amalgamation of what came before it. And you have a reason to craft more than one of a piece of armor for the first time ever, mind boggling for an oldhat.
Gonna go back to World since I skipped Iceborne while I wait for the MH6 announcement. But even at 100% completion, i find it hard to stay out of MHRSB for long.
I purchased a pc for the first time in 2020, being mostly a console gamer before then. I went with a 5700xt gpu, that was bundled with a resident evil remake and MH world:Iceborne. I initially tried to play it solo, but got overwhelmed and stopped for a bit. Later my friends got interested and we started playing together, which really helped overcome the initial learning curve.
Eventually my friends slowly stopped playing it due to the horrible story mode multi-player experience until there was only two of us playing. We played though the dlc and ended a few missions from the end. I still haven't completed it yet as i want to complete it with my friend only.
When rise was announced, i waited until it released on pc to get it, and then i bought generations for the switch.
Bow main in world, gunlance in rise, and great sword in generations.
I inherited my addiction from a coworker/friend. I was recruited to help him pass a wall he could not solo through in MHFU: the infamous Plesioth hipcheck barrier. He set me up with an LBG, probably the most straight forward weapon for a non-hunter gamer to grasp. From there, things just spiraled as I lost control of my life.
Through fortunate timing, Tri was only months from release when I started my MHFU journey, so I developed my habit right as a steady supply of the primo ish was starting to come out, and I haven't wanted to or been able to shake the habit since.
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