Monster Hunter

Monster Hunter Freedom

The first Monster Hunter game. This is a PSP port of the original game on PS2. Or technically it's a port of Monster Hunter G, which came out on PS2 exclusively in Japan. The first Monster Hunter on PS2 did technically come out in the states, but it was clunky & grindy even by those standards, and wasn't particularly popular. It didn't even utilize the face buttons in combat. You had to attack with your right analog stick.

I'm not even making that up. The face buttons aren't used at all, and you used the D-pad for camera control. You know the infamous claw grip, which you assume existed because the PSP didn't have a right analog? That grip predates the PSP.

Fortunately Freedom has the more sensible button-bound attacks, as well as a G-rank we never got on PS2. It's a lot more barebones than modern Monster Hunter, with only seven weapons and 31 monsters. Half of those monsters are just recolors though, and they didn't quite have the enhanced movesets associated with modern recolors. Freedom is interesting if you really want to start at the beginning, but otherwise I'd say start with something newer.

Monster Hunter Freedom Unite

Like the first game, this is a PSP port of Monster Hunter 2 G; which only came out in Japan, but there is a fan translation of Monster Hunter Dos if you really want to go for it. There's also Monster Hunter Freedom 2, which is a port of regular MonHun2, but most people will recommend Freedom Unite.

This is a lot of people's favorite. It added four new weapons for a total of 11, and 29 new monsters for a total of 60. It's still pretty rough, but it's generally considered the better PS2-era Monster Hunter. I'll admit, this one was too rough for me. But I'm willing to try it again someday.

Monster Hunter Frontier

Monster Hunter's one and only MMO. Launched in 2007, shut down in 2019, kept alive with private servers. It's built on top of the MonHun2 engine, reusing most of its assets & monsters.

It starts out as just an MMO variant of Freedom Unite, but it ascends G-rank and transitions into Z-rank; with insanely dangerous monsters & attacks you'd expect from an MMO. But also two new weapons unique to the game; albeit tremendously overpowered, but seeing what the monsters can do I'm not gonna turn em down.

I haven't actually played this one yet. People recommend the Rain server, which strips out all the pay to win garbage it had in life, and man I cannot wait to give it a try. It looks insanely fun.

Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate

My first Monster Hunter. This one is unique in that, while 3U is the only one with a G-rank, there are two versions before it, and both do something unique to make it distinct from 3U.

The original game was Monster Hunter Tri on the Wii. While the second game built off the first one with just objectively more content, Tri aimed to be a bit of a reboot. It went back down to seven weapons, but it also added the Switch Axe, and made the Bowgun totally customizable for light, heavy, even medium variants. Something they... never did again, even in the other games of this generation.

The other thing Tri did was replace the entire monster list. Only 18, but they're all original; save for Rathian & Rathalos. In addtion, they also added swimming! It's a half-baked attempt to add a third dimension to monster hunting, and it doesn't work that well. I like it in theory for gathering, but not for actually hunting monsters.

Capcom seems to have agreed, because when they made their routine PSP port, they completely redesigned the zones and removed swimming entirely! Portable 3rd is treated as a wholly unique entry, bringing back the missing Freedom Unite weapons, and adding 22 additionmal monsters; both brought back from Freedom Unite and recolored from the base roster. So naturally it was exclusive to japan, but a fan translation exists, and there's even an HD PS3 version. You can even use the HD textures in a PSP emulator.

But if you really care about swimming and/or G-rank, you can play 3 Ultimate on Wii U or 3DS. It has all the P3rd monsters, uses the same zones as Tri, swimming and all, and adds 11 additional monsters for a total of 51.

Being my first Monster Hunter, I have a lot of nostalgia for 3 Ultimate. And I gotta say, nostalgia aside, of all the MonHuns I could've started with, I'm really glad I started with 3U. I probably would've dismissed the series entirely if I started with one of the PSP titles, and as such wouldn't have the love for the series that I do now. With that in mind, I'd call this a definitive starting point. If you're new to the series and really don't know where to begin, start with 3U.

Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate

Seeing the Wii U wasn't doing so hot, and the PSVita was being squandered, Capcom decided to make 4 Ultimate a 3DS exclusive. But despite the hardware limit, they pulled out all of the stops. It adds two new weapons, the charge blade & insect glaive, and has a total of 75 monsters to hunt with them. Most are brought back from 3U & FU, but about a third of them are original. It's a pretty solid blend of old & new, and you can even get armor sets from monsters that aren't present by trading the parts of the ones that are.

4U also introduces mounting and an emphasis on verticality. Every zone either has ledges to jump from, or whole second levels to stand above & below your hunts. If you attack from above, there's a chance to mount the monster, and in-turn a chance to knock them down. The environments are super fun to hunt in, and they alone keep me coming back to 4U more than any other game in the series. There's even randomly generated hunts with a random zone layout & random monsters inhabiting them. It's cool!

This is also the first game to attempt a real story. Instead of being a dedicated hunter for a village, you're part of a traveling caravan; going to different parts of the world & helping different villages with their overpopulation of large monsters. The writing itself is nothing special, but having different villages to rest & prepare in is a nice change of pace.

4 Ultimate is arguably the best game in the series. It doesn't have some desired quality-of-life present in later entries, but that's negligible to being so content-rich & well-paced. If I could play a Monster Hunter forever, it'd this one.

Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate

Generations is a lot of things. It's a celebration of the franchise up to that point, it introduced a weapon art system & different weapon styles for more combat customization, it features the villages of Freedom, Freedom Unite, and Portable 3rd as pure nostalgia bait/change of scenery, and both the original & G-rank versions came out at really awkward times in the states. Generations came out a little over a year after 4U, and was comparable in content to 4U, but it was also the first Monster Hunter in six years to launch in the west without a G-rank. And by the time we got the G-rank version, Monster Hunter World had already been out for seven months and just had its PC version launch.

Nevertheless, Generations Ultimate is probably the second best game of the series. It has by-far the highest content volume, with 93 different monsters to hunt, and each weapon having six hunting styles creates a total of 84 different ways to play. The only thing holding it back is the monsters & locales haven't aged the best, but if you're a Freedom Unite veteran you'll probably be right at home with GU.

Monster Hunter World

Gods, World had so much going for it.

I'm gonna be real, I don't think any Monster Hunter deserves a rating higher than a 4/5. For the longest time, they were just too clunky & obtuse to ever break mainstream. But all that changed with the announcement of World. Monster Hunter finally caught up to the current generation, it was critically acclaimed across the board, became the single best-selling game of the franchise, and many considered it the single best game of the series.

And it was deserved! World had the perfect amount of modernization without losing its identity. Combat was tighter & better paced, hunting zones were seamless locations without loading screens, monster notes were added so you didn't have to rely on a wiki, gunners were no longer restricted to gunner-specific armor, they still kept the armor variants & created more depth in customization because of it, and it does the nature simulation better than any other game in the series.

Unfortunately, Capcom desperately wants to turn the franchise into a live service. World is loaded with seasonal events, daily login bonuses, and collabs with other games, making it feel like the second coming of Frontier.

But the thing that kills it for me is the DLC, Iceborne. Selling G-Rank as a DLC was inevitable, and objectively a better model than buying a whole second copy of the game. But it also came with the addition of catch-up gear; equipment designed to steamroll the base game so you can skip straight to G-Rank. I hate this equipment. Not only does it make inexperienced players even worse at the game by not building up to G-Rank naturally, but it also completley undermines the base game; essentially saying "this content is outdated. Let me help you skip it."

No Monster Hunter deserves a rating higher than a 4/5, but no Monster Hunter deserves to be held back on a 4/5 more than World.

Monster Hunter Rise

Rise is an interesting experiment. Being made for Switch hardware, rather than try to be a successor to World, it stripped the hunting out entirely and made it pure action. It adds wirebugs to give some excellent movement, a rideable wolf companion to speed around the hunting locales, and relegates all the prep work to collecting birds & butterflies around an arena to boost your stats instead of eating.

I never got into Rise. The wirebugs & movement are fun, but I really care about the hunting of Monster Hunter; not just the fighting.

Monster Hunter Wilds

The true successor to World, and probably the weakest modern game of the series. And just like World, it has so much going for it!

Wilds introduces a two major things. First is a completely seamless open world. Pick up a hunt at camp, immediately go out to hunt it. No loads between camp & wilderness, leaning even harder into the nature sim, and you can even build customizable camps out in the open world. Being able to live out in the wilderness, Metal Gear Solid V style, is a really cool idea in theory, and really fits the theme of being a monster hunter.

Combat introduces a focus mode. The old game had a strong emphasis on positioning since a lot of weapon attacks were really slow & deliberate, but Wilds lets you change directions on the fly. It kinda negates that original design, but I don't hate it too much. The focus mode is more for another new feature: Monsters get visible wounds on their bodies, which you can target directly to do extra damage. They even glow brightly in focus mode, making them easy to target.

The worst thing about Wilds though, aside from its further lean into a live service, is the railroading. World started having scripted quests that weren't too bad, but Wilds really likes to pull you on a leash. I've heard it lets go of that leash as soon as you hit high rank, but it was so grating on me that I never finished low rank. And with reports that the PC version's performance gets worse with every update, I don't think I'm coming back to this one for a while.