The Monster Hunter Series is a little over 15 years old, and it has steadily gotten more fame and notoriety. It was originally released by Capcom in 2004 on the Playstation 2. It was a massive success in Japan, but sales were moderate everywhere else. The Customers worldwide had received the handheld version of the game “Monster Hunter Freedom” on the Playstation Portable, both versions of the game got updated versions and then sequels. This had become a recurring theme with all monster hunter games. Capcom’s new series still wasn’t very popular in the west, however, and wouldn’t be for many years to come.
However, Capcom continued to publish games and had massive success with their Japanese fanbase, but in 2009 they took a bit of a gamble with the 3rd generation of monster hunter and released it on the Nintendo Wii. They took a turn and began a partnership with Nintendo allowing them to release the 4th generation of Monster Hunter on the 3DS, this allowed the new and improved games to piggyback off of the success of the 3DS. By 2011, Monster Hunter’s popularity had grown so much that Capcom had made many spin-off titles ranging from cards, manga, and games.
The company had taken a bold step with the 5th generation in January of 2018. They had released it to the main consoles of Playstation 4 and Xbox One, completely overhauling the graphics, game play, and design. This was Capcom’s most daring but most successful game because it had finally captured a large portion of players in the west and the expansion, Iceborne, only enhanced the popularity. Later on in March of 2021, Monster Hunter Rise was released purely on the Nintendo Switch.
Within the games you take up the role of a hunter and take on a variety of quests, from collecting plants or eggs to slaying giant city destroying monsters. The game itself is very simple at face value, but it can get very complicated down the line. There is no such thing as character stats, perks, or levels, just what you have on you, so crafting is a big part of the game. The games themselves are a positive experience, utilizing a feedback loop. Simply put, you are positively encouraged to continue hunting, which can be very captivating, to obtain more materials to craft better armor and weapons to slay bigger and badder monsters.
The most recent and current iteration of the game is known as “Monster Hunter Rise”, a game that has a new feature called “Wire-bugs”, allowing players to swiftly recover from knock back and using them for special attacks. The main game itself is complete, only now getting weekly updates, however it has very recently gotten a teaser trailer for the next version of it called “Monster Hunter Rise: SUNBREAK”, it is a expansion for the game that can be bought in the summer of 2022.
Now the games aren’t a “must play” by any means; it is a very niche series, meaning it’s not meant for everybody. However, the games popularity does deserve some credit because it takes dedication and hard work to craft a series such as this.