MONSTER HUNTER
if you’re only familiar with the modern entries, it’s hard to overstate the importance of all the knobby little now-vestigal bits (hot drinks, cold drinks, screamers, flashes, steaks, poison, timers, etc.) that’ve since been relegated to optional status. whetstones weren’t infinite, hit zones were less generous, tracking was both temporary and manual, and potions had to be crafted one-by-one. rather than being a semi-automated tertiary element, gathering and reconnaissance arguably occupy as much of your time as swordplay, and almost all battles are won and lost on the back of what you brought with you and how you decided to use it
quickly you’ll also find that the battles aren’t against the targets plastered on the guild boards, they’re against the entire biome. the camera jerks in awkward angles, insects pester, paintballs wear off, monsters fly away, felynes steal maps, and you’ve spent the last half hour micromanaging both analog sticks and the directional pad simultaneously at credible risk of a career ending injury
proficiency in killing makes the forests, swamps, and deserts more tolerable, but you’re never truly beyond their discomforts. best you can do is learn the region and develop a concrete plan of approach. some areas are just too fucked to even bother with, while others are relatively painless; down-time can be used to forage, scrounge, cook, and plant traps; small monsters can be culled in advance; every second can be spent toward giving you an advantage, and sometimes it’s best to simply wait out a bad situation altogether
it’s been six months since I last liquefied monoblos and I still remember the nuances of the final hunt almost perfectly. same for rathalos. same for basarios. same for all of them. despite their limited movesets, these encounters are extremely gratifying, not because they dispense the right sized bones and horns and jewels for better gear, but for the broader interplay surrounding them and how clearly you feel the hunter-gatherer role becoming second nature as experience slowly shifts the dynamic further in your favour
equally successful are the quiet moments where you’re given the opportunity to take in the beauty of these spaces in full. the segmented zones sell an abstract scale well beyond the measurable landmass, and all of them are aesthetically distinct and full of striking flourishes. excursions made with berry picking and mushroom gathering in mind have a rambling, placid quality that serves as contrast to the louder, more ungainly encounters as well as a reminder that these are ecosystems, that “monster” is ultimately a euphemism, and that the world isn’t built entirely on carnage, even if it can certainly feel that way
it’s true that the shitboxes are criminal, the pace is glacial, and the control scheme’s peculiar. it’s true that piscine livers and egg-carrying are every bit as unpleasant as everyone says. it’s true that there are virtually no quality-of-life features, the village is anemic, and the online hub’s a day job. but it’s also true that it arrived so fully formed that the series struggles to match its holistic design to this day
I don’t know who to recommend this to, but I couldn’t recommend it more strongly to whoever they are