Where should i start?

[Draculestia]

I heavily disagree there. I strongly believe that the best way to experience Monster Hunter is in release order.

Well I also agree with that, but that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about a person who has already learned how to play the game in 5th generation. My point is that a person is more likely to enjoy old Monster Hunter by easing themselves into the differences by going backwards from where they started rather than diving head first into something totally unfamiliar. I went backwards from Freedom Unite to Freedom 1, and I found that to be overwhelming at times. I can't even imagine what it's like to go from Rise straight to MH1. Every gamer is different, but I would never recommend that to a person who I actually wanted to enjoy the series.

[Risky(Glyph)]

Moved to MH1 Help & Support.
I strongly believe that the best way to experience Monster Hunter is in release order.

Every gamer is different, but I would never recommend that to a person who I actually wanted to enjoy the series.

I think either of these are reasonable depending on the individual's tolerance for... Grinding. For example, I kinda like the effort it takes to get flashbugs in 1 & 2, but someone who liked how many/often you're given them for free in World might hate that.

That said, I have no idea if I'd start Tri or Rise after finishing Dos!

[Lutyrannus]

We're talking about a person who has already learned how to play the game in 5th generation. My point is that a person is more likely to enjoy old Monster Hunter by easing themselves into the differences by going backwards from where they started rather than diving head first into something totally unfamiliar.

Yes, I think that for someone who has only played fifth gen Monster Hunter, unless they are just not interested in playing the oldest games, I would still argue that starting at the beginning is the best move. MH1 and MHW/R are so different than when players who are familiar with fifth gen jump that far back, it doesn't feel like you're playing the same game anymore. As long as someone is not told to expect a fifth gen experience, I think they will have a better time than going back slowly. When you go back slowly, you introduce the fact that 1) you're playing the series in reverse order, meaning that the release context of each game is missed, but to the maximum extent possible, and 2) players are going to have expectations based on what they've played in the past that they're going to try to apply to what are often completely different games. I've seen World players pick up MH1 and they usually get into it just fine. The main people who tend to have issues, in my experience, are Freedom Unite veterans, because 1) many aspects of discovery are lost, since they've already been to all of the locales and fought all the monsters, and 2) they have played a very similar game, so they apply expectations they've been given from that game, to MH1, which I would argue is practically a different subgenre of action game than Freedom Unite, despite being superficially similar.

I went backwards from Freedom Unite to Freedom 1, and I found that to be overwhelming at times. I can't even imagine what it's like to go from Rise straight to MH1. Every gamer is different, but I would never recommend that to a person who I actually wanted to enjoy the series.

Like I said above, I genuinely believe based on my experience with other players that going from Freedom Unite to MH1 is harder than going from MHW to MH1, but regardless, I will say that Freedom 1 sucks absolutely ass in the early game. I haven't finished it so I have no strong opinions on the game as a whole, but I can tell you for a fact that the opening section of the game is just absolutely whack, and the game in general is too. They let you access hard-class/high rank quests at HR1! Like, why?! They even gave Fatalis a low rank version... Grahhhh

Edit: I forgot to say, but I had never played a single 1st or 2nd generation Monster Hunter game when I picked up 1JP, and I'm damn glad about that. Discovery was one of the best parts about the game, and that would have been lost (at least in part) if I had already played something like Freedom Unite.