What was your Monster Hunter journey?

[Lutyrannus]

I'm curious to hear, what was everyone elses Monster Hunter journey? How did you discover this series, and why do you like it enough to create an account on a forum based around it? Which order did you play the games in, and which games have you played?

I started with Tri as a kid, because I saw it at GameStop and was enthralled with the concept (I was obsessed with dinosaurs, lol). It quickly became one of, if not my favorite game on the Wii. I didn't get very far though. From then on out I played every Monster Hunter game released in the west, so 3 Ultimate, 4 Ultimate, Generations, and then World. Something about World didn't quite stick with me so I kind of fell off of Monster Hunter for a while. Keep in mind that I had been a very casual fan throughout all of this - I didn't really play online much, I didn't talk about it on the internet, I just played the game casually, usually up until the end of village but not always. Because I had fallen off of Monster Hunter, I didn't play Generations Ultimate nor Iceborne. However, just a couple months before Monster Hunter Rise was announced, I saw Generations Ultimate on sale for really cheap, and was like "bro it's been forever since I played a Monster Hunter game!" So, I bought it, and it was like rediscovering an old friend. I didn't finish GenU, since I was a college student and am very easily distracted, but I played it up until about half-way through high rank (both village and gathering hall). This inspired me to replay World, which I finally finished, up to Xeno Ji'iva. I bought Iceborne but technically didn't play it, because I got distracted with other things.

Then Monster Hunter Rise was released, and it made me want to get involved in Monster Hunter communities, so I did. Honestly, I think that Rise being announced right when I was getting back into Monster Hunter is what segmented me as a life-long Monster Hunter enthusiast rather than just a casual fan. I ended up loving Rise when it came out, and hell, I still find it a lot of fun, which I know is an odd opinion for an Oldschooler. I followed a bunch of MH YouTubers and ended up SuperRad's Discord. This is where I started to make friends in the MH community, and I remember feeling more welcome than any other fandom I had tried to find a place within. People give the MH community shit, but really we're not that bad. Becoming active in SuperRad's Discord made me want to replay MH3U again, since it was the main game that people there aped. So, I booted it up for the first time since probably 2014 or so, and I was genuinely surprised at how much I liked it.

This caused me to want to play more old Monster Hunter. I played Portable 3rd for the first time, became a Tri stan for a while once I learned about the differences between MH3 and MH3U, and even managed to get my hands on some of the 1st/2nd gen games, which I had never grown up with unlike Tri. I didn't really play them yet, though. It wasn't until the Dos video released that I realized I should consider playing the 1st/2nd gen games as well. So, I tried out Freedom 1, and while I liked it, I could tell something was missing. So I wanted to play one of the PS2 games.

I pride myself on my ability to play older games and not be turned off by whack shit, mostly thanks to my experience with N64 Zelda. So, I figured I would play one of the PS2 games, and I figured it would be MH2, just since that's what everyone was talking about thanks to that YouTube video. However, I knew that online play was a major component of these games, and I knew that the game wasn't 100% in English yet, so I figured it would be way too incomplete of an experience to start with Dos. So, since I knew it had a private server, I decided to play MH1, and this is where I got the idea to do EVERY quest in EVERY Monster Hunter game, which is still my goal to this day. Hell, I even have a spreadsheet with my progress that you can reference if you want.

Playing MH1JP online was an experience that I never expected. I had expected the game to be better than everyone had claimed, because I knew that people were hyperbolic and exaggerated the faults of games they didn't like, but I still expected the game to be rough to get through, or at least to be clearly outclassed by every other Monster Hunter game I had played. But, despite that, I ended up having what was actually... an amazing time? I was genuinely surprised by how much I enjoyed the game. I actually used to stream back then (this is about a year and a half ago), so you can technically watch my first experience with MH1 here.

Anyways, that began my infatuation with the PS2 games, and is basically the summary of how I got to where I am now. I think most of you here probably have a vague idea of my history over the last year. Became a "prominent" (for lack of a better term) member of the Oldschool community, somehow became popular on Twitter (still don't know how that happened), played MH2 finally and it became my favorite game of all time.

Honestly, I think the best part about my Monster Hunter journey is that I never grew up with the Monster Hunter games I ape so much. So whenever people try to tell me that old Monster Hunter is "objectively" bad and that I only like it because of nostalgia, I can quickly point out that I have no nostalgia for the games prior to Tri.

So, that's my story. Feel free to comment on it if you want, but more importantly, I'd like to know - what's yours?

Edit: I might as well say for people who are too lazy to check out that spreadsheet, but the only Monster Hunter games that I have not played substantially (at least 50 hours) are Freedom, Freedom 2, Freedom Unite, base MH4, and Iceborne. Everything else in the series I've played at least 50 hours of, although I will admit that I have and had a bad habit of not actually finishing the games, so many of them did not include substantial interaction with the endgame grinds. The only games that I have actually played the endgame of, as in beat the final boss and then continued to play, are MH1JP and Rise. I have played Sunbreak a substantial amount, but I haven't really done much of the anomaly grind in that game.

[Jo_]

It all started when I saw 3U's boxart at walmart and thought "wow, that looks really cool!" Unfortunately for me at the time, I was only 12 and my parents forbade me from playing T for Teen games. I largely forgot about the series for 2 years until the demo for 4 Ultimate came out. I was hooked by it, and immediately bought the full game.

I became obsessed. I barely played any other games for the entirety of high school. I pre-ordered Generations, and I even imported MHXX when it came out! In my quest to english patch XX I learned the magic of piracy (and emulation), and over the next few years I played through 3 Ultimate, Portable 3rd, Freedom Unite, Dos, and Stories. I also reached my first and only HR999 in XX during this time. I couldn't play World because I didn't have anything to play it on, and my obsession subsided to casual multiplayer sessions in 4U and XX for a while.

During the pandemic I decided I'd go back to where it all started and play Monster Hunter 1...G... on the Wii... Weird pick I know but I fell in love with the series all over again. I've since played through Frontier and Rise/Sunbreak, and had a 2nd playthrough of 4 Ultimate. Now I've begun my 2nd and proper playthrough of Dos, since I didn't finish the village content on my first go, and I'm excited for Dos' revived multiplayer! Maybe I'll get around to World eventually but I don't feel a strong desire to.

[Shincry]

Started with my mother working on Blockbuster.
I had the advantage that, whenever a new game released... I would be the first one to give it a try and as long as I wanted to.
So when MH1 arrived my mother handed it to me.

I was kinda young so memories are kinda blurry, but i got carted by the bullfango on the gathering mushrooms quest, yeah.
I couldn't go pass it without dying, the sword was way too slow and unfair against such a fast enemy, so i raged and send it back to blockbuster really quickly.
After a while, a friend of mine got it and gave it to me as a present, not sure why but i decided to give it another chance, this time i had a brand new ethernet cable so... Maybe online would be more easier?

This was the beginning of everything, spent countless hours, met a lot of friendly people, at the time i didn't know a lot of english so it was kinda hard to speak with people, eventually i found a spanish guild.
I didn't know there were more MH games and i wouldn't play another until a few years, when I found a guy playing alone in a corner with his PSP.
Went closer to watch what he was playing... I couldn't believe it was real, what was that, what were those weapons and monsters...
This guy is now one of my closest friends and he lent me an entire PSP with the game to play MHFU, since he was really advanced I used some cheats to reach him fast and play together, so i didn't spent a lot of time playing FU.

After some time, Tri is announced... I literally sold instantly my Xbox360 just to have it... Now I had IRL friends and also joined a forum (Meristation) to play with people. Spent a lot of time just going around lobbies and farming everything, like, a lot of time.

Then MH3rd came... And my friend gave me a PSP with the game, again. This one was a blast, we would play the game with an entire party of friends even in middle of the lessons (We actually defeated Amatsu in middle of Math class), but afterwards didn't spent much time playing.

3U appeared and i couldn't play because i didn't had money to buy 3DS+3U... But after some months a friend of mine lent me again, both the console and the game haha.

When 4U was released... I was once again without 3DS and ANOTHER friend directly gave it to me, he didn't care, he just wanted me to play the game holy shit... So i bought the game obviously and it's one of the MH with more playtime in the series, since it's the one where I started do to research, guides and went around helping anyone... Almost the entire day would be playing this game, like, 100% of my free time was MH4U.
I didn't care about the content, i would simply spent time doing quest even without purpose.
Me and my friends would go to the house of one friend and spent a lot of nights just there, playing, taking turns, laughing, always with a lot of food to sustain, it is probably one of my happiest memories in my life ( I don't want this to turn dark, let's say irl wasn't really pleasant).

Since I had my own 3DS, when MHGen came it was instant buy and play, and it was almost the same as 4U, not much to add.

Then World came... This was a problem... HOW THE FUCK WOULD I GET A PS4... I was demolished and without hope.
Holy shit, a girl appeared, like, what are the chances... I met her and she knew about MH... She went and bought the game and came to my house with both the game and the PS4... Yup, she's my current GF, we started dating like, not long after haha

There's not much to say, i'm a bit sad and ashamed I didn't started to make content about MH when World happened, lost my chance there and other spanish content creators did... That's my only regret.

Not much to add now, Iceborne came and then Risebreak (My GF once again, gave me the Switch and the game as a present), and I'm here.

It's kinda funny how, if you look at everything... ALMOST EVERY SINGLE MH GAME I PLAYED WAS THANKS TO PEOPLE.

[Shupport]

I watched my brother play the first MH game on our PS2 but never played it cause he said it was super hard, and being much younger than him at the time, I definitely didn't wanna play anything that was hard lmao.

We did play A LOT of Freedom Unite when we both got our PSP's though and our dad had one too so the three of us hunted together whenever my dad had time. Otherwise it was just me and him.

Though I hadn't fully gotten into the series when my brother begged me to get Monster Hunter: World and I did, reluctantly, and it took me a while to get into the game. Mostly because I was using the defender set so everything felt too easy.
After taking a break from the game, I hopped back on and decided to use my brothers suggestion of abandoning the armor but keep the defender weapon since I was basically new and it made the game SO MUCH more fun.

Me and my brother spent tons of hours just fighting monsters and I spent more hours playing the game without him. It's honestly the game that made me and my brothers relationship so much better and I'm thankful for that.

After a while, I eventually got Rise then Sunbreak. It was... okay. I didn't enjoy it as much as World because of all the new things but I'm slowly starting to like it more after I got to Lunagaron lol.
On the side, I started MH4U, got Generations Ultimate for my birthday a couple months ago, started MHTri when I heard you could play it now and have been chipping away at the first JP version of the game!

Though I did realize how many MH games I decided to consume, I am keeping it at Rise, Tri and MH1JP mostly. ^^"

That's basically my journey!

[Rune]

3U->4U->Gen->World->Rise, realized i hated playing rise, stopped. not sure if i played p3rd here or after i started mh1.
one day i was fixated on getting my softmodded ps3 to play ps2 games, and i thought it would be funny to try monster hunter 1. played up through cephadrome and realized this game was tight as hell, remembered the mh united video i had seen a couple months prior which mentioned that mh1 online was available on a weird discord server, joined it, replayed village and started online gaming. got to hr17, lost my save, replayed up to hr20, sick ass game, now i don't like playing world anymore either

[BabyRath]

It all started with MHF2 for me. My mom was taking me and my brother to a video game store to buy one each to play on our shared PSP. We were pretty standard little guys, obsessed with dinosaurs, big monsters, dragons, the whole shebang. So when I saw it on the shelves, there was no doubt, I was going to buy... Star Wars Battlefront Elite Squadron, because a friend had it. BUT ! My brother had a better nose than me this time, and picked that unheard of game with a big Trex dragon on it ? Weird. A few days later, as I am waiting for my turn on the PSP, I just look at him play. A catchy song is playing, he is cooking meat. And again. And again. I ask him why he's doing that and he tells me he has no idea what he's supposed to do. So when my turn comes I decide to give it a try instead of my other games, and do the tutorial. Turns out he just missed the part where they explain you have to press O to climb ledges in this game (No prompts too !) and was locked to the first two zones of the Snowy Mountains lmao. But anyway that's where it catches on BAD with me. The premise is such an easy sell to a kid like me. So I played F2 a lot.

But one day, my brother refuses to stop playing. The horror : his memory stick is malfunctioning and he can't save anymore. Due to how PSP works, you could maintain your save on life support by just, never quitting the game. And as a big brother, I understood, he didn't want to see all his efforts go to waste (I mean, he went all the way to low rank Iodrome ! Huge accomplishment) So I was on a forced MH hiatus (At this point I had my own console but still one game). Until one day, returning from school, my mom (bless her mind, body and soul) hands me a game !
"I know you're bummed about this so here"
Insane ! But a little problem, this game isn't F2... There's a black cat monster instead of Tigrex on the box. I read the back of the box and realize : "Wow, this product is literally made for me". So I can just transfer my F2 save from F2 to keep playing ! It's where it all really started, because I went all in on FU.
I also started lobbying the game hard (you're welcome capcom). First, over time I convinced my brother that starting over in FU is better than clinging to F2. One teammate. Then we convert our other little bother. Two teammates. Then my best friend. Three. A cousin. Four. And that's the absolute height of MH for me. These 4 player hunts in local with them are everything to me.

Time passes and we keep playing FU. Tri releases, I play it (had to fight for this one, as it was PEGI 16 instead of FU's 12 and that worried my parents), the bros play it maybe a little, but we can't get the online to work and we wouldn't be able to play together anyway, so back to FU. 3U releases, and same deal mostly. I played it on 3DS because I wasn't aware it wouldn't have online, and we can't play local because we share one 3DS (getting our parents to buy a PSP each was already a tour de force). So back to FU. Then 4U is announced. It's the first time I hear of a MH game being announced instead of stumbling upon it. And it's looking AWESOME. So we kick all up in full gear, coordinate birthday presents to get enough consoles and get the game on launch. And finally, we are not going to FU (yet). 4U is an absolute BLAST. We play together, we play with randos, we play on our own, and we are having hella fun. It's also the first time I ever filled a Guild card Award section, and if you know me, you know that had an impact on my brain. That's probably when I decided my goal of completing every guild card award across all games.

Eventually, Generations is announced and oh boy, it's on 3DS. I mean, this is going to be such an easy sell, we already have the console, we already love 4U, so this is just going to be awesome all over again ! Right ? Well, not exactly. We are all starting to get weary of the games (me probably less but still a bit) and some tensions between bros make it harder to team up sometimes. Eventually, in 2017, I also have to travel all the way to France for my studies, leaving them all behind. So for 3 years, I just dropped Monster Hunter. This was supported by the fact that I couldn't play the new releases, on switch and PC , because I did not own the former and had a crappy latter.

That was it until the world was struck by coronavirus. I am alone and isolated for 6 months until, at the start of summer vacation, I manage to score a seat in a "send home" operation. For the lonely familyless students like me, we get to travel back to our parents (after being properly isolated of course) for the summer break. That's it, I'm finally home. The gang is back together, time has passed, and by nostalgia we pick up generation for a few games.
"This game is tight actually"
And I enjoy a summer punctuated by little hunts with my dear crew. Until I have to be sent back to my formative prison in France. Fuck that, I'm bringing Generations back with me, we can play online. And we do ! a wittle. I still have to study after all.
Eventually they announce Rise. And that's where I catch back the fever. GU is on sale for the occasion : let's grab it and play it until Rise comes. Me and the littlest brother play together almost every week at this point (middle brother has been sent swtichless to his own studies RIP). I remember my goal. So we play those games, complete GU, fuck it let's emulate 3U, we play that too, Sunbreak arrives, we play that too, middle bro buys a switch, welcome back to the gang, and we're still at it to this day.

In the midst of all that, I started getting in the MH community. It mostly happened after I finally decided to make a Twitter account for completely unrelated reasons, but I was just naturally drawn to MH content and ended up meeting with a lot of cool people, some of who are on this very forum, and I couldn't be happier to have met.

But yeah in hindsight, mom and little bro were the absolute MVPs

[Adam]

Started with Tri but never beat village (stopped around rathalos) and didn't have good internet at the time so I was only HR 2 when the servers shut down, I tried the 3 Ultimate demo on 3DS which I found interesting but didn't buy the full game. I didn't play any of the 4th gen games when they were new.

I picked up World from a game code from buying a gtx 1060 when building a computer for a friend (he already owned the game), I enjoyed it but stopped part way through high rank as I was obsessed with Destiny and Destiny 2 at the time. I didn't pick up Iceborne until after Fatalis had released because a friend wanted help getting the armour, I bought Iceborne and had an overall goo experience with the game with a few pain points (cutscenes, decorations, and the clutch claw).

A few months later a different friend convinced me to pick up Rise around launch and had some fun playing it with 2 buddies but we eventually stopped due to base rise being unfinished. Didn't touch Rise again until it's PC release and got hooked and played until I was around HR 400 or so. Had a good time playing Sunbreak through it's title updates.

In between Rise and Sunbreak I picked up GU and played through it with a friend who had recently moved across the country, after I convinced him to pick up 3 Ultimate but I had the thought at the back of my head about playing Tri again so I transferred my save file from my Wii to the Wii U since my Wii's disc drive was broken. Finished village and was wondering if there were potentially fan servers since there were fan servers for other Wii games.

So I found the Monster Hunter Tri server and waited to see if there were any updates for the fan servers, I got closed beta access back in April had a really fun time finally playing MH Tri online properly. I then got curious if there were servers for the PS2 monster hunter games until I found the oldschool discord around the same time I joined the Tri server.

I didn't get around to doing anything in the server until June so I lurked in the discord for around 7 months until I decided to get order a JP copy of the game(without doing research I though I could play the game like Tri with a live patched like riivolution and didn't check if the game was region locked) and made a freemcboot memory card and tried out MH1 with a buddy who I played some Tri with. He didn't stick with the game for long but I really liked Tri but wasn't expecting to get hooked by MH1.

So I played nothing but MH1 for 2 weeks straight ever playing for 16 hours straight one time. I got to HR20 in a week and made my fatalis armour by the third week. Transferred to MHG with Chaoz and Ryusei and have been grinding it out since July 1st and I am currently sitting at HR 28 ready to hunt crimson fatalis tomorrow.

I still have a few monster hunter games to play I have only done village in 4 Ultimate so far, I started Portable 3rd but haven't left low rank, I'm going to play through regular Generations at some point, I'm going to give MH4 a try just to see how orignal charge blade was like, and have started Dos but I plan to go online with no equipment to see how hard it will be.

I did pick up a japanese fat PS2 recently so I can play my disc copies of MH1 and MHDos just for the novelty which is pretty cool I missed the disc drive noises.

[Yuliri]

I don't remember the day that i have bought most mh but i will try to remember (and also sorry for my orthogrpahy)
My first mh was the demo of 3u and when I was kids i really wants to buy it because hunting dinosaure looks cool (like you luty). And a few year laters i have seen at the tv ads for 4u and instantly do everything for buy it. I was really bad, I didn't notice things like weapons has differents tree, so I was stuck with bad weapon (like the dual blade mineral tree). And also i didn't pay attention to the skills so i was thinking that my dual blade actually do ice but no. I think I have stop at the middle of hr. Then i have bought 3u. And i was so bad at this game that I didn't understand of points work in this game and so I was collecting only bonus items. And after that i have being walled by the rematch of ceadeus because my weapons was bad. Then i bought world (very late) and finish the game and I realise two things about this game: 1 how easy it was and 2 why i have always being stuck in other game, also I didn't to much like this game, but after that I return on 4u and open a wiki with weapons tree and realise that my weapons was really bad, I had almost cry when I have saw the credits of 4u. Then i played gu and I really didn't play much at this game and stop really quickly. Then at a retro gaming shop like in 2019 or 2020 I think i have bought fu and loved it. And this game make me good at mh for 2 reasons : 1 I have understand thats skill were really usefull and 2 I can play other weapons than dual blade. I have nothings to say that great game. Then i have played rise like minus 2 day before it realease (thanks micromania) and hated it, it was just to easy and didn't even finished I was really frustrated. Then like at cristhmas mounth later i have bought mh1 pal in 2021 i think? and played it without wiki and realise that i love this game but also I like even more mh with minimize the use of wiki. Finish the game at 100% and relise that there is not private server for mh1 pal... and this day i have saw mh oldschool server but i was to much scared for join it. Then I have bought tri at the realease of sunbreak . And at the start of this day i can't chose if my favorite mh is tri or 4u. And after that you know my story because at cristhmass i have start to join the mh oldschool server. (I don't remember when I have played iceborn so i didn't put it)

[happycodemonkey]

I got World on PS4 for super cheap and was hooked almost immediately, then finally got GenU on Switch (also for super cheap) even though I was absolutely convinced I would hate the older games due to a lot of the hyperbolic conversations about it online. Glad I took the chance because from there I started watching GaijinHunter, SuperRAD, and Flyann and have now played at least one or two village ranks of nearly every single Monster Hunter game (outside of some of the really weird ones, I don't think I'll be tracking down Dynamic Hunting any time soon ). I'm very glad for the new forums because discord is overwhelming but I love chatting with people about Monster Hunter and being able to play the older games online is amazing!

[WillowCatkinsMaria]

I began w MH3U by scouring Wii U eshop, caught my eye, been craving a certain type of combat those days where one that my attacks didn’t feel like the weapon was a hinge of my player model, deliberated, bought it.

Come low, high and G rank of 3U, I was carried because I was really clueless and was still learning mechanics and fights - how fights worked in MH clicked when I was fighting Duramboros, witj it’s design of exploitative spins, humps, mineable parts, etc

I play 4U, get carried in Low Rank to high rank, and that’s where I really got the reins of this series and started to finally formulate how to do things, poured 2200 hours into 4U and began a little science of set making and whatnot.

Returned to 3U, enjoyed it before my Wii U rotted into a corpse of metal, and then announcements for Generations came around and I remember being super excited about that game because I never fought Amatsu and everything looked promising.

I was one who floated around twitch streams when it came for community around 4th generation times so I only participated in a very transient sense, the other was the Elder Hall lobbies themselves and it was very fun and I remember stuff like waiting 2-3 hours for people to return from some business to resume hunts.

Generations came out and tbh, it’s a fun game for what it was on the 3DS and filled to the brim with the aspect of MH that I love the most - the combat, fast or slow, full of projectiles or devoid, you name it, the combat in MH is attentive and intimate.

Generations Ult comes and I buy it but get hit with an incredible amount of burnout so I take a break, a long one, enough for Rise to get announced and when I return by Rise - I’m utterly rusted and aged.

Over the course of 500 hours into base and Tu2 Rise, to which I don’t believe the former is all that worthy of a tarnished reputation due to circumstances of covid and it’s development, I then get back into the swing of MH.

Over the course of the time I was not playing MH, I was pursuing religious and philosophical studies so seeing it be eeked out into Rise in it’s theming unlocked a further portion of what I love in MH which is a demythologisation and re-metaphoricisation of supernaturality and religiosity into an equally natural phenomena, of the old types of literary usages of the mirror - of hunter, to creature, to human, to monster, to hunter, in a sense.

They are all both personified, divined and naturalised, all marred under what it means to be a dragon. (maj of time)

Sunbreak is my favorite due to the set making freedoms, combat being almost libidnal in absorption, the many forms one can choose to do any hunt, and it’s theming that continues which Rise has wherein it’s not necessarily a living environment but dead and empty ones because just as much as life is a significant force in MH and the brimming environments are important, so too is death and the barren lands. (See: Fatalis, the many ruins, Nakarkos, etc)

And here I am now.