Monster Hunter Is Nothing Without Its Depth And Difficulty

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Monster Hunter has long been known as a challenging game for beginners, even being labeled nearly impassable at times. To excel in it, you’ll need an abundance of patience as you grapple with the numerous weapon types, intricate mechanics, and diverse strategies required to conquer its various beasts.

Instead, Capcom has consistently strived to expand the reach of the series beyond its long-standing community of dedicated fans. These fans, who have spent decades perfecting their skills to conquer the game’s challenges, know that the joy lies in overcoming these hurdles and falling in love with the game repeatedly, crafting new armor and weapons, immersing themselves deeply until the cephadromes became a familiar part of their gaming home.

Monster Hunter Wilds Was Always Going To Be More Approachable

To earn global recognition, Monster Hunter had to make some changes. It needed to enhance its world layout and streamline its mechanics, or at least make the game more accessible for newcomers. I recall struggling with the PS2 version, spending hours cooking meat and dying repeatedly before losing my temper. It wasn’t until Monster Hunter World, released over a decade later, that things started to make sense – an ‘aha’ moment shared by many others like me.

Monster Hunter has consistently held a strong following in Japan, yet its promotion for the latest edition seems to be ubiquitous, indicating that Capcom aims for this game to make a significant impact.

The most appealing aspect of the game was that it retained its complexity and difficulty in many ways we desired, but managed to eliminate much of the unnecessary hassle that Capcom had often included in their previous games. Now, you could embark on hunts either solo or with a group of friends more effortlessly than before, without needing to mark enemies with paintballs so they wouldn’t vanish after moving to a new area. The game offered larger and more diverse levels, as well as greater variety in encounter designs, weapons, and armor, which made the continuous progression through the game more enjoyable than ever.

In Monster Hunter: World and its Iceborne extension, I invested countless hours, and seldom did I feel adrift or underperforming. Even so, dedicated players seeking intricate weapon tactics could tackle the game’s deepest challenges, reaping rich rewards for their efforts.

In a couple of years, the game would surface with an experience similar to portable games on Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Portable (PSP). Later on, it was adapted for other consoles. Despite being a distinct game from World in many aspects, it retained the user-friendly elements that fans could easily access without hesitation, as they had previously enjoyed in World.

Starting from now, Monster Hunter transitioned into a series that recognized the need to cater to both dedicated followers and people like myself who sought to re-experience the greatness of World repeatedly. Given its mainstream status, it was expected to streamline itself in order to attract a wider audience or boost earnings, so the response to Monster Hunter: Rise isn’t the least bit shocking.

But This Casual Approach Is Both A Blessing And A Curse

As a devoted fan, I must say I wholeheartedly agree with Eric Switzer’s review on Monster Hunter Wilds. While he praised the game for dumping some of its confounding aspects, he also noted a concern that, if the series continues down this more casual path, it might lose what makes it uniquely Monster Hunter – a sentiment I can’t help but echo. After all, I fear that if it strays too far from its roots, it may no longer retain the essence of the game we’ve grown to love.

Earlier, during a prolonged fight, if a monster poisoned you, you’d have to rummage through your items hoping to find what you needed to survive. Now, there’s a swift option that simplifies this process and lets you concentrate on the present situation. This is indeed a beneficial change, but for those who have been playing for decades and have tailored their experience around the previous system, stripping it away to prioritize combat could be less of a blessing than advertised.

In today’s context, victories in combat don’t carry the same weight as they once did because battles are relatively simpler than before and the distinction between weapons and items isn’t as significant. The thrill of engaging in a 40-minute battle with a monster, barely managing to emerge victorious, seems to be less appreciated nowadays. Winning no longer feels as rewarding when there’s little struggle leading up to it, which is concerning for a series that has always thrived on the sense of adversity it provides.

As a devoted admirer, I’ve noticed an intriguing shift towards deeper narratives and captivating characters in contemporary games. This evolution makes sense when considering the need for a more immersive experience. Overcoming unyielding obstacles consistently can disrupt my engagement with the storyline, so a more manageable difficulty level seems fitting to maintain that connection.

In essence, I share the same sentiments about the challenge level in Monster Hunter Worlds as I do when players suggest that FromSoftware games should include an easier mode. While it’s clear that making these games more accessible would make them more appealing to a wider audience, I worry that such a change might irreversibly alter their core gameplay experience. Once you start down the path of making things simpler, there’s no going back; you’ve effectively opened Pandora’s Box, and returning to the original challenge these games once posed becomes increasingly difficult, if not impossible.

Monster Hunter finds itself in a challenging situation, and while it could solve this by offering tougher difficulty levels and hunts meant to test our skills over time, as the audience grows larger with certain expectations, how much can its new identity be changed before it loses its essence?

I don’t want Monster Hunter to turn into a showy spectacle, where the appeal lies in effortlessly slaying beasts and adorning oneself with their lifeless remains without any sense of accomplishment. However, with the arrival of Wilds, it seems we are edging closer to that possibility than ever before.

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2025-02-25 20:04