Monster Hunter History
On January 26th, 2018, the long-running Monster Hunter series makes it largest play yet for the mainstream spotlight with the release of the gargantuan Monster Hunter: World. Its lush and gorgeous locales, absolutely huge play spaces, and terrifying predators have been updated for the HD, high resolution age. Coupled with a smattering of system-wide changes large and small, Monster Hunter publisher Capcom looks to really be hoping to capture the audience it’s missed out on these past 15 years. As we near Monster Hunter World's arrival, now seems like the best time to recount the older, lower-poly moments of the series. Tracking its changes from humble Japanese beginnings to its breakout, worldwide success, you can see that Monster Hunter: World was almost inevitable. But that’s the future — let's look at the past.
Monster Hunter/Monster Hunter Freedom
In 2004, the phenomenon was born. As one of three games specifically developed by Capcom to take advantage of the PS2’s network capabilities, online multiplayer was always one of the central pillars of the series. To its credit, it sorta nailed it, successfully recreating that Phantasy Star Online action RPG feel from the Dreamcast era, but draped in a nature-conservationist costume. This is where the basic framework of every Monster Hunter game was built. Players were tasked with hunting giant beasts across multiple habitats, ranked in difficulty classes from 1 to 8. The three types of missions — Hunt, Gather, and Capture — were mixed and matched with various biomes and bosses to make an enormous variety of possible mission configurations. Once you succeeded, you were given rewards and opportunities to get materials (often directly from a slain trophy’s hide) to convert into new equipment. You used this stronger equipment to hunt stronger monsters, so on and so forth. It launched to pretty average critical reception, and to a pretty limited audience. A second version of it, Monster Hunter G, would be released in Japan a year after. Considered an expansion, it added the Dual Swords weapon (bringing the total amount of playable weapons up to seven), and new variant versions of monsters. Monster Hunter G would be ported to the PSP in 2005 under the name Monster Hunter Freedom.
Monster Hunter 2/Monster Hunter Freedom 2/Monster Hunter Freedom Unite
A sequel came pretty soon after the first game's expansion. Monster Hunter 2 hit the PlayStation 2 in 2006, and only in Japan. Its changes, besides enhanced graphics and new environments, were focused heavily on crafting and adding lots of meta systems. Previously, only weapons could be upgraded, but now armor could be as well. Equipment could also be fitted with gems that would help provide armor sets with new passive abilities. Feyline kitchens, a farming and fishing spot at your home base, and new weapons (like the bow and longsword) expanded the possibilities into uncharted territory. The PSP port, Monster Hunter Freedom 2, would be how the rest of the world experienced these changes in 2007. This is also the version of the game that started the trend of constant streams of free downloadable quests and items long after launch. Ultimately, the game was received similarly to the first, and is often cited as many a long time player’s first experience with the Monster Hunter series.
Monster Hunter Tri/Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate When the PlayStation 3 launched in late 2006, it left a lot of developers in a predicament. It had incredible processing power and graphical potential, but its proprietary Cell Broadband Engine with eight processors was not easy to work with. Capcom was not immune, and had to make tough decisions about which games they could reasonably develop for the console. The decision would eventually be made that Monster Hunter was just too cumbersome and expensive to develop on the PlayStation, and had to move elsewhere. That place would be the Nintendo Wii.
Monster Hunter Tri was sort of an awkward game, at first. Most of what we’d come to expect from Monster Hunter was there; the quest formula was still intact, and the myriad things to do in the hub town of Moga Village was reminiscent of hubs in the past. The environments were bigger and brighter, and it was easily the best looking game in the series at the time.
But three weapon classes were missing, replaced by a newcomer, the Switch Axe. Plus, the environments were bigger in order to accommodate underwater areas. Swimming was an awkward mechanic that became utterly maddening when fighting monsters simultaneously. The frustrating addition just introduced yet more slopes to a game that already had a very steep learning curve.
Monster Hunter World
In late January 2018, Monster Hunter World will launch globally, marking the series’ first trip back to a Sony home console in years. It also brings with it an incredible amount of changes, tweaks, and upgrades that you can learn more about in our coverage of the closed beta back in December, or at our Monster Hunter wiki. January 26th can’t come fast enough!