Monster Hunter

Monster Hunter takes place in a shared low fantasy setting where the human-like species have a pre-industrial level of technology, such as steam power, but continue to study the ruins of a long-past advanced civilization. In the setting's less populated regions, monsters roam the landscape and threaten small villages or research bases that have been established to study the ruins and these monsters. Players take the role of a Hunter that serves to help protect the villages and bases from these monsters, typically aiding in researching these.

The core feature of Monster Hunter is its compulsion loop.[4] Unlike traditional computer role-playing games, a player's Hunter does not grow and has no intrinsic statistics or attributes whatsoever. Rather, the Hunter's abilities are instead defined by the specific weapons and armor selected. The player can equip weapons, armor, and items most beneficial towards completing a given mission, and if successful, the Hunter is awarded in both in-game money ("zenny") and loot representing parts from the monster. These parts, along with other resources collected while on missions or through mission rewards, can be used to forge or upgrade new weapons and armor which then can be used in against more powerful monsters and tackle more difficult missions, completing the compulsion loop. Harder missions are typically restricted by a hunter's rank, which cumulatively increases as the player completes specific missions designated by the quest giver. Mission rewards are often generated randomly, often requiring the player to grind the same monster repeatedly to get the right parts. Weapons and armor have intrinsic bonuses or penalties towards certain types of elemental or physical damages, and may provide special skills which can be fine-tuned through the mix-and-matching of equipment pieces.[5]

The games feature a variety of different weapon classes, ranging from swords, hammers, and bows, with the most recent titles (Generations, World, and Rise) having a total of fourteen classes.[4] Each weapon class has a unique set of combat maneuvers and reflect a number of different play styles based on speed of attack, damage strength, range and the application of buffs and debuffs to monsters and allies. Monster Hunter games use an "animation priority" combat, committing the player to a move until the animation is completed and leaving them potentially vulnerable to a monster's attack.[6] Further, players are encouraged to watch their Hunter's health and stamina. Losing all health will force a retreat to a base camp, and after three such retreats, the mission is deemed a failure. Performing most combat actions consumes stamina, which recovers in a short amount of time; once exhausted of stamina, the Hunter becomes vulnerable as they pause to catch their breath. Monsters and other environmental hazards can also inflict blights and other negative status effects that impair combat abilities. Combat is centered around watching for a monster's tells prior to an attack to be able to dodge it and/or make a counterattack, and looking for openings to unleash strings of attack combos, depending on the Hunter's current weapon.[7] Unlike most other action games, Monster Hunter fights have been compared to a series of boss fights.[4]

Nearly all Monster Hunter games have a single-player mode; in these, the Hunter is often accompanied by a Felyne or Palico, a sentient cat-like creature that provides support and limited offensive abilities in combat. Most Monster Hunter games released with support for four-player cooperative online modes, allowing the group to hunt down stronger versions of monsters, though this support has since been disabled in older games. The games typically have a main quest line, frequently called "Low Rank" or "Village Quests", which can take up to fifty hours to complete. Once completed, the game opens up with new "High Rank" or "Gathering Hall" quests, featuring stronger versions of monsters they have previously faced, as well as new monsters not yet seen and unique variants of these foes, all of which provide better components for more powerful weapons and armor sets, providing hundreds of hours of potential gameplay following the main quest.[8][4] Most, if not all titles have a third rank of difficulty ("G Rank" or "Master Rank"), released after the base game. These add more monsters, locations, weapons and armour sets to the game.[9][4]

Ryozo Tsujimoto in 2016

The first Monster Hunter game was one of three titles Capcom had developed to take advantage of the processing power and online capabilities of the PlayStation 2, which according to Ryozo Tsujimoto, who has been the series' producer since Monster Hunter Freedom 2, had begun to match arcade games in capabilities; the other two such titles were Auto Modellista and Resident Evil Outbreak.[10] Tsujimoto considered Monster Hunter to be the culmination of the work of these other two titles once it was released.[10] He also felt that the game was intended for such cooperative play so that players of any skill level, working with others, could feel accomplished in taking down giant creatures.[11] Monster Hunter proved a success, selling over 1 million copies, principally in Japan.[11] Enhanced versions of the early games, adding more difficult monsters and end-game quests, were released with a "G" affixed to the end (such as Monster Hunter G for the first such game); for those titles that were released in Western regions, these were often, though not always, affixed with the Ultimate moniker. A second team worked to develop a series for the PlayStation Portable. These games often had a more lighthearted tone and expanded upon the palicoe system. In Japan, these games were released under the "Portable" title, while in the west they were released under the "Freedom" title. Even after these naming conventions were abandoned, this established the general tradition of one team releasing games for home consoles and a separate team releasing a portable game a few years later.[4]

The series took off explosively in Japan with Monster Hunter G and Monster Hunter Portable/Freedom on the PlayStation Portable and even more so once its sequels Monster Hunter Dos, Monster Hunter Portable 2nd/Freedom 2 and Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G/Freedom Unite were released which supported up to four players.[12] Handheld systems are generally more popular in Japan and due to the country's high population density, it was easy to find players to hunt cooperatively with, making it a phenomenon there.[13] James Miekle, writing for PC Gamer, had worked for Q Entertainment and lived in Japan during the release of Monster Hunter Portable 3rd, which was the best-selling PlayStation Portable game of all time and described how even during work, impromptu Monster Hunter sessions would break out between employees and there was extensive marketing of Monster Hunter branded consumer goods.[12]

While Monster Hunter had been successful in Japan, its popularity in Western markets (primarily North America and Europe) languished. In contrast to the Japanese culture, Western markets favored home consoles and computers during the mid-2000s and because of a thinner population density, most players relied on Internet-based gaming rather than local ad hoc networking.[13][12] The series also struggled with a difficult learning curve that had made the games off-putting in Western markets.[14]

The series had little popularity in the West until the release of Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate on the Nintendo 3DS, a console that had gained a sizable foothold in Western markets. While Monster Hunter's popularity in the West was still to a niche group, Capcom saw the potential for more growth there and took steps to better localize the next few titles to make the series more attractive; Monster Hunter 4 was the first game in the series to break one million sales in Western markets.[13] Capcom recognized there was still room for further growth of the series there; in an October 2016 interview, Capcom chairman Kenzo Tsujimoto said they were looking towards increasing the popularity of the games in the Western markets, recognizing that gaming consoles like the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One have dominance in these regions over handhelds.[15] Monster Hunter: World, the series's first major entry targeting home consoles and computers, was developed to be more alluring for Western markets without trying to make the game simpler.[14] A number of changes in gameplay were made that took advantage of the consoles' new technology; notably, while the prior games had split each hunting area into different zones as necessitated by limits of the console hardware, World's used seamless zones and several changes to gameplay were made to account for this.[4] World became the series' best-selling game, achieving more than 21 million units sold by 2022 and making the Monster Hunter series Capcom's best-selling series following Resident Evil.[16]

With the success of the changes to the formula defined by World, Capcom decided to continue this approach with the series' next major title, Monster Hunter Rise for the Nintendo Switch.[17]

Below is a list of games in the Monster Hunter main series. Each generation has a number of entries that are derivative of the original release. While the first four main titles were numbered, the subsequent installments, starting with World, use a keyword instead of a number to reflect a central concept for that game.[18]

Since the series debuted, Monster Hunter has sold 94 million units across all titles by June 30, 2023. It is Capcom's second highest-selling series, following Resident Evil.[35]

Total worldwide sales for Monster Hunter games exceeding 1 million units, through March 2023 are listed below:[36]

• List of Japanese role-playing game franchises
• God Eater, a video game franchise with a similar gameplay mechanic
• Lord of Arcana
• Toukiden
• Freedom Wars
• Horizon Zero Dawn
• Soul Sacrifice
• Wild Hearts
• Dauntless, a free-to-play game with a similar gameplay mechanic but requires an Online Connection to play

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Monster Hunter.

• Official website
• MonHun Nikki Girigiri Airū-mura Airū Kiki Ippatsu (anime) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia