You choose from a large roster of past monsters and six different hunting styles, each changing how your weapon's basic moves and dodges work. Preparing potions, traps, and gear before a hunt is as important as the fight itself, and hunts against the toughest monsters can take a long while. It carries over the series' steep learning curve, so expect an adjustment period before fights start to click.
Gameplay video
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Screenshots & review notes
The verdict
This one is for the hardcore, a sprawling celebration of the series that overwhelms newcomers with choice but rewards dedicated hunters with nearly bottomless depth.
The mechanics
Six hunting styles and switch skills mean two players can approach the same weapon completely differently, and that flexibility is the game's biggest strength.
Presentation
Visually it shows its 3DS roots more than Rise does, with less fluid animation, but the sheer density of monsters and locales compensates for the dated presentation.
Staying power
Best reserved for series veterans chasing the deepest possible customization. New players will likely find the onboarding rough compared to more modern entries.
Frames captured from the gameplay video above; notes are our own take on the game.
What it's like to play
You pick a weapon type and a hunting style, then head out from one of four village hubs into varied biomes broken up into smaller connected zones, each one requiring a short loading pause as you move between them, unlike the more open recent games in the series. Hunts play out much like the wirebug game above but without that tool, so mobility comes instead from rolling, blocking, and positioning carefully around a monster's attacks while you look for openings to strike its weak points. Hunter Arts, flashy super moves you build up meter to unleash, and selectable hunting styles that change your basic moveset give even old, familiar weapons some new options to experiment with.
Your goal across the huge quest list from all four villages is progressing from low-rank hunts through high-rank and eventually into a genuinely brutal G-rank tier, crafting better armor and weapons from monster parts as you go, and a single hunt can run fifteen to thirty minutes depending on the monster and your gear. The sheer amount of content here is the headline feature, with well over a hundred large monsters to fight across the combined village quest lines, more than any single entry offered before the newer mainline games arrived. Multiplayer halls let you team up with other hunters online for tougher fights, and a dedicated community still plays this regularly years after release.
This is an older style Monster Hunter through and through, meaning no scout flies pointing you toward monsters, more menu-based potion use during fights, and visuals that were upscaled from a handheld game and look the part. Newer players used to smoother recent entries may find the pacing and interface old-fashioned. For longtime fans who prefer the classic feel, or players who want as much monster-hunting content as possible in one package, this is an enormous, rewarding time capsule.