editing and production quality is really up there on a professional level. really well made video on a mundane discuss to death topic that really enriched it back.
Monster Hunter is one of the few games, having one of the overall best balances throughout all generations. Though you can grab your potion on the run, the monsters got their own improvement as well.
Wow if only you weren’t completely illiterate and could write a coherent sentence maybe any of that would make sense. The fact this comment has 1.6k likes is an embarrassment to the human race fml 🤦🏻♂️
“Your hardest entry is always your first” Me, with mh4 being my fifth entry, remembering the horror of bombs over gogmazios. The bombs.. it won’t stop. The tar, the roar.
I freaking LOVE fighting George. And yeah... my first being F1 with basically infant youtube, that was rough. Had to teach myself most of how this works and do real research for the rest. Was stuck on Plesioth for three nights just sitting on a toilet and sucking down gin, while developing "the claw" on my own... there were no videos online except one, which taught motion values I couldn't wrap my head around. It was learning how Sonic Bombs worked that broke the failure streak for me, and damn was it nice to get that first kill after about 40 minutes solo
It might be boomer bias speaking but I always lol when people say endgame of MHW and MHRise is incredibly hard when they have never experienced the horrors of fighting a dual apex monster GQ140 in MH4U
@@lykusfrayseeker Gen 2 (frontier included) and Gen 4 endgame is probably where it gets the most difficult imo. But yeah I ran into two apex rajangs and just wanted to cry
@@lykusfrayseekerit only hard if you solo them though and they're not designed to be soloed. With 4 average player and proper gear its not really that much of a nightmare, still hard but not autism inducing, i think only ex deviant and frontier musou/later zenith end game where MH difficulty peaked even with 4 players because fuck AOE one shot everywhere. I think sunbreak is definitely one of the harder end game. I mean sure i never got triple carted but man thats because i use berserk or having 250 health so i rarely get one shotted, the fight itself is actually quite hard to master especially like hazard risen shagaru, vals and hazard primo. I feel like i got hit much more in sunbreak than any MH game. Still old gen is much much harder to solo, MHFU really put me into focused state from start to finish in g rank.
A big thing to point out is improved performance and control schemes. It gives the player much greater ability to react effectively and thus makes the game much more forgiving than some of the more stiff and clunky performance of the first few games.
Objectively speaking smooth controls are better because you can translate your intent to the game much easier but the clunkiness of the older games makes learning feel so rewarding
not to mention Hitboxes too. the hitboxes in World and Rise are so close to the monster's model now those hits we got used to of being knocked by a hip in the next post code dont happen anymore
@@metakarukenshi I can attest to this personally. I was laying down to line up a wyvernsnipe on a rathian last week, who noticed me and charged. I didn't even have time to get up, but it didn't hit me, the charge hitbox is literally the Rathian's body.
@@senounatsuru6453 yeah as long as the body doesnt touch you you're fine. challenging for new hunters, but if you are a veteran and hunting a monster whos moves you know front to back, you can just dance around it.
I think another major aspect is that when you're going from a monster hunter game, to the new one. You aren't just going from one game to another. You're going from Master Rank to Low Rank.
This is the thing that always got me, especially because this conversation usually pops up when it's a transition from a G-Ranked title to a title that caps at High Rank. Of course the balancing and feel is gonna be different. Compare endgame MH4 to MH4G, or Generations to Gen Ultimate, and this conversation basically doesn't occur. It's really only when you go from GenU -> World or Iceborne -> Rise that this really ends up being a conversation.
@@lemongrab6173 I've done G rank MHFU Tigrex naked solo so, and I've also soloed Alatreon in World, those are probably comparable. I'm not as good as I used to be tho, edge dulled from not hopping on the Sunbreak train and not keeping up much with MH in general. Either way, no one who wants to have this discussion about difficulty legitimately will try and swing their Gamer Cred(tm) around, the point is to try and find some sort of objective measurement by which we can see if the games are getting easier or not, so that we can be sure that the interest is maintained. At the end of the day I'm of the opinion that difficulty doesn't really matter that much. Difficulty in Monster Hunter isn't a core theme like it is in other games that often get compared to MH, so I don't really think the difficulty thing is too big a deal one way or the other. It's more important to me that the MH games stay fun, and that means maintaining a reasonable level of difficulty. If everything's a cakewalk then it's not as interesting, but if things are generally within the same 'zone' of difficulty, whether they're trending easy or trending hard, it doesn't really matter. Monster Hunter being FUN matters first and foremost. If you want to measure the girth of your Gamer Skill(tm) then go elsewhere, to FromSoft's games, or maybe something like ULTRAKILL, or better yet, fighting games. Those are the actual hardest games, imo. But leave Monster Hunter out of that toxic mentality.
@@elizabethhicks4181 the fuck I don’t give a shit about the quests you’ve done in MHFU. I finished G rank twin terror on my own in MHFU. I’m talking about MH1. Even the fcking Aptonoths would kick the asses of these so called new gen pros in the original game. That’s how difficult things were. And getting money was so hard people actually attempted to get a sum by selling dung and fish and honey.
@@lemongrab6173 And apparently you're not even reading the rest of what I was saying. Cool. Measure your E-Peen elsewhere, man, no one needs that in Monster Hunter.
In my opinion, another important thing that might make the game appear easier is something that is completely outside the game; The community surrounding it. 18 years ago, you couldn't just go online and get a crash course in using a weapon effectively, watch speedrunners employ some mind-bending tricks to absolutely violate monsters nor could you just reach out to people who have datamined the game's intricate details for fun. The popularity of the internet and it's subsequent broadening of information that players can absorb results in even brand new players coming into the game with some idea of how to play.
Agreed, if people use the internet, they get all the information they need, all the meta's and tactics and they get video footage of how it's done so the only thing anyone needs to learn are the mechanics of the game and the muscle memory to utilize them.
Exactly this, now aday instead of spending 100 hours trying to get one thing not knowing where you find/get it. you just look it up and get it within about 10 to 40 minutes.
Exactly, those meta builds are quite annoying...like good for you, you read a strat that someone else came with and didn't figure it out on your own and now you're claiming it was easy. CONGRATS! Here's your stupid prize.
@@kukukachu Idk if that's the way to look at it either. I think as gaming evolves, developers should learn to factor in the players access to information and adjust the games difficulty accordingly. There are plenty of games that are still hard even if you have all the information.
@@michaelm6179 hmm, I guess the example that pops up in my head when making this argument is someone playing "Day of the Tentacle" and saying the game was easy because they looked at a guide. Well of course it's gonna be easy if you're not putting in the work to figure it out. You can't say that it was easy after you looked up how to beat it...
As a Veteran since Monster Hunter Tri, who too has asked this very question and heard every argument. I without a doubt believe you have made the greatest video to put this to rest, even for me. This has re-awakened the old ideals I used to have of being the hunter that taught others rather than talk about difficulty. And for that, you have my gratitude and thanks. Here's to the future of hunts and hunters, one and all!✊
Veteran since FU here, and I share the same opinion. From now on, every time I will hear someone bring up that topic, I’ll be sure to redirect them to that video.
I've not played the older monster hunters, but I'm playing through GU right now. Im loving it although having to use paintballs and not having infinite whetstones is so weird. Even though this was a perfect video and pretty much covered everything, alot of people I've asked have said they are harder because the controls are outdated, that some monsters hit harder or have weird hitboxes and the lack of movement. I just want to know even if this is true are some of the fights actually hard compaired to the newer games? Some of the event quests have been quite hard. Just asking because GU has charmed me but I'm playing on emulator, don't think I can play online or have all quests and event quests :( I killed fatalis on world and that shit was HARD! The first time at least. So far I'm not having issues with GU and I look forward to soloing the hub quests. I'm all for difficult fights 100%. Having 1000s of hours in world and rise has helped me but I know something will catch me off guard sometime soon. :D In monster hunter world I would help anyone, mostly with all the fast moving monsters people cant deal wit, or kirin lol. Rajang was one of my all time favourite fights to farm an I also used to farm nergagante in less than 3 mins so satisfying. I was proud of that LOL. I will never forget my first walls on world since it was my first game. I was a noob with shitty armor lol. First wall for me was anjanath aha it 1 shot me. Then it was diablos! Didn't know about using certain bombs for him wasn't used to using equpiment at all lol. That was a fun fight for noobs imo although all my friends hated black diablos ahaha. I love this series so much. Rise was very very easy coming from world, literally speedran through the whole game :/. After a couple hundred hours I was picking up weapons I wasn't that good with and taking off armor and fighting. It was that I had to use HR armor though all of MR lol. Was fun but maybe thats why I'm enjoying GU so much! It's a complete different pace than I'm used to. I do think being able to walk through load zones to heal and sharpen is super cheese though.
@@Beleth420 what you wanna look out for is deviants and what i call event quest elders. They are basically archtempered before archtempered(higher stats sometimes less time ect no new moves tho.. usually). Some elder dragon quests gives you a variation of their armor. An example being gx/ex magala or ex crimson fatalis.
As someone who has been with the franchise since the beginning, I want to initially say that... this video is absolutely beautiful and quite insightful. I can say that everything that was mentioned in this video is quite accurate, and that it's basically all down to the hunter themselves. Being a Newbie or Pro, Going Solo or Hunting with Friends, the experience is all in how one choses to play.
@@TuriGamer You say that but man Rise was 100% easier. I didn't even make MR armor until around the end of the story simply because there wasn't a real need to. Call it what you want but nothing about Rise battles have been engaging in a challenge sense.
@@HowIin It is what it is. its normal that mh franchises are getting easier series after series. I went from mh2, Mhfu, mhp3, mh4u, mhgu, IB and now rise. It gets easier and more easier. It's just the way it is. The most challenging was of course in the earlier days of mh. But i can say both world and rise are getting easier and i really hope mh6 would be harder even though it will be easier obviously eventually
kinda like when I pulled off my first sucessful (intentional) guardpoint in MHW, now I'm up to being able to pull it off reliably on certain monsters 40% of the time.
I think the individuality and difficulty is part of what makes it so addictive for some, and so easy to give up for others. I haven't played in a while, but I can still remember how to fully function and charge a charge blade. 😅 (My main weapon)
This video is genuinely fantastic, for such a small channel I’m blown away, you articulated all your points in such a well thought out and understandable way. You took all the words out of my mouth, bravo. Near sidenote: I started with rise and moved on to GU about 200 hours in and I loved how much more tension GU had to it, found it a lot more challenging.
@leoc5639 oh I have, I beat low rank giadrome and got walled by congalala, not continuing because ppsspp won’t let me set my right stick as the d-pad for better camera control
It feels really insulting when, in the case of Monster Hunter, deliberate gameplay design that new players didn’t have the patience to acclimate themselves to are seen as bad, and removal of that design in favor of lowering the skill floor is seen as a “QoL change”.
To be fair, monsters in the old games having tank like controls to them and hilariously bad hit boxes isn't really that tough to begin with. All you really have to do is run around and smack them in the ass/legs/tail. And waiting for like 3-5 mins for the monster itself to stop having a temper tantrum and running around like an autistic child looking for a cookie isn't tough either, just adds on time you've wasted in a 50-60 min hunt. That's my main issue in the older games, they're not tough, just more time consuming.
@@BumblelinoV1.0 Let me guess. You think running back to the boss fight is time consuming and not hard. YOU ARE A LITERALLY CLOWN. Dark Souls has that and it was brutal. You literally have to dodge and out-smart the AI Ask me how I know you never played Dark Souls before I will tell you how Because you and your casuals friends have to come to every series and ask for easy mode Well you got what you want in Elden Ring, you got what you want in Monster Hunter. Now what? What new niche series will you and your kind ruin next? I can't wait to find out NOT
@@brojakmate9872 you're telling ME to cope? While you wrote a wall of text? Bruh, you def can't handle another person's opinion.... Go back to twitter and complain some more...
An important thing to mention is that not only have the players been given more leeway in terms of healing and sharpening, but even if you ignore Rise and the crazy silkbind moves that let you animation-cancel a lot of things, the series has given all the weapons progressively more options. Like, it almost goes un-noticed but in World they introduced the ability to dodge-step cancel out of a charged shell, and also took away the limit of only being able to dodge backward, and to the side after an attack to now freely step in any direction (including forward). The player has gotten more skilled over time, but they have also been given more powerful OPTIONS over time. That alone is a good example of how both viewpoints can be true (an unskilled player wouldn't be able to CAPITALIZE on those options quite as well, after all).
And I think that's a good thing. Well maybe not all the wirebug stuff. I never liked that part of rise so much. I just am less of a fan of the focus on air mobility. It feels like a weird side step rather than a step forward. But giving your hunter more tools isn't bad. You just need to give the monster more tools that counter those new abilities.
@@anenemystand5582 It's neither good nor bad objectively. It is bad subjectively - i.e. MH is a game that was fundamentally designed around limiting the player. It's the same reason why in a Stealth game like Splinter Cell you'll die if you go in all guns blazing. It's intentional player limitation you need to adapt to. It is part of the fun. The problem with giving the Monster more tools as you give the player is that you're soon playing a VERY different game. There are MHW/R clips that genuinely look more like a hack and slash that tradition MH.
Also, as I have become painfully aware of from playing mhgu after both rise and world, most weapons had no option of dodging backwards, and generally, your character couldn't ever turn with any amount of speed. So every time you pressed the attack you had to know when to stop attacking so that you could evade effectively
So many people saying Rise is turbo easy would make you think literally every player is a speedrunner. It'd be nice if people were clear what they mean when they talk about difficulty. Do you mean it's easier to not cart 3 times and fail a hunt? In that case I could see how wirebugs, expanded characters movesets, and the lack of commitment in recovery items/re-gearing could be result in the games being considered easier. However I have a different mentality entirely to a game. If I beat a monster, but I got knocked around 90% of the time, missed half my counters, and burned through like 15 mega potions, that does not feel like a win to me. In what other action franchise has expanded movesets and options been considered a step toward casualization? That's just another thing to juggle--raising the skill ceiling and putting actual mastery that much further away. DPS meters inevitably lead to bullying with randoms, and can really dampen the spirit of the hunt if people have a poor mentality around it, but I sometimes wonder if people would have a different perspective if they could see just how much more output they could be producing. I've done pretty much everything in World besides Fatalis and AT Velkhana with the charge blade and dual blades, and nothing has been even remotely as difficult as trying to >50% of my friends HBG dps with the longsword in a counter heavy playstyle, which is apparently the most braindead weapon in the most braindead game. Of course, there are also people who are godlike who echo this sentiment, but at that point you've put in enough time to become an intermediate in a long term skill like drawing or something. Again, what other franchise do you hear people saying, "yeah, once you know all the enemies abilities, weapon movesets, and RPG elements like the back of your hand the game is piss easy"?
Honestly, being caught off guard by Natsu no Mirage(while I’m coincidentally wearing a KOR sweatshirt) had me tuning the video out and just vibing with the music.
Difficulty aside, I really miss the pre hunt preps. Tracking paint balls and knowing when a monster can be captured was a huge part of what made it felt like a hunt. Not a fan of Rise just straight let you see the monsters on the map from the start, but I do like wire bugs and mounts.
Old MH actually felt like the game was about hunting a giant monster, 'hunt'. Though stuck with limitations, World kinda did it best but at the same time(imo) wrong with the whole bug scent thing. Then we get rise, its no longer a hunt, its a giant map monster arena fighter. I mean its up to others to thing what they prefer and like. But I personally felt that its less about the hunt and prep nowadays and its probably only going more in that direction more and more as time goes by unfortunately because people tie it all up as QOL. Personally I find the idea of removing tracking instead of improving on it as a system/mechanic players use is lazy more than QOL for example lol.
@@gunzzter123 yea, that’s sums up exactly how I feel. I get that streamlining the game draws more players and I’m happy for the franchises’ success but I can’t help but miss the “older” days when it felt more like a hunt. It make sense for Rise being on a handheld to streamlining it makes each hunt faster but like you said, just showing the monster feels more like a arena fight than a hunt. They should strike a better balance between “QoL” and the actuall “chore” of hunting, I mean you can barely call it a chore, vatern hunters pretty much know the spots where the monster will spawn even in the older titles, you could make paint ball last longer, have a indicator when it’s fading or straight up have it last the whole hunt, anything but straight out remove it,
Yknow, i felt the same way about knowing the monsters exact location. I used to think it was rlly unecesarry. But the more i play rise, the more that the game becomes just a way to kill time for me in between my daily life, a little break from daily troubles. So i started playing rise in little burst of 1-2 hunts, and playing like this makes me appreciate that i can see the mosters right away, it means i could fight them right away and scratch the monster hunter itch faster, since the goal for me is no longer immersion, it's simply to have fun fighting monsters.
I don’t really care about the prep and paintballs as a means of immersing myself in “the hunt” (that’s such a vaguely defined term, so I hate using it). I simply really enjoyed the meaning it added to my actions. Prep time to make sure I was bringing in the right abilities to succeed. Paintballs to make sure I didn’t slack off (or the paint would disappear), and it rewarded me for being proactive and remembering to keep the paint up in the heat of the fight. But I dunno, with Rise’s open maps I don’t really miss the paintballs too much. I think there’s something about the “screen transition zone” structure from old gen that made searching for the monster more interesting, and merely including paint tracking in the open world structure won’t really change that for me. Prep though, I miss that. World kinda ruined skills in general
@@emblemblade9245 its not a vague term though, you go looking for the monster, you track the shadows, the direction, get used to its actions and animations/what it does/how it launches and if it U-turns or hook turns. stuff like that. Even without the paintball, which i did often in freedom and trii, All that is useless now because you always see them at all times on the map. There is no hunt, just arena fighter and different arena's your fighting in now. At least thats how i feel about it.
I find it very impressive how the MH devs constantly have new ideas for this game. Underwater combat, palicos, palamutes, minigames, mantles, decorations, hunter arts, designs, new monsters, and much more. It's always something cool and crazy. [Edit:] ALSO YOUR EDITING IS GREAT. So many good references and motion graphics.
That talk about "Veterans passing over skills to newbies who then become veterans themselves to pass their skills on" really moved me to tears. It is what i experience right now and honestly a few years ago aswell. 7 Years ago I bought my first MH game, 4U, and I was a total scrub. Thanks to my friends back then, I learned how to play the game and when world came out, I passed this knowledge and skill on to my sister who literally cried when fighting barroth. Even nowadays, where my best friend got gifted MHR, I can pass on my knowledge and skill to frens.
Also, I dont nescessarily think the game is getting easier or harder. The player is getting more options to fight the monsters but most of those are mechanical things. While it is more welcoming to newer players, do you think you could fight like a nergigante in mh2 or a magnamalo in 4? Recently I replayed some of the older games and compared to the newer, the monsters feel more sluggish and slow, probably because the players themselves are more limited aswell. I personally had an easier time playing through the grank of mh4u than getting through the master rank of mhr:s.
Himemori Luna, the hammer princess from the moon. I still remember the day where a monster huffed and puffed very hard, her knights look to her on what the next course of action is but she's already gone, all they could hear was a resounding "Sayonara Nanora, nnashoi!" farcasting back to camp as a fierce storm blankets the field
This video is THE MOST REFRESHING content I've ever watched in the MH community. I love the open-minded approach to this prevalent topic and that the video actually deviates from focusing on the question heavily, instead introducing you to factors that make the question seem so trivial and almost childish to ask. You also did a great job at reminding what Monster Hunter really is at its core. I won't lie, the Western fanbase really muddled the purpose MH was meant to serve as topics like this barely mattered until World's prevalence blew it into mainstream media. Everybody complains about an MH game's difficulty being comparably different to another title but often forget this isn't a Soulsborne game. Personally, I love that you uploaded this video and challenged this topic. I've seen other attempts at making it but it's often so biased and muddled with petty reasons and poor explanations (with massive redundancy).
As someone entirely new to Monster Hunter: Mindless easy game boring. Challenging game fun. Rise is a painfully unchallenging game. Meanwhile when I tried MH3 ultimate... that game kicked my ass hard. So I actually stuck with it. It's not just people getting used to the game over time.
I think it can't be understated how much easier a game feels when you start with a G-rank version of a game and then the next game comes out as a High-rank one. People will flood forums and whine about how easy it is without really thinking that it wasn't the full game and the way the release the games is not usual.
The game is OBJECTIVELY easier as almost every single mechanic is simplified and monster AI is slowed down. Getting hit doesn't even affect you anymore because you just wire bug recovery every 5 seconds. You can chug potions while sprinting and sharpen on your dog. It's impossible to die unless you're a total mong that isn't even looking at the screen. Or you take off all of your armor and actually get one shot by the monster. If the monster doesn't one shot you, it's literally impossible to die in Rise, because you can just sprint and chug potions. It's like playing a fantasy RPG where you can drink potions in the pause menu instead of it taking a turn to drink a potion.
I don't think this is true. The past two monster hunter games have had very poor difficulty in the base game, but really ramp it up with the expansions. It's nowhere like this in the older titles. Even replaying 4U and 3U as of late I've noticed that highrank used to feel significantly harder than it does now. It's as if the difficulty scales a lot less now.
@@Sammysapphira sounds like someone who never played sunbreak tu1 and after. People die way more online in this game than 4u or iceborne. Certain monsters you just cant play online have to do them solo because everyone always triple carts. Only monster ive seen people get bodied by as hard as some of the high level afflicted monsters in this game is rusted kush in 4u and behemoth in workd. Even being able to run while healing doesnt matter so much as the monsters are significantly more aggressive and have better tracking. So you still have to take a turn and pick your spot and same goes for wirefall, most of the time its better to wait on the ground before doing it or not do it at all because the monsters are specifically designed to pop you when doing it recklessly. The game just feels like less of a slog because its faster. I went back to 4u and was able to do the masters test after a couple warm up hunts first try whereas risen teo in tu3 took me like 5 attempts with my friend
@@tongpoo8985 Adding onto this, AI and attack patterns for monsters have been drastically remixed and revamped in Rise. The wirefall is an excellent, powerful tool, but many late game monsters, even in base Rise (haven't gotten around to Sunbreak) had patterns that punish the reflexive use of wirefall. Just like any other part of the movement kit, the wirefall is a tool you have to choose to use when you know it's time for it, or you'll get slapped. Simply claiming that it's an easy always get out of jail free card is not accurate to the design of the game as a whole. The player having more options doesn't matter if the monsters get more options too. Just look at Rathalos in Rise compared to Tri, 4U, or hell even World. He got a full, very scary, imo, revamp that turned him from a dopey easy to murk brainless wyvern into a downright scary aerial predator if you're not adequately prepped for his new aggression.
Very beautiful and fantastic video. Started with portable 3rd and seen so many changes in the monster hunter series, but never looked at how well the mechanics actually work together. Great video and Keep up the good work.
Hi there. First of all I want to say the final conclusion at the end of the video works to put me at ease a little bit. I have so much I would like to say but I will try to keep it short. I started playing Rise + Sunbreak a few weeks ago and really felt the downgrade in difficulty, and it had an impact on my enjoyment and experience. Today I searched online for the very same question that entitles this video, and after three or four videos discussing the same thing, I felt a bit hopeful I wasnt the only one with that idea in my head, thinking maybe Capcom would listen and adapt in future games. There was a very long list of things that seemed (and lets be honest: do) to make the game much easier. I felt devastated thinking one of my most favourite games (if not the very favourite) was taking a path of no return that wasnt going to give me what I expected from it. But then I saw those last 10 minutes of your video and it really clicked. You're right! Its all about what the game wants you to learn in order to win. Thats the experience. Thats the main act. We can always enjoy a new way of playing monster hunter, that will always be there for us. Having said that, I would like to point out something: I dont think its wrong for the devs to create new mechanics in new games. A new mechanic will make you feel out of your place with your weapon (or the whole game) at first, of course, but eventually you will add the mechanic to your repertoire, and you will feel fluid and good using it. Thats a good thing, its a good feeling. However, this can make the development of monsters attacks and patterns more troublesome for developers, since they will have to constantly re-design or change them in new games in order to make the monster feel like a challenge, like something that wants you to grow, to learn. Think about Sunbreaks "meta": the use of wirebugs its majorly a must in order to make the most out of a weapon. And most monsters, given the wide windows you get to attack them in this game, feel almost like a nuisance you have to get through to finally get to the end of the game and finally feel the pressure of the hunt. I felt bored - and trust me I hate having to use that word when talking about this game - when doing the village quests, and even the low and high rank quests. If a monster makes you get bored when hunting it, why even add it to the game? Thats what I thought when playing rise. Not that every monster makes you feel that way, but at least more than half of the village-to-high rank monsters do. Even MR at some times. And its not even the monsters fault: its the overpowered mechanics and the lack of adjusting of monsters behaviour to them. I understand its an enourmous work to update every single monster you want to add to a series in order to make it feel entertaining. But hunts have become, at least for me, very repetitive. Anyway. I appreciate this whole community of people supporting this amazing game. You guys are what makes it so great. I love playing MH and will keep doing it, probably despite the changes. But I hope one day I get the same feeling I got when first going to fight, determinated to win, against a Yian Kut-Ku. Or the respect and alertness I had when hunting a Yian Garuga, or the Tigrex. Or the laughs (and cries) I had when trying to beat two Diablos at the same time with a friend. TL;DR: I love you guys, I love the game, mobility mechanics are making the monsters feel rusty and the hunts repetitive and inocuous, dont do coke.
I have to say, I don't agree with you, but I can completely understand you. If I were in your position, I would feel the same way, but for me, MH Rise is my favourite MH. It's generally pretty high up there with my favourite games in general. I used to have my fun with difficult games, loved playing MH 3 ultimate back in the day (joined to MH kinda late). But now I find it more important when something feels good. and Rise does that extremely well. As a hunter you feel very agile and the wirebug moves are simply fun. You're the main character and I just love it. It doesn't matter whether you dash through the opponent with the Swtich axe or be a valstrax with the Gunlance. It's just cool and epic. Hope that makes sense and you can understand my side : )
I like that Rise and World both utilize different features and mechanics to make hunting exciting and challenging. Rise definitely felt easier for me (defender set made sure of that) but I've been playing since Freedom Unite and never felt that before.
Truly how do you not have more subs? The scripting pacing and Informative information in this video is astounding for such a small channel, let alone professionalism in sound quality, confidence in speaking, and editing! Keep it up my man you're going places!
The answer is simple - RUclips prefers frequent uploads of shorter videos; Uploading a 20 minute video at most twice a year will make RUclips bury you under more frequent uploaders.
people don't use the subscription page anymore so everyone is just served videos algorithmically through the home page, notifications and the sidebar, which all use algorithms to serve "content" based on what data google has harvested on them to predict what they like, which actually narrows peoples interest and discourages self-curation since it totally kills discoverability for smaller channels beyond youtube's arbitrary rules that change at the drop of a hat.
I don't even play Monster Hunter, but this video was so well made, I watched and enjoyed the whole thing. (The Shockmaster reference really caught me off guard)
I love world. It may be a bit easier than older gens, but everything looks and feels so alive. And personally, I like how the monsters counter world players' extra freedom of movement: that is, by being more mobile themselves.
Mhw feels like the game monster hunter was always meant to be. A living ecosystem that can be traversed seamlessly and with all sorts of fun dynamic interactions between the wildlife. Older monster games were fun. But they felt quite barren and the way the small monsters acted never felt real. And nothing knocks you out of immersion like literally getting knocked out of one zone by the monster and directly into a loading screen
@@anenemystand5582mhw is the best mh not because of gameplay, even though its amazing, its because it feels like youre hunting a creature in a live world, from the map design to all the little creatures, the interavtions between mpnsters, the fact alot of monsters are passive and the favt tjeh actually interact with the enviroment outside combat.
I like the more “action flow” of Rise. The open map, no loading zones, feels more immersive. The village quests do feel easier than past gen (was playing Generations Ultimate prior). And the palamute greatly made using “upkeep” items mobile.
I'll be honest here. I have never been so fascinated by a commentary video before in my life. The way you talk and how you explain the topic is really amazing. But most important of all, you did not say anything that would degrade people's opinion about something, truly the middleman of the topic with a valid reasoning behind it. The world seriously need more of this kind of commentary videos instead of commenting something to make it looks bad and recieve a lot of view and subs just because people really love drama and hate-speech. Really amazing brother, keep up the good work.
This was very insightful and with top tier editing. Amazing video! Even as a MH Boomer I don't want the series to be an experience only meant for masochists. But I do hope Capcom finds a middle ground between old and new, because I think failure it's an integral part of your growth as a hunter and later entries are becoming adverse to that idea.
I started in 4U, skipped Generations Ultimate (didn't know it existed until after world had come out), played World and Iceborne and eventually picked up 4U again for nostalgia. Now I can't even get back into World lol it feels way too easy?? I don't know why, is it just the hitboxes?
The argument that "your just getting better" is 100% untrue in my case, when I go back to 3U it's still the hardest mh game for me, the high rank in 3U feels as difficult if not MORE difficult than the G rank in Rise/Sun
G rank is Rise/Sun is not hard and 3U was one, not hard for me at all. I know it is cliché, but FU is way more unforgiving, I do like many changes they have made sense. The faster game play the the betterment of the resources collecting a lot is better, but it did make it more EZ. Only in FU do you have to do multiple quests just for the preparation of every attempt at a Hard Monster. Evan, in the late game, you will always be missing something. evan in Tri you will reach the point of abundance, in FU it only comes at the very end. Maining a Gunner in FU is not really possible with the cost it creates until the advanced game. One thing they also make it seam Harder is the way slower progression entering high Rank takes a lot of time wares as in MHW you can enter MR in a mater of hours as i did when i played it.
I think it would be interesting to have "restricted" or "legacy" challenges that disable certain gameplay features, would be interesting bonus or event content. Kind of the equivalent to having an old man yell at you about how things were back in the day. But as a quest.
Bro, older MH games you would be lucky to have 5 skills, Right now IN rise I have 3 pages of skills and I'm faster then the monster. Each game has a super challenge sure but the game overall HAS gotten easy because the hunters have gotten to strong
@@catowarmeowson9964 Bro, monsters also used to be sloths. They have gotten way smoother and more aggressive with their attacks to compensate for your increased movement. The skill gap has gotten way bigger in the newer games. Meaning that an experienced hunter can do so much more over a newbie in rise than one could in mhfu. Having the base experience you have and then giving you all these perks just feels like a buff but for new players they have to learn everything and more now. They do feel a little easier to complete but the skill ceiling has been raised so that perfection is much harder to obtain.
Excellent video, it covers pretty much the most important aspects that define the change of style (and challenge) in the newer entries. Really glad to see that your channel is growing and how many views this video got also. I'm fine with most of the changes made to MH but I would really love to see an HD re-release of FU or any other of the old titles since their unique flavor is still worth experiencing. The only change that I kinda dislike is how healing works now, I think there should be a reward to incentivize not moving around while you're drinking a potion, without removing the option to do so. Oh also and most importantly, your robot girl OC is CUTE!
I wish item consumption effects were faster if you stood still. For example, your potions heal you faster if you stand still, or your dash juice takes less time to activate if you stand still. That way, if you use these items during a hunt you're rewarded for timing it well. When you aren't actively in a hunt, you just get to save time by activating the effect quicker.
I like that they added the flexibility newer games added. It helps people who are great at the game. It encourages people that aren't as good at the game to try new things and learn. The beauty of options is that if you don’t want to use mechanics, you can go on a solo hunt and not equip them that I love. Remember that Hunter wearing the Rathian Armor in MHW? That dude straight up does not use a slinger and manually throws items. I love that guy. He still hunts like a pre-MHW hunter, but he doesn't think that the newer hunters that use slingers and fireflies are worse hunters, just different. I love it.
Self imposed difficulty should never be considered as a replacement for actual intentional difficulty, or challenge for that matter. Basically, if I am forcing the game itself to be harder for me, it's not going to be as enjoyable for many people as compared to the game being challenging from the get go and figuring out how to overcome those challenges. Video games that have difficulty as part of their metric essentially boil down to elaborate, complex puzzle pieces. We play games and overcome challenges in them because we like solving puzzles. If the solution to the puzzle is already handed to you from the beginning, it kind of defeats the purpose of solving it.
@@Aesieda I agree with you that self-imposed challenges shouldn't supplement difficulty. But with that said, I feel like Monster Hunter is the one series that can get away with it, just because of how much of the challenge depends on the player. I personally stopped using Wirebugs in Rise, for example, and I started having a lot more fun when I took away my get out of jail free card
@@NEETKitten I don't see anything special about MH as compared to other games. People push self-imposed challenges on themselves in other games as well like Pokemon. Hell, speedrunning is a form of self-imposed difficulty as well and pretty much every game with standard progression elements can be speedran. I myself can purposely choose to avoid mechanics in MH or other games, but it just doesn't feel as satisfying. When I first played Dark Souls 1, I played it mostly blind but I had a blast cause I did everything in my power to overcome all the challenges the game had to offer. I never had to purposely avoid mechanics or gimp myself. It's all psychological in the end.
I started in MH4U and even though World was "easier", I got a lot of challenge and enjoyment experimenting with mixed sets. Also those endgame hunts were some of the most fun I've had playing Monster Hunter
Excellent video! I feel like my worries has been put to ease with the future of the franchise once again. The video really didn't provide anything ground breakingly new for me but simply reminded me of what I already knew.
Awesome video man! This is a very well made and fun to watch youtube video. You are really underrated and deserve more subscribers. Fantastic editing aswell. Very well done, you definitely have my like and sub!
As a Tri Veteran who went back to play older titles I can say progress is a boon but i prefer having mechanically easier hunts, where preparation and monster knowledge count for more. The multi Monster quest example is a perfect highlight for that. Really thinking about what weapon and items to bring was much more fun than 30 min Fatalis DPS check.
I wanna say I had a whole evolution throughout this video because Im just getting into monster hunter and honestly this is completely right based off the gameplay styles of players and how they react to how a monster fights through this video I was fight Mitzusne for the first time and I'm just learning longsword and I won't lie I die 2 times. But on the third try around the time he started talking about learning how to adapt and looking for attacks that a player should look out for, it clicked for me. :Oh shi* I can see it now" I said as I was about to get shot with a water beam. I got into a pose and countered the b I t ch.
As someone who plays Rise and Freedom(gen 1). I noticed how the difficulty is mainly on limitations, like an even more limited inventory, hitbox being too big for their own good etc. Nowadays it's mainly making monsters with strong enough attacks and being swift to catch us off guard.
I agree. Whenever I talk about "difficulty in MH" with my friends, even though we've only really started playing in Gen5, it's been less about X game is easier than Y game and more X game presents challenges that the monsters are then changed to compensate for. Like in Rise the monsters being absolute psychopaths travelling at 2000000mph and literally teleporting. Like you choose a MH game based on the gameplay you feel like playing, not the difficulty.
I've noticed that too, a lot of the difficulty in the older games feels more like it's due to things like bad hit boxes than intended design. I'm more successful in the new games, but when I lose it rarely feels undeserved unlike older titles.
@@TuriGamer I think it's more accurate to compare it to the difference between the souls games. Sekiro, Demons' Souls, Dark Souls, Elden Ring, and Bloodborne are all the same souls franchise, but each one has a very distinct gameplay type where you may prefer one over the other, and it's totally fine to do so. Like some people enjoy the slower methodical combat of Demons' Souls or Dark Souls, while others enjoy the faster paced games like Sekiro or Bloodborne. This is the same for the Monster Hunter franchise as each game, while it has the same core gameplay loop, reiterates upon the style of how the gameplay is carried out, which keeps the game feeling refreshing and new.
I think that as you said, difficult moments, levels or monsters aren't the main point of Monster Hunter as a series. Rather, these serve to test and adequate you to what comes next or raise your skill level. That's why it feels like an integral part of the experience, because when you're playing it for the first time it *is*. My first game was World and i finished the main story without learning to properly time my rolls to take advantage of invincibility frames. I changed to longsword, used crystalbursts and scatternuts, i shoulder-tackled, used guardpoints and counters, changed to bow, dove away, upgraded my armor, used divine blessing... But i could never reliably roll every attack. That is, untill barioth. Master Rank was biting me in the neck and by the time i reached the story quest to hunt barioth i had already faced many difficulty peaks. Every weapon every time was just a bit too slow to come out of certain moves and/or sheathe to dive. Barioth taught me how to roll. It's not a difficulty curve, it's more of a zigzag line like the one shown at 6:35. The gameplay loop is as follows: You get shown a mechanic and/or feature and gain some monster options to hunt and familiarize yourself with those. In the beginning these are your attacks, how they chain together, environmental traps, your great Jagras, Pukei-Pukei's and so on. Then the game presents you with more features and/or more depth to the stuff you already know. These are your Flinches, Interruptions(Hitting Anjanath's face when it's Breathing Fire), Verticality(Mushroom walls, aerial attacks and Tobi-Kadachi being a Monster that climbs and jumps a lot). And so on and so forth. If you as a player can find a solution that involves pushing your understanding of these features for later, that's a valid effort and you'll be rewarded for that. But those features might come to bite you in the ass later because if you managed to overcome said challenge the game interprets that you understood (at least on an intuitive level) the things it's trying to teach you. Difficulty in the Monster Hunger series for me might not be the same as for the guy who played Rise first and got used to the usefulness of elemental blights that can be applied to monsters or the hands-on airtime given by wirebugs. The way everyone approaches each monster and gets familiarized with the formula as new iterations happen influences their opinions on difficulty DEEPLY. Long-ass comment, but a well-deserved one. Shit, i love this game.
I think that’s a very strongly made point. My question is: what comes next, for new players made veterans? We all remember our first MH as the most difficult, but it seems like every successive entry we play is designed around the same base difficulty, so it comes to feel like we breeze through low and high rank and are just waiting for G rank to come. I would like to ask what the devs can do to keep us more engaged and give us that desire for self-improvement our first game gave us, even at the lower ranks. Because the community felt pretty impatient waiting for the G rank expansion, and I dunno how well that’s gonna hold up now that the community is much bigger
I just got MHW and began playing. I'm a bit of an older hunter, having been a fan of the series since my PSP years. I definitely felt the game was a lot more streamlined than before and I miss some of the old school prepping and hunting elements that aren't as relevant anymore. Still I couldn't say for sure the game was "easier". The challenges were just different. Great video, loved the points being raised.
Pretty good video! Nicely nuanced and and very well edited. For me personally, the higher emphasis on the commitment mentioned in the video is something I really miss and is what made this series really click. Even if it was easier than 5th gen (and honestly I think the new games might have a higher skill ceiling anyway) the higher emphasis on methodical actions is something I prefer much more over the more free-flowing and reaction heavy gameplay, it wasn't eeally much of a difficulty issue for me as it is the gradual change in the core gameplay loop,,* though of course it's not like it's gone entirely I think the focus of the devs on multiplayer you mentioned might be a point that is pretty understated by the community too. As someone who mostly plays solo and think that's where the combat definitely shines the brightest, I can't help but wonder if that aspect being less of a priority and more of an afterthought might've made this series even more enjoyable for me. Regardless, I've seen quite a few threads and videos about these kind of topics and people seem rather sensitive about it. Expect a lot of comments that seem like they haven't gotten further than the first 2 mintues of this video or even just the title from people belonging tp both sides of the argument
Eh. People seriously need to go back and play older monhuns and see how reality actually stacks up to their memories. With the 'return' of dundorma and loc lac I recently replayed 2 and 3 a bit, and what I used to describe as methodical and committed is now much more accurately described as slow motion. To the point it is much, much easier, to the point my old block (2 GS) and evasion (swax) builds are just..... So not necessary. Especially GS, holy cow, I feel like I'm on crack or something with how easy it is to just not do anything but land unsheathe charge swings on massive openings. I want to comment on the videos point of the introduction of palicos, with a huge thumbs up, as that is such a massive change to the gameplay that often goes unstated. It actually took me a long time to warm up to using them, as their distraction of the monster injected an aspect of unpredictability not present when the monster soley focused on you. (If this isn't a dead giveaway, I'm totally a solo hunter). I did warm up to them, mainly because the damn little hair ball's are so charming, and they gathered loot. I do think the item argument is a nonstarter though. At least for my playstyle. In old monhuns you were 99% of the time never farther than a couple feet from an exit to the area, where you could take your time to heal, eat, sharpen, and do whatever you wanted completely at ease, far moreso at ease than even wirebugging up to a clifftop in rise, where the monster will slam it knocking you off, losing your item use. But even that was pointless to me by.... Tri, per necessity (arena/single area maps), as the monster ai was so exploitable you could do almost anything you wanted by simply sheathing and baiting a monster into an attack animation which you avoid and reposition where you could then complete almost any animation, while the monster recovers and reorientates, unless you had no levels in speed sharpening, then sharpening may be a gamble. This works the vast majority of the time, with the rare exception of those monsters that are specifically designed to pressure the player, in which case you had to wait for a specific attack, to make sure you had the time/it's not a massive aoe. Or if there were multiple monsters in a single stage area. Ok, THAT crap WAS, and STILL is rough when they all held an unspoken alliance to just smear the crap out of you. This was, and is one of the rare times my stingy butt would actually *use* the items i hoarded like a looney, smoke bombs, traps, drugged meat, anything to buy me some 1 on 1 time. Multi monster fights have DEFINITELY been made easier, or rather, less BS cheap. I feel like this could be explored, we have monsters that fight over territory, I feel like we should have monsters that have a supplemental relationship, that would be more likely to work with each other when encountering a hunter, so we have monsters that can be exploited against each other, along with monsters that have natural reasons to work together and need to be seperated/made sure they don't make contact. The restocking at base camps is also a non starting argument for me, as it just doesn't affect me in any way shape or form. Back when I actually struggled, and needed more than 10 mega potions, I would take spare materials with me to simply craft them in the field. Or run off ajd collect some herbs and honey, in complete safety. No I had no points in crafting, the amount lost if any was trivial to me. That provided me with so many potions I never came close to using them all, making the difference between that and restocking at a base meaningless to me. I can't imagine anyone who has played more than one monster hunter also being impacted by this, which leads to only one possible reason for the bile spewed by veteran players, it doesn't impact them at all, they just don't want new players to have that accessibility. They're crab people. Which is a pretty garbage state of being if you ask me. Adding new movement options disproportionately benefits veteran players who are building off of mountains of past experience. For newcomers, it makes the game harder as they have much more to learn at once than we did. You can't make use of those abilities, if you don't have the skills to use them, and the knowledge of when to use them. As far as I'm concerned, combat wise, what new monhuns have become is more engaging, I know have far more tools at my disposal, which means I can express how I play for more dexterously, even so much as choosing what set of actions I want to use at a particular time, even in response to the same monster action, so I'm not always doing the same move in response to the same action, something that not only wasn't possible in older monhuns, but I would never dream of even doing, or even be capable of doing, when I first played older monhuns, but the lack of which is painfully apparent in replaying the older monhuns. The skill ceiling is much much much higher, higher than the difficulty ceiling (so far, sunbreak is still updating, and it's becoming.... Less friendly with each update). Where monster hunters 'difficulty' has mostly been toned down, a LOT is outside of combat. This was a slap to the face when replaying dos, (dos, on PS2, not the very different psp freedom 2, which tones this down a LOT already, I don't expect many people to have played dos though), and it was still a little bit there in tri, and that's the difficulty in actually progressing the game, the grind you had to make to progress the village, and even to gather and stock the items needed to progress. If you were even allowed access to the areas you needed to get said items/loot from at that point in time. There were large periods of time spent not fighting monsters to progress, but gathering to get things you needed, in order to fight those monsters to progress. The thing is, that wasn't hard. Or challenging. It was tedious, and monotonous. But it did have..... There WAS something to it, (when it was behind you) there was a satisfaction felt when the toil paid off. But not enough for me to ever want it brought back as it was. Heck no. Oh also gathering loot. Rngesus has seriously, seriously chilled out, and I have absolutely no complaints about that, and again, feel like this is only something in the domain of crab people who want others to suffer what they did. That being said.... Gathering is just not the mind numbing grind it used to be..... I feel the tedium has been wrung out of it enough, that a new form of that mechanic that used to be such a large part of monhuns identity, while also being so tedious could be brought back with major payoff to immersion, satisfaction, and payoff.
My experience is that, at this point, going back from Sunbreak to 3U showed me that 3U was DEFINITELY harder to play, progress, and grind through. Sure, I had been playing since 3U, but even with all the skill and context of knowing the ins and outs of hunting in present day, the combat was still clumsier and the grind was still sloggier. I'm sometimes outright untouchable against some Master Rank monsters in Iceborne or Sunbreak, but I can ALWAYS expect even a basic G-rank monster in 3U to give me a bit of a hard time simply because the game itself is more difficult in the hunt. Now, of course, the really subjective aspect is whether the numerous, objectively easier elements added over the years "devalue the core gameplay" as you have Aisha (Moga Sweetheart, my first guild rep from 3U... and still the BEST considering how she behaves in Gen U) saying. I don't believe that for myself. I take great satisfaction from finishing hunts with ever greater speed thanks to the process of building my skill sets and more reactively adapting my actions in combat using my weapon. Being able to upgrade to max without needing a particular kind of armor sphere to do it that drops only occasionally also helps in the defense department. The game respects my time more in the grind, though the grind still doesn't end very easily. While I can get equipment refreshes, it's been nary a fight I've fought where I NEEDED the refresh to survive. Most of the time, I cart due to getting combo'd, one-shotted, or found in a compromising position while in need of healing, not running out of healing items. Monsters still take a considerable chunk of time and consideration to fight, though it's much easier to attack without downtime compared to how it used to be, meaning I can feel the satisfaction of hitting quite a bit more. It might even be said that the freedom to attack so much can create an illusion of safety that presents a new danger in a hunt. But the point remains that I have more fun now than before. I'm not as invested in the simulation of hunting. This all disregards most aspects of multiplayer, but, notably, I practically REQUIRED multiplayer to progress at an adequate pace in 3U when compared with newer games, and this considers my CURRENT skill. I dare say that the incentive to fight with others may itself be what's falling off in the series for me as the games iterate and make me more individually capable. I felt confident enough in progressing within Iceborne and Sunbreak on my own, ironically. My first victory against Iceborne's Alatreon was SOLO, for crying out loud. Even so, I'm ultimately loving Monster Hunter more as it iterates. I'm of the old guard, but not amongst the ones who miss the old days.
8:23: Thats one of the decisive points. All these discussions assume that difficulty in MH is static. When, in fact, it is fluent and largely dependent on your own choices. Bring Windproof and Astera Jerky vs Lunastra, and suddenly you will have a hard time dying even once. Bring Blight Resistance 3 vs Alatraeon, or Heavy Artillery 2 vs Fatalis etc. and they all become significantly easier. And those choices not only affect difficulty; its simply fun spending time strategizing and preparing in order to overcome a challenge in the game. Originally, i didnt want to click on that video, because it seemed like "one of those" videos. But im glad, i did. Your content is in-depth and the production quality is honestly kind of nuts.
Objectively speaking from Mh Gen to Mh Rise naming 1 example it is already easier since you see a blue symbol at the monster if it is already catchable. Alone that makes the hunt easier since you are relieved of stress and know you are on the right way
I think the biggest issue is that most of the veterans came in at some of the hardest points in the series and they're the most vocal about the difficulty thing. MH1, F, F2, and FU are all notoriously difficult and unforgiving. 3U's underwater was clunky and G-rank was super fast. 4U's guild quest system had very difficult combinations and was how most of the community was farming. And here's where you'll notice a pattern. Of the first 7 games that were released outside of Japan, 4 of them had G-rank, Freedom, FU, 3U, and 4U, and they even skipped some High Rank entries, being Dos, Portable 3rd, and 4. With G-rank being the endgame focus for most veterans, they find that the next game being only High Rank as too easy. And they aren't wrong. Compared to the G-rank content, everything in High Rank is easier. And a good amount of the veteran MH players play for the challenge. So whenever a new game comes out without G-rank, they get in a fit because it doesn't have G-rank, play the game anyway, then complain some more that the game that is easier than they wanted was easier than they wanted. Then they start complaining about no G-rank and make guesses when the G-rank expansion comes that is never guaranteed. Fun Fact: Generations wasn't going to have a G-rank version. The only reason that Double Cross/Generations Ultimate even released was because of fan outcry. I'm just glad that GenU's localization released during a time when World was at its lowest for me. For me, personally, as someone who started on 3U but didn't do the G-rank content because I didn't have friends with the game at the time, I don't mind the High Rank only games. What I do mind is the power creep in both the skills you can have, both the number and power of them, and how spongy monsters have become. In GenU, you'd be lucky to have 6 skills active, while in Rise, you regularly have 10 skills fully active. With the dynamic difficulty, especially with gunners, I feel like I'm doing nothing. I don't get flinches I'm chasing the monsters most of the time. If I wasn't a HH main for multiplayer, I probably would be doing nothing. I also feel I'm being pressured into pure dps sets more than in previous games, where having Evasion+1 felt mandatory to avoid some attacks.
@@williamking1081 Want the perfect balance of Freedom Unite White Fatalis DLC difficulty but without the clunkiness of older games and the old school graphics for nostalgia factor, ALL IN ONE? Portable 3 Ancient X monster custom quests, or X rank as I amicably call it.
What you're saying would only apply if veterans could somehow skip Low Rank and High Rank and couldn't compare between games It's not just the lack of G-rank
@@brojakmate9872 Here's the thing: they tend to be difficult enough. If you would compare a Souls game to MonHun, then the first playthrough is always the hardest. Once you've learned the game, future playthroughs aren't that difficult. If you've a veteran of one game in the series, that experience travels to other games in the series. The problems come when you're trying to make the game more accessible to new players. If you compare the start of any Souls game, aside from the controls, the game just throws you into it. Compared to MonHun, each game wants you to do the single player content to learn the game. Where Dark Souls wants you to learn things through trial and error, MonHun wants to guide you to be a better hunter. And while the tutorials in MonHun have gotten better over the years (they didn't tell you how to capture a monster in early MonHun for mandatory capture quests), the main changes in difficulty have been the quality of life changes over the years. There are three major QOL changes that heavily change the difficulty in my opinion: loadouts, combining, and using items. Where once you could only bring a set load-out of 30 items (between healing items, ammo, and other supplies), then you can bring 30 items plus 10 ammos in a pouch for ammo, then you can restock your items so that limit isn't needed. Where once you had to manually combine items in your bag, then you can combine items in a list of shortcuts, then you can assign a specific set of combines to a hotkey. And where once you had to stand in place and watch a flexing animation to heal, now you can move around while your potions are being used. Imagine if in Dark Souls your Estus Flask became infinite use and instant and you've got something similar. It doesn't matter if you can only have 2 Max Potions on you if you can restock them at a moments notice with a Farcaster. And this isn't even getting into how broken the armor skill system's become, but that's another can of worms.
This is a very nuanced point when it comes to MH. In many ways MH has become easier. - We have way more armor skills, with no downsides (negative skills) attached to them. - Weapons move sets are greatly expanded and infinitely less clunky, except for Gunlance. - You can access your entire box in the tent at base, which you can fast travel to any time you're not in combat. - Gathering has become faster and requires less planning. - Palicos have only gotten stronger throughout the series. - We have much more in and out of combat mobility. - Crafting requirements are significantly reduced. - We can benefit from all kinds of endemic life. - Gimmicks like monster riding deal damage and create openings basically for free. While there are these examples of the games becoming easier, in some ways they have also become more difficult. - Monsters have way more complex move sets and patterns. - Having more choices in armors and weapons also increases the chance of you making bad choices when selecting them. - Many parts of the games are balanced around modern mechanics, one notably being monster health. The question we need to ask is if the parts that became easier outweigh the parts that became more difficult. Right now, I think they absolutely do. I think MH as a whole has become easier over time. Hunters right now are highly overpowered. At its core a game is a set of problems that you, the player, has to find solutions for. MH right now has too many solutions for each problem. It means that even without engaging with the finer details of the problem, you will stumble upon the solution quite easily. In older games, we had less available solutions, meaning that you had to engage more with the problem itself to figure out what the actual solution is. I think if Capcom can bring back a sense of problem solving, instead of everything you do being this blanket solution to whatever the game throws at you, it will be very healthy for the future of the series. Solving a problem generally feels much better when you understand what the problem actually was. Solving it by accident or simply by default is usually not going to be as satisfying as a whole. It can even end up feeling like you are cheating, as I often feel like in current MH.
Seeing how monster hunter was back when it released in the west a long time ago, yeah, it's getting way easier now than it was back then. For me that's how it feels like to me.
Switched from Sunbreak to MHGU and it’s weird to think the two are even from the same series given how different they are. I like MHGU more but it’s not for the kind of wide audience Sunbreak was made for. For a lot of people SB is a better fit and it’s just a bigger crowd. It wouldn’t make sense to make new MH games for players like me because it would be a financial disaster.
Thank you for helping me to not get so caught up in the difficulty discussion and refocus on loving the game with friends and introducing it to new people.
I think it's a combination of things that has made MH become percieved as "getting easy." Players, as a group, have just become much better at action gameplay, MH's core mechanics getting refined, new gimmicks, and better movement options have all contributed. World and Rise are called easier because it introduced movement we've never had before. Not just the Clutch Claw or Wirebugs, but the mere fact that we can move as we drink potions or drugs. Before that was a static commitment and left you wide open. Let's also not forget that all the weapons have gotten refined and their gameplay styles have evolved with every new generation adding more to the weapon that it had. Longsword and Sword and Shield look nothing like they did in MH1 (LS was just a GS back then). And then let's not forget that in general, new and returning players have just become better at playing action games as a whole so there's a general increase in skill even without Monster Hunter being involved. Has MH gotten "easy?" Yes, however this is not due to one things. It's growing pains of MH adjusting to a more fast pace action gameplay than it used to be as well as players in general, not just MH veterans, being much better at playing action games than before.
@@lightbrand_ I'm almost certain the weapon shape was there. It just didn't have any different movements from GS. Just a great sword with a different skin.
@@MaakaSakuranbo controls also sucked and our movement options were limited and half the flying wyverns didn't even fight you, spending most of the hunt flying around. Yes the small monsters hassled you more but that has little to do with why MH is perceived as being easy today.
I think one aspect that not many people talk about is that gen 5 seemed to have been designed to be as solo player friendly as possible. In earlier entry only the low rank was meant to be played alone. You could try to play the rest of the game solo but the monster would become massive damage sponge and you could actually be at risk of running out of time which isn't something that should normally be a threat. But World and Rise were designed to be playable solo or multiplayer all the way through. And I think that aspect can explain many of the decisions they made in those games.
There are 2 changes which I feel are instrumental in making monster hunter "easier" from old gens to 5th gen: - Camera, which the old style with the dpad and even the 3DS touchpad style lockon style camera just made controlling the game another skill. Finally putting the camera into the right stick with World basically eliminated the camera as something that you'd need to spend time learning extensively and getting your hands used to weird positions while just trying to look around. I personally cannot play any of the older games just due to this change, despite having a 3DS. - Acquisition of items such as honey and potions being made absurdly easy through botanist NPCs and even available readily in hunts meant that preparing basic resources for each hunt was not as much of a chore as it was in the original game, allowing you to spend more time throwing yourself into the hunt. Those are the 2 things that I think world changed (to my knowledge) that significantly impacted game difficulty, although you would be right if you said that these aren't the only ones. That is because at least one of these changes was retrofitted onto Generations Ultimate for the switch, thus making it a far more accessible game.
The amount of mobility and the wirebugs did make Rise feel a lot easier. Even when I went back to World, I found myself pressing the wirebug button any time I got knocked around by a monster. Though honestly I could argue the same with GU which is by far my favorite of the series, the arts and styles can make fights a lot easier, aka Valor GS is a ton of fun with high mobility and quick charge attacks from drawing your blade or being able to dash forward with a max charged GS so you don't miss. But maybe do to the lack of verticality and being able to just run up a wall or spiderman around in the air, GU is a bit more grounded, unless you play Aerial style but even then
“Rise just feels easier because now you’re familiar with the base mechanics. Ask any newcomers to solo a Rathian, and I guarantee they’re gonna get their shit rocked.” - Punk Duck
Something that people doesn't always mention when discussion the difficulty about recent mh games is that... to combat the hunters getting so many new things, monsters have got their health quadrupled. For reference, a master rank rathalos in GU have 10000 health,accurate to 2 digits, whereas in world master rank rathalos has 20000, and in rise even a high rank rathalos have over 14000, and a master rank one would have 36000.
That's just a bandaid fix that doesn't solve anything except increase hunt times, and usually that's not even the case either because looking at base health values has to be compared with damage output values of the average hunter/player. You could have a monster have double or triple the health in a new game, but the hunters also deal more damage consistently. Either way, simply upping health bars doesn't make fights more difficult in a natural way.
I don't comment often, but this video was amazing. Commentary that was so clear but persuasive, editing that was refined and thought about combined a series I hold near and dear. Please please keep it up. I know this is old but I'm going to binge your backlog now :))
Just found this video as I've been on a bit of a monster hunter binge recently and I gotta say, this video was incredibly well done and articulated. Fully agree that no matter where you stand on the difficulty of monster hunter or what it means to be monster hunter. Monster hunter is well... Monster hunter for better or for worse. Been a huge of the games ever since I was 7 years old when I played the original Monster hunter on PS2. I got so angry just dying to a freaking Gendrome as a kid but it never stopped being fun or exciting hunting since then. I hope for the best in your future essay videos. Again this was an incredibly well scripted, articulated and edited video with a ton of well put together assets to help explain your statements. Well done.
"The greatest warrior becomes the most jaded, as all the joy and thrill has been lost to experience and skill. It is only when they find their student that their passion can ever be reignited." This quote I feel fits here really well - a lot of Monster Hunter fans I know all seem to struggle with the thought of the games getting "easier" - when I'm over here dying to Kut-Ku's still. At the end of the day, if they would shift their focus to helping low rank, low skill hunters, I think they'd find a whole new love for the game again - At some point, the ultimate end for every master, is to become a teacher.
My biggest issue currently is with lower tier and starter monster's. It doesn't feel like a difficultly curve anymore with them, which eases you along to stronger monster's, it feels like a flat difficultly line that suddenly spikes into a wall. And that wall seems to get further and further away with each game, in world it was Anjanath, in rise it was magnamalo WHO US LITERALLY THE FLAGSHIP. Starter monster's are your practice, your training exercise, they're not meant to be terribly difficult but not be complete pushovers either. I have not met a SINGLE person who has ever carted to Great Jagras. Not once, not even the most hopeless of noobies. Nor have I met anyone who has ever failed a quest to a Pukei or Kulu. Low rank is an absolute slaughterhouse, and that's not exactly fun, nor does it extend the amount of playtime you get. It's just unfair, the player has dozens of advantages to use at their disposal, while the monster's have received none for themselves in return. Only 1 hit wipe out attacks for a select few that no one really seems to enjoy and are generally pretty easy to avoid (-lunastra & alatreon *cough*) Monster's like Barroth were once a wall for many people, but now their little more than cannon fodder. The beginning of the difficultly curve gets further and further away, the hunter gets more and more advantages, and the monster's just get slower and weaker earlier on.
The amount of editing and thoughts dedicated in the of making this video will not go unappreciated, and i agree with your point. Great vid. Anyway, i think you forgot to include the fact that the difficulty from the old style of hunting is actually just a by-product from the limitation of the aviable technology rather than the intended difficulty of the game. Sure the game gets easier but that's mostly because we have to deal with less bullshit than we used to. The core idea and mechanic of monster hunting is very much still there (at least in MH world).
A lot of the difficulty came from things like bad hitboxes, limited move sets and less than ideal control schemes. That much is very true. However, the core design philosophy is not entirely the same. In older games it was very clear that the monsters were at the top of the food chain so to speak. They were threats that you basically could not straight up overpower. You had to outsmart and outplay them in order to have a fighting chance. This means knowing their move sets, their behavioral patterns, weaknesses etc. It made you prepare before each hunt. Now it is different. In current MH the hunter is the threat, not the monster. It has gotten to the point where you can ride monsters and puppeteer them, making them nothing more than tools for you to use. The threat of the monster is disappearing in favor of the hunter. It is a completely different design philosophy. Not even to mention that the entire world works for you now as well, as it's filled with endemic life to make your hunts that much easier. When you can puppet monsters around, and the whole map is your tool, what chance do the monsters really have? All Capcom do is give monsters a crap ton of damage on their attacks, so on the off chance that you do mess up and get hit you are somewhat punished at least.
@@DaShikuXI The statement that monsters are no longer the threat or don't stand a chance against hunters is a huge exaggeration. It's not like players can just make all the mistakes in the world and still completely overpower the monster. If this were the case, it would completely go against the design philosophy of Monster Hunter. Weapons like Rise's Longsword and Bowguns are the exception, not the rule. More options are available, but the monsters move faster and yes hit harder to compensate. The game has gotten easier to *control* but not necessarily any easier to do well at. The game knows players have options, and it's expected they use them. Failing to do so can be a massive handicap, weather thats to a players damage / time needed to finish a hunt or their overall survivability.
world has definitely felt like the perfect amount of difficulty to me with the amount of qol it has and the end game bosses (while they sometimes feel like bs) were hard enough to make me keep going and feel quite satisfied when i beat them. Games like generations and rise giving you so many options to dodge and recover i never really liked so much and made me feel like there was no challenge. and going back to the older games makes it a bit frustrating when fighting the controls sometimes (looking at gunlance having to face away from the monster to move forward cause you can only backtep)
What a well written essay, Jesus christ, this video solely motivated me on keeping the train going and finally creating the youtube channel I've wanted to make.
I just returned to MHGU and it showed me that the games were harder before MHWorld. I too thought that i just got better at it but no. And no its not harder because i have to adapt to older gameplay. I am 100 Hunts into MHGU. I am in High Rank and i die more often than i do in G Rank of MHRS
Amazing video and analysis! I've said it before and I'll say it again: Oversimplified, to me it seems like Capcom has buffed both the monster and the players movement sets and ways to interact, move and attack more and more over time - but the player characters abilities just got buffed way more, so that makes it feel like the monster got "weaker" or the game got easier.
ok i am three minutes in so idk if i'll continue to think this but THANK YOU THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I'VE BEEN SAYING also can't believe you only have 6k subs, this is crazy quality! Ik it's not gonna shift the tide right away, but if it helps, now you're at 6.58k + 1 :)
That is quite an interesting fact to put in. Monster hunter is easy or hard depending on the player itself. Sometimes it is easy, and sometimes it’s very hard(though in the case of world, World’s kushala and Lunastra. Those two are the hard dragons in my book.😅)
Just wanna say, great video! Anyway, here's my take: Difficulty doesn't matter if it's difficult because of terrible design. A lot of people say gen 1 and 2 were difficult but those games had atrocious hitboxes. The difficulty in modern monster hunter is fine, most of the difficult stuff is pushed towards the endgame as it should be. Veterans pushing for early game to be difficult shouldn't be listened to and just want the games to appeal to them. People gotta keep in mind there's plenty of people brand new to the series.
Unironically, the point monster hunter "got easier" was in the third gen, i got to play Freedom Unite for the first time recently and its mind-boggling how much of an improvement to the brutal jank 3U is
I wouldn't say it's intentionally getting easier. Additions like XX styles and Rise's silkbind moves were pretty good for the series as a whole. They just weren't very well balanced and have 1 or 2 outliers that trivialize the game (adept roll, bushido was also pretty nuts/longsword and other silkbinds that include counters).
As someone who played since PS2 era, MHFU, and THEN jump to Rise like almost a decade later (My skill was rusty and I'm no longer teen), I can understand people whining about gameplay streamlining. Except for Hitbox. Anyone defending the hitbox as challenge is having a stockholm syndrome. Certified insane.
I have no problem with less difficulty that comes from refinement, like no more wonky hitboxes or better refined weapon mechanics that make them a lot more fun to play (Hunting Horn is an example). But stuff like the coats introduced in MonHun World? That was an example of "too much". Some break the game way too much.
editing and production quality is really up there on a professional level. really well made video on a mundane discuss to death topic that really enriched it back.
the legend himself
Ooo the lord has spoken
Monster Hunter is one of the few games, having one of the overall best balances throughout all generations. Though you can grab your potion on the run, the monsters got their own improvement as well.
Boob
Wow if only you weren’t completely illiterate and could write a coherent sentence maybe any of that would make sense. The fact this comment has 1.6k likes is an embarrassment to the human race fml 🤦🏻♂️
Glory be to monster hunter, no matter which generation or iteration of a game; the desire sensor always has a means of trying to screw you.
The trick is to not look at what you looted. Confuses the desire sensor a lot of times 🤣
Or help a friend who needs it more than you do
Here here!
i am one of its victim, i rember on 3u i need to kill 30 dios to get 1 gem
I remember trying to get mystery. Slime only only to get less and less when I was about to upgrade...
“Your hardest entry is always your first”
Me, with mh4 being my fifth entry, remembering the horror of bombs over gogmazios. The bombs.. it won’t stop. The tar, the roar.
I freaking LOVE fighting George. And yeah... my first being F1 with basically infant youtube, that was rough. Had to teach myself most of how this works and do real research for the rest. Was stuck on Plesioth for three nights just sitting on a toilet and sucking down gin, while developing "the claw" on my own... there were no videos online except one, which taught motion values I couldn't wrap my head around. It was learning how Sonic Bombs worked that broke the failure streak for me, and damn was it nice to get that first kill after about 40 minutes solo
MH3U for me, i still don't think I've beaten ivory lagi by myself
It might be boomer bias speaking but I always lol when people say endgame of MHW and MHRise is incredibly hard when they have never experienced the horrors of fighting a dual apex monster GQ140 in MH4U
@@lykusfrayseeker Gen 2 (frontier included) and Gen 4 endgame is probably where it gets the most difficult imo. But yeah I ran into two apex rajangs and just wanted to cry
@@lykusfrayseekerit only hard if you solo them though and they're not designed to be soloed. With 4 average player and proper gear its not really that much of a nightmare, still hard but not autism inducing, i think only ex deviant and frontier musou/later zenith end game where MH difficulty peaked even with 4 players because fuck AOE one shot everywhere.
I think sunbreak is definitely one of the harder end game. I mean sure i never got triple carted but man thats because i use berserk or having 250 health so i rarely get one shotted, the fight itself is actually quite hard to master especially like hazard risen shagaru, vals and hazard primo.
I feel like i got hit much more in sunbreak than any MH game.
Still old gen is much much harder to solo, MHFU really put me into focused state from start to finish in g rank.
A big thing to point out is improved performance and control schemes. It gives the player much greater ability to react effectively and thus makes the game much more forgiving than some of the more stiff and clunky performance of the first few games.
Objectively speaking smooth controls are better because you can translate your intent to the game much easier but the clunkiness of the older games makes learning feel so rewarding
not to mention Hitboxes too. the hitboxes in World and Rise are so close to the monster's model now those hits we got used to of being knocked by a hip in the next post code dont happen anymore
@@metakarukenshi I can attest to this personally. I was laying down to line up a wyvernsnipe on a rathian last week, who noticed me and charged. I didn't even have time to get up, but it didn't hit me, the charge hitbox is literally the Rathian's body.
@@senounatsuru6453 yeah as long as the body doesnt touch you you're fine. challenging for new hunters, but if you are a veteran and hunting a monster whos moves you know front to back, you can just dance around it.
@@metakarukenshi that lavasioth seems to have the magick hips still tho🗿
I think another major aspect is that when you're going from a monster hunter game, to the new one. You aren't just going from one game to another. You're going from Master Rank to Low Rank.
This is the thing that always got me, especially because this conversation usually pops up when it's a transition from a G-Ranked title to a title that caps at High Rank. Of course the balancing and feel is gonna be different. Compare endgame MH4 to MH4G, or Generations to Gen Ultimate, and this conversation basically doesn't occur. It's really only when you go from GenU -> World or Iceborne -> Rise that this really ends up being a conversation.
Ok master rank let’s see you play MH1 and take on velocidrume without any armour you get to do it in 3 tries but no flash bombs!
@@lemongrab6173 I've done G rank MHFU Tigrex naked solo so, and I've also soloed Alatreon in World, those are probably comparable. I'm not as good as I used to be tho, edge dulled from not hopping on the Sunbreak train and not keeping up much with MH in general.
Either way, no one who wants to have this discussion about difficulty legitimately will try and swing their Gamer Cred(tm) around, the point is to try and find some sort of objective measurement by which we can see if the games are getting easier or not, so that we can be sure that the interest is maintained. At the end of the day I'm of the opinion that difficulty doesn't really matter that much. Difficulty in Monster Hunter isn't a core theme like it is in other games that often get compared to MH, so I don't really think the difficulty thing is too big a deal one way or the other.
It's more important to me that the MH games stay fun, and that means maintaining a reasonable level of difficulty. If everything's a cakewalk then it's not as interesting, but if things are generally within the same 'zone' of difficulty, whether they're trending easy or trending hard, it doesn't really matter. Monster Hunter being FUN matters first and foremost. If you want to measure the girth of your Gamer Skill(tm) then go elsewhere, to FromSoft's games, or maybe something like ULTRAKILL, or better yet, fighting games. Those are the actual hardest games, imo. But leave Monster Hunter out of that toxic mentality.
@@elizabethhicks4181 the fuck I don’t give a shit about the quests you’ve done in MHFU. I finished G rank twin terror on my own in MHFU. I’m talking about MH1. Even the fcking Aptonoths would kick the asses of these so called new gen pros in the original game. That’s how difficult things were. And getting money was so hard people actually attempted to get a sum by selling dung and fish and honey.
@@lemongrab6173 And apparently you're not even reading the rest of what I was saying. Cool. Measure your E-Peen elsewhere, man, no one needs that in Monster Hunter.
In my opinion, another important thing that might make the game appear easier is something that is completely outside the game; The community surrounding it.
18 years ago, you couldn't just go online and get a crash course in using a weapon effectively, watch speedrunners employ some mind-bending tricks to absolutely violate monsters nor could you just reach out to people who have datamined the game's intricate details for fun.
The popularity of the internet and it's subsequent broadening of information that players can absorb results in even brand new players coming into the game with some idea of how to play.
Agreed, if people use the internet, they get all the information they need, all the meta's and tactics and they get video footage of how it's done so the only thing anyone needs to learn are the mechanics of the game and the muscle memory to utilize them.
Exactly this, now aday instead of spending 100 hours trying to get one thing not knowing where you find/get it. you just look it up and get it within about 10 to 40 minutes.
Exactly, those meta builds are quite annoying...like good for you, you read a strat that someone else came with and didn't figure it out on your own and now you're claiming it was easy. CONGRATS! Here's your stupid prize.
@@kukukachu Idk if that's the way to look at it either. I think as gaming evolves, developers should learn to factor in the players access to information and adjust the games difficulty accordingly. There are plenty of games that are still hard even if you have all the information.
@@michaelm6179 hmm, I guess the example that pops up in my head when making this argument is someone playing "Day of the Tentacle" and saying the game was easy because they looked at a guide. Well of course it's gonna be easy if you're not putting in the work to figure it out. You can't say that it was easy after you looked up how to beat it...
As a Veteran since Monster Hunter Tri, who too has asked this very question and heard every argument. I without a doubt believe you have made the greatest video to put this to rest, even for me. This has re-awakened the old ideals I used to have of being the hunter that taught others rather than talk about difficulty. And for that, you have my gratitude and thanks. Here's to the future of hunts and hunters, one and all!✊
Veteran since FU here, and I share the same opinion. From now on, every time I will hear someone bring up that topic, I’ll be sure to redirect them to that video.
I've not played the older monster hunters, but I'm playing through GU right now. Im loving it although having to use paintballs and not having infinite whetstones is so weird.
Even though this was a perfect video and pretty much covered everything, alot of people I've asked have said they are harder because the controls are outdated, that some monsters hit harder or have weird hitboxes and the lack of movement. I just want to know even if this is true are some of the fights actually hard compaired to the newer games? Some of the event quests have been quite hard. Just asking because GU has charmed me but I'm playing on emulator, don't think I can play online or have all quests and event quests :(
I killed fatalis on world and that shit was HARD! The first time at least. So far I'm not having issues with GU and I look forward to soloing the hub quests. I'm all for difficult fights 100%.
Having 1000s of hours in world and rise has helped me but I know something will catch me off guard sometime soon. :D
In monster hunter world I would help anyone, mostly with all the fast moving monsters people cant deal wit, or kirin lol. Rajang was one of my all time favourite fights to farm an I also used to farm nergagante in less than 3 mins so satisfying. I was proud of that LOL.
I will never forget my first walls on world since it was my first game. I was a noob with shitty armor lol. First wall for me was anjanath aha it 1 shot me. Then it was diablos! Didn't know about using certain bombs for him wasn't used to using equpiment at all lol. That was a fun fight for noobs imo although all my friends hated black diablos ahaha.
I love this series so much. Rise was very very easy coming from world, literally speedran through the whole game :/. After a couple hundred hours I was picking up weapons I wasn't that good with and taking off armor and fighting. It was that I had to use HR armor though all of MR lol. Was fun but maybe thats why I'm enjoying GU so much! It's a complete different pace than I'm used to. I do think being able to walk through load zones to heal and sharpen is super cheese though.
First game for me was Generations, then 3U, then 4U, then World, then Rise on the PS4
in terms of difficulty Monhunter world > monster hunter rise
of course, original, monster hunter >>>>>>>>>>every other mh
@@Beleth420 what you wanna look out for is deviants and what i call event quest elders. They are basically archtempered before archtempered(higher stats sometimes less time ect no new moves tho.. usually). Some elder dragon quests gives you a variation of their armor. An example being gx/ex magala or ex crimson fatalis.
As someone who has been with the franchise since the beginning, I want to initially say that... this video is absolutely beautiful and quite insightful. I can say that everything that was mentioned in this video is quite accurate, and that it's basically all down to the hunter themselves. Being a Newbie or Pro, Going Solo or Hunting with Friends, the experience is all in how one choses to play.
@@TuriGamer You say that but man Rise was 100% easier. I didn't even make MR armor until around the end of the story simply because there wasn't a real need to. Call it what you want but nothing about Rise battles have been engaging in a challenge sense.
@@HowIin and in world has nothing challenging monster before lunstra/arch tempered introduced
@@translationwtf9232 So basically everything in Iceborne? That's fine. If you had a point in there I missed it.
@@HowIin lunastra and arch Tempered introduced before iceborne tho
@@HowIin It is what it is. its normal that mh franchises are getting easier series after series. I went from mh2, Mhfu, mhp3, mh4u, mhgu, IB and now rise. It gets easier and more easier. It's just the way it is. The most challenging was of course in the earlier days of mh. But i can say both world and rise are getting easier and i really hope mh6 would be harder even though it will be easier obviously eventually
The learning curve in MH is one of the most satisfactory things. You master a weapon and never forget the weight of your attacks.
kinda like when I pulled off my first sucessful (intentional) guardpoint in MHW, now I'm up to being able to pull it off reliably on certain monsters 40% of the time.
I've mastered the Lance. Every fight is a dance of me where I spit on the monster
@@Warpded fellow lance main spotted!! there are billions of us (probably)
@@dia5494 There should be
So underrated
I think the individuality and difficulty is part of what makes it so addictive for some, and so easy to give up for others. I haven't played in a while, but I can still remember how to fully function and charge a charge blade. 😅 (My main weapon)
This video is genuinely fantastic, for such a small channel I’m blown away, you articulated all your points in such a well thought out and understandable way. You took all the words out of my mouth, bravo.
Near sidenote: I started with rise and moved on to GU about 200 hours in and I loved how much more tension GU had to it, found it a lot more challenging.
@leoc5639 oh I have, I beat low rank giadrome and got walled by congalala, not continuing because ppsspp won’t let me set my right stick as the d-pad for better camera control
@leoc5639 I’m sure it’s possible, just not on my switch pro controller, which is the only option for a controller I have.
I was surprised you mentioned it, but I agree. Players have been mislabeling things as QoL for a while, and not just in the MH community.
It feels really insulting when, in the case of Monster Hunter, deliberate gameplay design that new players didn’t have the patience to acclimate themselves to are seen as bad, and removal of that design in favor of lowering the skill floor is seen as a “QoL change”.
To be fair, monsters in the old games having tank like controls to them and hilariously bad hit boxes isn't really that tough to begin with. All you really have to do is run around and smack them in the ass/legs/tail. And waiting for like 3-5 mins for the monster itself to stop having a temper tantrum and running around like an autistic child looking for a cookie isn't tough either, just adds on time you've wasted in a 50-60 min hunt. That's my main issue in the older games, they're not tough, just more time consuming.
@@BumblelinoV1.0 Holy mother of cope
@@BumblelinoV1.0 Let me guess. You think running back to the boss fight is time consuming and not hard.
YOU ARE A LITERALLY CLOWN. Dark Souls has that and it was brutal. You literally have to dodge and out-smart the AI
Ask me how I know you never played Dark Souls before
I will tell you how
Because you and your casuals friends have to come to every series and ask for easy mode
Well you got what you want in Elden Ring, you got what you want in Monster Hunter. Now what? What new niche series will you and your kind ruin next? I can't wait to find out
NOT
@@brojakmate9872 you're telling ME to cope? While you wrote a wall of text? Bruh, you def can't handle another person's opinion.... Go back to twitter and complain some more...
An important thing to mention is that not only have the players been given more leeway in terms of healing and sharpening, but even if you ignore Rise and the crazy silkbind moves that let you animation-cancel a lot of things, the series has given all the weapons progressively more options.
Like, it almost goes un-noticed but in World they introduced the ability to dodge-step cancel out of a charged shell, and also took away the limit of only being able to dodge backward, and to the side after an attack to now freely step in any direction (including forward).
The player has gotten more skilled over time, but they have also been given more powerful OPTIONS over time. That alone is a good example of how both viewpoints can be true (an unskilled player wouldn't be able to CAPITALIZE on those options quite as well, after all).
This sums up the "MH is getting easier" argument very well
And I think that's a good thing. Well maybe not all the wirebug stuff. I never liked that part of rise so much. I just am less of a fan of the focus on air mobility. It feels like a weird side step rather than a step forward.
But giving your hunter more tools isn't bad. You just need to give the monster more tools that counter those new abilities.
@@anenemystand5582 It's neither good nor bad objectively. It is bad subjectively - i.e. MH is a game that was fundamentally designed around limiting the player.
It's the same reason why in a Stealth game like Splinter Cell you'll die if you go in all guns blazing. It's intentional player limitation you need to adapt to. It is part of the fun.
The problem with giving the Monster more tools as you give the player is that you're soon playing a VERY different game. There are MHW/R clips that genuinely look more like a hack and slash that tradition MH.
@@MA-go7ee I never said it was objective. Only that I personally prefer one over the other and the reasons why
Also, as I have become painfully aware of from playing mhgu after both rise and world, most weapons had no option of dodging backwards, and generally, your character couldn't ever turn with any amount of speed. So every time you pressed the attack you had to know when to stop attacking so that you could evade effectively
So many people saying Rise is turbo easy would make you think literally every player is a speedrunner. It'd be nice if people were clear what they mean when they talk about difficulty. Do you mean it's easier to not cart 3 times and fail a hunt? In that case I could see how wirebugs, expanded characters movesets, and the lack of commitment in recovery items/re-gearing could be result in the games being considered easier. However I have a different mentality entirely to a game. If I beat a monster, but I got knocked around 90% of the time, missed half my counters, and burned through like 15 mega potions, that does not feel like a win to me. In what other action franchise has expanded movesets and options been considered a step toward casualization? That's just another thing to juggle--raising the skill ceiling and putting actual mastery that much further away.
DPS meters inevitably lead to bullying with randoms, and can really dampen the spirit of the hunt if people have a poor mentality around it, but I sometimes wonder if people would have a different perspective if they could see just how much more output they could be producing. I've done pretty much everything in World besides Fatalis and AT Velkhana with the charge blade and dual blades, and nothing has been even remotely as difficult as trying to >50% of my friends HBG dps with the longsword in a counter heavy playstyle, which is apparently the most braindead weapon in the most braindead game.
Of course, there are also people who are godlike who echo this sentiment, but at that point you've put in enough time to become an intermediate in a long term skill like drawing or something. Again, what other franchise do you hear people saying, "yeah, once you know all the enemies abilities, weapon movesets, and RPG elements like the back of your hand the game is piss easy"?
So happy to hear that you used Kimagure Orange Road music for this video. Two of my GOATs combined (KOR and MH)
Honestly, being caught off guard by Natsu no Mirage(while I’m coincidentally wearing a KOR sweatshirt) had me tuning the video out and just vibing with the music.
I legit thought this was a 500k+ sub channel. No way you are so underrated, it’s a crime. Such a good video.
The sound quality, thought-out arguments, the artwork, and the editing. Yah. dude is WAY underrated. Subscribed.
Difficulty aside, I really miss the pre hunt preps. Tracking paint balls and knowing when a monster can be captured was a huge part of what made it felt like a hunt. Not a fan of Rise just straight let you see the monsters on the map from the start, but I do like wire bugs and mounts.
Old MH actually felt like the game was about hunting a giant monster, 'hunt'. Though stuck with limitations, World kinda did it best but at the same time(imo) wrong with the whole bug scent thing. Then we get rise, its no longer a hunt, its a giant map monster arena fighter. I mean its up to others to thing what they prefer and like. But I personally felt that its less about the hunt and prep nowadays and its probably only going more in that direction more and more as time goes by unfortunately because people tie it all up as QOL. Personally I find the idea of removing tracking instead of improving on it as a system/mechanic players use is lazy more than QOL for example lol.
@@gunzzter123 yea, that’s sums up exactly how I feel. I get that streamlining the game draws more players and I’m happy for the franchises’ success but I can’t help but miss the “older” days when it felt more like a hunt. It make sense for Rise being on a handheld to streamlining it makes each hunt faster but like you said, just showing the monster feels more like a arena fight than a hunt. They should strike a better balance between “QoL” and the actuall “chore” of hunting, I mean you can barely call it a chore, vatern hunters pretty much know the spots where the monster will spawn even in the older titles, you could make paint ball last longer, have a indicator when it’s fading or straight up have it last the whole hunt, anything but straight out remove it,
Yknow, i felt the same way about knowing the monsters exact location. I used to think it was rlly unecesarry. But the more i play rise, the more that the game becomes just a way to kill time for me in between my daily life, a little break from daily troubles. So i started playing rise in little burst of 1-2 hunts, and playing like this makes me appreciate that i can see the mosters right away, it means i could fight them right away and scratch the monster hunter itch faster, since the goal for me is no longer immersion, it's simply to have fun fighting monsters.
I don’t really care about the prep and paintballs as a means of immersing myself in “the hunt” (that’s such a vaguely defined term, so I hate using it). I simply really enjoyed the meaning it added to my actions. Prep time to make sure I was bringing in the right abilities to succeed. Paintballs to make sure I didn’t slack off (or the paint would disappear), and it rewarded me for being proactive and remembering to keep the paint up in the heat of the fight.
But I dunno, with Rise’s open maps I don’t really miss the paintballs too much. I think there’s something about the “screen transition zone” structure from old gen that made searching for the monster more interesting, and merely including paint tracking in the open world structure won’t really change that for me.
Prep though, I miss that. World kinda ruined skills in general
@@emblemblade9245 its not a vague term though, you go looking for the monster, you track the shadows, the direction, get used to its actions and animations/what it does/how it launches and if it U-turns or hook turns. stuff like that. Even without the paintball, which i did often in freedom and trii, All that is useless now because you always see them at all times on the map.
There is no hunt, just arena fighter and different arena's your fighting in now. At least thats how i feel about it.
I find it very impressive how the MH devs constantly have new ideas for this game.
Underwater combat, palicos, palamutes, minigames, mantles, decorations, hunter arts, designs, new monsters, and much more.
It's always something cool and crazy.
[Edit:] ALSO YOUR EDITING IS GREAT. So many good references and motion graphics.
Now if only they will ever bring back underwater combat again with even more sea monsters
@@TuriGamer What do you mean? In gen 1 most of those stuff haven't existed yet
Dark Souls is better
@@brojakmate9872its a different game lmao
@@thesupreme8062 they have the same combat
That talk about "Veterans passing over skills to newbies who then become veterans themselves to pass their skills on" really moved me to tears. It is what i experience right now and honestly a few years ago aswell.
7 Years ago I bought my first MH game, 4U, and I was a total scrub. Thanks to my friends back then, I learned how to play the game and when world came out, I passed this knowledge and skill on to my sister who literally cried when fighting barroth. Even nowadays, where my best friend got gifted MHR, I can pass on my knowledge and skill to frens.
Also, I dont nescessarily think the game is getting easier or harder. The player is getting more options to fight the monsters but most of those are mechanical things. While it is more welcoming to newer players, do you think you could fight like a nergigante in mh2 or a magnamalo in 4?
Recently I replayed some of the older games and compared to the newer, the monsters feel more sluggish and slow, probably because the players themselves are more limited aswell. I personally had an easier time playing through the grank of mh4u than getting through the master rank of mhr:s.
@@fluffyskye4813 Eh. Whatever. The series is dead. Elden Ring sold more than Rise. It's over. Move on
@@brojakmate9872 bro who is even talking about Elden Ring in this convo??
@@me_like_giraffe The voices in my head
I started in 4U as well! Even with how much I love every improvement and new direction the series has gotten, I'll always miss the two-turn shuffle.
Himemori Luna, the hammer princess from the moon. I still remember the day where a monster huffed and puffed very hard, her knights look to her on what the next course of action is but she's already gone, all they could hear was a resounding "Sayonara Nanora, nnashoi!" farcasting back to camp as a fierce storm blankets the field
This video is THE MOST REFRESHING content I've ever watched in the MH community. I love the open-minded approach to this prevalent topic and that the video actually deviates from focusing on the question heavily, instead introducing you to factors that make the question seem so trivial and almost childish to ask.
You also did a great job at reminding what Monster Hunter really is at its core. I won't lie, the Western fanbase really muddled the purpose MH was meant to serve as topics like this barely mattered until World's prevalence blew it into mainstream media.
Everybody complains about an MH game's difficulty being comparably different to another title but often forget this isn't a Soulsborne game.
Personally, I love that you uploaded this video and challenged this topic. I've seen other attempts at making it but it's often so biased and muddled with petty reasons and poor explanations (with massive redundancy).
aka phemitod and symmetra
As someone entirely new to Monster Hunter:
Mindless easy game boring. Challenging game fun.
Rise is a painfully unchallenging game. Meanwhile when I tried MH3 ultimate... that game kicked my ass hard. So I actually stuck with it.
It's not just people getting used to the game over time.
It should be more like Soulsborne game. That's a good thing
if all monsters were as hard as fatalis you think it would make good sales?
@@sakuranohana1014 Yes absolutely
I think it can't be understated how much easier a game feels when you start with a G-rank version of a game and then the next game comes out as a High-rank one. People will flood forums and whine about how easy it is without really thinking that it wasn't the full game and the way the release the games is not usual.
The game is OBJECTIVELY easier as almost every single mechanic is simplified and monster AI is slowed down. Getting hit doesn't even affect you anymore because you just wire bug recovery every 5 seconds. You can chug potions while sprinting and sharpen on your dog. It's impossible to die unless you're a total mong that isn't even looking at the screen. Or you take off all of your armor and actually get one shot by the monster. If the monster doesn't one shot you, it's literally impossible to die in Rise, because you can just sprint and chug potions. It's like playing a fantasy RPG where you can drink potions in the pause menu instead of it taking a turn to drink a potion.
I don't think this is true. The past two monster hunter games have had very poor difficulty in the base game, but really ramp it up with the expansions. It's nowhere like this in the older titles. Even replaying 4U and 3U as of late I've noticed that highrank used to feel significantly harder than it does now. It's as if the difficulty scales a lot less now.
@@Sammysapphira can you share a video of you hunting an afflicted sinister magnamalo lvl 180 please
@@Sammysapphira sounds like someone who never played sunbreak tu1 and after. People die way more online in this game than 4u or iceborne. Certain monsters you just cant play online have to do them solo because everyone always triple carts. Only monster ive seen people get bodied by as hard as some of the high level afflicted monsters in this game is rusted kush in 4u and behemoth in workd.
Even being able to run while healing doesnt matter so much as the monsters are significantly more aggressive and have better tracking. So you still have to take a turn and pick your spot and same goes for wirefall, most of the time its better to wait on the ground before doing it or not do it at all because the monsters are specifically designed to pop you when doing it recklessly. The game just feels like less of a slog because its faster. I went back to 4u and was able to do the masters test after a couple warm up hunts first try whereas risen teo in tu3 took me like 5 attempts with my friend
@@tongpoo8985 Adding onto this, AI and attack patterns for monsters have been drastically remixed and revamped in Rise. The wirefall is an excellent, powerful tool, but many late game monsters, even in base Rise (haven't gotten around to Sunbreak) had patterns that punish the reflexive use of wirefall. Just like any other part of the movement kit, the wirefall is a tool you have to choose to use when you know it's time for it, or you'll get slapped. Simply claiming that it's an easy always get out of jail free card is not accurate to the design of the game as a whole.
The player having more options doesn't matter if the monsters get more options too. Just look at Rathalos in Rise compared to Tri, 4U, or hell even World. He got a full, very scary, imo, revamp that turned him from a dopey easy to murk brainless wyvern into a downright scary aerial predator if you're not adequately prepped for his new aggression.
Very beautiful and fantastic video. Started with portable 3rd and seen so many changes in the monster hunter series, but never looked at how well the mechanics actually work together. Great video and Keep up the good work.
Hi there. First of all I want to say the final conclusion at the end of the video works to put me at ease a little bit. I have so much I would like to say but I will try to keep it short. I started playing Rise + Sunbreak a few weeks ago and really felt the downgrade in difficulty, and it had an impact on my enjoyment and experience. Today I searched online for the very same question that entitles this video, and after three or four videos discussing the same thing, I felt a bit hopeful I wasnt the only one with that idea in my head, thinking maybe Capcom would listen and adapt in future games. There was a very long list of things that seemed (and lets be honest: do) to make the game much easier. I felt devastated thinking one of my most favourite games (if not the very favourite) was taking a path of no return that wasnt going to give me what I expected from it. But then I saw those last 10 minutes of your video and it really clicked. You're right! Its all about what the game wants you to learn in order to win. Thats the experience. Thats the main act. We can always enjoy a new way of playing monster hunter, that will always be there for us.
Having said that, I would like to point out something:
I dont think its wrong for the devs to create new mechanics in new games. A new mechanic will make you feel out of your place with your weapon (or the whole game) at first, of course, but eventually you will add the mechanic to your repertoire, and you will feel fluid and good using it. Thats a good thing, its a good feeling. However, this can make the development of monsters attacks and patterns more troublesome for developers, since they will have to constantly re-design or change them in new games in order to make the monster feel like a challenge, like something that wants you to grow, to learn. Think about Sunbreaks "meta": the use of wirebugs its majorly a must in order to make the most out of a weapon. And most monsters, given the wide windows you get to attack them in this game, feel almost like a nuisance you have to get through to finally get to the end of the game and finally feel the pressure of the hunt. I felt bored - and trust me I hate having to use that word when talking about this game - when doing the village quests, and even the low and high rank quests.
If a monster makes you get bored when hunting it, why even add it to the game? Thats what I thought when playing rise. Not that every monster makes you feel that way, but at least more than half of the village-to-high rank monsters do. Even MR at some times. And its not even the monsters fault: its the overpowered mechanics and the lack of adjusting of monsters behaviour to them. I understand its an enourmous work to update every single monster you want to add to a series in order to make it feel entertaining. But hunts have become, at least for me, very repetitive.
Anyway. I appreciate this whole community of people supporting this amazing game. You guys are what makes it so great. I love playing MH and will keep doing it, probably despite the changes. But I hope one day I get the same feeling I got when first going to fight, determinated to win, against a Yian Kut-Ku. Or the respect and alertness I had when hunting a Yian Garuga, or the Tigrex. Or the laughs (and cries) I had when trying to beat two Diablos at the same time with a friend.
TL;DR: I love you guys, I love the game, mobility mechanics are making the monsters feel rusty and the hunts repetitive and inocuous, dont do coke.
I have to say, I don't agree with you, but I can completely understand you. If I were in your position, I would feel the same way, but for me, MH Rise is my favourite MH. It's generally pretty high up there with my favourite games in general. I used to have my fun with difficult games, loved playing MH 3 ultimate back in the day (joined to MH kinda late). But now I find it more important when something feels good. and Rise does that extremely well. As a hunter you feel very agile and the wirebug moves are simply fun. You're the main character and I just love it. It doesn't matter whether you dash through the opponent with the Swtich axe or be a valstrax with the Gunlance. It's just cool and epic. Hope that makes sense and you can understand my side : )
I like that Rise and World both utilize different features and mechanics to make hunting exciting and challenging. Rise definitely felt easier for me (defender set made sure of that) but I've been playing since Freedom Unite and never felt that before.
Grew up playing unite, it’s my fav one
Really appreciate someone properly adressing the difference between pre 5th gen and post 5th gen gameplay and why some prefer one to the other.
Truly how do you not have more subs? The scripting pacing and Informative information in this video is astounding for such a small channel, let alone professionalism in sound quality, confidence in speaking, and editing! Keep it up my man you're going places!
The answer is simple - RUclips prefers frequent uploads of shorter videos; Uploading a 20 minute video at most twice a year will make RUclips bury you under more frequent uploaders.
people don't use the subscription page anymore so everyone is just served videos algorithmically through the home page, notifications and the sidebar, which all use algorithms to serve "content" based on what data google has harvested on them to predict what they like, which actually narrows peoples interest and discourages self-curation since it totally kills discoverability for smaller channels beyond youtube's arbitrary rules that change at the drop of a hat.
I don't even play Monster Hunter, but this video was so well made, I watched and enjoyed the whole thing.
(The Shockmaster reference really caught me off guard)
*Play it.*
Play it.
Play it
You have to bro
Play it.
I love world. It may be a bit easier than older gens, but everything looks and feels so alive.
And personally, I like how the monsters counter world players' extra freedom of movement: that is, by being more mobile themselves.
Easier you say? You mean less clunky controls, because after reaching the end game, beating Fatalis and AT Velkhana, World definitely isn't easy.
@@RukaGoldheart I say "may be" because I really don't know how newer games compare to the old ones. I've only played World and a little bit of Rise.
Same I loved World, I just dislike the clutch claw introduced in IB lol
Mhw feels like the game monster hunter was always meant to be. A living ecosystem that can be traversed seamlessly and with all sorts of fun dynamic interactions between the wildlife.
Older monster games were fun. But they felt quite barren and the way the small monsters acted never felt real. And nothing knocks you out of immersion like literally getting knocked out of one zone by the monster and directly into a loading screen
@@anenemystand5582mhw is the best mh not because of gameplay, even though its amazing, its because it feels like youre hunting a creature in a live world, from the map design to all the little creatures, the interavtions between mpnsters, the fact alot of monsters are passive and the favt tjeh actually interact with the enviroment outside combat.
I like the more “action flow” of Rise. The open map, no loading zones, feels more immersive. The village quests do feel easier than past gen (was playing Generations Ultimate prior). And the palamute greatly made using “upkeep” items mobile.
I'll be honest here. I have never been so fascinated by a commentary video before in my life. The way you talk and how you explain the topic is really amazing. But most important of all, you did not say anything that would degrade people's opinion about something, truly the middleman of the topic with a valid reasoning behind it.
The world seriously need more of this kind of commentary videos instead of commenting something to make it looks bad and recieve a lot of view and subs just because people really love drama and hate-speech.
Really amazing brother, keep up the good work.
This was very insightful and with top tier editing. Amazing video!
Even as a MH Boomer I don't want the series to be an experience only meant for masochists. But I do hope Capcom finds a middle ground between old and new, because I think failure it's an integral part of your growth as a hunter and later entries are becoming adverse to that idea.
as an old "guard" player rise was way too easy. going back to mh4U and MHGU kicked my ass, i had to learn to git gud again. felt great TBH
this as a mh3ubaby i feel the same way. MH4U and MHXX/GU is true monhuns.
I started in 4U, skipped Generations Ultimate (didn't know it existed until after world had come out), played World and Iceborne and eventually picked up 4U again for nostalgia.
Now I can't even get back into World lol it feels way too easy?? I don't know why, is it just the hitboxes?
The argument that "your just getting better" is 100% untrue in my case, when I go back to 3U it's still the hardest mh game for me, the high rank in 3U feels as difficult if not MORE difficult than the G rank in Rise/Sun
G rank is Rise/Sun is not hard and 3U was one, not hard for me at all. I know it is cliché, but FU is way more unforgiving, I do like many changes they have made sense.
The faster game play the the betterment of the resources collecting a lot is better, but it did make it more EZ.
Only in FU do you have to do multiple quests just for the preparation of every attempt at a Hard Monster. Evan, in the late game, you will always be missing something.
evan in Tri you will reach the point of abundance, in FU it only comes at the very end. Maining a Gunner in FU is not really possible with the cost it creates until the advanced game.
One thing they also make it seam Harder is the way slower progression entering high Rank takes a lot of time wares as in MHW you can enter MR in a mater of hours as i did when i played it.
I think it would be interesting to have "restricted" or "legacy" challenges that disable certain gameplay features, would be interesting bonus or event content. Kind of the equivalent to having an old man yell at you about how things were back in the day. But as a quest.
I can see it. Challenges called "survival hunts" where you're dropped somewhere random on the map, with no camp AT ALL. Would be really fun!
It depends, each game has its super challenges, such as sunbreak afflicted, GU deviants, Fatalis and alatreon in iceborne, 4U apex, etc.
Arch tempered elders
Bro, older MH games you would be lucky to have 5 skills, Right now IN rise I have 3 pages of skills and I'm faster then the monster. Each game has a super challenge sure but the game overall HAS gotten easy because the hunters have gotten to strong
@@catowarmeowson9964 maybe because you are too skilled?
@@catowarmeowson9964 Bro, monsters also used to be sloths. They have gotten way smoother and more aggressive with their attacks to compensate for your increased movement. The skill gap has gotten way bigger in the newer games. Meaning that an experienced hunter can do so much more over a newbie in rise than one could in mhfu. Having the base experience you have and then giving you all these perks just feels like a buff but for new players they have to learn everything and more now. They do feel a little easier to complete but the skill ceiling has been raised so that perfection is much harder to obtain.
@@OMGYOUARER8GHT no, I still struggle I with old mh
Excellent video, it covers pretty much the most important aspects that define the change of style (and challenge) in the newer entries.
Really glad to see that your channel is growing and how many views this video got also.
I'm fine with most of the changes made to MH but I would really love to see an HD re-release of FU or any other of the old titles since their unique flavor is still worth experiencing. The only change that I kinda dislike is how healing works now, I think there should be a reward to incentivize not moving around while you're drinking a potion, without removing the option to do so.
Oh also and most importantly, your robot girl OC is CUTE!
I wish item consumption effects were faster if you stood still. For example, your potions heal you faster if you stand still, or your dash juice takes less time to activate if you stand still. That way, if you use these items during a hunt you're rewarded for timing it well. When you aren't actively in a hunt, you just get to save time by activating the effect quicker.
They are in world but not to a degree that makes standing still worth it personally@@DursTuckle
26:28 Da Baby casually carrying the squad
LET'S GO NANORA~!
I like that they added the flexibility newer games added. It helps people who are great at the game. It encourages people that aren't as good at the game to try new things and learn.
The beauty of options is that if you don’t want to use mechanics, you can go on a solo hunt and not equip them that I love.
Remember that Hunter wearing the Rathian Armor in MHW? That dude straight up does not use a slinger and manually throws items. I love that guy. He still hunts like a pre-MHW hunter, but he doesn't think that the newer hunters that use slingers and fireflies are worse hunters, just different.
I love it.
Isn't that also the guy you see in the into of the first MH
Self imposed difficulty should never be considered as a replacement for actual intentional difficulty, or challenge for that matter. Basically, if I am forcing the game itself to be harder for me, it's not going to be as enjoyable for many people as compared to the game being challenging from the get go and figuring out how to overcome those challenges. Video games that have difficulty as part of their metric essentially boil down to elaborate, complex puzzle pieces. We play games and overcome challenges in them because we like solving puzzles. If the solution to the puzzle is already handed to you from the beginning, it kind of defeats the purpose of solving it.
@@Aesiedasomeone with a brain
@@Aesieda I agree with you that self-imposed challenges shouldn't supplement difficulty. But with that said, I feel like Monster Hunter is the one series that can get away with it, just because of how much of the challenge depends on the player. I personally stopped using Wirebugs in Rise, for example, and I started having a lot more fun when I took away my get out of jail free card
@@NEETKitten I don't see anything special about MH as compared to other games. People push self-imposed challenges on themselves in other games as well like Pokemon. Hell, speedrunning is a form of self-imposed difficulty as well and pretty much every game with standard progression elements can be speedran.
I myself can purposely choose to avoid mechanics in MH or other games, but it just doesn't feel as satisfying. When I first played Dark Souls 1, I played it mostly blind but I had a blast cause I did everything in my power to overcome all the challenges the game had to offer. I never had to purposely avoid mechanics or gimp myself.
It's all psychological in the end.
2:59 That final greatsword swing was so awesome, holy crap!
I started in MH4U and even though World was "easier", I got a lot of challenge and enjoyment experimenting with mixed sets. Also those endgame hunts were some of the most fun I've had playing Monster Hunter
Excellent video! I feel like my worries has been put to ease with the future of the franchise once again. The video really didn't provide anything ground breakingly new for me but simply reminded me of what I already knew.
Awesome video man! This is a very well made and fun to watch youtube video. You are really underrated and deserve more subscribers. Fantastic editing aswell. Very well done, you definitely have my like and sub!
As a Tri Veteran who went back to play older titles I can say progress is a boon but i prefer having mechanically easier hunts, where preparation and monster knowledge count for more.
The multi Monster quest example is a perfect highlight for that. Really thinking about what weapon and items to bring was much more fun than 30 min Fatalis DPS check.
I wanna say I had a whole evolution throughout this video because Im just getting into monster hunter and honestly this is completely right based off the gameplay styles of players and how they react to how a monster fights through this video I was fight Mitzusne for the first time and I'm just learning longsword and I won't lie I die 2 times. But on the third try around the time he started talking about learning how to adapt and looking for attacks that a player should look out for, it clicked for me. :Oh shi* I can see it now" I said as I was about to get shot with a water beam. I got into a pose and countered the b I t ch.
Bro if you uploaded just a bit more I know you'd blow up. Your commentary and style is top notch.
Keeping a higher upload frequency is kinda tricky without sacrificing somethin' with this style, but I'm tryin' to work on it!
As someone who plays Rise and Freedom(gen 1). I noticed how the difficulty is mainly on limitations, like an even more limited inventory, hitbox being too big for their own good etc. Nowadays it's mainly making monsters with strong enough attacks and being swift to catch us off guard.
I agree. Whenever I talk about "difficulty in MH" with my friends, even though we've only really started playing in Gen5, it's been less about X game is easier than Y game and more X game presents challenges that the monsters are then changed to compensate for. Like in Rise the monsters being absolute psychopaths travelling at 2000000mph and literally teleporting. Like you choose a MH game based on the gameplay you feel like playing, not the difficulty.
I've noticed that too, a lot of the difficulty in the older games feels more like it's due to things like bad hit boxes than intended design. I'm more successful in the new games, but when I lose it rarely feels undeserved unlike older titles.
@@TuriGamer I think it's more accurate to compare it to the difference between the souls games. Sekiro, Demons' Souls, Dark Souls, Elden Ring, and Bloodborne are all the same souls franchise, but each one has a very distinct gameplay type where you may prefer one over the other, and it's totally fine to do so. Like some people enjoy the slower methodical combat of Demons' Souls or Dark Souls, while others enjoy the faster paced games like Sekiro or Bloodborne.
This is the same for the Monster Hunter franchise as each game, while it has the same core gameplay loop, reiterates upon the style of how the gameplay is carried out, which keeps the game feeling refreshing and new.
@@TuriGamer Yes because dealing with shitty hit boxes was to make you think not because they just couldn't bother to not design it like dogshit.
@@TuriGamer this is 100% what happened
I think that as you said, difficult moments, levels or monsters aren't the main point of Monster Hunter as a series. Rather, these serve to test and adequate you to what comes next or raise your skill level. That's why it feels like an integral part of the experience, because when you're playing it for the first time it *is*. My first game was World and i finished the main story without learning to properly time my rolls to take advantage of invincibility frames. I changed to longsword, used crystalbursts and scatternuts, i shoulder-tackled, used guardpoints and counters, changed to bow, dove away, upgraded my armor, used divine blessing... But i could never reliably roll every attack. That is, untill barioth. Master Rank was biting me in the neck and by the time i reached the story quest to hunt barioth i had already faced many difficulty peaks. Every weapon every time was just a bit too slow to come out of certain moves and/or sheathe to dive. Barioth taught me how to roll. It's not a difficulty curve, it's more of a zigzag line like the one shown at 6:35. The gameplay loop is as follows: You get shown a mechanic and/or feature and gain some monster options to hunt and familiarize yourself with those. In the beginning these are your attacks, how they chain together, environmental traps, your great Jagras, Pukei-Pukei's and so on. Then the game presents you with more features and/or more depth to the stuff you already know. These are your Flinches, Interruptions(Hitting Anjanath's face when it's Breathing Fire), Verticality(Mushroom walls, aerial attacks and Tobi-Kadachi being a Monster that climbs and jumps a lot). And so on and so forth. If you as a player can find a solution that involves pushing your understanding of these features for later, that's a valid effort and you'll be rewarded for that. But those features might come to bite you in the ass later because if you managed to overcome said challenge the game interprets that you understood (at least on an intuitive level) the things it's trying to teach you. Difficulty in the Monster Hunger series for me might not be the same as for the guy who played Rise first and got used to the usefulness of elemental blights that can be applied to monsters or the hands-on airtime given by wirebugs. The way everyone approaches each monster and gets familiarized with the formula as new iterations happen influences their opinions on difficulty DEEPLY. Long-ass comment, but a well-deserved one. Shit, i love this game.
I think that’s a very strongly made point. My question is: what comes next, for new players made veterans? We all remember our first MH as the most difficult, but it seems like every successive entry we play is designed around the same base difficulty, so it comes to feel like we breeze through low and high rank and are just waiting for G rank to come. I would like to ask what the devs can do to keep us more engaged and give us that desire for self-improvement our first game gave us, even at the lower ranks.
Because the community felt pretty impatient waiting for the G rank expansion, and I dunno how well that’s gonna hold up now that the community is much bigger
@@emblemblade9245 They should play a better game. Like Dark Souls
I just got MHW and began playing. I'm a bit of an older hunter, having been a fan of the series since my PSP years. I definitely felt the game was a lot more streamlined than before and I miss some of the old school prepping and hunting elements that aren't as relevant anymore. Still I couldn't say for sure the game was "easier". The challenges were just different. Great video, loved the points being raised.
Yup felt the same way first playing World Palico was also way more OP lol the you jus get use to it
Challenges like what? Care to elaborate?
Pretty good video! Nicely nuanced and and very well edited. For me personally, the higher emphasis on the commitment mentioned in the video is something I really miss and is what made this series really click. Even if it was easier than 5th gen (and honestly I think the new games might have a higher skill ceiling anyway) the higher emphasis on methodical actions is something I prefer much more over the more free-flowing and reaction heavy gameplay, it wasn't eeally much of a difficulty issue for me as it is the gradual change in the core gameplay loop,,* though of course it's not like it's gone entirely
I think the focus of the devs on multiplayer you mentioned might be a point that is pretty understated by the community too. As someone who mostly plays solo and think that's where the combat definitely shines the brightest, I can't help but wonder if that aspect being less of a priority and more of an afterthought might've made this series even more enjoyable for me.
Regardless, I've seen quite a few threads and videos about these kind of topics and people seem rather sensitive about it. Expect a lot of comments that seem like they haven't gotten further than the first 2 mintues of this video or even just the title from people belonging tp both sides of the argument
Plesioth's Hip Check has such a wide range, it hit me all the way in Rise.
Eh. People seriously need to go back and play older monhuns and see how reality actually stacks up to their memories. With the 'return' of dundorma and loc lac I recently replayed 2 and 3 a bit, and what I used to describe as methodical and committed is now much more accurately described as slow motion. To the point it is much, much easier, to the point my old block (2 GS) and evasion (swax) builds are just..... So not necessary. Especially GS, holy cow, I feel like I'm on crack or something with how easy it is to just not do anything but land unsheathe charge swings on massive openings.
I want to comment on the videos point of the introduction of palicos, with a huge thumbs up, as that is such a massive change to the gameplay that often goes unstated. It actually took me a long time to warm up to using them, as their distraction of the monster injected an aspect of unpredictability not present when the monster soley focused on you. (If this isn't a dead giveaway, I'm totally a solo hunter). I did warm up to them, mainly because the damn little hair ball's are so charming, and they gathered loot.
I do think the item argument is a nonstarter though. At least for my playstyle. In old monhuns you were 99% of the time never farther than a couple feet from an exit to the area, where you could take your time to heal, eat, sharpen, and do whatever you wanted completely at ease, far moreso at ease than even wirebugging up to a clifftop in rise, where the monster will slam it knocking you off, losing your item use.
But even that was pointless to me by.... Tri, per necessity (arena/single area maps), as the monster ai was so exploitable you could do almost anything you wanted by simply sheathing and baiting a monster into an attack animation which you avoid and reposition where you could then complete almost any animation, while the monster recovers and reorientates, unless you had no levels in speed sharpening, then sharpening may be a gamble. This works the vast majority of the time, with the rare exception of those monsters that are specifically designed to pressure the player, in which case you had to wait for a specific attack, to make sure you had the time/it's not a massive aoe. Or if there were multiple monsters in a single stage area. Ok, THAT crap WAS, and STILL is rough when they all held an unspoken alliance to just smear the crap out of you. This was, and is one of the rare times my stingy butt would actually *use* the items i hoarded like a looney, smoke bombs, traps, drugged meat, anything to buy me some 1 on 1 time. Multi monster fights have DEFINITELY been made easier, or rather, less BS cheap. I feel like this could be explored, we have monsters that fight over territory, I feel like we should have monsters that have a supplemental relationship, that would be more likely to work with each other when encountering a hunter, so we have monsters that can be exploited against each other, along with monsters that have natural reasons to work together and need to be seperated/made sure they don't make contact.
The restocking at base camps is also a non starting argument for me, as it just doesn't affect me in any way shape or form. Back when I actually struggled, and needed more than 10 mega potions, I would take spare materials with me to simply craft them in the field. Or run off ajd collect some herbs and honey, in complete safety. No I had no points in crafting, the amount lost if any was trivial to me. That provided me with so many potions I never came close to using them all, making the difference between that and restocking at a base meaningless to me.
I can't imagine anyone who has played more than one monster hunter also being impacted by this, which leads to only one possible reason for the bile spewed by veteran players, it doesn't impact them at all, they just don't want new players to have that accessibility. They're crab people. Which is a pretty garbage state of being if you ask me.
Adding new movement options disproportionately benefits veteran players who are building off of mountains of past experience. For newcomers, it makes the game harder as they have much more to learn at once than we did. You can't make use of those abilities, if you don't have the skills to use them, and the knowledge of when to use them.
As far as I'm concerned, combat wise, what new monhuns have become is more engaging, I know have far more tools at my disposal, which means I can express how I play for more dexterously, even so much as choosing what set of actions I want to use at a particular time, even in response to the same monster action, so I'm not always doing the same move in response to the same action, something that not only wasn't possible in older monhuns, but I would never dream of even doing, or even be capable of doing, when I first played older monhuns, but the lack of which is painfully apparent in replaying the older monhuns. The skill ceiling is much much much higher, higher than the difficulty ceiling (so far, sunbreak is still updating, and it's becoming.... Less friendly with each update).
Where monster hunters 'difficulty' has mostly been toned down, a LOT is outside of combat. This was a slap to the face when replaying dos, (dos, on PS2, not the very different psp freedom 2, which tones this down a LOT already, I don't expect many people to have played dos though), and it was still a little bit there in tri, and that's the difficulty in actually progressing the game, the grind you had to make to progress the village, and even to gather and stock the items needed to progress. If you were even allowed access to the areas you needed to get said items/loot from at that point in time. There were large periods of time spent not fighting monsters to progress, but gathering to get things you needed, in order to fight those monsters to progress. The thing is, that wasn't hard. Or challenging. It was tedious, and monotonous. But it did have..... There WAS something to it, (when it was behind you) there was a satisfaction felt when the toil paid off. But not enough for me to ever want it brought back as it was. Heck no. Oh also gathering loot. Rngesus has seriously, seriously chilled out, and I have absolutely no complaints about that, and again, feel like this is only something in the domain of crab people who want others to suffer what they did.
That being said.... Gathering is just not the mind numbing grind it used to be..... I feel the tedium has been wrung out of it enough, that a new form of that mechanic that used to be such a large part of monhuns identity, while also being so tedious could be brought back with major payoff to immersion, satisfaction, and payoff.
My experience is that, at this point, going back from Sunbreak to 3U showed me that 3U was DEFINITELY harder to play, progress, and grind through. Sure, I had been playing since 3U, but even with all the skill and context of knowing the ins and outs of hunting in present day, the combat was still clumsier and the grind was still sloggier. I'm sometimes outright untouchable against some Master Rank monsters in Iceborne or Sunbreak, but I can ALWAYS expect even a basic G-rank monster in 3U to give me a bit of a hard time simply because the game itself is more difficult in the hunt.
Now, of course, the really subjective aspect is whether the numerous, objectively easier elements added over the years "devalue the core gameplay" as you have Aisha (Moga Sweetheart, my first guild rep from 3U... and still the BEST considering how she behaves in Gen U) saying. I don't believe that for myself. I take great satisfaction from finishing hunts with ever greater speed thanks to the process of building my skill sets and more reactively adapting my actions in combat using my weapon. Being able to upgrade to max without needing a particular kind of armor sphere to do it that drops only occasionally also helps in the defense department. The game respects my time more in the grind, though the grind still doesn't end very easily.
While I can get equipment refreshes, it's been nary a fight I've fought where I NEEDED the refresh to survive. Most of the time, I cart due to getting combo'd, one-shotted, or found in a compromising position while in need of healing, not running out of healing items. Monsters still take a considerable chunk of time and consideration to fight, though it's much easier to attack without downtime compared to how it used to be, meaning I can feel the satisfaction of hitting quite a bit more. It might even be said that the freedom to attack so much can create an illusion of safety that presents a new danger in a hunt. But the point remains that I have more fun now than before. I'm not as invested in the simulation of hunting.
This all disregards most aspects of multiplayer, but, notably, I practically REQUIRED multiplayer to progress at an adequate pace in 3U when compared with newer games, and this considers my CURRENT skill. I dare say that the incentive to fight with others may itself be what's falling off in the series for me as the games iterate and make me more individually capable. I felt confident enough in progressing within Iceborne and Sunbreak on my own, ironically. My first victory against Iceborne's Alatreon was SOLO, for crying out loud. Even so, I'm ultimately loving Monster Hunter more as it iterates. I'm of the old guard, but not amongst the ones who miss the old days.
8:23: Thats one of the decisive points. All these discussions assume that difficulty in MH is static. When, in fact, it is fluent and largely dependent on your own choices.
Bring Windproof and Astera Jerky vs Lunastra, and suddenly you will have a hard time dying even once. Bring Blight Resistance 3 vs Alatraeon, or Heavy Artillery 2 vs Fatalis etc. and they all become significantly easier.
And those choices not only affect difficulty; its simply fun spending time strategizing and preparing in order to overcome a challenge in the game.
Originally, i didnt want to click on that video, because it seemed like "one of those" videos. But im glad, i did. Your content is in-depth and the production quality is honestly kind of nuts.
Objectively speaking from Mh Gen to Mh Rise naming 1 example it is already easier since you see a blue symbol at the monster if it is already catchable. Alone that makes the hunt easier since you are relieved of stress and know you are on the right way
I think the biggest issue is that most of the veterans came in at some of the hardest points in the series and they're the most vocal about the difficulty thing. MH1, F, F2, and FU are all notoriously difficult and unforgiving. 3U's underwater was clunky and G-rank was super fast. 4U's guild quest system had very difficult combinations and was how most of the community was farming. And here's where you'll notice a pattern. Of the first 7 games that were released outside of Japan, 4 of them had G-rank, Freedom, FU, 3U, and 4U, and they even skipped some High Rank entries, being Dos, Portable 3rd, and 4. With G-rank being the endgame focus for most veterans, they find that the next game being only High Rank as too easy. And they aren't wrong. Compared to the G-rank content, everything in High Rank is easier. And a good amount of the veteran MH players play for the challenge. So whenever a new game comes out without G-rank, they get in a fit because it doesn't have G-rank, play the game anyway, then complain some more that the game that is easier than they wanted was easier than they wanted. Then they start complaining about no G-rank and make guesses when the G-rank expansion comes that is never guaranteed.
Fun Fact: Generations wasn't going to have a G-rank version. The only reason that Double Cross/Generations Ultimate even released was because of fan outcry. I'm just glad that GenU's localization released during a time when World was at its lowest for me.
For me, personally, as someone who started on 3U but didn't do the G-rank content because I didn't have friends with the game at the time, I don't mind the High Rank only games. What I do mind is the power creep in both the skills you can have, both the number and power of them, and how spongy monsters have become. In GenU, you'd be lucky to have 6 skills active, while in Rise, you regularly have 10 skills fully active. With the dynamic difficulty, especially with gunners, I feel like I'm doing nothing. I don't get flinches I'm chasing the monsters most of the time. If I wasn't a HH main for multiplayer, I probably would be doing nothing. I also feel I'm being pressured into pure dps sets more than in previous games, where having Evasion+1 felt mandatory to avoid some attacks.
I agree pretty much
@@williamking1081 Want the perfect balance of Freedom Unite White Fatalis DLC difficulty but without the clunkiness of older games and the old school graphics for nostalgia factor, ALL IN ONE?
Portable 3 Ancient X monster custom quests, or X rank as I amicably call it.
What you're saying would only apply if veterans could somehow skip Low Rank and High Rank and couldn't compare between games
It's not just the lack of G-rank
Souls games don't have this problem.
Why just not make LR and HR hard?
@@brojakmate9872 Here's the thing: they tend to be difficult enough. If you would compare a Souls game to MonHun, then the first playthrough is always the hardest. Once you've learned the game, future playthroughs aren't that difficult. If you've a veteran of one game in the series, that experience travels to other games in the series. The problems come when you're trying to make the game more accessible to new players.
If you compare the start of any Souls game, aside from the controls, the game just throws you into it. Compared to MonHun, each game wants you to do the single player content to learn the game. Where Dark Souls wants you to learn things through trial and error, MonHun wants to guide you to be a better hunter. And while the tutorials in MonHun have gotten better over the years (they didn't tell you how to capture a monster in early MonHun for mandatory capture quests), the main changes in difficulty have been the quality of life changes over the years.
There are three major QOL changes that heavily change the difficulty in my opinion: loadouts, combining, and using items. Where once you could only bring a set load-out of 30 items (between healing items, ammo, and other supplies), then you can bring 30 items plus 10 ammos in a pouch for ammo, then you can restock your items so that limit isn't needed. Where once you had to manually combine items in your bag, then you can combine items in a list of shortcuts, then you can assign a specific set of combines to a hotkey. And where once you had to stand in place and watch a flexing animation to heal, now you can move around while your potions are being used. Imagine if in Dark Souls your Estus Flask became infinite use and instant and you've got something similar. It doesn't matter if you can only have 2 Max Potions on you if you can restock them at a moments notice with a Farcaster. And this isn't even getting into how broken the armor skill system's become, but that's another can of worms.
This is a very nuanced point when it comes to MH. In many ways MH has become easier.
- We have way more armor skills, with no downsides (negative skills) attached to them.
- Weapons move sets are greatly expanded and infinitely less clunky, except for Gunlance.
- You can access your entire box in the tent at base, which you can fast travel to any time you're not in combat.
- Gathering has become faster and requires less planning.
- Palicos have only gotten stronger throughout the series.
- We have much more in and out of combat mobility.
- Crafting requirements are significantly reduced.
- We can benefit from all kinds of endemic life.
- Gimmicks like monster riding deal damage and create openings basically for free.
While there are these examples of the games becoming easier, in some ways they have also become more difficult.
- Monsters have way more complex move sets and patterns.
- Having more choices in armors and weapons also increases the chance of you making bad choices when selecting them.
- Many parts of the games are balanced around modern mechanics, one notably being monster health.
The question we need to ask is if the parts that became easier outweigh the parts that became more difficult. Right now, I think they absolutely do. I think MH as a whole has become easier over time. Hunters right now are highly overpowered.
At its core a game is a set of problems that you, the player, has to find solutions for. MH right now has too many solutions for each problem. It means that even without engaging with the finer details of the problem, you will stumble upon the solution quite easily. In older games, we had less available solutions, meaning that you had to engage more with the problem itself to figure out what the actual solution is.
I think if Capcom can bring back a sense of problem solving, instead of everything you do being this blanket solution to whatever the game throws at you, it will be very healthy for the future of the series. Solving a problem generally feels much better when you understand what the problem actually was. Solving it by accident or simply by default is usually not going to be as satisfying as a whole. It can even end up feeling like you are cheating, as I often feel like in current MH.
Really appreciate your analysis here, thank you for taking the time to make this.
Seeing how monster hunter was back when it released in the west a long time ago, yeah, it's getting way easier now than it was back then. For me that's how it feels like to me.
When it comes to Rise, Dual blades + Demon Flight = No Skill, Button Spam Perfection👌💯
Switched from Sunbreak to MHGU and it’s weird to think the two are even from the same series given how different they are. I like MHGU more but it’s not for the kind of wide audience Sunbreak was made for. For a lot of people SB is a better fit and it’s just a bigger crowd. It wouldn’t make sense to make new MH games for players like me because it would be a financial disaster.
This is a great video that the mh community needed for a long time.
0:33 I hate how I instantly went “hey wait I know that artist.”
Thank you for helping me to not get so caught up in the difficulty discussion and refocus on loving the game with friends and introducing it to new people.
I think it's a combination of things that has made MH become percieved as "getting easy." Players, as a group, have just become much better at action gameplay, MH's core mechanics getting refined, new gimmicks, and better movement options have all contributed. World and Rise are called easier because it introduced movement we've never had before. Not just the Clutch Claw or Wirebugs, but the mere fact that we can move as we drink potions or drugs. Before that was a static commitment and left you wide open. Let's also not forget that all the weapons have gotten refined and their gameplay styles have evolved with every new generation adding more to the weapon that it had. Longsword and Sword and Shield look nothing like they did in MH1 (LS was just a GS back then). And then let's not forget that in general, new and returning players have just become better at playing action games as a whole so there's a general increase in skill even without Monster Hunter being involved.
Has MH gotten "easy?" Yes, however this is not due to one things. It's growing pains of MH adjusting to a more fast pace action gameplay than it used to be as well as players in general, not just MH veterans, being much better at playing action games than before.
Longsword was not basically a great sword in MH1, it did not exist at all, it was only introduced in MHDos, the 4th game in the main series
@@lightbrand_ I'm almost certain the weapon shape was there. It just didn't have any different movements from GS. Just a great sword with a different skin.
@@blackmark2899 Correct. It actually has the same name and model in MHW as it did in MH1 as a great sword.
Divine Slasher
Go back to MH1, the small monsters hassled you MUCH more.
@@MaakaSakuranbo controls also sucked and our movement options were limited and half the flying wyverns didn't even fight you, spending most of the hunt flying around. Yes the small monsters hassled you more but that has little to do with why MH is perceived as being easy today.
I think one aspect that not many people talk about is that gen 5 seemed to have been designed to be as solo player friendly as possible. In earlier entry only the low rank was meant to be played alone. You could try to play the rest of the game solo but the monster would become massive damage sponge and you could actually be at risk of running out of time which isn't something that should normally be a threat. But World and Rise were designed to be playable solo or multiplayer all the way through. And I think that aspect can explain many of the decisions they made in those games.
People actually complained about hurtboxes getting fixed? And I thought Souls community is bad.
There are 2 changes which I feel are instrumental in making monster hunter "easier" from old gens to 5th gen:
- Camera, which the old style with the dpad and even the 3DS touchpad style lockon style camera just made controlling the game another skill. Finally putting the camera into the right stick with World basically eliminated the camera as something that you'd need to spend time learning extensively and getting your hands used to weird positions while just trying to look around.
I personally cannot play any of the older games just due to this change, despite having a 3DS.
- Acquisition of items such as honey and potions being made absurdly easy through botanist NPCs and even available readily in hunts meant that preparing basic resources for each hunt was not as much of a chore as it was in the original game, allowing you to spend more time throwing yourself into the hunt.
Those are the 2 things that I think world changed (to my knowledge) that significantly impacted game difficulty, although you would be right if you said that these aren't the only ones. That is because at least one of these changes was retrofitted onto Generations Ultimate for the switch, thus making it a far more accessible game.
The amount of mobility and the wirebugs did make Rise feel a lot easier. Even when I went back to World, I found myself pressing the wirebug button any time I got knocked around by a monster. Though honestly I could argue the same with GU which is by far my favorite of the series, the arts and styles can make fights a lot easier, aka Valor GS is a ton of fun with high mobility and quick charge attacks from drawing your blade or being able to dash forward with a max charged GS so you don't miss. But maybe do to the lack of verticality and being able to just run up a wall or spiderman around in the air, GU is a bit more grounded, unless you play Aerial style but even then
“Rise just feels easier because now you’re familiar with the base mechanics. Ask any newcomers to solo a Rathian, and I guarantee they’re gonna get their shit rocked.” - Punk Duck
umm well, i watch a streamer live, playing mh rise as his 1st time of monhun game, beat rathian in 7 min without dying lol.
@@joulmn link it.
FINALLY!!
SOMEONE WHO GETS IT
This video is perfectly explains the whole difficulty argument, in a fair, balanced & unbiased manner
Something that people doesn't always mention when discussion the difficulty about recent mh games is that... to combat the hunters getting so many new things, monsters have got their health quadrupled.
For reference, a master rank rathalos in GU have 10000 health,accurate to 2 digits, whereas in world master rank rathalos has 20000, and in rise even a high rank rathalos have over 14000, and a master rank one would have 36000.
That's just a bandaid fix that doesn't solve anything except increase hunt times, and usually that's not even the case either because looking at base health values has to be compared with damage output values of the average hunter/player. You could have a monster have double or triple the health in a new game, but the hunters also deal more damage consistently. Either way, simply upping health bars doesn't make fights more difficult in a natural way.
@user-bq5np8zb2r No old game monster does that, infact World monsters combo you more but go off fiver. Keep spreading that misinformation.
I don't comment often, but this video was amazing. Commentary that was so clear but persuasive, editing that was refined and thought about combined a series I hold near and dear. Please please keep it up. I know this is old but I'm going to binge your backlog now :))
Just found this video as I've been on a bit of a monster hunter binge recently and I gotta say, this video was incredibly well done and articulated. Fully agree that no matter where you stand on the difficulty of monster hunter or what it means to be monster hunter. Monster hunter is well... Monster hunter for better or for worse. Been a huge of the games ever since I was 7 years old when I played the original Monster hunter on PS2. I got so angry just dying to a freaking Gendrome as a kid but it never stopped being fun or exciting hunting since then. I hope for the best in your future essay videos. Again this was an incredibly well scripted, articulated and edited video with a ton of well put together assets to help explain your statements. Well done.
Well this is a pleasantly good video. You did a great job with it.
People after using long sword and then complaining about the game being too easy
Ikr. I need to know what weapon people are using and still calling it easy. If I use dual blades or bowgun of course the game gonna be easy af.
I love this series and I've always wondered why World and Rise seem so easy. I kinda miss the old stuff they removed or changed now
Remember snowman 😂 and you uad t get kicked to break the ice snow
"The greatest warrior becomes the most jaded, as all the joy and thrill has been lost to experience and skill. It is only when they find their student that their passion can ever be reignited."
This quote I feel fits here really well - a lot of Monster Hunter fans I know all seem to struggle with the thought of the games getting "easier" - when I'm over here dying to Kut-Ku's still. At the end of the day, if they would shift their focus to helping low rank, low skill hunters, I think they'd find a whole new love for the game again - At some point, the ultimate end for every master, is to become a teacher.
My biggest issue currently is with lower tier and starter monster's. It doesn't feel like a difficultly curve anymore with them, which eases you along to stronger monster's, it feels like a flat difficultly line that suddenly spikes into a wall. And that wall seems to get further and further away with each game, in world it was Anjanath, in rise it was magnamalo WHO US LITERALLY THE FLAGSHIP. Starter monster's are your practice, your training exercise, they're not meant to be terribly difficult but not be complete pushovers either. I have not met a SINGLE person who has ever carted to Great Jagras. Not once, not even the most hopeless of noobies. Nor have I met anyone who has ever failed a quest to a Pukei or Kulu. Low rank is an absolute slaughterhouse, and that's not exactly fun, nor does it extend the amount of playtime you get. It's just unfair, the player has dozens of advantages to use at their disposal, while the monster's have received none for themselves in return. Only 1 hit wipe out attacks for a select few that no one really seems to enjoy and are generally pretty easy to avoid (-lunastra & alatreon *cough*)
Monster's like Barroth were once a wall for many people, but now their little more than cannon fodder. The beginning of the difficultly curve gets further and further away, the hunter gets more and more advantages, and the monster's just get slower and weaker earlier on.
The amount of editing and thoughts dedicated in the of making this video will not go unappreciated, and i agree with your point. Great vid.
Anyway, i think you forgot to include the fact that the difficulty from the old style of hunting is actually just a by-product from the limitation of the aviable technology rather than the intended difficulty of the game. Sure the game gets easier but that's mostly because we have to deal with less bullshit than we used to. The core idea and mechanic of monster hunting is very much still there (at least in MH world).
A lot of the difficulty came from things like bad hitboxes, limited move sets and less than ideal control schemes. That much is very true. However, the core design philosophy is not entirely the same. In older games it was very clear that the monsters were at the top of the food chain so to speak. They were threats that you basically could not straight up overpower. You had to outsmart and outplay them in order to have a fighting chance. This means knowing their move sets, their behavioral patterns, weaknesses etc. It made you prepare before each hunt.
Now it is different. In current MH the hunter is the threat, not the monster. It has gotten to the point where you can ride monsters and puppeteer them, making them nothing more than tools for you to use. The threat of the monster is disappearing in favor of the hunter. It is a completely different design philosophy.
Not even to mention that the entire world works for you now as well, as it's filled with endemic life to make your hunts that much easier. When you can puppet monsters around, and the whole map is your tool, what chance do the monsters really have? All Capcom do is give monsters a crap ton of damage on their attacks, so on the off chance that you do mess up and get hit you are somewhat punished at least.
@@DaShikuXI The statement that monsters are no longer the threat or don't stand a chance against hunters is a huge exaggeration. It's not like players can just make all the mistakes in the world and still completely overpower the monster. If this were the case, it would completely go against the design philosophy of Monster Hunter. Weapons like Rise's Longsword and Bowguns are the exception, not the rule.
More options are available, but the monsters move faster and yes hit harder to compensate. The game has gotten easier to *control* but not necessarily any easier to do well at. The game knows players have options, and it's expected they use them. Failing to do so can be a massive handicap, weather thats to a players damage / time needed to finish a hunt or their overall survivability.
@@princetbug Speaking as a Light Bowgun player in Rise and Sunbreak, a bad move can still fail you the hunt.
world has definitely felt like the perfect amount of difficulty to me with the amount of qol it has and the end game bosses (while they sometimes feel like bs) were hard enough to make me keep going and feel quite satisfied when i beat them. Games like generations and rise giving you so many options to dodge and recover i never really liked so much and made me feel like there was no challenge. and going back to the older games makes it a bit frustrating when fighting the controls sometimes (looking at gunlance having to face away from the monster to move forward cause you can only backtep)
Your editing is god tier ಥ‿ಥ ❤️ Keep it up!
What a well written essay, Jesus christ, this video solely motivated me on keeping the train going and finally creating the youtube channel I've wanted to make.
I just returned to MHGU and it showed me that the games were harder before MHWorld. I too thought that i just got better at it but no.
And no its not harder because i have to adapt to older gameplay. I am 100 Hunts into MHGU. I am in High Rank and i die more often than i do in G Rank of MHRS
MH veterans when the game is slightly accessible
I think the problem is people overlook many things but who am I to know I'm just a player
I played rise first, and I'll be the first to vote that world is harder than rise
Jajaja keep going back to older games buddy you might actuslly enjoy the challenge
Amazing video and analysis!
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Oversimplified, to me it seems like Capcom has buffed both the monster and the players movement sets and ways to interact, move and attack more and more over time - but the player characters abilities just got buffed way more, so that makes it feel like the monster got "weaker" or the game got easier.
ok i am three minutes in so idk if i'll continue to think this but THANK YOU THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I'VE BEEN SAYING
also can't believe you only have 6k subs, this is crazy quality! Ik it's not gonna shift the tide right away, but if it helps, now you're at 6.58k + 1 :)
That is quite an interesting fact to put in. Monster hunter is easy or hard depending on the player itself. Sometimes it is easy, and sometimes it’s very hard(though in the case of world, World’s kushala and Lunastra. Those two are the hard dragons in my book.😅)
The amount of professional editing and voiceover in this is amazing, I loved every minute of this
A lot of complaints for Rise being too easy, but I don’t hear anyone complaining about Primordial Malzeno being too easy now do I?
Hes hard but thats one monster out of the whole roster bruh, i dont hear any other being as least equally as tough as P.Malzeno now, do I?
Its because these guys are stuck in Village quests.
Just wanna say, great video! Anyway, here's my take:
Difficulty doesn't matter if it's difficult because of terrible design. A lot of people say gen 1 and 2 were difficult but those games had atrocious hitboxes.
The difficulty in modern monster hunter is fine, most of the difficult stuff is pushed towards the endgame as it should be. Veterans pushing for early game to be difficult shouldn't be listened to and just want the games to appeal to them. People gotta keep in mind there's plenty of people brand new to the series.
Unironically, the point monster hunter "got easier" was in the third gen, i got to play Freedom Unite for the first time recently and its mind-boggling how much of an improvement to the brutal jank 3U is
Third gen made MH get easier for good reasons.
5th gen made MH get easier for bad reasons.
I wouldn't say it's intentionally getting easier. Additions like XX styles and Rise's silkbind moves were pretty good for the series as a whole. They just weren't very well balanced and have 1 or 2 outliers that trivialize the game (adept roll, bushido was also pretty nuts/longsword and other silkbinds that include counters).
As someone who played since PS2 era, MHFU, and THEN jump to Rise like almost a decade later (My skill was rusty and I'm no longer teen), I can understand people whining about gameplay streamlining. Except for Hitbox. Anyone defending the hitbox as challenge is having a stockholm syndrome. Certified insane.
1:13 God, I need to grow up.
Its the same commitment you have when u working on all your videos keep it up and thanks for making all
Those videos so some can enjoy them
I can confirm the answer on the right doesn't have the same weight as the answer on the left. 2:21
I have no problem with less difficulty that comes from refinement, like no more wonky hitboxes or better refined weapon mechanics that make them a lot more fun to play (Hunting Horn is an example).
But stuff like the coats introduced in MonHun World? That was an example of "too much". Some break the game way too much.