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I think everyone has this “Monster Hunter Moment”.
For me it was the Tigrex from Monster Hunter Freedom Unite. Toppling that thing felt better than acing an exam (I was in High School at the time).
Nice job Patrick, I’m glad it all clicked for you : )
My “Monster Hunter moment” came when I took down my first “difficult” monster in Monster Hunter Freedom 2 – a Rathian, and I instantly fell in love.
Partially related: Because Patrick mentioned the Diablos in the article I’ll share a picture of one of my craziest monster hunter moments (and maybe gaming moments). I had to kill 2 Black Diablos and I landed the killing blow on the 2nd Diablos with literally 0 minutes and 0 seconds left on the clock…
Nice, I think almost everyone who’s gotten into Monster Hunter has one (or a couple) of monsters where the game clicks. I know you said that if you stopped now you feel like you’ve got it but I encourage you to play at least a bit more if you have the time. High rank (at least in my personal opinion) is where you really test the skills you picked up because getting hit actually starts having real consequences…
I’ve had multiple little moments where MHW clicked for me, whether it was my first time killing a rathalos after a 30+ minute long fight that ended with me chasing it down a waterfall onto the forest floor or, like Patrick, beating my head against a diablos for over an hour before it all clicked and I learned how to exploit its attacks.
MHW is the first game I’ve played in a very, very long time that gives me the same sort of rush as Dark Souls or Bloodborne.
For me, it was the Ogdaron.
I just got done playing with a bunch of friends, and I wanted to do one more mission (12:30AM) and just explore the Rotten Vale. So, I start up an expedition and go into the depths. I only had 8 Potions, and 3 High Potions. Suddenly, my health starts slowly dropping and the handler states “The air is poisonous”, and I decide to GTFO.
As I head up the hill, this large, dog-like creature that is skinless, turns the corner and stares at me. I stop in the bushes and forget to crouch and hide, and suddenly it is on me. This creature is viciously swiping and jumping and all I can do is avoid its attacks, while choking on poisonous gas. Oh, and he connects for the first time and puts a bleed on me that causes me to take damage when moving…
I hid in the bushes, bleeding and poisoned and I am already down to four potions left. During this struggle I was able to get in a few hits and dismember its tail. We are both wounded, and the beast finally leaves to give me a breather. I should have gone back to my tent, stocked up and went after him, but I was chasing that experience.
I top off and find the monster waiting around the corner, stupid hunter. We battle again, and it just feels like a bloody brawl, and every hit just feels sickening with the crunch of steel meeting flesh or claw rending mine.
Finally, the beast runs away, and we are both on the ropes. One potion left, and at 40% health. I chase after the beast, and the bloody dance starts again. Finally, it ends with me landing a lucky jump and the beast is slain, and I sit there with my health ticking down due to a bleed. I crouch, take the last potion to heal up, and then proceed to carve my prize.
Since that fight, I can’t put the game down. I haven’t felt this into a game since Dark Souls and Bloodborne. That rush is amazing, and I want more.
Are there games you’ve played, where a specific fight, sequence, or something else brought what’s interesting about it into view?
I was excited for the release of Steep last year, but It finally clicked with me what type of game it wanted to be when I did a mission that was simply about making it down the hill, no points needed, no checkpoint, no severe time limits, just go down the hill while “To Build a Home” is playing. It was a very relaxed introspective moment so completely opposite of the Red Bull, XTREME SPORTS, score attack stuff the game had been up to that point. I finally felt like I got a glimpse of the experience the devs wanted to deliver.
Alternatively, what have you given up on?
I will never be able to get into any CRPG with real time combat. I’m overwhelmed by the amount of quick decision-making needed to be successful. Even with pause I can never seem to get a good rhythm going. If anyone has any tips for how to ease the experience I’d love to hear them, as I’d love to finally get Pillars of Eternity.
I haven’t had my Monster Hunter moment yet (I bounced off MH4U on 3DS after a dozen hours or so of solo play), but somewhere in my third attempt to understand The Binding of Isaac, I had my sudden moment of clarity, not just about BoI, but about roguelikes and -lites and about “difficult” games in general.
I’d put 20 hours into the original Steam release of Isaac before finally succumbing to frustration - it was all too random! why doesn’t it explain anything?! - and come back only briefly with The Wrath of the Lamb DLC, so I don’t know what, exactly, possessed me to pick up Rebirth (the expansion/remake that significantly retooled the engine and visuals) when it dropped a few years later. And I can point to a couple of quality of life improvements - the framerate, controller support, lightly re-tooled early game difficulty - that helped ease me back into it, but they weren’t the things that ultimately stole hundreds of hours from me. I don’t remember what did it, exactly - I think it might have been bombing a slot machine, knowing it might get me the last couple of coins I needed to buy The Bible just before heading into Mom’s Heart - but somewhere in the early going I finally saw the curvature of the whole game.
It wasn’t a game about reacting to all the random shit it threw at you. It was a game about managing randomness - about understanding the unwritten rules of the world, about learning the odds and then playing the odds and eventually bending the odds to your will. Progression wasn’t about unlocking new stuff, it was about learning how all the stuff fit together in the first place.
I’ve since sunk more time into BoI (and it’s later expansions) than just about any other game, and it’s opened up a whole genre, a whole damn philosophy of gaming to me. And it’s taught me to stick with the stuff that’s frustrating, if it looks like there’s a good idea at its heart, so there’s a good chance I’ll be dropping some time on MHW in the near future.
It took me a bit to get over my hump of MP shooters until I started getting the hang of shooting people. Destiny 2 Competitive sure took like 4 days of playing to get that system and people’s basic strategies.
Defeating the two bell tower gargoyles in Dark Souls were what started my FromSoft addiction as well.
PSA for all you new Monster Hunters out there (and tip for you Patrick): capture, capture, capture!!! Capturing monsters (dinosaurs?) drastically cuts down the grind needed for crafting requirements. Some resources can only be acquired through capturing. Also, technically, capturing is easier way to end a quest.
Super Street Fighter 4 had a moment like this for me. I’d been playing fighting games all my life against my older brother and friend group, but it wasn’t until this game came out and I started playing online that I realized how much I didn’t fully understand. After getting destroyed in ways I didn’t even know were possible, I started reading guides online, learning more about concepts I had observed but didn’t have the vocabulary for, like hitboxes, priority, invulnerability frames, etc. Big moments for me were when I first read someone’s jump-in and successfully timed an anti-air, and when I tech’d out of my opponent’s wake-up throw for the first time.
