In preparation of Monster Hunter Rise's release, I thought it was a good idea to slowly chip away at the granddaddy of the series: Monster Hunter on the PS2. And with no uncertainty do these next words come: don't play this game. You might flinch at that statement, thinking the worst the game has to offer is that it's outdated or visually unappealing, but it goes so much deeper than that. The first Monster Hunter was an online game meant to be played with friends, where rote hunts and boring load times were counterbalanced by idle banter. Without that, you are left with a raw, brutish solo experience that I'd be surprised if anyone—even diehard fans of the series—can stick with past the opening hours.
And it's not that Monster Hunter is too difficult or awkward to play—it's that it has a soul-crushing grind for gear.
There are two aspects that Monster Hunter can laud over its successors, the first being its originality. Monster Hunter established almost all of the series' staples, whether it's the core gameplay, resource gathering, item crafting, weapon trees, armor trees, enemies, setting, story structure—you name it. Even the weird way the game separates online and offline quests traces its roots to this humble title, with the exception that you can't even enter the hub without a network adapter installed (which is no big loss since the servers are dead anyway.) Monster Hunter is kind of like Pokemon in that the first entry laid the foundation for every other title going forward, even though many of its designs nowadays could be considered tedious and punishingly draconic.
The only other thing Monster Hunter excels at is that it makes you work hard for your victories. There's no expedition hunts, no lock on, no palico buddies, no farm—not even a goddamn canteen to stuff your face at at. All you get are two expensive stores with pitiful stocks and a box with two pages of inventory. Every potion you consume needs to be manually crafted from ingredients found out in the wild, the nodes often blending in with their surroundings (good luck spotting mushrooms.) Combat can't be won by roll spamming or button mashing (er, analog mashing, as attacks are mapped to the right stick of all things) since your character's movements are as slow as molasses in the dead of winter. Plus monsters not only hit hard but have some crazy hitboxes attached to their body, dishing out near-instantaneous hip checks and tail spins that'll wreck you if you're anywhere near them. I used to think folks online were joking about Yian Kut-Ku being their first roadblock, but hoo boy, that fight against him in the jungle biome can really test your patience (as well as vision—why are there so many damn trees?!)
The neat thing about this is that you're forced to engage with all of Monster Hunter's systems on a conscious level. Unlike modern Monster Hunter titles where you can luck into a new piece of equipment after a single hunt, here you'll be spending a lot of time grinding out low rank gear in order to survive. Ingredients are no longer something that you'll mindless gather either; you'll beeline out of your way during hunts to visit honey, mushroom, and ore deposits, possibly restarting the hunt if the hauls are poor. And monsters being no joke makes preparing before a hunt paramount, as every second Plesioth spends in the water inches you that much closer to the dreaded time-out. There's no other game in the series that forces you to be as "ready" as the original Monster Hunter—but this compliment is tainted with a poisonous consequence...
... That you have to do a lot of mindless grinding.
Before I begin, let me just say that I have nearly 1000 cumulative hours spread across four (now five!) games in the series, and it's become one of my all-time favorites. Therefore my frustration with Monster Hunter on the PS2 likely doesn't come from a disdain for the franchise, nor confusion as to why its mechanics work the way they do. I've endured the egg deliveries, I've withstood the Khezu roar-spam, and I no longer groan at being paralyzed by vespoids while mining. I appreciate the series for its eccentricity and stubbornness, and sympathize with fans that gripe about how the modern games have been streamlined, such as with the removal of paintballs or allowing you to switch gear mid-hunt. As Monster Hunter has becoming more accommodating, it's chiseled down its barrier to entry, losing some of the grit and workmanship that was required to get into it—two aspects that could make even mundane hunts rewarding.
But the first Monster Hunter game is terrible. I could go on about the pathetic monster roster, the lack of quest variety, how imprecise it feels to attack with the right analog stick, and how vexing Velocipreys are (JUST LET ME CARVE), but what broke my back was the process of making gear. You start the game with a sword & shield and no armor, which makes finding new gear a top priority. But the economy in Monster Hunter is brutal: you receive about 300-800 zenny per quest, yet armor costs anywhere from 1500-3000 per part. Plus every piece of equipment requires you to mine for ore, but iron pickaxes cost 160 zenny and can snap after a single use, so you'll be digging through your box often for monster parts to sell. But that's not the worst part, oh no—it's the damn machalite ore.
This garbage mineral is found only in area 5 of the starting zone, despite there being ore deposits in areas 6 and 11. Worse yet is that the node has roughly a 10-15% chance to drop machalite when mined, and nodes can not only exhaust after a single use but also stay depleted for the entire hunt! And even worse is that there's no ore gathering quests, meaning the quickest and most efficient way to farm machalite is to start a Velocidrome quest, run to area 5, pray for a single drop, and then hunt the Velocidrome! I must've run through this hunt a hundred or so times; I acquired over 100,000 zenny from selling nothing other than Velocidrome scales and fangs—but I still didn't have all the ore I needed!
To upgrade my hammer to its final level, I had to mine a whopping 85 machalite ore, of which I reckon I had a 50/50 chance of obtaining 1 per Velocidrome hunt. Considering that the hunt takes roughly five minutes, this totals to 10 hours of grinding, which checks out: I reached the Rathalos by hour 27 of my playthrough, and managed to best him around around hour 36. Luckily I used audiobooks to numb my sorrow, but I can't express how absolutely dull this entire process was. I wasn't playing Monster Hunter anymore—I was struggling with a fickle one-armed bandit that paid out with 6 machalite ore only once and 0 machalite dozens and dozens of times.
And I know what you're thinking: "Why did you need the best hammer to beat Rathalos? Why not get better armor? Or mine in a different locale? Or just play better?" Alas, I seriously tried all three avenues. The best armor I could get with fire resist was the Yian Kut-Ku set—which I made. While the desert and jungle settings had machalite nodes (only one each AFAIK), the former required farming piscine livers (nooo thank you) and the latter had you gathering 10 mushrooms in vespoid-infested areas. Lastly, I gave the Rathalos about three admirable attempts, all of which took over thirty minutes and ended in crushing defeat. After besting him I think I could've done it with the penultimate hammer upgrade, but knowing I had a goddamn Plesioth ahead of me, I figured it was better to do my grinding now rather than later. And thank god I did because that Plesioth hunt was absurdly dull, repetitive, and long—timing out there would've put me in a straight jacket.
What really rubs me the wrong way is that Monster Hunter didn't need to be like this. It could've had a mineral gathering quest, or let the player go on expeditions, or allow nodes to replenish, or add a Rathian (or Basarios) hunt before the Rathalos hunt so you could craft better armor—all of which future titles would do! Even something simple like giving the player invulnerability frames while they're on the ground can make a huge difference in a fight, as the game loves to combo you to death in a corner and there's nothing you can do about it (getting up is automatically done for you!) I know a lot of this is me looking backwards and struggling to see what the first Monster Hunter did right instead of wrong, but what it did wrong is in the meat of its gameplay, present at every moment you're in control. It's baffling to me that the game managed to take off in Japan considering how janky, agitating, and obstinate the first entry is. Was the online that good? Was the concept that novel that it helped folks overlook how shamelessly repetitive the game is?
And god, there are so many other parts of Monster Hunter that grate on me. Why are quests randomly unavailable? Why does the cooking minigame have such tight timing? Why make all the starting weapons so expensive? Why do I have to personally bring my materials to the blacksmith for crafting when they know how much of a material I have? Why end the village questline on a Monoblos hunt instead of one of the three elder dragons? Why is the egg delivery the only quest with a thirty minute time limit? Why make the fish wyverns spend 90% of their time not on land? Why make bullfangos? Why infinitely spawn monsters in some zones but not others? Why do some quests get hot/cold drinks in the supply box but not others? And why the hell doesn't the game let you know that you can't capture an enraged monster? Oh don't worry—you can still put them to sleep inside of the goddamn trap, but as long as they're enraged the hunt doesn't complete! I failed to capture a Rathalos twice due to this, wracking my brain as his sleeping muzzle poked partway out of the pitfall trap, mocking me. I only found out that it's impossible to capture enraged monsters from reading youtube comments in broken english, which is where my tolerance for the game had truly reached its end.
I was excited to sit down and play the original Monster Hunter, to discover where the series had started and learn how much it had grown. Plus it would give me some fun bragging rights—lots of people may have played through Freedom, but how many reached the credits of the original PS2 game? Unfortunately, there's no bragging rights to be found here; pouring hours into the game will only yield what I'd honestly describe as a miserable experience. I could only recommend Monster Hunter to veterans of the series that not only have an unshakable love for it, but also find old bad games to be better than new good games. The progenitor of the Monster Hunter franchise may boast a promising premise, but it lacks quantity as well as quality, doling out 1 minute of fun for every 10 minutes of suffering.
And it's only mediocre fun, at that.
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Images obtained from: amazon.com, neoseeker.com, Amazon.com
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