Why I'm Looking Forward to Monster Hunter World

Fans seem to be very split about Monster Hunter World. I understand a lot of the concerns, but thought I would write a post about why I'm so excited for it. Monster Hunter World was the major surprise from this year's E3 and literally got me giddy like a teenage girl!


Capcom makes good games, but their releases are often underwhelming. What they call sequels MMOs or any "games as a service" product would simply call patches or expansions not entirely new games. Monster Hunter hasn't had a significant re-working in years. While I am a relatively new fan I've gone back and played many of the older games as well as importing Japanese only titles and playing the Chinese only Monster Hunter Online. The original Playstation 2 entry was fairly unique (I never tried importing Monster Hunter 2). After these first two Playstation games was the Freedom series. Freedom Unite was the only one of the series I played, but my understanding is this was a cumulative update. Since Freedom Unite Monster Hunter has basically been the same. Yes there have been new weapons, quality of life improvements, much needed hit-box fixes and graphical and mechanical improvements, but you can play anything from Freedom Unite to Generations and it basically plays the same.


With World, the biggest legitimate complaints is the fact it's not on hand held. While I personally can't wait to play an HD big screen experience (This is the main reason I played Online), I have grown to enjoy the ability to bring my 3DS to work and simply sit next to 3 other people at lunch and play. Local multiplayer will be severely lacking in World, but we get the trade off of the best graphics I've seen in Monster Hunter to date.

Also I do hope the Monster Hunter XX (Double Cross) does actually release in English on the Switch. The base game (Generations) has already been localized so only G rank content would need to be localized and this would give us the mechanically definitive version of this Monster Hunter time frame (Freedom-Generations) in the West. It really makes no since for Capcom to not release XX in the West based on the very little effort it would take to localize and the fact the game would stand alone in the Action-RPG space on the Switch. Capcom also recent said they were surprised by the sales of Street Fighter II on Switch and are considering more Switch releases. I think I would be in the camp that argues 4 Ultimate is actually a better over-all game (balance, progression curve, story), but a 60 fps 1080p Monster Hunter on Switch with the mechanical improvements made on Generations would be a great game we should get to play in North America!

Okay back to World... with the recent weapons videos I think it's much more clear this is a Monster Hunter game, I was actually hoping for a bit more re-tooling, but as long as they fix things like being able to change directions mid-combo to make following monsters/avoiding hits possible and make canceling out of combos easier I'll be happy with the HD upgrade we are getting. Having all the favorite weapons return is a good thing and while many of the monsters appear new this isn't a bad thing. I hope the Artificial Inelegance re-vamps are real! Not cheesing zone lines should help the immersion and using environments looks limited at the moment, but full of potential! For the first time ever in the series the North America and Japanese versions are releasing at the same time! The last question I have that I haven't heard an answer on is will we get G rank? Playing Portable 3rd and now Generations, Monster Hunter isn't really Monster Hunter until you hit that difficulty curve in G rank that requires you to put effort into your hunts. Fingers crossed, but Yes I am more excited for Monster Hunter World then I've been for any other title I can think of in the last few years!

-PC version!!!!! /mic drop

The Basics of Importing Games

I have recently enjoyed importing games and am going to write a post about the basic considerations when importing hoping to help others interested in importing. There are a lot of details you'll need to look into, but this is a quick overview to get you started.

Does Your System Support Importing (Region Locking)?

The first thing you need to know is if you will be able to boot the game on your system. Some systems are region locked and will only read disks with a matching region encoded to them.  3DS is region locked while the DS was not. Playstation 3 and 4 are not locked, but I haven't looked into others so I won't list them. A Google search will answer this question quickly. If your system is region locked you'll need to buy a system for the region the game is made in. This may or may not be easy for example the 3DS is self contained, anything that is not you will need to know if it supports NTSC/PAL and if your TV also does. Also some kind of power/pug adapter may be required, plugs are easy but 110/220 voltage is not always.

PCs are technically always open, but I've read up on a few rare cases that require you to change the language and/or location in the operating system.Other issues may still apply though, keep reading.

Is the Online Play Restricted in your Area (IP Blocking by Region)?
IP addresses are the internet's way of telling who's who where the data needs to go. IP addresses are grouped by country like mailing address and some game servers restrict access to IP addresses for anything not in their intended area. I'll give two quick examples of this.

- Monster Hunter Portable 3rd: The middleware software that allows multiplayer on the Playstation 3 HD version does not connect in the US. So I can play all the single player content fine, but won't be able to use the multiplayer.

- Monster Hunter Frontier: This game is an always online game so basically you can't play any of it without connecting to a server as far as I can understand.

So how do you get around IP blocking? The only way I am aware of is using a VPN connection to an IP address inside the restricted access area. I've setup a free VPN and had a lot of latancy just web browsing, so haven't tried to play games over it at all. There are also paid VPNs that will probably perform better. Lastly I've also read about Frontier players being found out and the VPN being blacklisted so one one else could use it to play. I've avoided trying to get past this kind of restriction so far.

Is the Game Localized in Your Language?
This can be a bit one... Here are some considerations.

- If you are importing the game anyway, check all regions to see if any are better. Gundam Breaker 3 for example was never released in North America, but the Asia release had English subtitles and menu translations, so importing this version was far superior to the Japanese version.

- Look for versions that have language more similar to yours. I don't have a ton of experience with Spanish or German, but both are easier to try to decipher for me than something without the Latin alphabet.

- If other games in the series are in your language play a lot of them first. In my case most of the titles I've imported are Monster Hunter titles and I started by playing their English versions and mostly imported to play on the big screen instead of handheld. The game is still very recognizable to the original so most of the mechanics and iconography are similar enough to understand knowing them in English first.

- This one will require some gray areas, but a lot of games have fan-translated version. If you are playing on PC you might be able to patch it in, or if it's not a current generation console you might be able to find an emulated version of the game that has been patched you can use as reference to learn some of the mechanics. As long as you actually own a copy of the game and the system it seems gray, but I'm not a lawyer, so don't take my word for it.

- Look for community sites, YouTube videos, etc that other people have posted to help out.

- Google Translate

In my opinion this is the big one and what really makes importing a language you don't understand doable. Sorry for the boor quality shot, but Google Translate allows you to use your camera's phone and will in real time translate the text in the camera to your language. You can also take a picture and highlight just the text you want translated. The translations aren't perfect by any means, but normally will give you a good enough translation to figure it out.

- If you find yourself wanting to import from the same country consider learning the language.

Research the Specific Game and Region Requirements

In conclusion the internet is a big, wonderful, scary, disgusting, amazing place. Someone else has probably already imported the game you are looking out to your region if it hasn't just released. Do your research. Internet searches on every game I've imported and numerous ones that I didn't have told me exactly what to expect. They'll tell you what features will or will not work, the back of boxes will tell you what languages will have auto and subtitles and multiplayer options. Also any third party online middleware should be listed there and you can search for other games using it.

After importing a few games I was surprised how easy and enjoyable it is. And currently I'm spending a large percentage of my gaming time playing Monster Hunter Online a Chinese MMO version only in Mandarin. If there is a game you really want to try go for it and enjoy!

Difficult Video Games

So I'm stuck on Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate on the 9 star quest: Advanced: Whale of a Hammer. I've 3 carted at least a baker's dozen times. The interesting thing is I can (mostly) pinpoint something I did wrong to cause the carts. Because of this (I think) I keep trying the quest. I concluded melee range is very risky, so I crafted my first set of gunner armor and bow. I have the positioning and timing down of the fight, so now my only problems are terrain forcing me out of position at a bad time or a failed dung bomb attempt trapping me with both of them at the same time and something going wrong.

So it turns out Monster Hunter is actually much more difficult than Dark Souls after you get deep into the game. Like many things different monsters will be harder for different people, but you will find at least a few to give you a hard time. This is the third quest I can think of that's given me serious problems, but this one more so than the ones before. So the question is why keep playing, and why does it feel fair compared to many other games?

I've read up on this and been thinking about it a while. I think the most comprehensive insight I got was an article about speed running games. It talked about how games needed to be predictable to speed run. The controls had to be tight, and in the same situation everything had to work the same way. Then playing a Mario Maker level that you just stood there and all kinds of things happened around you for 2-3 minutes while you watched a Rube Goldberg machine type of level push you through to the end. The game functions so tightly that they can do that.

That is the way Monster Hunter works. Fighting in this case two frenzied Black Gravios' you want to stay to the left of center because centered his beam will hit you and on the right side his downward beam will hit you on the way back up at the end. 90% of the time after any beam some kind of AOE attack will come from home so you have to be out of melee range, etc... Because mostly everything happens the same you can see your mistakes and what you could have done to avoid it. So you always feel like if you'd been just a little bit better you would have won!

I think this is the key... making sure the player can see how they could have prevented the death or penalty of whatever kind happens in your game. Games that don't get this have you dying and questioning why, did the AI get a lucky roll, was there anything in my control that could have let me win? Dangling the carrot at the end of the stick and realizing if you're just a bit better you'll be able to reach it is the sweet spot.

Closing Notes: Monster Hunter does have advantages here as by 9 star quests you have sunk a lot of time into the game and understand it. The variants of the monsters means you have fought an easier version of the same monster before, preparing you for this tougher version, and before you fight multiple monsters you've fought them solo and killed them, so nothing is new except the complexity of taking on multiple at the same time. But still the game is setup to make all this happen.