Are "MonHun-likes" The New "Souls-likes"?

 

          Hello! I have the need to beat the Monster Hunter horse some more. I’ve been wanting to play Monster Hunter or something Monster Hunter like but every time I think about MH I just think about all the things that I’m unhappy with and it stops me in my tracks. The other problem at the moment is there aren’t many games like MH, but that seems to be changing soon.

            As far as Monster Hunter goes, I’m just relatively tired of Sunbreak. I think about going back to World/Iceborne despite how much I hate it, because it’s pretty, but I think about the mantles and the clutch claw and it makes me shutter. I think about doing Sunbreak but I’m so tired of starting at the same spot every time, running around getting spiribirds and endemic life, like I just want to go. Exploring is fine but once you’ve done it 10 times, you get it. I had Googled “I’m so tired of collecting spiribirds” at work and found a Reddit thread about it and one person commented “that’s why I have a mod to spawn a prisim spiribird at the start of every hunt” and someone else said “tell me more things like this” which I thought one, that’s funny and two, must be fucking nice. Sure I could buy Sunbreak again but I refuse to, I will not break this time! I’ve put so much time into the Switch version and I’ve given Capcom enough of my money over the years, so I’ve been exploring Dauntless a little bit again.

            Dauntless has changed a bit since I started so I didn’t know where to even start. I feel like when the game first came out it was rather linear and understandable. “Hey you, here’s a behemoth, go fight it.” “You did it! Well done, here’s another one.” Stuff you’d expect. I get in now and there’s no real guidance as to what to do. You look at the hunt menu and there’s a ton of different mission types and it was confusing. I’ve watched several videos for beginners and such and I think I have a slightly firmer grasp on things. It has a battle pass and I’ve known that but I’ve found that there are dailies and weeklies and I was like, “ohhh, okay, this is like Apex.” I understand now. If I look at it from the point of view of it being like Apex and not Monster Hunter the game makes more sense to me. There’s like 50 different currencies to keep track of, it’s kind of dumb and all games as a service/free to play games are like this.

            So, some things I like from Dauntless versus what I dislike from Monster Hunter. Firstly, you can change anything about your character’s appearance whenever you want. I don’t know why I still harp on this since in Rise/Sunbreak you can’t see your character well anyways or they’re wearing a helmet but harp I shall. Secondly and similarly, you can show off your face however you please. Have your helmet on, have your helmet off, have it in town but off in fights, have it off in town but on during hunts, amazing. How difficult is that? Thirdly, and one of the reasons I’m tired of MH is the weapons are pretty cool. I’m just kind of tired of MH’s weapons you know? I’ve been playing since 3 and yeah some things are different and they’ve added stuff but it’s still same-y. I’ve been messing around with the insect glaive since 5 because they added it in 4 and I just hadn’t used it. I like the hammer in Dauntless, it has bullets, basically, that you can use to charge your attacks or just shoot off if you’re close enough or even use them to push you away or towards the monster. Behemoth, sorry. I also like the chain blades and the fist weapons are pretty neat from the little I’ve used them in the training area. Fourthly, I like that the fight areas are so open. There are a lot of areas in MH that are just a really tight corridor for whatever reason or a cave that’s just big enough for the monster to turn around in. Why?  Especially when you have monsters turf-warring each other it’s like “why do you have them doing this here?” Fifthly you can go to an island and just hunt/slay to your hearts content. Oh, almost forgot, Dauntless has cross progression and cross-play, what a thought, guess it wasn’t that hard after all Capcom.

            With the little bit I’ve done with Dauntless, for the most part it seems you do these patrols or hunting grounds? They're hunting grounds, and you go to an island and you can just slay all the behemoths there all day. After you kill one another will spawn shortly after and you just repeat. You go around the island looking for treasure boxes and other behemoths to fight. Each island has different groups of behemoths and are harder or easier depending on your armor and weapon levels so it’s kind of fun to be able to run around an area and just fight monster after monster without having a time limit. I don’t enjoy in Monster Hunter how I can be fighting something for half an hour and the monster doesn’t even show like I’ve done anything. I don’t want fights to be easy but I also don’t want to be stuck doing one hunt for forty minutes. Similarly some of the Dauntless fights just seem like I’m bullying the behemoths. But I think the patrols are just to help you level up so you can do harder things down the road that I haven’t gotten to. Another thing Monster Hunter has been doing since World with the Nergigante and the anomaly monsters in Sunbreak is they’re trying to make us play more aggressively. If you let these monsters build up enough energy they’ll release a powerful attack so you’re trying to break parts or weak spots to slow that process down. Usually once the monster goes into rage mode I step back, let them cool off, maybe poke em here and there but you can’t be ideal with anomaly monsters. They’re aggressive but vulnerable so you have to be even more aggressive.

            There seems to be quite a few new MonHun like games coming in the near future. Maybe developers are stepping away from “Souls-likes” and going towards “MonHun-likes.” We got Wild Hearts set to come out in February. I’m not sure how I feel about it, there’s a lot going on in the trailers. I saw a Jimmy Neutron mount in one of them and my thought was, “if you need a mount, why not just make the map smaller?” but we’ll see, I’ll have to wait for some reviews before I commit to it. They have some interesting weapons. They have some normie katana and bows but then you got some clown running around with a parasol and another guy with a straight up cannon so I don’t know. Wait and see. The Game Awards showed off Blue Protocol which LOOKS like it could be MH like but not sure. They say it’s an MMO but I think MH and Dauntless are also grouped as MMOs so I don’t know. There’s still Xbox’s “Project Suerte” that Certain Affinity is working on but haven’t seen anything about that. Since it’s an Xbox Studios game it’ll probably never see the light of day like everything else they own. Recently there’s been talk about an MMO set in the Horizon Zero Dawn universe and that just sounds like it could be a MH game to me. I tweeted that thought to them some years ago, maybe they went with it. I think it could have potential. (Just as I was searching for images for the bottom like I always do, I saw some screenshots from World with Aloy and I forgot all about that crossover but there was another during Iceborne and Frozen Wilds I didn't know about. So maybe Guerrilla saw some Horizon potential in World.)

            I think that’s everything I wanted to hit on. In short I hope Monster Hunter and other hunting games take some tips from Dauntless. Character change whenever we want, helmet options and large areas to fight with multiple targets. I still think back on my post about what I wanted from the new Monster Hunter and how I wanted it to basically be open world. Go out, fight whatever you want, go back to a town or rest area to restock items and get new food buffs then go back out, seamlessly. No loading, no waiting, just go. The “story” of Monster Hunter and its quest is like “there’s this monster causing problems, go kill it” and you do but then you want more parts for weapons and armor so you have to go back out tens of times so it’s not like it was just the ONE monster, there seems to be quite a few of them and they’re not really causing that much trouble.

            What do you think? Still enjoying Sunbreak some how? What’s your secret? Tell me. Playing Dauntless and at the top of the leaderboard? Is there anything else that has been announced recently that you’re excited for? I’m excited to see what Armored Core come back. Alright, let me know your thoughts below and I’ll catch you around later. Bye bye!

                @AztecSauce