Every of this episodes has the same simple but awesome game mechanics, hunting, surviving and gathering ressources. The games don't really have a deep story, very often your village is endangered by a large dragon-like monster, the wyvern. There different kinds of wyvern, small, middle and even some, that size is as huge as a scyscraper. There are also dragons and beast, just like the ape-like Blangonga.
When you slay these monsters you cut scales, webbings, carapace, horns or something like this from their defeated bodies. You also gather other materials like ores, crystals, herbs, shrooms, bugs and so on, there are more than thousands of items.All these materials can be used to make the smith of the village forge stronger weapons or armors.
I like this kind of gathering, in other games cold, coins armor parts or other stuff like this is dropped by wild animals - OH, THERE'S A BEAR, LET'S SLAY HIM, IT'S DONE, OH LOOK, THE LOOT FOR KILLING THIS BEAR IS GOLDEN CHEST PLATE, not really reallistic, I mean giant are wyvern aren't realistic either, but that's not the point, in MH you gain money by doing quests or selling materials. The only reason that would explain a bear, wolf or whatever dropping an armor is that this animal ate a warrior with his armor in one piece.
You don't have a level system, but that's one of the big plus points of this game, your strength is defined by your equipment and your skills. You start with easy quests, were you have to fight against some small raptor or just deliver 2 pieces of meat. To get access to harder quests and monster you have increase your rank, which can be handled by finishing some specific quests.By having access to more difficult quests and monsters you can gather uncommon or even rare materials to either increase your weapons or create new ones, the same with the armor pieces. You can wear up to 5 diffenet armor parts, helmet, torso, gauntlets, hip and legs. Every part has skill, so you can unlock an attack boost or other effects by combining the rights armor parts, a hole Rathalos (flagship monster of the first episode, seen above) enables a middle attack boost in almost every part of the series, but also decreases your protection skill, so sometimes the wyvern can defeat you with just one blow. BTW for every quest you have 3 tries within this quest, so if are defeated twice, the quest is not yet failed. In every part of the series the fun is increased a lot when you go on a hunt with someone else - if you are unexperienced some wyvern can't be defeated on your own. To finish a quest almost unharmed you both have to have a good armor and weapon and also the knowledge of your enemies ecology, movements and general behavior, else you will need very many potions to recover.
I think that's enought for a short summary of all the similarities within this series, so lets start with the first episode.
Monster Hunter for PS2 (packshot at the top) - 2004
This game comes with only a few monsters compared to all the other games of this series (~30 monsters).
It all starts with creating a character, you choose the gender, one of 10 (?) face types, you can look like young girl or even like a very old woman. Then you choose your haircut and its color and in the end of your creation your voice, and the most imortant thing surely is a name for your avatar.
Then you start in your village with nothing but underwear and one of your weapons out of your inventory, you can choose between the following weapon types, after deciding if you wanna play as a melee character or if you want deal damage from distance, the 2 classes are blademaster and gunner. the blademaster armor has a higher defence than the same gunner counterpart. In my opinion a gunner is a great support character but it's hard to play in the single player. After that you choose your weapon, there are great sword, sword and shield, hammer,lance, light gun, heavy bowgun. After that just rush to the village elder to learn the basics like gathering meat and so on.
After some hours you will have learned a lot of more than just the basics, some movements of the Velociprey (blue raptors) or other wyvern will have burnt into your brain. Your armor and weapon should be already be increased, there's also one fact about the armor, in multiplayer sessions someone will almost instantly guess your rank just by seeing your armor and will decline a hunt with you.
After these hours you should also have faces your first Rathalos (left) and maybe been defeated if you didn't escape, but this one is only a hard one in the beginning of the game, later it's an easy one, but there are other even harder ones, e.g. the Diablos, it prefers the desert, it's really hard to defeat. Fighting some wyvern gives you the possibility to cut parts of them and carve those, like their tails, horns and so on.
I think that's all for now for Monster Hunter.The update came 2005, it was Monster Hunter G and was released only in Japan (rerelease for Wii 2009).
Many new things were featured just like more monsters, especially subspecies of the already existing one, which causes also new armors and weapons. For example there not just a red Rathalos but also a azure one, which is also the flagship monster of Monster Hunter G. Almost every wyvern has a subspecies, a new difficulty has also been inserted, after some low rank quests the high rank followed and in this game the G-rank was added.
After that Monster Hunter Freedom (PAL/NA) 2006 / Monster Hunter Portable (JP) 2005 for PSP
was released. It was a kind of portable version of MHG, multiplayer was
not able by online infrastructure, but by adhoc wireless from PSP to
PSP.There are not so many differences, but with the first PSP-episode the MONSTER HUNTER CAMERA FINGER was developed, you don't have a second analog stick like on the PS2, so you control the character with your thumb on the PSP analog stick and turn the camera with your left pointer finger, if you play for houres this could hurt, believe me...XD.
One year later the next episode was released Monster Hunter DOS / Monster Hunter 2 for PS2.
It was released in Japan only and features many more monsters added to all the old ones, especially different elder dragons, which are very hard to defeat in the beginning, especially if you haven't played one of the former episodes. The flagship monster is the Kushala Daora, the wind elder dragon, in the intro of this game a new type of monsters is shown the Blangonga, an ape-like beast, looks a bit like a snow mandrill, the family of this kind of monster is called Pelagus, a nother one is the Congalala. Round about 20 monsters are added, so it's now about 60 different ones. They also added completely new areas, the only one kept was the forest and hill, the new ones are a new desert, swamp, djungle and vulcano.
After the great success of the first PSP episode a second one was released, Monster Hunter Freedom 2 / Portable 2 was released in 2007. Many things are the same as in the PS2 version, but they deleted the Yamatsukami and added the new flagship monster Tigrex which is pretty cool, but also very hard to defeat, just like the Rathalos in the first generation. A nother huge wyvern has been also added, the Akantor. Changes in the second generation are also some new weapon types, the dual swords, the katana/longsowrd, the hunting horn and the bow. Some of the former great swords were changed to longsword, e.g. the iron katana. There is also the possibility to import your save data from the first MHF game to start with a paper for a legendary SnS and every item like honey potion can be transfered, every other, as same as the weapons and the armor are changed to money. In this generation the first possibility to improve your armor with armor spheres was added, also the skill decorations to customize your armor parts, your equipment can have up to 3 slots which can be filled, so you can increase the "natural" skill of your armor parts even more or you can avoid negative skills.
I think that's all for now, Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, Monster Hunter Tri, Monster Hunter Portable 3rd and Monster Hunter 3G / 3 Ultimate will follow soon.
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