Diary of a Monster Hunter–Part 2: The First Parallel

Well, it didn’t take long into my time with Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate to see the first strong parallel with the Souls series of games. Much like both Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls, Monster Hunter is a game that almost requires you to seek outside help in order to understand its systems and maximize your efficiency in terms of game time. Fortunately, there’s an even bigger community built up around the Monster Hunter series than the Souls series, so there’s no shortage of places to look for help when it comes to understanding the game and its systems.

I tried to go it alone, but you basically arrive in a port city to start the game, and then talk to a bunch of people to get the lay of the land. None of those encounters are particularly helpful in terms of making weapon choices, or thinking about how to start shaping your character. Because upgrading things take resources that you must collect (just like the Souls games), I didn’t want to waste any of those resources exploring upgrades paths I would abandon later.

So, after a few quick searches, I found a great tutorial on getting Started in MH3U by YouTube user DMJared. Entitled “The Beginner’s Guide to Monster Hunter,” this series of videos offers a clear introduction to the game, its systems and the world itself. Despite the narrator sounding like he’s doing a bad NPH impression, the videos are very well put together, and are really funny at times as well.

Having watched the series and begun some of my first monster encounters, I feel well informed enough to slog through the first few hours of the game. Much like my time with the Souls series though, I will be gathering and storing resources before I make any final decisions an what gear I’m going to seriously upgrade.

More to come!