what exactly is "friction"? the backloggd community frequently evokes this term to describe a wide array of moments and mechanics, yet without any sort of ontological basis to unify disparate uses of the term. I don't seek to define any axioms regarding the term, but I would like to take the opportunity of my completion of freedom unite's arduous village questline to ruminate on the uses of friction as an intentional and unintentional design technique. let's first establish friction at a high level:
Friction consists of gameplay elements that oppose player progression or elongate time spent on it.
this is a nice open-ended definition that gives us plenty of room to explore. possibly the most basic example of this is movement: the physical limitation of your avatar being unable to exist at all coordinates at once or being able to instantly teleport to any coordinate is within itself an act of friction. this spans a wide range of mechanics; consider tetris, where at high speeds the frame count behind a single lateral movement of the falling piece becomes a limitation against being able to place a given piece at the desired location before the piece lands, or games with areas that change the kinematics of a player's movement to become slower or faster than their base speed. for a walking simulator, the act of movement is the primary element separating their narratives and environments from less frictional genres such as interactive fiction and visual novels. of course, this above classification isn't necessarily useful for discussion given how wide-ranging it is, so I'll present a taxonomy to cover the most common types.
Immersive friction consists of frictional gameplay elements that seek to heighten the sense of existence in the game's environment.
a good example of the above would be plant growth mechanics, where seed items are planted and then can be harvested after a given amount of in-game time. while this poses a time restraint on the player in terms of obtaining the items, few would object to such a feature given that it simulates crop cultivation in reality. unless the player has no exposure to agriculture, they will be able to make a connection from reality to the in-game environment and integrate the mechanic into their understanding of how the world operates. this doesn't necessarily have to consist of elements that correspond to our reality, as I would suggest it also encompasses elements that exist to introduce the player to the particular quirks or "unrealistic" elements of the in-game world.
Oppositional friction consists of frictional gameplay elements that seek to heighten difficulty.
this design methodology is the reason that many of us find many 8-bit games unbearable; games that lean on oppositional friction too heavily can suffer from serious artificial difficulty. otherwise this is pretty bread-and-butter design fundamentals in order to present a proper challenge to players. damage balancing, enemy counts, time limits, and cooldown timers (among others) all fall under this umbrella, and often these values are the first to be tweaked in post-game updates in order to dial in the exact amount of challenge players need.
Unintentional friction consists of frictional gameplay elements resulting from oversights in the development process.
bugs, glitches, and their ilk all fall into this category. the shining example of this in my head is the sonic adventure duology: both of these games would likely be far better tolerated by the gaming community at large (who already are relatively forgiving of these games' failings) if they simply weren't riddled with countless collision issues, screwy camera sections, and physics goofs. of course, it's not always easy to tell whether a given mechanic falls into this category or one of the others given that specific design intentions are not always known. it's also certainly true that "unintentional smoothness" or something similar exists in many games, where development oversights actively reduce friction in other areas.
every game has frictional elements that fall into each of these categories, and identifying them within freedom unite (which I'll hereby refer to as mhfu) is easy. monster hunter games have retained a loyal fanbase that appreciates the dense internal logic of the series's world, all of which relies on immersive friction. weapons become dull with repeated use and must be frequently sharpened, materials must be gathered by hand or farmed over time, certain monster materials come from breaking or severing specific parts of the monster, and powerful items must be combined by hand. while understanding the intricacies will never come easily to a new player, the games do provide ample resources to those willing to learn, and the difficulty is balanced in such a way that new players won't have to leverage every mechanic in order to succeed during the early hours of the game.
mhfu is not a truly standalone product, as it is not only the culimination of the first two generations of monster hunter and an expansion of monster hunter freedom 2, but it is also at some level a retooled port of the ps2 title monster hunter 2 dos (or mh2). that game pushes the envelope on immersion past the first generation of entries by heavily expanding the single-player village scenario and introducing a cycle of seasons that solidified the game's setting. day and night alternate and change the map layouts, huntable monsters vary based on time of year, and the overall progression befits that of a living area that grew with the player day by day. players need to plan for seasons in advance; for example, beehives with vital honey deposits dry up in the cold seasons, forcing players to either stockpile in advance or lie low until the season passes over. every material carved or received post-hunt must fit in your limited pouch, and items in your box only stack to the point that they would in your regular inventory. all of this was carefully considered by the developers in order to create an enticing hunter/gatherer simulation that pushed difficult decision-making and world knowledge onto the player (for more information I highly recommend this rather lengthy retrospective of the game).
mhfu rolls back many of these changes in favor of streamlining the hunting experience. virtually all the mechanics I've listed above are absent: there is no seasonal system, day/night features are now simply part of the quest instead of cycling, item box space is nigh unlimited, and quest rewards teleport directly to your box. I want to stress that changing these isn't inherently a problem (something that the above video struggles to articulate). the monhun portable devs had decided to center the boss fight aspect of the series rather than the survival mechanics, and given the boost that mhfu gave the franchise, it seems like they successfully identified what enticed most players to begin with.
however, this absence of immersive friction seriously wounds the believability of the world. mhfu lacks the undergirding framework that made mh2 so interesting as a simulation of hunter-gathering lifestyle, and without that structure the cracks in the foundation begin to show. monsters here are endless scores of polygonal marionettes to be plopped into one of the many areas on a whim. they frequently walk in place, awkwardly jitter between moves, and refuse to interact with other monsters in their vicinity. stripped of the ecological backgrounds underpinning their mh2 appearances, these monsters can do nothing except serve as punching bags for the player to idly and repeatedly kill. later games would substitute back in more immersive elements that make these fights feel more dynamic and alive: the exhaustion system in the third generation slows down the monster and makes them feel as if they are legitimately expending energy battling you, and the fourth generation adds a significant amount of environmental interaction with the focus on verticality. mhfu sits at an awkward crossroads where it streamlines the mechanics to the point of killing some of the charm while simultaneously not possessing any innovations that make up for the lack of immersion.
simultaneously as the immersive friction is dialed back, the oppositional friction stings ever greater. the hitboxes are one of the most infamous examples from this entry (and prior ones); virtually every monster has an attack with a disjointed hitbox or a frame one activation that seriously strains depth perception and reaction time, especially for players new to the game. with the artifice of progression already so apparent here, these questionable design decisions scan more as cruel tricks to increase playtime and encourage reliance on multiplayer. the game seems as if it were self-aware, less truly a hunting game and more a endless boss rush that relies on compulsion to drive playtime. in response, the player begins to push back, bending the game even further away from a microcosm of elevated reality. why not just spam flash bombs if every monster can be repeatedly blinded by them? why bother exploring all the different quests when I can just look up key quests online? what's the point of fighting two monsters at once when I can wait for minutes on end in a different area waiting for them to split up? at this point the game begins to lose sight of the thrill of the hunt at all, and for every pound of pain it dishes out it receives a karmic retribution threatening its ability to convince me that its conceit has any basis to it at all.
so while its many weak points have been rectified in later entries and it performed incredibly well when released, from a design perspective I see mhfu as a cautionary tale in many ways. friction is not just a blunt weapon but a nuanced tool that requires care to truly apply properly. to that end: simply removing elements of friction from a game does not necessarily have a net positive effect on a game. removing key elements of immersive friction can in turn kill a player's desire to exist within the world the game creates. removing some elements of immersive friction may be for the best, but it may be equally or more pertinent to target elements of oppositional friction instead, especially if the goal is to streamline gameplay. finally, there are other ways to include immersive elements that are not necessarily frictional. including these can retain essential depth even when frictional elements are absent. I intend that none of these conclusions are dogmatic, but merely that they are my examinations of how this game feels slight compared to others in its series.
----------------------------------
gonna be upfront here: I didn't really finish the village quests. once I got to 9 star quests I did a quick tally of how many wyverns I had defeated and the number was probably around 60 or so, which is way under the 100 threshold you need to unlock the silverlos/goldian key quests. no way in hell I was going to needlessly grind when I already had 80+ hours and was desperately tired of this game, so I went ahead and set a goal to defeat rajang and call it quits. honest to god I was surprised I got that on the second try given how much of a pain it is... when enraged he could easily knock out 75% of my life bar if I got hit with the beam or some of his other attacks, especially since I was still using LR gravios armor (heavily upgraded of course).
nekoht's quests in general are probably the most abysmal key quest choices I've seen in the series up to now. for one: great forest is barely ever featured even though it's supposed to be the new map for the entry. it's a solid map but given that I've literally fought no one other than hypnocatrice and narga there I don't have super strong opinions on it either way. meanwhile you're pushed into a bunch of the shitty first gen maps... I read a gamefaqs thread stating that first gen desert is far superior to its dunes remake in fourth gen and I am perplexed about how anyone can hold that opinion. another place where the lack of other immersive friction fails: here is a map with two gigantic flat areas that I never get to explore organically at all and where I can be knocked into the adjacent areas off of virtually any border with no indication of where said border falls. the white monoblos fight here walled me for a bit and it was so infuriating. the basarios fight is bizarre since it takes place in old swamp and basarios literally never leaves a single area... the khezu fight is fine, even though having to run back and forth between the two separate cave areas isn't particularly fun. the double hypnocatrice refight is pointless (what a boring addition) and the rest of the 8 star rank keys are sort of here-or-there, just more hunt-a-thons.
except for yian garuga... what the fuck were they thinking. supposedly this Elegy of a Lone Wolf quest features the souped up scarred garuga variant and it hits like a truck with a cushy hp boost as well. I legitimately timed out on this fight using gunlance much to my absolute bafflement. my bit of hammer practice from mhgu recently came in handy here however, as I grinded out a nice iron hammer for HR and proceeded to crush the poor bird's skull in a truly cathartic 25 minute blast. this is truly the mhfu dichotomy: you feel like absolute shit when you do poorly and an absolute god when everything's going in your favor. just a year after starting my true monhun journey I finally felt like I accomplished one of the major elements of being a strong player, which is actually being able to switch weapons to counter a specific monster rather than leaning on a single weapon type for everything. it felt like such a natural fit too, as I was sussing out the safest quarter-turns to get fully charged standing shots on, nailing rolls through certain attacks, and watching my positioning to ensure I couldn't be caught by frame one moves at any point. that's some fucking monster hunter. same with the rajang fight; he's total bullshit but then it just clicks and suddenly I'm side-hopping through his punches and exploiting his janky beam hitbox.
that nargacuga fight is the most telling of where the series was destined to go from this game on. narga might be using tigrex's skeleton (I think anyway) but its moveset is completely its own. it moves with grace, braces itself for attacks, and features unique windups for virtually everything in its arsenal. I've fought narga dozens of times in p3rd when grinding for his endgame weapon, so I never expected this fight to be tough, but it really did put into relief how clunky many of the other monsters are. the move pool for 1st gen monsters is absolutely barren; expect to see virtually every wyvern have a tail whip, a hip check, a basic bite, and a turn-around swipe, all with virtually identical animations. some of the skeleton reuses are particularly glaring as well, like what are the differences between diablos and monoblos really? is it just that diablos jumps further from the ground when reemerging and also has more hp? it's pretty cleared why they've phased sone of these out in more recent years... it's an absolute crime that gigginox hasn't replaced khezu though, that fight is miles more interesting.
really it comes down to how much information you have going in. I already knew the controls from p3rd so I wasn't too thrown off by not having little context icons to let me know how to gather in certain spots or climb ledges. I started farming armor and power seeds from day 1 as a cash crop, and I ended up having to extensively use them not only for demondrugs/armorskins but also to consume on their own; who knew that they give +10 to a stat and stack with your drugs? in many of the other games I could coast without really preparing for each monster, but here it's an absolute necessity. flash bombs for everyone, sonic bombs for diablos, tainted meat for tigrex, etc. etc. I needed to spare no expense just to get by here. without all that prior knowledge it would've been curtains for me with this game a lot faster I think, and I would absolutely not recommend this game at all to those who haven't played any of the other pre 5th-gen games at least. I'm soloing G4 stuff in mhgu without thinking twice and then getting my ass handed to me by high rank village in this game. rough.
one day I'd love to flex my assembly knowledge and maybe make an easy-type hack for this game, which seems potentially feasible given that FUComplete exists. my ideas:
+base value of 50 defense. this is what mh3u did, and it would hopefully dull the edge on some of the truly insane attack values in this game.
+dung bombs actually scaring off monsters. this works on khezu, so it may be possible to either expand this check for all monsters or hook in the code for it into other monster AI routines, wouldn't be easy though. would really make double monster quests far more bearable
+felyne chef auto-cooking. just always give me 50/50 please, stop making me look at the wiki for the various recipes
+high rank village harvest tours. what the hell were they thinking leaving these out??
anyway back to mhgu... I'm an agnaktor x set grind away from getting to enjoy that kickass ahtal-ka fight. I'll come back to this and do multiplayer sometime, I'm sure I'll get an itch eventually and hunstermonter is still very active. maybe then I'll finish off village... which btw I already fought akantor a bunch in p3rd so it's not like I'm missing that fight completely, and I skipped HR shen gaoren because that fight is easily the most boring siege I've ever played.
another quick note: sony rules so much for making their handheld save data easy to access and move. originally started this on my dad's vita, moved the save to ppsspp, then back to vita, then to my psp, then back to ppsspp. playing this with claw on psp actually feels pretty viable but it was starting to give me some arm pain so I decided to call it quits on real hardware. it looks so gorgeous on that screen though...
Friction consists of gameplay elements that oppose player progression or elongate time spent on it.
this is a nice open-ended definition that gives us plenty of room to explore. possibly the most basic example of this is movement: the physical limitation of your avatar being unable to exist at all coordinates at once or being able to instantly teleport to any coordinate is within itself an act of friction. this spans a wide range of mechanics; consider tetris, where at high speeds the frame count behind a single lateral movement of the falling piece becomes a limitation against being able to place a given piece at the desired location before the piece lands, or games with areas that change the kinematics of a player's movement to become slower or faster than their base speed. for a walking simulator, the act of movement is the primary element separating their narratives and environments from less frictional genres such as interactive fiction and visual novels. of course, this above classification isn't necessarily useful for discussion given how wide-ranging it is, so I'll present a taxonomy to cover the most common types.
Immersive friction consists of frictional gameplay elements that seek to heighten the sense of existence in the game's environment.
a good example of the above would be plant growth mechanics, where seed items are planted and then can be harvested after a given amount of in-game time. while this poses a time restraint on the player in terms of obtaining the items, few would object to such a feature given that it simulates crop cultivation in reality. unless the player has no exposure to agriculture, they will be able to make a connection from reality to the in-game environment and integrate the mechanic into their understanding of how the world operates. this doesn't necessarily have to consist of elements that correspond to our reality, as I would suggest it also encompasses elements that exist to introduce the player to the particular quirks or "unrealistic" elements of the in-game world.
Oppositional friction consists of frictional gameplay elements that seek to heighten difficulty.
this design methodology is the reason that many of us find many 8-bit games unbearable; games that lean on oppositional friction too heavily can suffer from serious artificial difficulty. otherwise this is pretty bread-and-butter design fundamentals in order to present a proper challenge to players. damage balancing, enemy counts, time limits, and cooldown timers (among others) all fall under this umbrella, and often these values are the first to be tweaked in post-game updates in order to dial in the exact amount of challenge players need.
Unintentional friction consists of frictional gameplay elements resulting from oversights in the development process.
bugs, glitches, and their ilk all fall into this category. the shining example of this in my head is the sonic adventure duology: both of these games would likely be far better tolerated by the gaming community at large (who already are relatively forgiving of these games' failings) if they simply weren't riddled with countless collision issues, screwy camera sections, and physics goofs. of course, it's not always easy to tell whether a given mechanic falls into this category or one of the others given that specific design intentions are not always known. it's also certainly true that "unintentional smoothness" or something similar exists in many games, where development oversights actively reduce friction in other areas.
every game has frictional elements that fall into each of these categories, and identifying them within freedom unite (which I'll hereby refer to as mhfu) is easy. monster hunter games have retained a loyal fanbase that appreciates the dense internal logic of the series's world, all of which relies on immersive friction. weapons become dull with repeated use and must be frequently sharpened, materials must be gathered by hand or farmed over time, certain monster materials come from breaking or severing specific parts of the monster, and powerful items must be combined by hand. while understanding the intricacies will never come easily to a new player, the games do provide ample resources to those willing to learn, and the difficulty is balanced in such a way that new players won't have to leverage every mechanic in order to succeed during the early hours of the game.
mhfu is not a truly standalone product, as it is not only the culimination of the first two generations of monster hunter and an expansion of monster hunter freedom 2, but it is also at some level a retooled port of the ps2 title monster hunter 2 dos (or mh2). that game pushes the envelope on immersion past the first generation of entries by heavily expanding the single-player village scenario and introducing a cycle of seasons that solidified the game's setting. day and night alternate and change the map layouts, huntable monsters vary based on time of year, and the overall progression befits that of a living area that grew with the player day by day. players need to plan for seasons in advance; for example, beehives with vital honey deposits dry up in the cold seasons, forcing players to either stockpile in advance or lie low until the season passes over. every material carved or received post-hunt must fit in your limited pouch, and items in your box only stack to the point that they would in your regular inventory. all of this was carefully considered by the developers in order to create an enticing hunter/gatherer simulation that pushed difficult decision-making and world knowledge onto the player (for more information I highly recommend this rather lengthy retrospective of the game).
mhfu rolls back many of these changes in favor of streamlining the hunting experience. virtually all the mechanics I've listed above are absent: there is no seasonal system, day/night features are now simply part of the quest instead of cycling, item box space is nigh unlimited, and quest rewards teleport directly to your box. I want to stress that changing these isn't inherently a problem (something that the above video struggles to articulate). the monhun portable devs had decided to center the boss fight aspect of the series rather than the survival mechanics, and given the boost that mhfu gave the franchise, it seems like they successfully identified what enticed most players to begin with.
however, this absence of immersive friction seriously wounds the believability of the world. mhfu lacks the undergirding framework that made mh2 so interesting as a simulation of hunter-gathering lifestyle, and without that structure the cracks in the foundation begin to show. monsters here are endless scores of polygonal marionettes to be plopped into one of the many areas on a whim. they frequently walk in place, awkwardly jitter between moves, and refuse to interact with other monsters in their vicinity. stripped of the ecological backgrounds underpinning their mh2 appearances, these monsters can do nothing except serve as punching bags for the player to idly and repeatedly kill. later games would substitute back in more immersive elements that make these fights feel more dynamic and alive: the exhaustion system in the third generation slows down the monster and makes them feel as if they are legitimately expending energy battling you, and the fourth generation adds a significant amount of environmental interaction with the focus on verticality. mhfu sits at an awkward crossroads where it streamlines the mechanics to the point of killing some of the charm while simultaneously not possessing any innovations that make up for the lack of immersion.
simultaneously as the immersive friction is dialed back, the oppositional friction stings ever greater. the hitboxes are one of the most infamous examples from this entry (and prior ones); virtually every monster has an attack with a disjointed hitbox or a frame one activation that seriously strains depth perception and reaction time, especially for players new to the game. with the artifice of progression already so apparent here, these questionable design decisions scan more as cruel tricks to increase playtime and encourage reliance on multiplayer. the game seems as if it were self-aware, less truly a hunting game and more a endless boss rush that relies on compulsion to drive playtime. in response, the player begins to push back, bending the game even further away from a microcosm of elevated reality. why not just spam flash bombs if every monster can be repeatedly blinded by them? why bother exploring all the different quests when I can just look up key quests online? what's the point of fighting two monsters at once when I can wait for minutes on end in a different area waiting for them to split up? at this point the game begins to lose sight of the thrill of the hunt at all, and for every pound of pain it dishes out it receives a karmic retribution threatening its ability to convince me that its conceit has any basis to it at all.
so while its many weak points have been rectified in later entries and it performed incredibly well when released, from a design perspective I see mhfu as a cautionary tale in many ways. friction is not just a blunt weapon but a nuanced tool that requires care to truly apply properly. to that end: simply removing elements of friction from a game does not necessarily have a net positive effect on a game. removing key elements of immersive friction can in turn kill a player's desire to exist within the world the game creates. removing some elements of immersive friction may be for the best, but it may be equally or more pertinent to target elements of oppositional friction instead, especially if the goal is to streamline gameplay. finally, there are other ways to include immersive elements that are not necessarily frictional. including these can retain essential depth even when frictional elements are absent. I intend that none of these conclusions are dogmatic, but merely that they are my examinations of how this game feels slight compared to others in its series.
----------------------------------
gonna be upfront here: I didn't really finish the village quests. once I got to 9 star quests I did a quick tally of how many wyverns I had defeated and the number was probably around 60 or so, which is way under the 100 threshold you need to unlock the silverlos/goldian key quests. no way in hell I was going to needlessly grind when I already had 80+ hours and was desperately tired of this game, so I went ahead and set a goal to defeat rajang and call it quits. honest to god I was surprised I got that on the second try given how much of a pain it is... when enraged he could easily knock out 75% of my life bar if I got hit with the beam or some of his other attacks, especially since I was still using LR gravios armor (heavily upgraded of course).
nekoht's quests in general are probably the most abysmal key quest choices I've seen in the series up to now. for one: great forest is barely ever featured even though it's supposed to be the new map for the entry. it's a solid map but given that I've literally fought no one other than hypnocatrice and narga there I don't have super strong opinions on it either way. meanwhile you're pushed into a bunch of the shitty first gen maps... I read a gamefaqs thread stating that first gen desert is far superior to its dunes remake in fourth gen and I am perplexed about how anyone can hold that opinion. another place where the lack of other immersive friction fails: here is a map with two gigantic flat areas that I never get to explore organically at all and where I can be knocked into the adjacent areas off of virtually any border with no indication of where said border falls. the white monoblos fight here walled me for a bit and it was so infuriating. the basarios fight is bizarre since it takes place in old swamp and basarios literally never leaves a single area... the khezu fight is fine, even though having to run back and forth between the two separate cave areas isn't particularly fun. the double hypnocatrice refight is pointless (what a boring addition) and the rest of the 8 star rank keys are sort of here-or-there, just more hunt-a-thons.
except for yian garuga... what the fuck were they thinking. supposedly this Elegy of a Lone Wolf quest features the souped up scarred garuga variant and it hits like a truck with a cushy hp boost as well. I legitimately timed out on this fight using gunlance much to my absolute bafflement. my bit of hammer practice from mhgu recently came in handy here however, as I grinded out a nice iron hammer for HR and proceeded to crush the poor bird's skull in a truly cathartic 25 minute blast. this is truly the mhfu dichotomy: you feel like absolute shit when you do poorly and an absolute god when everything's going in your favor. just a year after starting my true monhun journey I finally felt like I accomplished one of the major elements of being a strong player, which is actually being able to switch weapons to counter a specific monster rather than leaning on a single weapon type for everything. it felt like such a natural fit too, as I was sussing out the safest quarter-turns to get fully charged standing shots on, nailing rolls through certain attacks, and watching my positioning to ensure I couldn't be caught by frame one moves at any point. that's some fucking monster hunter. same with the rajang fight; he's total bullshit but then it just clicks and suddenly I'm side-hopping through his punches and exploiting his janky beam hitbox.
that nargacuga fight is the most telling of where the series was destined to go from this game on. narga might be using tigrex's skeleton (I think anyway) but its moveset is completely its own. it moves with grace, braces itself for attacks, and features unique windups for virtually everything in its arsenal. I've fought narga dozens of times in p3rd when grinding for his endgame weapon, so I never expected this fight to be tough, but it really did put into relief how clunky many of the other monsters are. the move pool for 1st gen monsters is absolutely barren; expect to see virtually every wyvern have a tail whip, a hip check, a basic bite, and a turn-around swipe, all with virtually identical animations. some of the skeleton reuses are particularly glaring as well, like what are the differences between diablos and monoblos really? is it just that diablos jumps further from the ground when reemerging and also has more hp? it's pretty cleared why they've phased sone of these out in more recent years... it's an absolute crime that gigginox hasn't replaced khezu though, that fight is miles more interesting.
really it comes down to how much information you have going in. I already knew the controls from p3rd so I wasn't too thrown off by not having little context icons to let me know how to gather in certain spots or climb ledges. I started farming armor and power seeds from day 1 as a cash crop, and I ended up having to extensively use them not only for demondrugs/armorskins but also to consume on their own; who knew that they give +10 to a stat and stack with your drugs? in many of the other games I could coast without really preparing for each monster, but here it's an absolute necessity. flash bombs for everyone, sonic bombs for diablos, tainted meat for tigrex, etc. etc. I needed to spare no expense just to get by here. without all that prior knowledge it would've been curtains for me with this game a lot faster I think, and I would absolutely not recommend this game at all to those who haven't played any of the other pre 5th-gen games at least. I'm soloing G4 stuff in mhgu without thinking twice and then getting my ass handed to me by high rank village in this game. rough.
one day I'd love to flex my assembly knowledge and maybe make an easy-type hack for this game, which seems potentially feasible given that FUComplete exists. my ideas:
+base value of 50 defense. this is what mh3u did, and it would hopefully dull the edge on some of the truly insane attack values in this game.
+dung bombs actually scaring off monsters. this works on khezu, so it may be possible to either expand this check for all monsters or hook in the code for it into other monster AI routines, wouldn't be easy though. would really make double monster quests far more bearable
+felyne chef auto-cooking. just always give me 50/50 please, stop making me look at the wiki for the various recipes
+high rank village harvest tours. what the hell were they thinking leaving these out??
anyway back to mhgu... I'm an agnaktor x set grind away from getting to enjoy that kickass ahtal-ka fight. I'll come back to this and do multiplayer sometime, I'm sure I'll get an itch eventually and hunstermonter is still very active. maybe then I'll finish off village... which btw I already fought akantor a bunch in p3rd so it's not like I'm missing that fight completely, and I skipped HR shen gaoren because that fight is easily the most boring siege I've ever played.
another quick note: sony rules so much for making their handheld save data easy to access and move. originally started this on my dad's vita, moved the save to ppsspp, then back to vita, then to my psp, then back to ppsspp. playing this with claw on psp actually feels pretty viable but it was starting to give me some arm pain so I decided to call it quits on real hardware. it looks so gorgeous on that screen though...
7 Comments
Huge props for shoutouting portable 3rd, always so sad to see it overlooked on Monster Hunter discussion 😔.
Great review, I had no clue that MH2 had such mechanical depth and immersion! Now I'm gonna have to check it out.
I definitely agree with how godlike thie game makes you feel. It is a very crude game all things considered but I always thought that in the transition to more World-like gameplay a lot of the strengths that came with that simplicity were lost in translation. I still like the World games, but there's just no comparing the sheer adrenaline that Freedom Unite's punishing gameplay can offer. It is as you say, the monster movesets (specially on wyverns) are exceedingly simplistic and repetitive but goddamn, those tail swipes mean losing 3/4 your HP. I remember being hardstuck on Tigrex as a kid and finally killing it was one of my most glorious moments.
Though if you were to tell me to play any "classic" MH I'd play XX/3rd in a heartbeat, FU's sadistic tendencies hold a very special place in my hestt
Is this the Monster Hunter game that started to veer off into the quests being more focused on the fight rather than the level? Because I think that's one thing they tried to explore in the World games (and didn't particularly succeed).
Great review, I had no clue that MH2 had such mechanical depth and immersion! Now I'm gonna have to check it out.
I definitely agree with how godlike thie game makes you feel. It is a very crude game all things considered but I always thought that in the transition to more World-like gameplay a lot of the strengths that came with that simplicity were lost in translation. I still like the World games, but there's just no comparing the sheer adrenaline that Freedom Unite's punishing gameplay can offer. It is as you say, the monster movesets (specially on wyverns) are exceedingly simplistic and repetitive but goddamn, those tail swipes mean losing 3/4 your HP. I remember being hardstuck on Tigrex as a kid and finally killing it was one of my most glorious moments.
Though if you were to tell me to play any "classic" MH I'd play XX/3rd in a heartbeat, FU's sadistic tendencies hold a very special place in my hestt
Is this the Monster Hunter game that started to veer off into the quests being more focused on the fight rather than the level? Because I think that's one thing they tried to explore in the World games (and didn't particularly succeed).
@letshugbro that's an interesting point that I hadn't quite thought of and I think specifically reflects on how intrusive the farm is as a resource acquisition aid. while it makes the gathering grind much less grueling it really does add an inappropriate amount of chores onto the end of every quest, and the inability to stack yields over multiple quests in infuriating. mh2 didn't have the farm as far as I'm aware which may have been a blessing in disguise, but it did require players to take items out of the box in order to combine them. a truly misguided mechanic.
I didn't end up including it in this review but I do think that mhfu's specific foibles benefitted ad-hoc multiplayer in a way that really hampered the game's success in the west. there's sort of a pyramid scheme-esque incentive to get other people around you into the game (as this article sort of discusses in a weird orientalist way), but without the same population density elsewhere (especially in the US) you're forced to wade through some truly grueling fights on your own and without the time save you'd get grinding materials with others. I think this + the tepid sales of the psp in the west is what kept portable 3rd from getting localized even though it sold an absolutely astounding 4.9 million copies in japan alone.
if I ever had time/budget/team to do so I really think a fusion of mh2's time mechanics with something like stardew valley or harvest moon would really go over well with a modern audience. mh2 has a request-driven progression structure that would really fit something with a town you can expand and upgrade over the course of campaign, and it could maybe reorient the focus of the grind away from strictly equipment to a wider variety of goals with lesser requirements overall. I'm more than fine with rise though, I think it's basically the platonic ideal of monhun with all extraneous systems pushed to the periphery.
@FranzMagitek p3rd is still my favorite in the series I think... the memories i have with that one and the general cohesiveness of yukumo village + misty peaks always pulls me back in. I think there's definitely a sweet spot with 3rd and 4th gen where they were able to offer a wide array of both manageable and difficult content where normal progression was much more comfortable and endgame content was truly brutal. also yea I think this is where monhun really leaned into the individual fights and time attack focus... world definitely attemps to make exploration much more key but I unfortunately found a lot of those environments pretty unintuitive to explore. I appreciate how rise delineates between exploration and the fights themselves, but I find a lot of the environments for combat unfortunately flat given all the new traversal methods.
I didn't end up including it in this review but I do think that mhfu's specific foibles benefitted ad-hoc multiplayer in a way that really hampered the game's success in the west. there's sort of a pyramid scheme-esque incentive to get other people around you into the game (as this article sort of discusses in a weird orientalist way), but without the same population density elsewhere (especially in the US) you're forced to wade through some truly grueling fights on your own and without the time save you'd get grinding materials with others. I think this + the tepid sales of the psp in the west is what kept portable 3rd from getting localized even though it sold an absolutely astounding 4.9 million copies in japan alone.
if I ever had time/budget/team to do so I really think a fusion of mh2's time mechanics with something like stardew valley or harvest moon would really go over well with a modern audience. mh2 has a request-driven progression structure that would really fit something with a town you can expand and upgrade over the course of campaign, and it could maybe reorient the focus of the grind away from strictly equipment to a wider variety of goals with lesser requirements overall. I'm more than fine with rise though, I think it's basically the platonic ideal of monhun with all extraneous systems pushed to the periphery.
@FranzMagitek p3rd is still my favorite in the series I think... the memories i have with that one and the general cohesiveness of yukumo village + misty peaks always pulls me back in. I think there's definitely a sweet spot with 3rd and 4th gen where they were able to offer a wide array of both manageable and difficult content where normal progression was much more comfortable and endgame content was truly brutal. also yea I think this is where monhun really leaned into the individual fights and time attack focus... world definitely attemps to make exploration much more key but I unfortunately found a lot of those environments pretty unintuitive to explore. I appreciate how rise delineates between exploration and the fights themselves, but I find a lot of the environments for combat unfortunately flat given all the new traversal methods.
Yeah that's what I think World fails in. The levels are terrible to navigate 😭. Interested to hear Rise tries to both ends, wish Capcom lock the game to DX12 😑
I dont understand shit of what you talked about MH because I dont actively like MH very much, but your way of devealing the concepts of friction has trapped me into thinking I do. Someday... just someday I'll play MH1 because I'm that much of an idiot.
MHFU is a game that I seriously have a love/hate relationship with. Back in high school, I went out of my way to actually try and play through the low rank village, at the very least. I wanted to see what others saw in "the best classic MH game". The one thing that draws me into FU like no other MH game is definitely the atmosphere, of all things. Gathering runs served as a good way to de-stress, and take in the sights and sounds of each dense area. I actually prefer this game (and only this game) not having a heads-up display for gathering points, it makes me organically seek them out, and make a mental map in my head, which is ironically closer to your description of a more dedicated "hunting" game.
Regardless, my wall back in the day was Tigrex, and he was a wall that I just didn't have the patience to overcome. I'd say "I was softened by my first game, MH4U", but that's not really true at all. I played an obscene amount of MH4U (beat every single quest!), I know what hitting a wall feels like. The difference, I feel, is that MHFU's mechanics had been pushing against me this whole time, and Tigrex just pushed it a little too far. My friend and I plan on doing a co-op playthrough of MHFU someday, mostly so we can at least share the pain a bit.
Regardless, my wall back in the day was Tigrex, and he was a wall that I just didn't have the patience to overcome. I'd say "I was softened by my first game, MH4U", but that's not really true at all. I played an obscene amount of MH4U (beat every single quest!), I know what hitting a wall feels like. The difference, I feel, is that MHFU's mechanics had been pushing against me this whole time, and Tigrex just pushed it a little too far. My friend and I plan on doing a co-op playthrough of MHFU someday, mostly so we can at least share the pain a bit.
@Mur96 I'm glad you enjoyed it even without the monhun background, I definitely intended this as half more general mechanical analysis and half my actual experience with the game, so that people who were interested in the ontology of friction part could just read through that. godspeed if you play mh1... not something I think I'll ever do lmao, maybe I'll try freedom out just for kicks one day
@Hooblashooga yea I think there is something fun about finding a sort of hidden resource spot (the ice crystal gathering point next to the veggie elder in snowy mtns, or the infinite bone pile in the next room over) that later games don't capture. I think p3rd is the happy median in this regard, where they added in the icons but didn't use the tri style very obvious resource points, so the environments feel more organic in that respect. tigrex is one of the scariest flagships ever for sure imo, when he's enraged it almost feels safer to run away or not even bother attacking sometimes. the later games are better at making sure each weapon is balanced on its own, whereas here it feels like they intended you to find weapons that work better against certain monsters (ie lance/GL versus tigrex, or as I mentioned above hammer vs yian garuga). I def did a try with hammer during the tigrex fight and it was way too hard to stay out of the way of his charge with the disjoint hitbox.
@Hooblashooga yea I think there is something fun about finding a sort of hidden resource spot (the ice crystal gathering point next to the veggie elder in snowy mtns, or the infinite bone pile in the next room over) that later games don't capture. I think p3rd is the happy median in this regard, where they added in the icons but didn't use the tri style very obvious resource points, so the environments feel more organic in that respect. tigrex is one of the scariest flagships ever for sure imo, when he's enraged it almost feels safer to run away or not even bother attacking sometimes. the later games are better at making sure each weapon is balanced on its own, whereas here it feels like they intended you to find weapons that work better against certain monsters (ie lance/GL versus tigrex, or as I mentioned above hammer vs yian garuga). I def did a try with hammer during the tigrex fight and it was way too hard to stay out of the way of his charge with the disjoint hitbox.
letshugbro
2 years ago
Rise is comically smooth to the point where you can prep for every quest in like a dozen button presses, but I like that because it's helped my friends get into the franchise (and frankly, last thing I wanna do after a day of work is sort some Pom Pom Pus Sacs or w/e in a huge twenty-page inventory system). I know Capcom will always follow the Most Money, but it would be really interesting to see what a modern survival-focused singleplayer-only Monster Hunter looks like...