While it's nice to see a game series I enjoy get so much positive press, it's popularity is somewhat confusing to me though. In Japan I know that Monster Hunter has always been big, you sort of just bump into it everywhere. It might be a poster advertising Frontier in an internet cafe or some kind of promotional thing like a Monster Hunter themed design on a drink or something, it's the kind of thing that just pops up in every day life fairly often. Now I can't speak for America but in the UK it was a different story completely, I only knew 2 people who also played Monster Hunter and apparently there was some little shop in London where hunters could go meet up to hunt stuff on Freedom Unite.
They were games that had good reviews but never much of a following. I started to get into the series around the time of Freedom Unite and I remember having a grand old time with it. However, back then I remember getting an armor set and posting a picture of it on Facebook to show some friends and a bunch of people chimed in with comments like "why are you such a sad fuck?" or "this game is for losers" etc. It wasn't even a high level set, it was a shit early game thing that required no effort too, not that it really matters I guess.
I stuck with the series up to Monster Hunter Portable 3rd on the PSP (so 2008-2010 roughly) and in that time only met 1 other guy who was at all interested. After that the series moved to 3DS which was all region locked and shit and I was living in Japan so I was sort of locked out of playing it unless I wanted to import or drop money on a Japanese 3DS but even with each DS release I didn't see anyone talking about it.
Now it's 2018, World gets released and suddenly everyone is all "MONSTER HUNTER OMG LOOKS SO GOOD!". Like, where did this excitement come from? I spent so much time looking for people with even a passing interest to no avail and now suddenly everyone's a fan? What the fuck happened? It feels to me that some people are bandwagoning a bit here. They actually don't know jack shit about the series past World but because of all the praise and publicity suddenly they love it now.
Still, I know I might be coming across as all bitter and sort of gatekeepy like "who are these filthy casuals playing MY game" but that's not the case. It's confusing but it does make me happy to see a series I like getting so much praise and hype around it. It all means that when I DO go and buy it I'll have plenty of people it with, finally.
Happy Hunting to newcomers and veterans alike!
