A friend got me into Monster Hunter ca. 2013 and now I have nearly 5000 hours split across various games, the bastard. I guess I won’t be doing cocaine or gunpla or toy car collecting anytime soon! XD

It’s a really great experience, I often say good MH games (that is, MH games in general: bad games are a rarity in this franchise) bring out my three preferred Ms: music, monsters and marvels, the latter one meaning the landscapes, the maps, the exploration. You haven’t experienced what kind of comfy immersion can game developers go for until you wander about the Sandy Plains at night to bbq up some Aptonoths and Rhenoplos into steak, and you watch the shooting stars in the night sky. ~~And then you get distracted from the bbq serial griller and you end up with 2x Burnt Meat instead…~~

Started out with 3U. Underwater is great btw, don’t listen to people who say it shouldn’t return. The first time I tried the game I just Didn’t Get It and thought it was not for me… but man the music was so cool (the Sandy Plains battle music!) and the monster designs (Barioth!) insisted that I should make another try. Grabbed it back after a long break, followed the instructions this time, found a weapon that was to my liking (switchaxe, or as we call it, the Swag Axe), and haven’t really stopped much since then. I take good care to backup my saves often as well, juuuuust in case I don’t really like to grind hundreds of hours for the most random rewards on the double.

By this point the only gen I have not played is Gen1, I’ve played Dos, FU, Tri, P3rd, 3U (1400 hrs), 4U, XX, Gen, GU (1200 hrs), Rise, Sunbreak and Stories 2 (800 hrs). Nowadays I can sometimes be found on the LanPlay network on MHGU and MHRS, and I’m waiting to get a better computer so I can try Frontier and maybe Iceborne. When I show up on the net, it's usually to accompany randoms on quests thanks to the wonders of doot doot.

Growing up my dad would always do a silly amount of research into the best video games to get my brother and I. And they were always relatively unknown - games like Zack and Wiki, and ofc Monster Hunter. So for my 10th birthday I got Monster Hunter Tri, that’d just released that year. He also bought a classic controller for me, as he’d heard that it was borderline necessary.

I loved the game to death. I’d literally just wander around Moga Woods and live off the land for as long as possible. I ofc sucked at the game tho, getting totally walled by some of the first monsters like Qurupeco. But I didn’t really care as I’d just go back to messing around in the woods.

Eventually I hit a wall so hard that it led me to quitting the game. Gobul. I rage quit and didn’t fully come back to the franchise until years later. I would play on and off for a while, but it took years for me to fully get into the series. I had a 3ds and saw that a demo for 3U was available, so I tried it out. I loved it, and immediately went out and bought both 3U and 4U. Been playing ever since.

I’m actually playing through Tri for the first time since then now that the servers are up, and having a blast!

I inherited my addiction from a coworker/friend. I was recruited to help him pass a wall he could not solo through in MHFU: the infamous Plesioth hipcheck barrier. He set me up with an LBG, probably the most straight forward weapon for a non-hunter gamer to grasp. From there, things just spiraled as I lost control of my life. Through fortunate timing, Tri was only months from release when I started my MHFU journey, so I developed my habit right as a steady supply of the primo ish was starting to come out, and I haven't wanted to or been able to shake the habit since.

My friends and I got access to the MH:W demo on the PS4. We played it a decent amount leading up to release day and pretty consistently found ourselves coming back to it. By the time Iceborne came out, we were practically veterans with hundreds of hours put in and we made the switch to PC. It's been tradition ever since. World, Iceborne, Rise (first on Switch, then again on PC) and lastly Sunbreak. We were starting to feel burnout pretty hard by the time Sunbreak rolled around, but I'm sure we'll get together to hunt in whatever's coming next in the series!

In World I mained IG then later in Rise I mained LS. Thinking about picking up GS in the next one... 🤔

My ex at the time picked up Freedom 2 not long after launch, and I asked him about it after seeing it sat on his shelf. He gave me it to keep since he got so frustrated with the controls and not knowing what to do, but I fell in love. I sucked at the game, but would spend hours gathering materials and building new gear to try out. Since then I've played all of the localised games, as well as fan translations and the recent private servers for 1/Tri and Frontier. Can't wait to try out the online for Dos too.

MH Tri was my first. I remember getting the demo from GameStop and just being amazed. I easily put 600 hours in the game sleep bombing Alatreon and fighting Jhen Mohran.

Way back in the day I had heard that Monster Hunter was the new hot game in Japan, and they had just released Monster Hunter Freedom Unite on PSP. At the time I couldn't make heads or tails of it, but I beat my head against it for a while. For some reason I stuck with the series almost out of sheer refusal to accept that I didn't grok it, but then Monster Hunter Rise came along. 700 hours later across two platforms and I'm more of a Monster Hunter fiend than I ever was.

A good friend had the OG for Ps2. He even had the online adapter so he was able to kill Fatalis and get the Dragon Armor. It was sick! He let me borrow it for a while. I remember struggling so hard with Kut Ku lol. I didn't get to play it much though.

Not too long from then, Freedom came out and we both got PSPs. We got another couple friends to join us and we played the SHIT out of those games with a full group. So many all nighters getting through the G rank quests. It was a blast. We've all stuck with our same weapons ever since (Lance for life)

People started going off to college during the 3DS days, but we picked up a few more friends and were still able to get a lot of parties together. Those were a lot of fun. I was particularly fond of Gen with the ridiculous aerial styles lol.

The more robust online of the newer titles helped us keep playing together when we have the time. But man, nothing can beat the old days. I have so many great memories of hunting with my buddies. Monster Hunter will always hold a special place in my heart.

I used to own a Wii U back in the day and for a variety of reasons there was a drought of good games to play on it. A YouTube channel I followed at the time had this same issue but in terms of content to create. So they started playing MH3U. I had never heard of monster hunter before and was intrigued, so I bought the game. 1000 hours later I had a new favorite franchise. Lol.

From there, I naturally played 4U, Gen, GU, and Rise on release. I've never played World because I've only recently bought a system that could run it (Xbox). Currently in the middle of Sunbreak and depending on when I "finish" and when MH6 comes out, I might try to squeeze in World because I'd love to play it.

First off, thanks for setting up this community!

A friend who had played the prior games convinced me to try MH:W on PC, and I really enjoyed it. As my first MH game, I didn't know what I was doing most of the time. Got Rise and Sunbreak on the Switch. Countless carts and cat puns later, I'm still enjoying the series.

My first MH was Tri for the Wii. When I started playing I didn't really like it, and that's because I didn't really understand the game at that time. I got stuck at Gobul (underwater fight) and so I stopped. After some years of not playing, I got back to it armed with patience, and I finally understood the game, and beat almost everything solo offline had to offer. Recently I got a decent pc and finally got a long wish of mine - Monster Hunter World. I'm enjoying it, currently at 47h in.

I've bought a used PSP with some games and one of them was Monster Hunter Freedom Unite. The game felt really weird, slow, pretty confusing and most of all quite difficult. Since I couldn't get any new games I had no choice but to play the ones I got (I've had Patapon, Burnout and like two other, can't remember). I've been pretty intrigued by the game, it was unlike anything I've ever played and I kinda like the cozy atmosphere of the village, the little farm, had a nice selection of interesting weapons. I kept playing the game in small chunks until it all just kinda clicked and I've been a fan of the series ever since (even though I'm still not that good at it).

It's a long story, but essentially, I played the game for the first time with my older brother back when MH2NDG came out and Freedom Unite hadn't come out yet. Played Freedom Unite a lot when it came out, put the series back down for a whole until my best friend told me to get a 3DS and 3U to play together.

Played a lot of 3U, 4U when it came it, loved Generations and Generations Ultimate on the Switch a lot (latter is probably my favourite MH game by a wide margin), World I found ok, didn't play a lot of Rise.

Kind of on a hiatus right now with the series

I heard that Monster Hunter played a lot like Dark Souls. I was still into my Soulsborne binge at the time, so I decided to give Monster Hunter World (as it was the only available Monster Hunter game on PC at the time until Rise came around) a try. Let's just say that the rest is history.

I tried like a decade ago as a kid on the ds and couldn't for the life of me figure it out, about the time rise was announced a buddy got me into world and it was a great journey!

MHW was my first. I was actually interested in MH before MHW came but I didn't have the console or device for those games.

Got into MH with MH4U. Completely lucked into it. Had gotten myself a 3DS primarily intending to do small indie games and retro games, but happened on MH4U and thought that sure I might give a bigger tripple A style game for the 3DS, just to see how something that scale of a game would be on a handheld... And I got HOOKED. Then as I expressed my surprise at this to local friends, and praising the game, a couple of others got it as well and we started hunting together, both online but even better in local mode, which exposed the game to some others that didn't even have 3DSes and got them interested enough to buy both device and game!

Since then I've been stuck, playing MH4U, Generations (and ultimate), World, Rise and a bit of Stories 2.

Favourites are MH4U and World.

Edit: Lance main, Hammer secondary... But have used most weapons at least a bit.