A Complete History of Monster Hunter

hey there everyone this is superrad here uh introducing the collection the complete collection of my mainline history series they are all individual uploads that you can find on my channel but i decided that you know for midweek upload i would take all of them and put them into a single video for your viewing pleasure the main thing about watching all of these in one go like especially within a collection is that there is going to be a few inconsistencies or mistakes that you're going to hear mostly because when i was making these i'd have a couple issues or misinformation or something like that and i didn't realize that i was i was making a mistake sometimes they're just honest mistakes slip slip of the mind my my brain no working i correct most of these either in the description of the video or in the next video for example in world i say there's a certain amount of monsters it's incorrect i correct it in the iceborn video so if you see an issue please don't just immediately go to the comments and let me know because i i know i know and i'm sorry and i hope you like this video and if there is an issue that i did miss because i am going to be putting all the corrections into the description then let me know please because i will also add that to the description as well and yeah i hope you really enjoy this this was a couple months of my life that was a lot of fun to create and i hope you like it i often think back to my first experience with monster hunter back in 2006 when monster hunter freedom was released i would have been about 13 at the time and i was looking for new games to fill up my psp library i had never heard of monster hunter before but the cover art caught my eye it was a man holding a giant bone sword fighting what looked to be a conventional dragon or wyvern i never really knew the difference the concept sounded simple but interesting enough and i decided to pick it up the game demanded a certain level of commitment and learning that i wasn't looking to put into a series at the time the battle system was confusing to me and felt slow and sluggish i found myself with barely any weapons items or money and no real understanding about how i was supposed to progress i didn't get it i think it was maybe a week later that i traded the game in it wouldn't be until the release of freedom unite in 2009 that i gave the series another go i had memories of playing freedom and felt like i missed something maybe the concept appealed more to me now that i was a bit older but i'm not sure i had a more accepting attitude of the premise in fact it sounded really appealing to hunt monsters in order to progress rather than your traditional action rpg leveling system again i didn't give very far the game was still very demanding and lacked a certain quality of life standard that i expected from games at the time something that is now appealing to me and the cult following the game received in the west i still had a hard time progressing figuring out what weapon suited me best and i probably hit a wall when i had to face a tigrex in the snowy mountains area fast forward a year to 2010 and it was with the release of monster hunter try that i really sank time into the series hours and hours of my day would go by hunting monsters i think a big factor for me finally successfully getting hooked to the series was through having friends that played it with me through freedom and freedom unite i always tried to play the game solo and that definitely isn't where the game is at its strongest i'm laying out this backstory to convey how interested and invested i am in the series as well as how inherently good the concept is even when the game was considered to be at its most inaccessible to a wider audience it still had this pull in the back of my mind that made me want to return to try it again monster hunter world has topped the charts becoming capcom's best selling game of all time with 15.7 million copies sold at the time of making this video but what about the other games in the series what led monster hunter to become the capcom powerhouse it is today and how did the series perform since its initial inception and release in 2004. in this multi-part video series we'll take a look at all five generations of the monster hunter franchise as well as frontier a chinese mmo rpg series released on pc and several spin-off games that have been developed i'm super rad and today i'm joined with flyann to bring you a brief history of monster hunter first generation [Music] so let me paint a picture for you it's 2001 and network play has been introduced to the playstation 2 which released a year prior your capcom's production studio one division and trying to figure out how to capitalize on the new functionality an initiative is formed to create three games with the goal of at least one of these games selling a million copies or more these three games include auto modalista resident evil outbreak and you guessed it monster hunter monster hunter was produced by suyoshi tanaka and noritaka funamizu but the development and production was taken over by ryozo tsujimoto who became the series producer since monster hunter freedom 2. he has stated monster hunter to be the culmination of the work that went into the other two titles as part of the network play initiative spoiler both monster hunter and resident evil outbreak ended up selling over a million copies in japan and this feat wouldn't happen in the west until the release of monster hunter 4 on the 3ds the game was designed with cooperative play in mind so players of any skill level could feel accomplished when hunting the giant creatures found in the series despite this angle and the total sales reaching over 1 million copies monster hunter still wasn't a big name in japan and wouldn't be until the release of freedom 2 in 2007 so what's the game about if you're an avid monster hunter fan you probably already know the answer to this but let's take a deeper look for those less familiar with the series monster hunter is a hack and slash action strategy game that focuses on the hunting and capturing of large boss-like monsters it promotes heavy preparation before each hunt by forcing the player to gather items around each of the game's hunting areas and use those items to craft beneficial items such as health potions or antidotes to become more effective in the world of monster hunter the player must use the items they carve off of the large monsters to forge and upgrade existing equipment making the character more effective by raising their attack and defense monster hunter introduces the following weapons 5 blademaster options the greatsword sword and shield hammer and lance with dual blades being introduced later in the international edition and two gunner options the lipogun and the heavy bow gun each of these weapons have their own strengths weaknesses and playing styles blademaster and gunners also get their own armor sets in majority with some sets and armor pieces being shared between the two class archetypes weapons all have a specific sharpness level that can decrease through use while on a hunt a hunter must sharpen their weapon when it is in disrepair or i'll suffer from lower damage and potentially bouncing off of the enemy instead of slicing or bashing into them the maximum sharpness obtainable on a weapon in monster hunter 1 was green with new sharpness levels being introduced in the expansion and in future games additionally certain blademaster weapons such as the long sword were better at damaging certain enemy parts or cutting off enemy tails but more blunt weapons like the hammer were more effective at knocking out the enemy and breaking through hard hide armor sets would also provide additional skill bonuses depending on the set such as additional health or the ability to endure heat of the volcano area without items the game introduced many of the iconic monsters that have persisted throughout the series these include gendrome iodrome and velocidrome bisarios and gravios safidrome and plessioth diablos and monoblos yan katku and gypseros kezu wrathian and the game's flagship monster rathalos possibly the most popular monster in the series on top of these large monsters are several smaller monsters that the player will hunt and gather from along their quests and several elder dragons elder dragons are a special class of large monsters that defy typical classifications of the standard monster and are exceptionally powerful in monster hunter 1 these include fatalis lao shan long and kirin kirin is the perfect example that the term elder dragon does not necessarily guarantee the creature will be of a dragon lake appearance as of writing this it is currently impossible to hunt both kirin and fatalis in the original game as they were online specific hunts and the servers have been shut down additionally elder dragons cannot be captured like most larger monsters the greater goal of the player is to complete quests that unlock higher ranks so that they can fight higher difficulty enemies and craft better gear quests in single player and multiplayer are separate with multiplayer quests being set to a higher difficulty to match the possibility of multiple hunters on a mission the single player or village quests consist of 1 star to 5 star while the multiplayer or town quests go up to 6 star town quests are broken up into low rank which is up to 3 star and high rank from 4 star and up high rank quests introduced new monsters and armor sets as well as more powerful versions of previously introduced monsters completing quests in the original game provided the player with hunter rank points or hr points for short it would take certain amounts of hr points for the player to eventually advance up through 20 hunter ranks starting as a ranger and eventually reaching the title of monster hunter the hunter rank determines what quest the player can participate in as well as what is sold in the local shops the hub world the player spends most of their time in is kokoto village where they can shop forge upgrade and eat before posting quests and heading out on hunts this is where all offline content takes place within the first generation the village has a landmark called the hero's blade which is embedded in a large rock the blade belonged to a legendary hunter who hunted a monobloss and the elder dragon lao shan lung single-handedly before hunting a second lao shan lung due to it killing his fiancee this hunter is referred to as the hero of kokoto the online town quest took place in mineguard town a special location only seen in the original monster hunter and the expansion monster hunter g mineguard consisted of the central square an armory where the player could forge equipment and the tavern the tavern was where players would interact the most being able to post quests get virtually drunk and chat the tavern reappears in monster hunter freedom but is located in kokoto village other locations in mineguard town include the guest house where players could rent rooms based on their hunter rank here the player could change their gear eat for kitchen or feline skills and save their game finally mine garden town also included a market where players could visit various shops to buy goods and get daily special sales on each server up to eight players could enter the town at any given time but only up to four players could participate in a quest together the original monster hunter introduced eight unique hunting and exploration slash gathering locations these included forests and hills jungle desert swamp and volcano additionally there were two special boss areas the fortress and castle scrade as well as an arena the fortress is a special location where the hunters can fight lao shan lung and later shen gaoren in monster hunter 2. the castle area was used specifically to fight the elder dragon fatalis a player would have to pay different contract fees of various amounts of the in-game currency zenny to unlock additional areas and weapons of the castle to help in the battle poogie is an iconic pet to the player and has appeared in every monster hunter to date in monster hunter 1 the player could interact with poogie but wouldn't be able to dress him up in costumes until monster hunter 2. the player can interact with poogie and play a short time-based mini-game to pet the poogie's head and have it follow them around there is a long-standing rumor that petting the poogie properly will raise the hunter's luck and helps with getting rare items from carving large monsters on hunts this has never been proven to be true and i want to make that very clear because this is one of the oldest rumors in the series it is unproven that petting the poogie does anything to raise drop rates but is that going to stop you from petting him anyway monster hunter was released internationally and included several differences compared to his japanese counterpart specifically the inclusion of dual blades which did not appear in the japanese release the variety of this weapon type was small and were integrated into the sword and shield crafting paths instead of their own unique path other changes include seeing equipped weapons outside of a quest the addition of an autosort function for the inventory something that has persisted throughout the rest of the series and the addition of the iconic kill screen which shows the player's perspective during the last hit of an enemy encounter that killed it and completed the quest as well as multiple other small changes now with all that out of the way let's have flyanne explain all of the additional content found in the expansion game monster hunter g monster hunter g is a japan exclusive game released on the playstation 2 in 2005 and later on the nintendo wii in 2009 it is considered an expansion of the original monster hunter consisting of all the content from the main game as well as several new additions before we get into the content let's discuss the name why g what does adding a letter signify to the player there's a lot of discussion you can find online about the g title but the easiest way to think about it is to think about how western culture might add words like super or ultimate to their titles when definitive editions are released in fact when monster hunter 3 g made it over to the west it was renamed to monster hunter 3 ultimate the general consensus you'll find online is that g stands for great or that it conveys a certain energy of something being bigger or better mhg introduced a lot of new content including concepts that would last throughout the entire series one of these was subspecies certain monsters within the series received new variations that while generally looking fairly similar to one another could have multiple changes such as elemental type weaknesses moves and drops these subspecies included black gravios and blue yan kuku green plesioth that son of a and purple's gypsyrose red kazoo black diablos and white mana blows pink wrathian and gold wrathion azur rathalos who ended up being the flagship monster for the western release of three ultimate and silver afterloads and the elder dragons ashen laoshan lung and crimson fatalis with new monsters came new armor sets and weapons and with new weapons came two new sharpness levels introduced to the series where the previous highest sharpness level was green now players could work towards blue and further into white sharpness these sharpness levels provided significantly higher raw damage multipliers g-rank quests were introduced to the game these quests would appear after the hunter successfully completed high rank and would offer more difficult challenges as well as a new tier of weapons and armor sets something that is persistent in both monster hunter for the ps2 and monster hunter g is the control style this style changes in freedom but in the original ps2 releases had the player attacking with the right analog stick and moving the camera with the d-pad this led to a popularized form of holding the controller called the claw grip this form of holding the controller was even used by the developers of the game with future releases of the game and the inclusion of multiple control schemes the claw grip soon became obsolete in 2009 a version of monster 100g was ported to the nintendo wii the re-release included a special classic controller for the game as well as a demo for monster hunter tri there are a few differences to go over specifically the control scheme which was based on the freedom portable version of the game rather than the ps2 version the game also added move sets and handling from the second generation of games without the inclusion of second generation weapons an example of this being in the greatsword charge having come out after the second generation of games it included a few quality of life changes such as the hunter starting with one of each weapon type at their base forms as well as the ability to preview weapons before crafting them monster hunter portable could be considered a mobile port of g with very few variations or changes there are multiple to discuss however but nothing as drastic as the additions added to g for example only one new monster is introduced to the series that being yan garuga a relative of yan kutku and a monster that functioned in the game similarly to elder dragons from the later generations needing to be repelled multiple times subspecies previously were only available in town quests now called guild quests but now also appeared in village quests the player wouldn't know if they were hunting a subspecies unless the quest specifically mentioned the color of the monster in the quest description the game also introduced a multiplayer only treasure hunt mode where two players could take on a gathering quest and be rewarded with money by completing it arguably the biggest addition to the game was the kokoto farm an addition where players could gather materials without going out on quests and into field areas like zones and quest fields they have limited amounts of resources that would only refresh in between quests the player can purchase renovations as they progress through the game that would allow them to gather better materials the player would have to first unlock these renovations through urgent quests and then purchase them using kokoto points which are obtained by buying and selling materials in the village the training school was also introduced which allowed players to learn how to play the game and hone their skills as well as certain challenges the players could partake in it's rather bare bones in freedom and has expanded on in future games no new sharpness was introduced in the freedom version of the game however white sharpness was nerfed in g the raw damage multiplier for white sharpness is 1.5 and is brought down to 1.3 for the portable game and that's it for the first generation of monster hunter i'd like to thank flyanne for joining me in this video you can find him over on the following links are also in the description be sure to check out his poke hunter series where he draws hunters equipped with pokemon inspired armor and weapons additionally a big shout out to the monster hunter gathering hull discord for offering clarification on certain topics such as the inclusion of yan garuga in freedom as well as general lore knowledge that they didn't possess before and will help for future videos you can find a link to that discord in the description as well in the next video we will be focusing on the second generation of monster hunter including monster hunter dos freedom 2 and freedom unite which really helped to popularize the series in japan see you then hello hello it's me i i make i made this i made this video um i'm super rad i have a couple extra topics to go over or just some clarifications of stuff that got brought up in the video so i'm gonna go ahead and i'm gonna i'm gonna read it and you're gonna you're gonna be like that thing i was about to call you out on i oh he brought it up here at the end okay so it's not it's not as bad so first of all small monsters in the in monster hunter 1 in the ps2 which is what i i played most of it myself uh they are awful they're they're terrible in newer games they kind of just like they vibe a little bit and will attack you but not to the consistency i mean you might be able to see it in some of the some of the footage that i made i you can't carve you ha you have to clear it out if you want to be able to carve without any real issues they're just they're just so awful so yeah there's that the claw grip stuff on the psp i ended up writing it like it went away after monster hunter a g on the ps2 but that's not true the psp actually didn't even have a right analog stick so while the control scheme did change claw grip was still like a viable option uh within that game you still like you still like held it kind of like kind of like this and moved the camera getting the quest you want is tough the amount of times i had to go into a quest and abandon it so that i could go back and see if one of the monsters i needed to record was now an option was astronomical each of the ranks gives you five options it could the game could only fit in five options and those options kind of like randomly cycle through or maybe random i'm not sure i think random uh but they would cycle through every time you would go into a quest and come back so i had to go into a quest abandon it and come back out which was awful i didn't mention him in this video but there is a legendary gunner uh on top of the hero of kokoto there is a legendary gunner he actually gives you i believe a quest to hunt a monobloss i believe it's the hunter monobloes and he kind of just shows up at some point he kind of shows up at some point late into the game and just uh and just hangs out under the tree near where you would like go off to go do your quests so yeah he's there the legendary gunner he's pretty cool finally i said that uh it is impossible to play this game online and like visit mine guard town that's that's technically not true i believe through emulation and like either through an emulator or modding your ps2 that you could like go into somebody's private server if they're hosting one i think and play it through that and that means that you could technically access mind guard town and you could technically access kieran and fatalis but i wasn't i didn't want to do that and i didn't do that and again thank you to flyann for appearing in this video okay hello everyone and welcome back to another lesson on the history of the monster hunter series today we'll be looking at the second generation of games including monster hunter dose freedom 2 and freedom unite some of the games that really started to make a name for themselves in the west as someone who got into the monster hunter series through the third generation onward it's interesting going back and revisiting the portable series as well as investing time into learning about monster hunter dose for the playstation 2 a game that never made it to north america and that has some unique content that hasn't reappeared in future games by making this video and doing this research i too am learning about the series as a whole and filling the gaps on the knowledge that i've never had or have lost through time i'm not going to drag on with a long introduction by looking at this script i think that the length of this video is going to be long enough as it is but i'll say this monster hunter is a series where a very large portion of the content is not readily available to western audiences it is one of japan's most popular and influential series and has made a big name for itself globally with the release of world but that wasn't always the case it wasn't until the release of monster hunter portable in 2005 that the series really began to take off in japan and it wouldn't be until the release of freedom 2 in 2007 that the series finally exploded it wouldn't be possible or rather it would be improbable that i could make these videos without the help of the monster hunter community through groups dedicated to the series the lore and preserving past content it's possible for these videos to exist today thank you to the community as a whole monster hunter dose is in my opinion a definitive addition to the series and one that really set in stone what the series would be moving forward and i hope to show you why that is as we explore this generation of the monster hunter games what led monster hunter to become the capcom powerhouse it is today and how did the series perform since its initial inception and release in 2004. in this multi-part video series we'll take a look at all five generations of the monster hunter franchise as well as frontier monster hunter online and several other spin-off games that have been developed i'm super rad and today i'm here to bring you a brief history of monster hunter second generation after the development of monster hunter 1 and monster hunter g the series appeared on portable consoles with the release of monster hunter freedom in 2005 but freedom wasn't the only game being developed by capcom at the time while the company wanted to expand into portable gaming an ever-growing market in japan they continued to work on the next full entry in the series monster hunter dose for the ps2 which would release in 2006 just one year after the release of portable despite its small cult following in the west the series still got press from sites like ign who covered its announcement all the way up to its release clearly there was some interest in the series it's actually a bit amusing there's even an article where ign tells you you're wrong for calling it monster hunter 2 instead of dos speculating that it would be called to in its english release unfortunately that english release never happened due to subpar sales and lack of interest in the west capcom decided not to release it over here in 2013 ryozo tsujimoto who became the series producer starting with monster hunter freedom 2 is even quoted as saying when you look at the history of the monster hunter franchise in the west you can't really say that it's been a huge success however this didn't stop them from developing something great for japanese audiences to call monster hunter 2 ambitious is a bit of an understatement the amount of changes and concepts designed for this specific entry are staggering there's a bit of a disconnect between western audiences and the series since the game never made it over to north america some even claiming that it is just monster hunter 1 with a few additions but is that the case well no in fact dose is what shaped the series to be what it is today with many of its core concepts and additions persisting through the series all the way up to world but that doesn't mean there aren't a few bad eggs in there for example let's take a deeper look at the time of day and seasonal system monster hunter 2 was the first game in the series to implement a day and night cycle the cycle affects monster spawns quests and even the environment if it's daytime in the desert zones you'll need a cold drink to keep cool but if it's nighttime it's noticeably colder and hot drinks are required to stay warm that's a pretty cool addition and one that adds a little immersion to the series without inhibiting the player too much on the other end of the concept are seasons monster hunter 2 contains 3 seasons that change dynamically as you complete quests within the game first hot or warm season where carnivorous monsters are more active and more likely to be encountered this season locks the player out of the desert zone hunting location but generally offers more to hunt next is cold season which like hot season also locks the player out of a hunting zone this time the snowy mountains area monsters in this season become more aggressive but as a trade-off we'll have a better chance of dropping rare materials for the player finally there's breeding season where monsters go to well you know and during this time there will be more herbivores out and about making this season an optimal time to go gathering while this mechanic of seasons is an interesting addition and offers certain advantages to the player it's hard not to notice how it also limits them locking them out of specific areas and by doing so also locking them out of specific quests and in a game that feels like it's all about player freedom even going on to label its portable series as such it was an addition that probably didn't receive a very good reception we can infer this since the mechanic didn't even make it into the next game in the portable series freedom 2. if you are going into monster hunter 2 don't let this mechanic bother you too much though the player can force a change of seasons by paying to do so at their bed in their player home additions also came to weapons one thing i failed to mention in part one of this series was that each weapon may have an element associated with it these elements included fire water thunder and dragon monsters may be weak to one or several of these elements and using them against them in battle will produce extra damage on top of the ones already listed there are also several elements where the point of them wasn't to offer extra base damage but instead cause ailments these elements included paralysis which had the chance to paralyze an enemy for a short time and allow the player to attack unobstructed poison which could produce a damage over time effect and sleep which could put the enemy to sleep allowing the player to set up traps or explosives new to monster hunter 2 was the ice element which would deal extra damage to those monsters who were weak to it along with the new elements there were several new blademaster weapons introduced to the series including my personal favorite and main weapon longsword yes i am a weeb unfortunately but are you trying to tell me that the spirit gauge wasn't the coolest concept in the series at the time you couldn't even boost its level yet or use the spirit round slash and it was still incredibly gratifying to fill it up and get that 12 damage boost on top of the long sword blade masters also had access to the hunting horn and gun lance the hunting horn was especially unique allowing the player to play different combinations of notes to create a desired buff effect gunners also had access to the bow which is a faster and more versatile weapon allowing skilled hunters to take down monsters from a distance with ease some existing weapons also had various changes for example the iconic greatsword charge attack was first introduced in two if you remember from my previous video this was also retroactively added to monster hunter g when it was re-released on the nintendo wii sword and shield also now had the ability to use items even while weapons were achieved in combat both armor and weapons had a new slot and decoration system introduced where players could put decorations into an empty slot to boost specific skill points to either unlock a skill or help boost it to its next tier of effectiveness this gave the player more overall customization and control over the armor sets speaking of armor sets players could now name and label the sets that they kept in their item box allowing them to change equipment much easier on top of this armor was now upgraded similarly to how weapons were requiring certain specific monster parts or gathering materials before being able to forge it to a higher level of effectiveness so what about the monsters well not only were there new additions but every large monster from monster hunter g also returned for the next entry in the series on top of that there were two new monster classifications added the carapacean crab-like creatures who can use other larger monster skulls as their shells and fanged beasts something interesting to note is that balfango a monster who first appeared in the original game is considered a fang beast from this point forward while simply being a herbivore in the previous entries the following large monsters were introduced buldrome a monster that is similar to a large bullfango kangalala and blangonga two ape-like creatures and the first of their kind in the series as well as rajang an online-only ape-like creature daimyo hermitar and shogun shianatar two of the new carapacean monsters introduced the daimyo wears the skull of a monobloss while the shogun wears the skull of a gravios shen gao ren an extremely large carapacean is a special online only monster that wears the skull of a lao shan lung believe it or not despite its size it's not classified as an elder dragon while neither named or classified as a monster in the game itself there is a large shackalaka the player can hunt called king shakalaka what's a shakalaka they're a type of linear creature similar to the felines found in monster hunter 1 by the release of monster hunter world there are three types of linens and within those three various subtypes but we won't get into that until later entry in the series various new elder dragons were also introduced into the series including the flagship monster of dose kushala dalra on top of kushala there are the following new entries rested kushala a variant of kushala whose metallic skin has started to rust this is not a subspecies similar to how scarred garuga in freedom was not it has small visual differences and may act slightly different in combat with rusted kushala being more aggressive than its normal counterpart kamilios a jittery monster that has the ability to poison the player and steal their items similar to egypt seros tiastra and lu nostra an iconic elder dragon pair lu nostra is an offline only monster and appears in monster hunter 2's end game white fatalis an online only subspecies of fatalist that appears white and glows similar to that of a kirin and finally yama tsukami a very unique looking elder dragon who appears as the endgame hunt for the online quest chain yama rarely appears in monster hunter games and western audiences would first get to hunt one with the release of freedom unite on top of this lao shan long and kirin both had easily accessible offline quests while fatalis and its subspecies remained online only multiple new locations were also added to the series these include snowy mountains desert jungle swamp volcano tower and town town is a part of the online hub town of dundorma and is a location usually used to fight elder dragons speaking of dundorma let's talk about hub areas the main offline hub area in monster hunter 2 is jumbo village a port village and location unique to monster hunter 2 specifically the town has never made a reappearance in any future monster hunter games only being mentioned by name in monster hunter 4 ultimate by completing various special requests the player could upgrade various parts of the village including the blacksmith or the player home these upgrades would offer several benefits such as the blacksmith opening up a shop that contained various supplies the tavern is where the player will spend a good portion of their time taking available quests depending on the season and participating in mini-games such as arm wrestling against the jumbo arm wrestler or drinking with the wyverian lady several shops exist in the town as well including the feline merchant who sells general goods a traveling merchant known as the pedaling granny who shows up from time to time and the blacksmith when upgraded items could be combined at the combine shopkeeper if the player had the proper recipe several items now also had multiple recipes making it easier to craft items there is no kitchen in town but there is a feline cook who will make various meals for you or your poogie when given the proper ingredients there are also multiple gathering areas including a fishing corner where the player can go to catch fish as long as they have bait and a cave where they can provide a minor with a pickaxe to go collect various ores for them similar to the hero of kokoto there is the hero of jumbo who is known for slaying a loonastra this hero also has a sword in a stone for the player to obtain by upgrading their mining cave to level 3. finally if all requests for the shipyard manager have been completed and the lu nostra has been slayed the player can travel to kokoto village for a visit similar to the online hub of my guard town monster hunter 2 has its own online hub known as dundorma part of dundorma is set up specifically to defend against various attacks from elder dragons this hunting location is simply known as town dundorma sports an item shop and blacksmith as well as a guild hall which is similar to the tavern and where players will generally hang out and pick up quests there are two people of note in the town specifically his immenseness an old giant wyverian who is the leader of both dundorma and the elder dragon observation team a corporation who focuses on finding elder dragons additionally there is the songstress who can be found on a stage in dundorma the player can give the songstress a musical note in exchange for her singing a song i don't have much else to say on dundormus specifically but it is important to note that while monster hunter 2's online servers have gone on flying dundorma isn't completely lost rather the town reappears in monster hunter 4 ultimate although not fully additionally there are restoration efforts to get monster hunter 2's online component back up and running given the time maybe i'll make a similar video to my mind guard entry when that happens quests in monster hunter 2 function almost identically to previous entries in the series however there are a few additions for one players now have access to subquests these tasks would be tacked onto larger quests and would allow the player to complete the quest through an easier objective meaning that they could end it sooner without losing any loot that they had already obtained these would not mark the quest as completed however meaning that they would still need to eventually be completed properly additionally a wanted system was added that would reward the player with extra money if they hunted monsters that were currently wanted by the village a quality of life feature was also added to offline quests where the player could now properly pause the game if they needed a break from the action there are a few more additions of note added to monster hunter 2 such as a usb connectivity functionality that would allow players to connect their psp to monster hunter 2. doing so would unlock a yan garuga quest for both games one really interesting addition was the inclusion of a competitive player vs player system where players would face off against one another each attempting to hunt one another's monster that they bring with them into the battle it's hard to find reviews for monster hunter 2 but taking a look at the sales to date the game has sold just over five hundred thousand copies about two hundred thousand more than monster hunter one before it monster hunter freedom a game released a year prior sold roughly 1.3 million over double the amount of monster hunter 2. this is most likely due to multiple factors including freedom's overseas release and portability however the next release in the series sold over a million more copies than freedom and truly put monster hunter on the map in japan let's take a look monster hunter freedom 2 also known as portable 2nd in japan is an interesting entry in the series while freedom was for the better part just a port of monster hunter g freedom 2 has multiple large changes and more additional monsters one major change is the shift in location substituting jumbo village for a new snow-based hub called pokey village a lot of freedom specific features such as farming also make their return it's for this reason that the game isn't considered a direct port of monster hunter 2 rather being called a portable update let's start with what's been removed first of all the entire season system has been stripped from the game no longer locking the player out of various content day and night cycles also no longer technically exist rather than being dynamic a quest will now inform the player if it takes place during day or night and adjust the map accordingly yama tsukami has also been removed from the series on top of that the pvp mechanic introduced in two does not make a return either on to the new hub poke village sported many of the amenities seen in freedom while lacking certain features that appeared in monster hunter 2. specifically the player could not upgrade the village or their player home the farm makes a return allowing players to gather various items such as bugs or ore a change compared to freedom allows the player to farm without worrying about breaking their tools however tools will still break while out hunting and gathering an adventurous feline named trenia can also be sent out to help gather for hunters some of the items he can obtain are unique to him and cannot be gathered by the player returning to the game are the general store as well as the blacksmith and armory where the player can upgrade their equipment the feline kitchen and training school also make a reappearance with the training school being expanded on with additional quests allowing the player to train against the additional monsters the feline kitchen is inaccessible until the player meets and hires wandering feline chefs which can be found by interacting with a wandering chef barrel near the player home or by speaking to the pedaling granny speaking of the pedaling granny she makes her return from monster hunter 2. this time introducing the game's mascot pet poogie to you the guild hall appears in pokey village and is where the player will pick up their offline and online quests additionally treasure hunts make a return and no longer require an additional party member main offline quests would still be picked up by the village elder outside of the guild hall players now also have the ability to connect to the internet to download additional quests item packs and poogie costumes by the way if you're wondering what that giant boulder behind the village elder is it's macolite three new monsters are introduced to the series with the release of freedom too these include geodrome a large monster version of geoprey which were introduced in monster hunter 2. think of it as a winter variant of velocidrome without actually being called a variant a cantor a flying wyvern but in name only as he is considered flightless despite this classification and the flagship monster of freedom 2 the tigrex a series regular and fairly popular monster despite how excruciatingly difficult i found him in this series again he was the reason i stopped playing monster hunter until the release of try there aren't many other changes to the series though the tower location from monster hunter 2 does get a slight rework freedom 2 was a real turning point for the series in japan selling to date 2.4 million copies globally in the west the game received multiple 7 out of 10s and higher with few lower than that gamespot notably gave the game a 5 out of 10. despite this the game sold fairly well in the west and would go on to become a classic entry for the psp the game wouldn't see a lack of success with its next entry either let's take a look at monster hunter freedom unite this is it monster hunter freedom unite a series classic and the best selling entry on the psp ever monster hunter freedom unite was considered a critical success in japan by capcom and it wouldn't be long until they brought it over to the west it sported 1500 different weapons and 2 000 armor sets advertised over 500 hours of gameplay potential and allowed players to transfer their freedom to save over to unite so they wouldn't lose progress it was truly a master class entry in the series one of the most notable additions was the introduction of the feline companion system now typically known as pallicos the player can hire up to 13 feline companions but only have three of them set as active having companions that is active allows them to take part in training and better their skills in hunting and gathering comrades are limited to offline only content and also cannot join the player when fighting exceptionally large creatures such as lao chan long and shen gaoren felines had multiple stats such as attack and defense and would even track the fondness they held towards the player a feline would either use a slashing or impact weapon and while the player could not change a comrade's equipment directly as the comrade levels up their weapon will show multiple visual differences the player can use points to have their comrade learn up to three skills at a time and have them unlearn skills when they want to switch them out players can even share their companions with friends through the psp's sleep mode the feline companion will keep track of who their original commander was freedom unite once again offered multiple new monsters for the player to hunt including multiple sub-species these included plum damiel hermitar and tereshogen chianatar the plum damio wears a diablo skull and sports a purple tone while the tara shogin wears a black gravio skull instead of a normal gravios and sports a black and red tone next is emerald kongalala who appears green in color and is much more flatulent than its normal counterpart and copper blangonga who was a larger and stronger subspecies of blangonga that lives in hot desert regions rather than in the snowy mountains area two new additions actually first debuted in monster hunter frontier those being hypnocatrice and levassiath while appearing in muncha frontier hypnocatrice would never appear in the main series again meanwhile levassiath would appear in cross doublecross and monster hunter world the vespoid queen a large neopdoron monster is introduced for the first time in freedom unite technically there is a downloadable quest in freedom 2 where the player fights an enlarged vespoid called the vespoid queen but this is simply a larger model of the vespoid with more health and that inflicts greater damage eucanalos is also introduced in freedom unite and has a special location to hunt in found in the snowy mountains called snowy mountains peak it resembles in a cantor the flagship monster of the series is a brand new addition the narghakuga another very popular monster in the series additionally both yama tsukami and king shakalaka make a return in this entry a variant of rajang is also introduced in freedom unite called furious rajang furious rajang starts off looking like your average enraged rajang but when going into rage mode has its fur stand up and become visibly electrified many of the old monsters also have new attacks as well as new telegraphs making it easier to know when an enemy was going to attack a specific way and plan accordingly there are multiple little additions and quality of life changes such as extra equipment pages instead of 6 the player now has 8 pages to use with the ability to upgrade that number to 10 player could also store more sets in total as well as hold a maximum number of 99 of each item within a storage slot in the player's box players could even install part of the game's data onto a memory card for faster loading times additionally the player could skip certain cutscenes such as the entry scenes for fatalis and lao shan lung guild cards also received an upgrade with multiple new pages which would allow various stats and feline information to be shown there are also many new character customization options such as hair and starting clothes and the addition of new music for areas and new downloadable quests the game was basically packed to the brim with new features and additions the game introduced many new weapons and armor sets thanks to the inclusion of the new monsters some of these armor sets even had unique skills that could not be obtained from decorations some weapons received several changes as well for example some dual blades could sport two elements rather than one and the hunting horn added the ability to produce a sonic bomb effect with these new weapons and additions came a brand new sharpness level to date purple sharpness is the highest level of sharpness that can be obtained for any weapon in almost any monster hunter game except for frontier which added the sky blue sharpness which is one level higher than purple g-rank quests marked their return with the release of freedom unite this is because freedom unite is a direct expansion of freedom 2. in japan the games are called portable 2nd and portable 2nd g respectively these quests can be picked up from the new guild clerk in the guild hall certain first generation locations saw their return and existing locations such as forest and hills now have the ability to be in either day or night the volcanic region was also upgraded adding two new areas to the map finally the game introduced epic hunting quests where the player would hunt multiple monsters one after the other carving these monsters wouldn't produce materials but would instead reward the player with mega potions however quest rewards would still be monster materials meaning that the player could capture monsters for rarer rewards freedom unite sold exceptionally well globally for a psp game racking in 3.8 million sales to date it would even see a digital release on the ps vita with the inclusion of right analog stick functionality for the camera controls finally ending the need to use the infamous claw grip as of writing this it is the third best-selling game on the psp western reviews of this game were slightly better than freedom 2 with a metacritic score averaging above the 80s wow ok that was a lot of information for a brief history entry and there's definitely even more i could have gotten into but why not try the game yourself dust off that old psp or that vida and check out freedom unite one of the pillars of quality in the monster hunter series in the next part of this series we'll be looking at the third generation of monster hunter including portable 3rd tri and ultimate which are some of my favorite games and include some of my favorite monsters including the best boy legia cruz hello everyone and welcome back to another lesson on the history of the monster hunter series today we'll be looking at the third generation of games including monster hunter tri portable third and three ultimate when i originally started the series i think the generation i was looking forward to covering the most was this one a generation that i spent the most time with overall clocking in hundreds and hundreds of hours between try and three ultimate alone it's a generation that introduced some of my favorite monsters a generation that introduced me to some long time friends that i still have today a generation that would take me from simply dipping my toes into the series and finally taking the plunge becoming a dedicated fan of monster hunter as a whole excited for new releases in the series and even revisiting past ones i remember buying a wii u simply because it came with a copy of three ultimate and a pro controller it was all i really played on the console for quite some time and that should really say something considering people's general opinions towards the wii u as a whole monster hunter was that good enough for me to buy a whole console just so i could play that one game recently for my birthday i even received the second volume of the monster hunter illustrations art book which covers a lot about the third generation design so it really is the perfect time to be making this video many new concepts and additions were added in this generation but at the start many were removed looking back it's pretty surprising to me how much was lost in the release of try now that i can look at it with a more experienced and critical eye some of these additions withstood the test of time like the updates to the spirit gauge or the slime element now known as the blast element and some additions didn't like water-based combat but all in all this was another step forward for the series as a whole and i'm looking forward to revisiting it with you and reminiscing as we go through what led monster hunter to become the capcom powerhouse it is today and how did the series perform since its initial inception and release in 2004 in this multi-part video series we'll take a look at all five generations of the monster hunter franchise as well as frontier monster hunter online and several other spin-off games that have been developed i'm super rad and today i'm here to bring you a brief history of monster hunter third generation previously on deadliest hunters no these floofs ain't hunters to hunt all able to swallow your whole you'll need more than your wits link up and battle with your friends on the fiercest online multiplayer for the wii in life they're hunters and then they're monster hunters hunting season is open ready for team just a quick note before we really get into this i generally record all of my footage myself when i can but it's hard to get all of the footage for try as i no longer own a copy and it seems impossible to get a save file for it that would have all the quests and equipment unlocked making it much easier for me to make this video that being said i do still have a fairly thorough save file for 3 ultimate so much of what you'll be seeing for try will be coming from there by the point monster hunter tri was in development and set to release the majority of monster hunter games or rather all the mainline games had been released on sony consoles so why then was try being developed for the nintendo wii of all things well looking back at the release of the wii and the total number of sales it really was the dominating console at the time you may not remember this or may even be too young to have experienced it but when the wii was announced and approaching release it was a cultural phenomena the change from a traditional nintendo style to a console that was primarily centered around motion controls through the market for a loop and in all the right ways apparently because the wii was outselling the ps3 and the xbox 360 in the united states a country where sony and microsoft were generally dominant this was even more prevalent in japan where the wii was overall the most dominant console of the generation it's no surprise then to find out that development for monster hunter tri for the ps3 was ultimately scrapped and design began for a console that would reach more audiences overall but specifically in japan where monster hunter was a leader in their gaming market and culture if you remember from part 1 of this series a demo for the game was released with the re-release of monster hunter g on the nintendo wii it should be noted that while try did introduce some forms of motion controls to the series due to the wemo predominantly being a motion control device the game was often sold alongside the nintendo classic controller and was generally considered the preferable way to play this demo also came over to america before the game's western release the game was released in japan on august 1st 2009 and it wouldn't be until april 20th 2010 that we saw a north american release okay so what did we get with this new release in the series well it's probably better to start off with what was lost fans of the second generation of games like freedom unite may have been a little disappointed for one major reason the only returning large monsters were wrathion rathalos and diablos unlike monster hunter dose tri didn't include any subspecies either on top of this some of the new weapons introduced in the game were removed as well including dual blades gun lance hunting horn and the only additional gunner option bow long sword fans could breathe a sigh of relief however as the weapons seemed to survive this purge in total only 18 large monsters were even available to hunt that might seem like a small number but 15 of these were original designs before we get into these new monsters let's talk about one addition to the game that probably had the greatest impact on design choices and development monster hunter tri is the first of only two releases in the series to implement underwater combat maps were designed to have several areas where the player could not only swim in water but also dive deep into these areas and fight monsters in multiple underwater locations this combat was different to say the least focusing on a more three-dimensional movement system as the player could swim upwards and downwards on top of this the player now had an oxygen gauge that had to be maintained this gauge could be affected in multiple ways players would regain oxygen if they resurfaced or if they swam through air bubbles found in multiple underwater locations additionally players could carry items to refill their oxygen reserves they wouldn't be able to build sets towards stopping the depletion of this gauge until the release of three ultimate the whole underwater concept received a fairly mixed reception the slow movement underwater and requirement for oxygen could be considered limiting then again it was a new option of exploration and combat in the game it also allowed players to follow water-based monsters to continue combat rather than being forced to wait for them to return to land looking back however it was a truly bitter addition considering how much of the development time it took up and how much more could have been added or included instead of water combat maybe we could have had more new monsters maybe we could have had more returning monsters maybe certain weapons introduced in past games didn't need to be scrapped director kaname fujioka commented on the amount of effort required to implement this mechanic and stated that these sections took too much time away from what other parts they could develop overall i never personally had an issue with it during my time playing but i was also someone introduced to the series with it it just kind of fit in with where we are now in the series and what i've experienced in past games all i can think about is how much more core content could have been added without its inclusion and ultimately feel like it was a failed addition now before we touch on the monsters let's talk about what was added to equipment despite losing several weapons one new blademaster weapon was introduced the switch axe also known as the slash axe in japan the switch axe was a very unique addition to the series and really marked what i consider to be monster hunter's more experimental phase of weaponry the weapon has two forms axe and sword and can switch between the two at will or during combos this adds a large amount of versatility for the player while in combat now i won't delve too deep into the weapon at this time but maybe expect a more thorough look in a future dedicated video now bow guns on the other hand were vastly different in how they were crafted the guns were now fully customizable players could craft frames barrels and stocks for their guns and make some match pieces to better suit their needs some bogun options were considered all-in-one packages and didn't require customization there was also the introduction of the middle bull gun which functioned as a middle ground between the light and heavy options armor remained largely unchanged from this generation however in try players could continue upgrading their low rank armor until it ascended into a high rank variant this would generally be a cheaper option material wise for the player than just crafting a new piece outright that is if they've been keeping up with upgrades as they progress these pieces upgraded from low rank to high rank had minimally different resistances but no changes too big to make a noticeable effect okay so let's talk about monsters as mentioned previously there weren't many returning monsters aside from rathalos wrathion and diablos as well as no subspecies included however some of the monsters added to try have had a lasting impact on the series and even appeared on games all the way up the world gen 3 also introduced two new monster types leviathans and brute wyverns leviathans are see your lava-based creatures and specialize in swimming while brute wyverns have large bulky bodies they use to fight you with brute force so first up we have the great jaggi and the great baggie two bird wyvern creatures jaggy would be one of the first large monsters the players would hunt and try and prefer warm climates while baggy can generally be found around colder ones it can also be noted that great baggie are generally larger than great jaggy kuropeko another bird wyvern an incredibly annoying monster to hunt this monster can actually sing when it's in danger and the song will get the attention of other large monsters in the area sending them to your location and potentially making the hunt more difficult royal ludroth a spongy leviathan who can store up large quantities of water to use in defense against other predators or hunters barroth one of the first brute wyverns the player will ever face their hard heads protect them for most attacks on top of this they can roll around in the mud and wear the hardened clumps as armor gobel another leviathan who is similar to that of a puffer fish gobble has the ability to swallow its prey whole and can emit blinding flashes of light similar to a flashbomb giganox or kezu2 as i like to call them a disgusting looking cave-dwelling flying wyvern giganox has many abilities but one truly spine-shivering tactic is when it lays giggy sacks to spawn young giggy which will try to attach to you like a leech barrioth is saber-toothed cat-like flying wyvern very similar in appearance to narkakuga from freedom unite it's a tundra-based monster and weapons created from it generally have high affinity agnator a lava-based leviathan who dwells in the volcano area of monster hunter try unlike water-based leviathans players can't dive in to chase after them but don't worry about that since this monster can swim straight through rock toward you eragon another brute wyvern who can smash his chin into the ground to cause seismic activity it's incredibly durable making it difficult for slashing based weapons if you knock an origami down you can actually take a pickaxe to its back to mine some materials devil joe in my opinion devil joe is one of the best things to come out of the third generation an absolute beast of a brute wyvern that has no remorse for any creature it has a variant introduced in three ultimate and has the ability to invade areas where hunts are taking place disrupting any hunter in the area truly one of the most savage monsters in the series in try he is an online only monster and can only be actively hunted in six star quests until then the player will need to complete quests where it may invade finally the game's flagship monster and one of my all-time favorites legia cruz a large portion of the village quest line focuses on the player taking one of these down it can generate electricity around its body and is generally considered to be the top of the aquatic food chain on top of the large monster additions there are also three new elder dragons to look at sadius is the first we'll take a look at and is considered the end game hunt for village quests you fight one in a special underwater cavern full of weaponry like ballasta and a dragonator it has a large beard of fur and can even shoot out powerful beams of water then we have jen moran actually don't know much about its popularity but it does have a rather unique and entertaining battle segment players will be on board a desert-based sailing ship and must use the provided equipment of cannons ballista and dragonator to deal as much damage as possible players can actually jump onto it and mine various parts of its body as well as damaging various body parts last but certainly not least is alatreon possibly my favorite elder dragon introduced to the series this dragon has control over multiple elements including dragon ice thunder and fire the players fight the dragon in a special location within the volcano called the sacred land it is considered elementally unstable monster hunter 3 was also the first game where the monsters could inflict elemental status effects on the player these are known as blights and had various effects on top of various ways of removing them for example fire blight would damage the player over time but they could remove this through items rolling three or four times or rolling once in water several new locations are also introduced the main location of which is deserted island or d island for short this is one of the first locations the player will hunt in and varies from forest to cave to water-based areas the island is within the same area as moga village and the player can even see the entrance to moga on the island players can actually freely hunt in this location without the need of accepting a quest additional locations include flooded forest sandy plains tundra volcano underwater ruins where the player fights sidious great desert where the player fights jen sacred land where the player fights aletreon and two arenas one land-based and the other water as mentioned attached to d island is a small fishing hub known as moga village and is where the player will start their journey at the beginning of the game the town is dealing with earthquakes and the player is tasked with finding and hunting that which is thought to be responsible a legia cruise the town is above a large underwater tunnel system where sidious dwells and it is soon uncovered that the elder dragon is the cause of the earthquakes there's not too much to cover about the village specifically it has all the amenities you would expect from the past games but also introduces the argosy captain to the series through him players trade special items for more useful ones the captain will even reward you eventually with his longsword a very appreciated gift for longsword mains out there it should be noted that players can customize their home with various furnishings and allow other players to visit their homes through an online connection farming also makes a return in the series although it functions differently the farm does not include any mining or fishing spots instead it has multiple sites the player can level up that will provide various other crafting materials like mushrooms herbs and honey try introduces an online hub similar to that of mine guard town called lock lock city if you thought mine guard was lost to time just know lock lack is even more so while there are restoration efforts for mind guard lock lock is having a much tougher time coming back to life the city consisted of a main gate that would allow players to search for an online lobby up to 100 players could hang out in this location at any given time once in a lobby they'd be on the main street where only up to four players those within your party could enter together once again the city contains many facilities known to the series that i won't go over again off of main street is lodge street where the player can customize their house based on three building options leading from here is the tavern where players grab quests and eat meals players can also take on other hunters in arm wrestling first introduced in monster hunter dose similar to the feline comrades at monster hunter freedom unite the player has a new companion they can bring with them on quests this time around players can have a shakalaka friend named cha-cha who can be invited on quests with them cha-cha can level up from participating in missions with the player and has multiple stats like stamina health attack and defense players can unlock and equip cha-cha with various masks these masks offer various effects and help the player on their quests while in combat cha-cha will dance and certain combinations of dances could provide boosts to the player such as attack up or defense up quests remain largely unchanged in this edition but do include unstable environments where during quests there is a chance a non-quest related monster will show up to potentially interrupt your hunt this is particularly intrusive when devil joe shows up it should be noted that offline quests did not have any high rank equivalents in this entry and wouldn't until 3 ultimate overall tri received favorable reviews even receiving a perfect 40 out of 40 score from famitsu the 11th game to ever do this it went on to sell 1.9 million copies effectively half of freedom unite which was dominating in japan and it wouldn't even put a dent into the sales of the next game in the series let's take a look at monster hunter portable third now i'm going to start things off with a little correction from my previous video in part 2 i mentioned freedom 2 was one of the best-selling psp games to date and the best-selling psp monster hunter game but that was inaccurate to clarify monster hunter portable 3rd actually sold the most out of all the freedom and portable series clocking in 4.9 million copies to put that in perspective for you freedom sold 1.3 million copies and freedom 2 sold 2.4 million with freedom unite at 3.9 even more specifically portable thirds sold more as a japanese exclusive than try and three ultimate combined funny enough the game was predicted to sell over 5 million copies not quite hitting the mark but getting incredibly close it was known by capcom that monster hunter didn't do as well in the west as it did in japan in fact western sales of tri were particularly weak overall in comparison this may have been why japan decided not to release portable third in the west at all a sad but ultimately understandable move on their part unlike freedom being a port of monster hunter g or freedom 2 and unite building off of the first game with additional content portable 3rd was mostly a standalone experience and most of the game's mechanics and concepts had to be remade that being said it is still considered a successor within the freedom and portable series due to this players cannot transfer their freedom to or unite save files however the players would receive several bonuses for loading their previous games save data portable third has a focus on sound design and graphical quality looking to push the psp to its absolute limits due to this there is less overall content in the game in comparison to freedom unite but more quests to accept it has less melee and ranged weapons to choose from in comparison to freedom unite as well as less armor pieces and items overall the game also had an hd remaster on ps3 called monster hunter portable 3rd hd version released august 25th 2011. it's really no surprise that the game was so successful coming off the heels of unite and trying developers opted to include most of the new content from tri as well as the removed content that had shown up and unite for one underwater combat was completely removed from this entry in the series and locations from tri that had underwater or swimming segments were reworked and while tri had kept the inclusion of purple sharpness portable third removed this level also feline companions marked their return rather than cha-cha who we were introduced to and try all weapons from freedom united as well as the switch axe make their return in portable third however the customizability of the boguns does not yakumo village is the new offline hub for portable third it's a mountain hot springs with a large focus on verticality the village is broken up into three different levels which the player can traverse using the multiple staircases provided shops are generally found on the first floor of the village while offline quests and the player home are on the second finally on the top level is the gathering hall where the player can take part in multiplayer quests the village hot springs can be used by the player to boost their abilities while using the springs the player can purchase various beverages that will give them various beneficial effects the hot springs are guarded and run by the feline spring keeper farms once again make a return in this generation and the player now has a more streamlined approach to gathering here the player can send their feline companions out to mine various ore or out on exploration efforts to gather materials additionally this is where the player will train their companions exclusive to yakimo is the wood from their surrounding forests and carpentry efforts the skill of their carpenters is so high they can actually make various weapons and equipment out of it many of the monsters introduced and try marked their return in the portable series as well as a new subspecies for them additionally there were more returning monsters like nargakuga and tigrex who also receives subspecies starting with the new additions we have arzaros a new fanged beast similar to that of a bear they even feed on fish and honey legambi an ice-based fanged beast very close in features to arzaros but with incredibly large ears which make it susceptible to sonic bombs vulvodon another fanged beast similar both to arzaros and legambi this monster prefers warm areas such as sandy plains or the volcano additionally it has an incredibly long tongue der ambrose a large brute wyvern with a gigantic tail that can spin around to cover a wide area great rogi a monster very similar to jaggy and baggy from tri but has the ability to spew a toxic mist nibelsnarf a sand-based leviathan similar in design to gobel with a giant mouth and ability to suck in prey and the flagship monster of the series zen ogre a fanged wyvern with wolf-like features it has the power of electricity when a zenogra is knocked down the player can take a bug net to its back to gather materials onto subspecies we have brute tigrex an even more aggressive and powerful version of tyrex that can even damage and send players flying with just its roar green nargakuga a more agile subspecies of nargakuga that can also easily stun hunters with its slam attack crimson kuropeko an electric subspecies of kuropeko that has the ability to blind the opponent similar to egyptseros it has the ability to have monsters it summons with its song and are already in rage mode which is purple lidroth a poisonous subspecies of ludroth with a pink color on its skin and spongy mane jade baroth an ice subspecies of barroth that lives in cooler environments like the tundra instead of mud jade baroths keep a large amount of snow and ice packed around their body baleful giganox an electric subspecies of giganox that can also turn red when enraged similar to a red kazoo sand berry off a warm climate subspecies of burial that lives in the sandy plains hey uh just a quick side note i forgot to mention glacial agnectdor in this video for some reason and the footage was even recorded so i don't know why i forgot to actually put him in the script he should be he should be right here right right there okay finally there's one new elder dragon introduced to the game amatsu a flying elder dragon that never really touches land during battle it is very similar in motion and design to leviathans and also has a wind barrier that is similar to that of a kushala it is fought in a newly introduced area the sacred pinnacle areas from tri return while a few special areas are added for specific monsters polar field has been added for fighting a eucanalos lava canyon has been added for fighting in a cantor and the sacred pinnacle as mentioned earlier there is also one new typical quest area added called misty peaks one final note on the monsters dragonblight did not make a reappearance in portable third but would appear again in three ultimate new to portable third were some additions to feline comrades specifically comrades can now be used in online multiplayer quests as well as against jen moran previously comrades were unable to join quests featuring such large monsters feline armors can now be customized further with the player being able to change the helmet and torso they could wear different armor pieces based on slain monsters weapons could also be customized now but still fell into only the slash and impact roles additional features like cats being more emotive the ability to change their name and the ability to search for specific types of fill lines were added all in all they became more accessible and fleshed out which was a welcome addition to offline players as mentioned at the beginning of this game's section it performed amazingly well becoming one of the best selling games on the psp and best-selling portable monster hunter game ever having sold better than even monster hunter 4 and 4 ultimate though not combined and this was only as a japanese exclusive the sheer popularity and praise of the game was phenomenal to say the least the next game in the series would sell fairly well although not as well as portable third and would take the player back underwater and back to mocha village let's check out monster hunter 3 ultimate monster hunter 3 ultimate is the expected g expansion of monster hunter tri it was not only released on the wii u but also on the nintendo 3ds portable console and players could freely transfer their save file back and forth between the two if they owned a copy of both games this allowed the players to take their game on the go while also having the option to play a higher quality home console version of this inclusion players could even play together locally with one player on a wii u and one on the 3ds however online play was only supported on the wii u version this marked the return of both moga village as well as underwater combat the expansion offered multiple new additions that will go over one interesting conclusion was the addition of a new shakalaka companion players can now go on quests with both cha-cha and his rival shakalaka kayamba a useful feature called target camera was also implemented normally when the player pressed the l button the camera will face whichever way the player is facing now when a large monster is targeted pressing the l button will immediately face the monster weapons removed and try also make the return while removing tri's bogun customization options like the portable series 3 ultimate also offered downloadable event quests that would be available in the online hub area forever once unlocked the offline hub finally received high rank quests that the player could participate in as expected from a g game three ultimate reintroduces g-rank quests this is the first entry in the series where g-ranked sets have drastic visual differences on top of this most of the armors provide skill points to different skills than their low and high counterparts a new and recurring mechanic in the series introduced is hunters for hire these hunters are npc versions of players you've met online and received the guild card of they offer quests that they are willing to take on and can be sent out with several other hunters if you pay a small fee and can come back with various rewards the hunters will update their sets to match their real-life counterparts as you meet up with them online the mechanic reappears at monster hunter 4u and monster hunter generations moving back to the online hub it's important to note that the players no longer visit lock lock city for online quests instead there is a new area called portanzia which is much much smaller and doesn't contain amenities like player housing instead it consists of two areas the marina where all the shops are and the tavern where players can grab quests and eat at the canteen multiple monsters return from portable third as well as some from old games like plessioth and its subspecies subspecies from portable 3rd also show back up as well as some new additions brand new additions include the game's flagship monster brachydios who also introduces a new element called slime where buildup of the element can cause high damage explosions this would later become known as blast element in future releases within the series in japan brachy is on the cover art while azuratholos was used in north america a new elder dragon is also introduced called dire morales who is fought in its own special location known as the tainted sea dire morales is an incredibly large monster that can transition between land and sea and will do so fairly frequently while in combat new subspecies include rust deramboros a subspecies that is very similar to its normal counterpart but has a more axe-like tail stiggy and zenogra a dragon element subspecies that sports a darker color scheme the attacks sport a red charge effect rather than the yellow and blue electric effect and ivory legia cruz a land-based subspecies of ligia cruz it rarely enters the water during combat and has a more powerful and wider set of electrical attacks its skin is an ivory white color hence the name two of the elder dragons introduced and try also receive new subspecies specifically golden siedus a fully grown version of your typical seedus with both horns fully developed it sports a golden color and mane and hologen a larger and stronger subspecies of genmoron now something to point out is the existence of rare species which are incredibly powerful types of already existing monsters these aren't to be confused with variants such as furious rajang in part one flyann and i called silverathalos and goldrathian a subspecies but this was my error in the script rather they are part of the rare species classification introduced in three ultimate are two new rare species lucid nargakuga a rare species of nargakuga that has white fur and the ability to turn invisible and abyssal lagear crews a rare species of legia crews with black skin and scales it always appears in a fully charged state and can even create whirlpools within the water to disorient hunters finally there is the introduction of a new variant savage devil joe which is a devil joe that stays within a permanent rage form state during combat however it can still enter a further level of rage where the dragon element surrounds its face and its eyes glow a bright red it's faster and stronger than your typical devil joe and can swiftly cart even the most experienced hunters three ultimate went on to sell 2.6 million copies and was received fairly well in japan and the west a gaming news site called digital fix even said it could very well be the best reason to own a wii u and that's all i have for you on the third generation of monster hunter a generation of games that really influenced me if it wasn't for try or 3 ultimate i might not be here right now writing the script recording this footage editing this video met some of my best friends that have affected my life so drastically who knows where i would be right now from what i understand online functionality is still running for three ultimate so if you want to ever try out some of this generation's exclusive content there's no better time than right now in the next part of the series we'll be discussing monster hunter 4 for ultimate generations and generations ultimate there really is so much content to explore within those games hello everyone and welcome back to another lesson on the history of the monster hunter series originally this video was going to cover all of generation 4 including 4 for ultimate generations and generations ultimate but due to the amount of content in each of these releases i'll have to break this video up into its own two parts in this video we will be covering four and four ultimate while in the next video we'll dive deep into generations and generations ultimate i think consistency in a game series is a rare thing generally in a long running series you'll have a roller coaster of releases some being the perfect example of yes this is why i love these games and others kind of leaving you scratching your head wondering why you even bought this garbage to begin with i can often look back at the upcoming release of kingdom hearts 2 how infuriatingly excited i was for the release of it and how long the wait was killing me i would constantly be browsing online sites like kh insider looking for any shred of new information and any taste of the game before its initial release when i could finally get my hands on it i was obsessed with it and the hype as we know it was overwhelming i remember my father driving me to the store and finally getting my hands on it and it really didn't disappoint kingdom hearts 2 was everything i loved from the first game but more expanded on past content and added so much new content that was so incredibly gratifying to play to this day it's one of my favorite games and then kingdom hearts 3 was released and to say the least it wasn't what i was expecting or hoping for now i know what you're probably saying super rad i came here for monster hunter content not kingdom hearts what is anime and mickey mouse have to do with killing giant monsters well consistency again if we look at a series like kingdom hearts it really went all over the place with the quality of games they released but i can't say i ever felt that way with monster hunter if you remember from my previous videos i entered the series in the third generation but even from re-exploring the games they always felt consistent in their quality always building off of the last game in some way but keeping that core feeling that gratifying feeling that makes fans of the series so addicted the grounded combat the grind the aesthetic and more monster hunter had a few hiccups like the inclusion of water-based combat and try and 3 ultimate but it never disappointed me world being another story altogether what i'm trying to say is that with each release in the series monster hunter is in some way kingdom hearts 2 to me i obsess over its release it comes out i play it and it's everything i wanted everything i expected and hoped for and more monster hunter is consistent with it every release is a gem itself almost always better and bigger than the last and monster hunter 4 ultimate and generations ultimate to me are love letters to the series as a whole what led monster hunter to become the capcom powerhouse it is today and how did the series perform since its initial inception and release in 2004. in this multi-part video series we'll take a look at all five generations of the monster hunter franchise as well as frontier monster hunter online and several other spin-off games that have been developed i'm super rad and today i'm here to bring you a brief history of monster hunter 4th generation [Music] side note similar to the last video i'll be using footage of four ultimate even when discussing the original game in the series this is due to having files and progress available to me that allow me to show more overall while north american players finally had access to monster hunter 3 ultimate in march of 2013 monster hunter 4 had already been readily available to japanese audiences for half a year in fact players in north america wouldn't even have a chance to legitimately play for until the release of four ultimate in the west in february of 2015 and that was still five months after four ultimate's japanese release why was this well you have to keep in mind that western sales of the game weren't even reaching a million copies sold while selling multiple millions of japan the cost and workload of localization generally outweighed the return capcom or the monster hunter development team expected to see this isn't to say they weren't trying to break through to their western audience but these attempts always seemed to not be worth it in my last video i talked about the sales directly affecting portable 3's lack of release in the west but that's not really the whole story portable 3rd also had multiple development issues between the developers and sony due to lack of planning on localization the release of third on the ps3 lack of trophies and multiple other factors there's actually a really good reddit post about this and i'll link it in the description so give it a read so there were multiple factors at play here both through cost and localization on top of that the vita was on its way to release and the psp was basically dying in the west overall it makes sense then that with the development of monster hunter 4 being on a new nintendo handheld the lack of western sales and the development team already being burdened with localization issues around portable 3rd that they would have their doubts about putting any effort into localizing 4 until the release of 4g or 4 ultimate over a year later now this is just theorizing but the release of 4 and time between 4 and 4 ultimate gave the development team plenty of time to work on a localization for ultimate since a large amount of the content is reused ultimate just being an expansion of four which can explain why the developers put more stock into porting it over on top of this the localization director for capcom andrew alfonso started developing the localization very early on something that wasn't the case for portable third on development specifically monster hunter 4 was one of the biggest games yet it took a lot of the reworkings and new features from the third generation and melded them in with old features from previous games and new features found in the 4th generation and beyond one of these and arguably the biggest feature of monster hunter 4 was the aspect of verticality while trian 3 ultimate tried to add more depth by allowing players to swim underwater and fight within both horizontal and vertical spaces monster hunter did the same while removing the water mechanic and it really was to the game's benefit gone were underwater segments and in their place were new map designs with towering cliffs ledges and pillars that the player could actively climb up in previous games players could climb from ledge to ledge and specifically climb up certain terrains like vines that were spread across specific sections of the map now most flat surfaces could be actively climbed and launched off of and players can interact with these surfaces with more depth comparing monster hunter's new vertical design to that of underwater it was faster smoother and overall fits the themes of the game's original design better than water-based combat a welcome inclusion that would show up in generations and be fully expanded upon in monster hunter world there's actually a beta trailer released around 2011 that showcases a much grander design idea for climbing and verticality as a whole incredibly large areas of the map are scalable and can even be destroyed causing both the player and monster to fall and slide along the ground a feature that was removed and wouldn't be integrated until the release of monster hunter world this design idea is at least partially kept within area 8 of heaven's mount with all the verticality introduced into the game hunter's jumping and spending more time in the air was a given to complement this the game introduced two new mechanics jumping attacks and mounting when in the air players can now swing their weapons and through hitting enemies with these aerial attacks would build up the opportunity to mount them if mounted the player would then take part in a minigame where they must mash one of the attack buttons to fill up the enemy's topple gauge however this gauge is slowly chased by the image of a dragon chomping toward the end of it if the dragon head reaches the end of where the gauge is currently filled up the player will be tossed off the dragon head icon will turn red when either the monster begins to flail around or when it roars to be successful at toppling the monster the player must steady themselves by holding the right shoulder button doing so allows the player to slow down the enemy's advancement on their gauge but also drains their own stamina after successfully mounting a monster they will begin to build up a tolerance to future mounting attempts similar to ailments like paralysis the inclusion of mounting was definitely a game changer but it wasn't without its own design hiccups for one it was incredibly easy to mount enemies and became one of the sole strategies for many players on top of this other players would be punished for attacking monsters while it was mounted by another player instead of contributing to toppling the monster attacking it while mounted would help the monster catch up to the player's topple gauge meaning they had a better chance of being kicked off another new mechanic specific to the fourth generation of games is the frenzy virus a large part of four's storyline revolves around the player researching and hunting the game's flagship monster gourmet gala we'll get into gourmagala more later on but its introduction also brought with it the new status ailment known as frenzy virus where afflicted players will become infected with the virus and a gauge will signify its buildup over time this is probably one of the simplest but most interesting additions to the series in 4th generation to me if the player allows the gauge to fill up the icon will change natural recovery will cease to function and the player will take additional damage from moves that cause the ailment however if the player gets more aggressive and inflicts a large amount of damage before the gauge fills they will receive a beneficial effect from the ailment gaining a 15 affinity boost as well as temporary immunity from reinfection it was such a simple and interesting addition because it made ailments something that weren't just detrimental through proper and skillful play hunters could turn a negative situation into a positive it was truly a very rewarding and gratifying feeling within the story and quests of monster hunter 4 monsters can also be infected with the frenzy virus these monsters will have multiple visual differences such as discoloration on their body purple smoke surrounding their mouth and glowing red eyes the virus makes these monsters much more aggressive and is transmitted through the dander of agor magala's wings and various other mangala species i'll mention later the addition of jumping meant that all weapons needed to have new jumping attacks included in their arsenal additionally two new blademaster weapons are introduced into the series first is the insect glaive which prioritizes aerial attacks allowing the player to launch themselves within battle without the need of cliffs or ledges this meant that insect glaive users would have an easier time mounting creatures in comparison to other blade master classes it also had a unique feature in the use of kinsex a new insect creature that can be paired with a glaive and sent out by the user kinsex will attack monsters in locations based on where the player aims the mat depending on where the kinsek lands it will return to the player and bestow a specific buff next was the introduction of the charge blade similar to the switch axe the charge blade has two forms sword mode where it functions similar to sword and shield and axe mode a slower but stronger mode players will generally build up energy in sword and shield mode before switching to axe mode to perform devastating attacks alright let's move on to the monsters despite how fast monster hunter 4 felt there really weren't that many new monsters added overall from what i can count there's about 13 total large monster additions including subspecies rare species and elder dragons this is padded out by reintroducing a large amount of monsters from past games back into the series monster hunter 4 also introduced four brand new monster types to the series those being amphibians tendocerons snake wyverns and unknown new large monsters introduced to the series included catchawaka a new fang type beast monster that resembles a lemur though it has a trunk on its face it has the ability to cover its face with its large ears creating a type of mask najarala the introduction of snake wyverns and a rather large monster it has the ability to fling its tail plates at enemies while creating a shrieking sounds to players ears it can also encircle players and trap them before attempting to paralyze them nurcilla the introduction of temnoceron monsters and currently the only type of temnoceron to exist next to a subspecies introduced in monster hunter 4 ultimate it resembles an arachnid and can trap players with its new webbed status ailment it also wears a gypsyro skin around its body selftas and seltas queen an interesting addition to the neopteron types of monsters celtes can be hunted on their own but will generally accompany a celta's queen when hunted a queen can actually call in a celtas to mount on top of it allowing the queen the ability to boost when charging tetsukabra is the introduction of the amphibian monsters it resembles a toad but has two large tusks attached to its lower mouth it can use these tusks to pick up large boulders and carry them around as both a weapon and a shield zamtrios another amphibian introduced in monster hunter 4. on top of having the ability to encase itself in a form of ice armor zamtrios can also enlarge its entire body becoming a giant fleshy ball that can roll around and slam towards the player in the game's flagship monster gore magala the first of the new unknown type of monsters introduced in monster hunter 4. the storyline spends a large portion of the game focusing on gore magala due to it causing the frenzy state in monsters it has the ability to enter its own frenzy state in which two feelers appear on top of its head and this is the only time players can attempt to damage them enough to break them on top of the new large monster additions three new elder dragons and an elder dragon subspecies are introduced shigaru magala the mature form of agora magala that has been given the elder dragon classification they are stronger and more agile than agoragala and their feelers remain out at all times dharan an elder dragon similar to that of gen but not considered a subspecies the fight against one of these is very similar to gen but requires the breaking of certain body parts to reach other locations on its body instead of two horns it has one large drill-like horn on its head dalimador an elder dragon with similar features to a snake wyvern it is incredibly large and the player must fight it while it encircles a large craig and oroshi kirin a subspecies of kirin that has a darker color scheme and uses the ice element over thunder it is also considered to be more aggressive than a traditional kirin finally is a new subspecies and a new rare species introduced to the large monsters first is the new subspecies ruby basarios it is very similar to your typical basarios but has large pink crystals or gems protruding from its back instead of the rocks we normally see this monster can only be encountered in the everwood and the new rare species molten tigrex its skin is red in majority and uses the blast element to cause explosions with its attacks it also has two rage states allowing it access to attacks from brewed tigrex like its explosive roar it can only be fought in the tower summit area now i want to take some time to discuss the towns and locations of monster hunter 4 but to do that we need to discuss the storyline kaname fujioka the director of monster hunter 4 states that the game has a large focus on adventure and story progression for one the game now opens up with a tutorial sequence against dar and as a means to ease new players into the gameplay style of the monster hunter series then they are tasked with helping a caravan travel across the world visiting various towns and locations as they progress and advancing various goals along the way like dealing with gormagalla and shigaru magala the caravan consists of multiple members including the care veneer whom the player meets first at the start of the game and gets them to join on their mission guildmarm the guild's receptionist and researcher she has a lot more personality compared to other guild receptionists and hyper fixates on specific types of monsters she finds interesting like brachydios the man and little miss forge who provide most of the smithing functionality for the caravan the street cook who functions as a means players gain feline skills and the wycoon the wycoon and the yporium are an interesting addition as the player can give them certain materials in order to receive materials from monsters not actually in the game for example the player could trade a great jaggy claw to receive an arzaro shell the caravan takes the player to multiple new locations let's take a look valhalla bar is the first town players will arrive in and explore in monster hunter 4. it is a port city that neighbors the great desert which was introduced in monster hunter 3. it's similar in its design to lock lac city acting as a hub for large numbers of travelers and merchants it's used to be near multiple large monsters like jen or daryn moran and has a sandship fleet to help defend against them next is hearth a village found underground and surrounded by magma and populated by the tauvirian race a race of mole like humanoid beings that are considered workaholics they work similarly to wyverians and become depressed when they can't work this happens when the magma in their village stops flowing as it is used to produce much of the equipment they work on this is where the caravan meets little miss forge who joins them in order to learn from the man players are also introduced to the equipment polish workshop here where they can unlock certain equipment which can be found within the everwood following hearth is chico sands which is located off of another hunting area the primal forest it's a secluded area along the beach and rather peaceful due to this it's inhabited by a community of felines in the majority as well as the cat granny an old wiverian woman the main feature of chico sands is a nearby area called sun snug isle here felines meet up for various tasks such as fishing or hunting players can send a team of non-active palikos they have recruited known as monster hunters on missions to hunt and collect various materials this is done through a three-stage mini-game similar to rock paper scissors there is also a casting machine where the hunter can spend caravan points to hire five of their palacos to catch schools of fish this also includes its own small mini-game the player can even catch a plesioth or its subspecies green plessy off it's terrifying moving on players eventually reach the village above the clouds kathar a group of farming wyverians live here and it's located near heaven's mount introduced in this location is the melding pot here players can meld items if the player trades frenzy shards or zenith gems in four ultimate they can receive various items additionally the player can sacrifice 3 talismans they may not want to create a new random talisman there are 6 melting options which either require higher talismans as sacrifice or offer different rewards regardless of the type of talisman offered in 4 and 4 ultimate the talisman melding requires the use of frenzy shards moving on from towns we can now discuss hunting areas the main hunting areas include ancestral steppe which includes various types of locations to explore like valleys caves and forests it really shows off monster hunter 4's more colorful and saturated feel primal forest another colorful hunting area full of vegetation one of the major locations in this area includes a large skeleton the player can walk around under sunken hollow an area that features a subterranean cave system making the perfect home for creatures like the tetsu cobra it's connected to a dormant volcano frozen seaway the new tundra-like area introduced in monster hunter 4. this is generally where players will hunt monsters like zamtrios or legambi volcanic holo after the dormant volcano surrounding the sunken hollow finally erupts the volcanic hollow is the new location the player can explore and finally heaven's mount high in the mountain ranges and incredibly unstable players can often see parts of the mountain falling around them interestingly there is no explorable desert region in this game not counting the great desert as it is a special location used for elder dragon battles next are some special locations tower summit an arena type area the player can fight multiple creatures in including but not limited to molten tiger x and oroshi kirin it is almost identical to area 10 of the tower area from previous games great desert i already mentioned that this was a returning area from three and where the player will hunt jen and daryn sanctuary where the player will fight shigaru magala it actually shares a base camp with heaven's mount but the player is limited to only accessing sanctuary when fighting shigaru and can't access other areas ingol isle a volcanic arena area where the player can fight akantor and crimson vitalis spear tip craig where the player can fight dalimeter and the great sea an event area where the player will fight gourmagala and later seregios in 4 ultimate one final and unique area to talk about is the everwood an area that was clearly inhabited by some intellectual species at one point in time but is now abandoned with many structures old and crumbling here the player can hunt specific monsters from older games that they can't find in normal quests within monster hunter 4 including nyan garuga velocidrome and bosarios this area is extremely special in that it always has a random layout when players enter for expeditions similar to free hunts in mogu village expeditions have no failure conditions and the player will simply return to the base camp if they faint by completing quests players can unlock the ability to do both low and high rank expeditions while g-rank expeditions wouldn't be added until 4 ultimate players may find relic weapons within expeditions but the weapons must be brought to hearth to be polished before being used these weapons will have randomized stats and players can find better relic weapons through a mechanic known as guild quests guild quests were special quests that could be leveled up through repeated completion players could receive these quests in multiple ways either through hunting monsters and expeditions sharing through guild cards or by using the 3ds spot pass feature once the player had these quests they could register them to their active guild quests and go out to complete them by completing them players would level them up from level 1 to 100 which would signify whether the quest was low or high rank and would also raise the power of the monster that the player was hunting by completing high level quests players would be able to obtain relics that would have better randomized stats than those from regular expeditions it was an interesting feature to say the least i personally never got behind the randomized stat aspect something that seems to have stuck around in future monster hunter games it should also be noted that both charge blades and insect glaives couldn't be excavated by this point sales-wise monster hunter 4 sold 4.1 million copies in japan alone competing with the 4.9 million copies sold by portable third in fact it sold 1.8 million within the first two days of its release famitsu gave the game a score of 38 out of 40. the next release in the series would sell similarly well to its original counterpart and would become one of the fastest selling monster hunter games in the west and the first monster hunter game to sell over 1 million copies outside of japan let's take a look at monster hunter 4 ultimate [Music] [Music] foreign as mentioned earlier due to the lack of development on a localization western players never saw a release of portable 3rd in the west but localization for monster hunter 4 started early and didn't have some of the hiccups with nintendo that portable 3rd did with sony due to this a north american release of monster hunter 4 ultimate made its debut a few months after its japanese release for ultimate was the natural expansion release to follow that of monster hunter 4. as with all g releases it brought over new monsters weapons armors and the g-rank on top of that are various expansions to the content introduced in 4 as well as new content altogether it was a definitive addition to the series and included one of the biggest total monster counts to date let's go over some of those features now major changes were made to the frenzy virus including the debut of y stones and the apex state to better fight against these frenzy monsters hunter could use these items called y stones on their weapons to temporarily quality effects of the frenzy these items could be used multiple times but would only last for a short period similar to how hunters could power through the frenzy state by dealing enough damage some monsters now have the ability to suppress the virus as well entering what is known as the apex state in this state monsters are more powerful durable and aggressive and some of their moves have even been known to be upgraded they can even infect hunters with the frenzy virus themselves similar to elder dragons these monsters cannot be trapped and almost all attacks against them will bounce off luckily for players there are special types of y stones that can suppress this state as well allowing the hunters to damage these monsters properly only certain monsters have the ability to enter this state such as devil joe zenogur or the game's flagship monster seregios as well as multiple others parts of the story from monster hunter 4 are reworked to add in the inclusion of seregios additionally near the end of the player's journey they will arrive in dundorma an existing location in the series and the original online hub area in monster hunter dos from the second generation of games it is not the full area of dundorma however and has been limited in what can be explored by the player i discussed dundorma town in part two of this history series so if you haven't watched it yet you can find all the information there this is where the gathering hall is located and where players can participate in online g-rank quests new hunting areas were also added to ultimate including dunes a desert-based area and a remake of the old desert from monster hunter 1. battle quarters is another special area attached to dundorma and full of special weaponry used for defending against elder dragons this is an upgraded version of the town area from monster hunter dose finally both polar field from portable 3rd and castle scrade from monster hunter 1 marked their return to the series weapons received a few reworks and new moves to make the aerial combat more accessible to different weapon types additionally more options for chargeblade and insect glaive were added these weapons could also be found as relics in the everwood now like monster hunter 4 new armor skills were added to complement the various additions to the game speaking of the everwood guild quests now had the ability to go up to level 140 where the player could hunt g-rank equivalent monsters these would offer the best results when obtaining relic weapons however to balance the use of relic weapons and give players other options a new form of upgrading regular weapons was added foreshadowing augmentation in monster hunter world extreme forging was added to four ultimate when a weapon becomes fully upgraded players now have the option to boost one of three parameters attack defense and life recovery where the player could gain health with every hit they connect 4 ultimate has one of the biggest monster hunter rosters in any monster hunter game on top of 62 large returning monsters there are also 13 brand new additions to the series meaning the game had a total of 75 large monsters and 98 monsters overall on top of these additions two monsters could be forged into weapons that had incredibly unique traits the first of their kind first is the flagship of ultimate seregios it was a monster designed to rival rathalos and has the ability to enter the apex state it introduced a new status ailment known as bleed where the player will take damage when performing various actions and can cure the effect by crouching for an extended period of time after curing bleed the player's natural recovery receives a temporary boost weapons created by seregios have a unique trait where they will self-sharpen every time the player rolls one new elder dragon is introduced gog mazzios an extremely large tar-based elder dragon fought in the battle quarters attached to dundorma it is one of the end-game g-rank fights and shares visual similarities with gore and shigaru magala it also introduces the new tart effect which is similar to getting webbed but will also explode over time if the hunter does not free themselves multiple new subspecies also make an appearance ash ketchuwaka a firebase subspecies of quechuaca with darker fur tidal narjarala a water-based subspecies with purple plates which it can use to shoot homing water balls at the player shrouded nursilla a subspecies that wears kezu skin instead of a gypsarose and can inflict paralysis on the player desert celtis and celtus queen similar to your typical celtics but the queen has a more articulate tail which she can use to throw male celtics and hunters alike berserk tetsukabra a more aggressive species of tetsukaba that can cause large explosions with the rocks it picks up tiger stripes zamtrios a warm climate subspecies of zamtrios since there is no ice it cannot create a body of armor but it has become more agile and effective in its bloated state and sha dala madur a subspecies of the elder dragon introduced in four there aren't many differences other than skin color but shah dala madur are weak to ice and thunder elements unlike a typical dahlometer two variants are also introduced into the series chaotic gourmegala a typical gourmagala that was interrupted during its molting process into a shigaru magala due to this it holds visual traits of both shigaru and gore magala weapons made by chaotic or magala have a unique trait including both negative and positive affinity when players suppress the frenzy virus by dealing enough damage the negative affinity is turned positive and boosts the player's overall critical hit chance raging brachidios a larger and slower variant of brachydios that has a more yellowish hue to its slime color and turns red when enraged monster hunter 4 ultimate received favorable reviews although famitsu actually scored it two points lower than its original counterpart almost all major review sites scored the game with at least an eight which is a higher average than most previous releases in the series it was also the first western release of the game to sell over 1 million copies outside of japan with a total worldwide sale of 4.2 million copies this marked what was considered true western success and can be attributed to better marketing more dedication to localization and an easier entry into the series overall with tutorials dedicated storyline and structure as well as a greater sense of adventure which seems to appeal to western audiences and that's monster hunter 4 an entry that probably added some of the most valuable content overall to the series the added mobility and verticality of the game would ripple through the future games within the series and be expanded on fully in monster hunter world the fact that this entry in the series took an entire video to cover shows how much it contributed to the series as a whole i'd like to give a big shout out to the monster hunter 4g citric community for their help in making this video and answering various questions i had about 4 and 4 ultimate if you ever want to try a high definition version of 4 ultimate it's possible and i'll link the discord in the description additionally thanks as always to the gathering hall lore team for helping me make sure i keep these videos as accurate as possible their discord will also be linked in the description hey it is me again i'm here for another off script clarification segment at the end of the video i didn't do one of these in the last one because i didn't feel like i needed to but i feel like there was a couple things that i just wanted to quickly cover that i either glossed over or didn't mention first thing is i didn't really talk about palace as a whole they still function similarly to freedom unite they still have skills they have armor not a ton has changed about them you can still train them and that all takes part in the chico sands area mostly and yeah they are pretty much the same i didn't think it was necessary to really delve into them too much but i did want to mention that i didn't forget about them something else i didn't mention was the cute progress that gets made towards your house cause your house is basically the caravan and as the caravan becomes a sand ship and then an airship it gets upgraded visually in each city and i thought that was pretty cool also i noticed and i i don't think i ever noticed this before when i was originally playing for ultimate but they'd have the same issue that they had in the psp games where only a certain amount of quests seem to be able to be shown and they cycle through those quests when you enter a quest and whether you win it or abandon it and you come back out they will have cycled through them and i hate that and i really i really hate that and i wish they wouldn't do that but maybe it was a memory error or something i'm not completely sure and i think it's really funny that dalimeter or shaw dalmater is considered a subspecies when realistically it's just a dalimeter that has shed its skin and has discoloration because of that which i think would go away with time you would think it would be a variant instead of a subspecies similar to rusted kushala but technically black diablo should be a variant for similar reasons but isn't considered a variant i believe it's also considered a subspecies so who knows there isn't a ton of logic that goes into why they decide something is a subspecies are a rare species i feel like they sometimes just like throw like just like toss a die and see like what the answer is going to be but sometimes there is logic in a backstory and but this doesn't really seem to fit with what we see with shaw dalmater so i don't know that that seemed weird to me if i messed something up my bad if i left something out also my bad but uh let me know in the comments and i will try to do better next time thank you okay goodbye hello everyone and welcome back to another lesson on the history of the monster hunter series this is part 4.5 in the series and a continuation of the fourth generation of games today we'll be focusing on monster hunter generations and its ultimate expansion release the generations games or cross and double cross as they're known in japan really pushed the series and started to steer it towards monster hunter world some say this was for the better while others say it was for the worse the series began to expand on the high mobility of monster hunter 4 and evolved the concept with flashier movement special attacks monster designs and concepts generations feels like a celebration of the monster hunter games it contains many returning hunting areas monsters and even villages that the player will revisit characters throughout the series mark their return in a nostalgia-fueled hyper-action experience that really set the tone for the future of the series everything in generations is bigger better and more customizable than before the game even boasted four flagship monsters over the traditional one per entry what led monster hunter to become the capcom powerhouse it is today and how did the series perform since its initial inception and release in 2004. in this multi-part video series we'll take a look at all five generations of the monster hunter franchise as well as frontier monster hunter online and several other spin-off games that have been developed i'm super rad and today i'm here to bring you a brief history of monster hunter generations [Music] side note just like the last two videos in this series i'll be using footage strictly from the ultimate version of generations when talking about the initial release monster hunter 4 ultimate was a hit selling well in both japan and the west this was good news for the series and put more confidence in capcom and the monster hunter developers when it came to localizing content the game was released in japan under the cross title a year after for ultimate's release on november 28th 2015 but wouldn't reach the west until july 15 2019 almost 8 months later this means western fans went about a year and a half without a new release in the series fans were definitely eager for new content and generations more than delivered planning for generations began during the development of monster hunter 4 ultimate with the idea of the entry being the crossing of old elements of the series with those from newer releases hence why players get to explore old villages and meet pre-existing characters some who have never appeared in a western release before ryozo tsujimoto stated he wanted the game to have a festival feeling and treated the game as a celebration of over 10 years of monster hunter the theming was designed around the number four meaning four hunting styles four flagship monsters and four villages shintaro kojima compared the x in the title to a division of four sections while generations boast one of if not the largest amount of content within a monster hunter release it is not considered a mainline release within the series one of the community managers on twitter confirmed this stating generations isn't mainline this helps explain some of the experimental concepts designed for the game like deviants or hunter arts this can also explain why the game's g release wasn't called g at all but rather double cross in japan on top of all this the game continued the tradition set by monster hunter 4 offering many entry-level tutorial quests to help familiarize the player with the content within the game there were even tutorial quest lines for each of the weapons that were used to help players feel out what works best for them before getting into what was added let's take a look at what was removed from monster hunter 4. much like monster hunter 4 generation skips the inclusion of underwater combat and continues to focus on verticality since multiple new maps mark the return a lot of them have been adjusted with more ledges allowing the player more options when it comes to jumping at a monster on top of this despite gore and shigaru magala returning in this entry the inclusion of frenzied monsters and the apex state were removed entirely however players could still get infected and it functioned virtually the same to monster hunter 4. weapon honing or extreme forging was also removed leading to less overall customizability when upgrading weapons finally the concept of guild quests were removed as well players would now only have your typical quests available through the quest managers as well as special permit quests for deviants mounting has also been updated in my previous video i explained how hunters attacking monsters would cause the player to fall off of the monster easier but my reasoning was inaccurate to clarify monsters would still take damage from hunters when mounted this meant monsters could also be staggered which would automatically throw the mounted player off before they could topple the monster generally hunters would ask other players not to attack when they mounted a monster to fix this issue generations made it so monsters take no damage when attacked during the mounting process instead players that attack the monster now directly contribute to helping topple it meaning the action never stops just because a single player is mounting a monster on top of not taking any damage monsters also cannot be inflicted with status ailments finally the threshold for mounting was greatened making it more difficult to actually mount a monster this was to avoid hunters hyper-focusing on mounting as a strategy within every hunt as mentioned previously no new weapon types were added to this entry in the series and instead the overall functionality of each weapon was expanded upon through hunter arts and styles rather than adding new weapons to the series the designers instead decided to focus on adding more freedom to the weapons that already existed this led to the introduction of hunter styles and hunter arts upgrading was also overhauled in generations now players would level up their weapons to increase their effectiveness certain weapons would have branching paths that were only unlocked when a player leveled up their weapon to a certain extent however generally the player had the choice to instead keep leveling their weapon if they didn't have the required materials for a new path higher level weapons could still be branched off later on if the player preferred when leveling up weapons or armor players would sometimes be required to offer up multiple materials of their choice from a specific monster each monster piece they offered would be worth a certain amount of points and the player would have to offer a minimum amount of points to complete the upgrade rare monster drops would be worth more points now let's get into one of the main features of generations hunting styles and hunter arts arts are special moves the player can equip the amount that they are able to equip depends on the style that they are currently using and the types of arts available to them is dependent on the weapon they are using at the time for example long sword users get access to the critical juncture ability which puts them into a stance where if attacked they will perform a counter attack for a large amount of damage against the enemy it's one of the strongest single hit moves in the game when equipped these abilities will appear on the hunter's ui while in a hunt through fighting the hunter's gauges will fill up allowing the use of these abilities when maxed out after using an ability the gauge will reset to empty a lot of thought had to be put into the balance of these new features as to not overpower the player and turn monster hunter into a generic hack and slash the developers wanted players to still heavily rely on anticipating monsters movements and behaviors as well as reacting to telegraphed attacks hunting styles would dictate how the players would use their weapons generally each style would have its own perks and restrictions often limiting the moveset of the player but offering them benefits in the form of more arts to use in battle or new moves entirely versus the guild style and one returning players would be most familiar with this was your typical monster hunter control experience but also allowed the user to have up to two hunter arts equipped at one time striker style is next and promotes a more aggressive and offensive play style players would have access to 300 art slots meaning they had plenty of moves under their belt and their hunter arc gage would build up both through attacking and taking damage in this style hunters begin to lose access to some of their moves for example dual blades users wouldn't be able to enter their demon mode the third inclusion is aerial style and would allow hunters of any weapon type to easily mount creatures players would only have access to one hunter art but could now leap when rolling this leap would turn into a large vertical jump if the player rolls into a monster allowing them to perform jumping attacks no matter where they are on the map insect lave specifically benefited from this style as it offered them more mobility and movement the final form added was a depth style a style designed for veterans where the focus is on dodging or blocking attacks at just the right time to open them up for a devastating counter a perfect example would be the hammer which gets a quick charge after a successful dodge similar to aerial style the player only has access to one hunting art so what about the monsters while generations technically had the largest amount of monsters at the time boasting 107 total it only included 73 large monsters which was 2 less than 4 ultimate but did see the return of the leviathan species which hadn't been seen since three ultimate including lagaya crews let's take a look at what was added first of the new inclusions is the great macau a bird wyvern and an entry-level monster similar to that of jaggies or velocidromes it has the ability to sit on its tail and use it as a spring to launch itself across the map malfestio a bird wyvern that looks like an owl on top of being able to inflict sleep it can also inflict a new ailment to the series called confusion which will reverse the player's movement controls for a short period of time it will automatically wear off when hit or when the player uses specific cleansing items next we have gamma the first of the faded four it is one of the largest fang beasts ever seen and resembles a mammoth with a trunk and two giant tusks it can use its trunk to suck in snow and even draw hunters towards it astolos the second of the faded 4 and a flying wyvern despite its classification as a flying wyvern its features heavily resemble that of an insect or neopteron it has the ability to use electricity and will even lunge at the player one last time once defeated mizutsune the third of the faded four and the newest inclusion of leviathans within the series it has the ability to inflict a new ailment bubble blight which has multiple levels of effectiveness when first inflicted with bubble blight players actually benefit from it and gain the effects of evasion and constitution plus one however if they are struck with another bubble attack they will begin to slip and slide and lose the ability to attack the final member of the fate of four is glavinus a large t-rex style brute wyvern who has a giant blade for a tail it can sharpen the tail with its teeth to create large explosions and can shoot fire projectiles from its mouth flabinus is also the only monster of the fateful to appear in monster hunter world within the iceborn expansion on top of the new large monster inclusions there is one new elder dragon introduced to the series nakarkos is a large bone-covered monster similar to that of a cephalopod it uses the bones to camouflage itself and can inflict a new ailment on the player called mucus when inflicted with mucus if the player rolls around in bones they will stick to them and change the status to ossified when ossified the player's movement is impaired and they cannot attack including nakarkos there are technically only seven new entries within the series this is bolstered by the large amount of returning monsters as well as the introduction of the deviant system deviants are special versions of monsters that come equipped with new abilities as well as new moves and fighting styles their appearance is different from that of their normal counterparts crafting dv and equipment comes with multiple benefits deviant weapons help fill out the 100 gauge faster and wearing full deviant armor sets grants specialized deviant abilities however simply wearing the full set isn't good enough and the player will need to upgrade each piece to a certain level in order to unlock the set's ability an example you can find on the wiki is grim claw sole which provides both speed eating plus 2 and high grade ear plugs deviants can be fought through the use of special permits which the player can acquire over time by playing the game or through purchasing using their various research points in generations they can also be obtained through the 3ds's spot pass feature each deviant has 10 levels of quest that can be unlocked and this number gets upgraded to 16 in generations ultimate although the g-rank specific deviants only have six levels players unlock these by hosting a deviant quest and completing it thus unlocking the next stage in the deviant's development this leads to better and increased rewards only the player that hosts the quest upgrades their deviant this led to a culture of deviant turn online lobbies where hunters would take turns posting their deviant deviants introduced in generations include red helm arzaros the largest of their species and colored in red fur they can hurl debris at the player and jump to great heights before crashing down snow baron lugambi a deviant with darker fur compared to its normal counterpart they can lift large mounds of snow similar to that of giant boulders and throw them at hunters stone fist termitar who sports a larger left claw the pincer is virtually invulnerable but is able to be attacked when a monster has been tripped drill tusk tetsucobra a deviant similar to a normal tetsukabra but with more pronounced and sharper tusks it's highly aggressive and will often attack stunned hunters silverware narghakuga true to its name has silver-toned fur instead of the normal black coat they are both faster and stronger than your typical narghakuga and often larger grimclaw tigrex a tiger x which has developed large blue claws and has the ability to use brute tigrex's explosive roars at all times thunderlord's an ogre a fully charged zoonographer by default that has a green shade around it instead of blue when it charges further into its ultra charged state it glows a bright yellow similar to rajang crystal beard eragon a deviant that grows large purple crystals in its giant chin it can toss crystal-like rocks that emit sleep gas at hunters but acts generally the same compared to a normal oregon dead eye yon not to be confused with scardy and garuga from earlier games this variant only has one eye it's actually smaller than your typical version of this monster dread queen wrathion generally larger than your typical wrathian and with a more potent poisoned tail that can inflict deadly poison on the player dread king rathalos a thicker and often larger version of your typical rathalos that is also a deeper shade of red these rathalos can shoot fireballs that explode over time rather than disappearing or exploding immediately and finally hellblade glavinus the only one of the fated4 to have a deviant until generations ultimate the horns and spikes on its body are larger and it looks permanently enraged often fuming with heat on top of this it has the ability to inflict blast on top of the new monsters and deviants is a final new form for monsters called the hyperstate this was a new state introduced into the series where seemingly regular monsters are now more powerful and aggressive these monsters are covered in a black mist similar to apex state despite this they are not the same this form changes up the behavior of the affected monster with some moves becoming slower while others become faster and their telegraphs change slightly these monsters cannot be fatigued and will enter their rage state more frequently they even have more health than your typical monster players can offset the difficulty slightly by attacking parts of the monster's body where the mist moves to doing so increases the hunter arts gauge more than normal not every monster has a hyper state but generally all final forms of weapons and armor will require some sort of hyper material generation sees the players starting off in the village of berna with all of the typical amenities you expect at this point in the series however the player will also find themselves traveling to three returning villages from past games to complete quests and gain reputation these villages include kokoto poki and yakumo various features unique to each of the towns return as well in kokoto the player can pull out the hero's blade after successfully defeating the village quest astolus in pokey the player can access the mystery cave after defeating gameth here they can mine dark pieces and dark stones for the cost of elder dragon bones while yakumo doesn't unlock anything for the player after defeating mitsutsune they can still interact with the hot springs and gain various requests from the npcs there while hiring quests exist within the gathering hub area near burna generations does not include a high rank for village quests instead it offers multiple quests within six star tagged as advanced and function as a limited amount of high rank optional solo content multiple hunting areas are brought back for the release of generations some have even been remade including vernon hills a remake of forest and hills marshlands a remake of swamp and arctic ridge a remake of the snowy mountains area on top of all the returning and remade hunting locations exists wyvern's end a special arena location where the player fights nakarkos one of the final additions in generations comes in the form of playable felines on top of hiring palakkos to perform various gathering tasks and hunting alongside the player they can now also be designated as prowlers and controlled by the player to complete various feline only quests the skills they use as palikos can now be directly used by the player within these quests as agile creatures they do not have stamina and can climb and gather much faster than any hunter players can even mix and match their online party participating as prowlers and normal hunts alongside typical hunters on top of this there's a new mini-game for sending out backup palakkos on hunting quests now players can choose a rank and shoot their palacos like pinballs into specific areas where they land determines what they'll bring back from a hunt generations was another successful release in the west selling 4.3 million copies globally even more than monster hunter 4 ultimate the response of four you and generations in the west was overwhelming and led developers to wanting to focus more on localization early in development and eventually released the games closer in date to their japanese counterpart we wouldn't see this for the ultimate release however as it would be almost a year exactly after its japanese release that it finally made it worldwide let's take a look at monster hunter generations ultimate to talk about monster hunter generation's ultimate we need to talk about monster hunter double cross all you really need to know is that double cross was a japanese exclusive 3ds game which never saw a release globally a bit odd considering how well the games were now performing outside of japan about five months after its release double cross received an hd version on the nintendo switch japanese players could even freely transfer their cross data to double cross as to not lose progress and then transfer their 3ds data to the switch and back whenever they liked by this point it didn't seem likely that global players would be receiving this entry in the series this is because another five months after the release of the hd switch title came the release of monster hunter world a global release in fact and one that rocked the monster hunter fandom and community due to its popularity and sales now we'll get into that in part five but suffice to say it seemed like world was the correct direction sales-wise for the series and now seemed like there was little to no incentive to bring a pass game in the series one not even considered to be mainline over to the west well get out the clown makeup if you felt this way because surprisingly the switch version did finally make its way over as generations ultimate a year after its initial release on top of this western generations players could also transfer their generation saves over to the switch version so as to not lose progress so what took so long why did they finally decide to release this entry in the series in an interview on the official monster hunter youtube channel game producer shintaro kojima stated the monster hunter production team were working on monster hunter world after the release of the japanese monster hunter doublecross but there was a huge demand for a western version so we decided to bring it to the west meaning the push from a global audience really helped influence their decision on bringing the game over let's take a look at the additions within this expansion one of the biggest generation specific changes was the inclusion of hunter styles with generations ultimate came two new styles that the players could choose from first is the valor style which is designed around a new sheathing mechanic and also locks multiple existing weapon moves behind it players now glow blue and sheath their weapons much slower this sheathing method can be lengthened by holding the sheath button but will drain players stamina and eventually player health while in this stance if players are attacked head on they will automatically dodge and immediately sheath while taking a percentage of the damage that they would have initially this can even be used on monster roars allowing the player to maximize dps on top of all of that players could also attack out of this sheathing stance doing so would fill a gauge that when full will power up the attack of the player as well as unlock various moves or introduce new ones entirely this style only gets one hunter art slot next is alchemy style which is designed around support and has three slots for hunter arts players can fill up their alchemy bar with up to five charges over time or through attacking charges can be spent to create support items that have various effects a new large monster elder dragon and deviants are introduced in this expansion it also has the highest large and total monster count within the series clocking in 93 large monsters and 129 total monsters let's take a look first up is valstrax a new elder dragon and one of the two flagship monsters in generations ultimate it shares similarities with a jet and can generate large bursts of dragon energy from its wings which it can use to fly and propel itself at high speeds players focus on hunting valstrax within the high rank village quest line next atalka is the most recent neopdoran entry within the series and is the final hunt of the g-rank questline it's fought within its own special arena location and has the ability to grab hold of multiple large pieces of debris and wear them like armor turning into a giant walking fortress those are the only two normal additions within this expansion after these two come several new deviant entries that we'll go over now first is rust razor chiana tar which have sharper claws with more protruding spikes similar in appearance to that of a glavinous it's no surprise then that it can actually wear a glap on his skull as its shell nightcloak malfestio is next and is another monster that has the ability to turn invisible on top of this it has golden scales and red webbing instead of the traditional blue color the second flagship to ultimate is bloodbath diablos an even more aggressive and powerful version it is also much faster being able to turn incredibly quickly its skin is a darker tone similar to black diablos and has red vein-like streaks spread throughout finally the remaining three of the fated four have now each received a deviant version bolt reaver astulos similar to a typical astolos but with larger features overall it appears in the state of a fully charged astulos but can charge even further changing the color of its electricity to the blue it can even generate a blade beam on top of its horn elderfrost's gammath a deviant that can cover itself in a hard ice coating instead of snow like your typical gameth even its trunk could be covered in ice and soulseer mitsutsune a larger deviantasune that is considered blind however it can open its left eye when enraged and will glow with a blue flame high rank quests were finally added to village quests which offered a new location for the players to explore called the soratorium here players would advance their village high rank quest line researching and eventually hunting and slaying of valstrax while out on these quests players can gather and collect burned husks which can be used alongside research points to upgrade the lab facility within the soratorium this offers several benefits throughout the player's journey but specifically unlocks the ability for the player to fuse armor armor fusion is new to generations ultimate and monster hunter in general now pieces of armor can be visually overwritten with other pieces this means players can now dress their hunters how they want for example if the player is wearing a specific combination of pieces to get certain armor skills to activate but doesn't like the mismatched look they can now fuse the armor and look how they prefer players must own both the piece they want to equip and the piece they want to fuse onto it another additional location the hunter's pub is introduced another skyship where hunters can participate in g-rank quests this is also where the player will spend hunter coins obtained through jeering quests to buy fusion materials and various other goodies some more older areas marked the return in this entry like desert and jungle from monster hunter dose but the only truly unique areas introduced were ruined pinnacle and forlorn citadel ruined pinnacle is a full hunting area and where players will eventually slay valstrax it's only been recently explored and the architecture suggests an old civilization used to live there forlorn citadel is a new arena location where the players hunt atalka it has multiple tools and weapons for the player to use similar to most large-scale monster fights overall double cross and generations ultimate sold noticeably worse than its original release with only 3.6 million global sales in comparison to 4.3 million from generations before it despite this it scored fairly well on metacritic with an aggregate score of 80 from critics and 8.5 from users as of writing this and with that marks the end of the fourth generation of the series the titles monster hunter cross and generations are fairly fitting considering these were effectively a send-off and celebration to the generations of games before it hopefully you learned a little something through watching this video and if you've never played an old school monster hunter game before i highly suggest trying this one out it's incredibly inclusive and one of the easier games in the series to get into with one of the highest monster rosters to date these are long videos and require a lot of research if for some reason there's an error feel free to comment below and let me know i always try to add corrections when i can the next part of this history series will cover the current final generation of the mainline series of monster hunter games specifically monster hunter world and iceborn though iceborn may be its own video depending on how long it ends up being hello everyone and welcome back to another lesson on the history of the monster hunter series this is part 5 in the series and the penultimate episode on the history of the mainline generations today we'll be focusing on monster hunter world the most successful game to be released in the series as well as capcom's best-selling game of all time if you've seen my previous video discussing whether or not world is a good monster hunter game you'll know i have quite a few criticisms for how the series has progressed in design after its jump from gen 4 to generation 5. but that's not what we're here for today no instead we'll be continuing to take a look at the development and design history of the games and how the development team managed to make one of the most successful games in capcom's history and i really want to celebrate what they have achieved with this release monster hunter world is leaps and bounds the most polished cinematic and graphical experience in any release within the series and it does well in making the player feel incredible with its eccentric and flashy combat the amount of work that had to go into designing these locations new monsters and updated visuals for existing monsters is absolutely absurd and you can see that it paid off so sit back relax and get ready to hear about one of the most unique entries within monster hunter what led monster hunter to become the capcom powerhouse it is today and how did the series perform since its initial inception and release in 2004. in this multi-part video series we'll take a look at all five generations of the monster hunter franchise as well as frontier monster hunter online and several other spin-off games that have been developed i'm super rad and today i'm here to bring you a brief history of monster hunter world [Music] development for monster hunter world began three years before its reveal at e3 2017. thanks to the advancement in console technology and the growing support for the series worldwide capcom decided to change the direction of the series and create something they envisioned would have even more of a global appeal including ease of access hence why it is the first in the series to be globally released and released on multiple consoles including pc ryozo tsujimoto the game senior producer and someone i have mentioned multiple times in the past was growing weary of the arcane rules established by the old series and felt the way zones were designed were overly limiting but ultimately necessary due to the hardware they were working with now planning for a worldwide console release tsujimoto and the monster hunter team could work on greater more open and naturally feeling environments with ecosystems that both players and monsters would interact with however this change to the environments caused a design shift that was felt throughout the entire game and would cause a change in multiple core elements found in the series previously such as heightening player mobility when using items as they couldn't use the standard tactic of leaving the zone for safety since these environments were so advanced and monsters were to interact with them a lot of work designing monsters had to go hand in hand with level design typically designers would come up with a mechanic to feature the monster around and then work with level designers to make sure it could be properly implemented this made it harder to have monsters appear in more than one area as they were generally designed around the complexities of the area you initially found them in this design shift led to one very apparent observation western players were going to love this game an open world console and pc experience pretty much checked off all the necessary boxes for what makes for a strong base when it comes to the western market and console games were much more popular globally than portable games which were only exceptionally strong in japan the stars were aligning for capcom and this led to the decision of a global release there were other aspects changed for western audiences as well such as fully voice acted content and adjustments to the user interface with a cleaner and overall design an addition of a radial menu for easy item selection apparently they wanted these cutscenes to help cut down on the unskippable dialog boxes of past games which is funny because they didn't make cutscenes skippable at all unless they were repeatable scenes from specific assignments and there were still plenty of unskippable dialogue there's actually a prototype of an early iteration of the game that demonstrated a turf war between an anjanath and lagaya cruz which is especially interesting considering that there are no leviathans within monster hunter world or iceborn during a postmortem from monster hunter world game director yuya tokuda explained that lagyar cruz was originally added in the prototype but was ultimately scrapped apparently there were too many issues with the animation rig for leviathans and the bones of the species were removed pugi also wasn't planned for the initial release of the game but fan outcry led to the beloved pet being implemented through a day one patch now poogie has many costumes to unlock within world and appears in both the base game and iceborn expansion developers continued the tradition set from monster hunter 4 and generations by adding a large amount of tutorial content to help make the game more accessible to newer players there was even a training area introduced where players could easily test out any weapons of their choosing the title monster hunter world is used to complement the interconnectedness of this entry with a worldwide release global servers and an open world experience in each area let's take a look at some of the additional changes and main features in this entry the most apparent change or upgrade is the graphical and cinematic improvements introduced now running on next-gen hardware and made specifically as a next-gen experience the engine had the ability to use high-quality models and textures as well as breathing life into areas with dense foliage and details not possible in previous releases monsters specifically received a huge upgrade with a lot of older monsters getting revamped designs to better show off their fur feathers scales and other additional features they began to feel more drenched in realism than their older generation predecessors monsters and areas weren't the only aspects of the game to receive graphical improvements however both hunters and palikos featured a high level of detail and players could now fully customize the face of their character choosing various styles for multiple face features hairstyles expressions and more world provided the most customizable experience for creating a hunter since the series release pallico customization also offered a large amount of options but were generally very similar to their old gen counterpart just with some next-gen polish introduced along with improved graphical content came updated player controls movement and fidelity world wanted to focus on players being in the action and helped promote that by making it easier for the players to run around and interact with the map hunters were now faster and more agile with the ability to turn on a dime they could chase after monsters easier and even had the ability to slide down large sloping areas for extra speed and the ability to jump off of these sloping areas while sliding to perform various aerial attacks similar to monster hunter 4 and generations the design of maps featured many many ledges for the player to climb up and jump from a lot of the areas were designed to reward the player for traversing them properly finding areas they could slide or vines that they could swing on would often offer faster pathways to their destination than simply running additionally there were plenty of slinger bugs placed around each area allowing hunters to grapple onto them and swing around with ease the slinger could even be shot when climbing up large cliffsides to allow the player to climb much faster than what was traditionally expected now before we talk further on the areas themselves or the slinger let's discuss the storyline and progression introduced monster hunter world introduces the player to a brand new area called the new world a location where elder dragons are known to migrate every 10 years known as the elder dragon crossing the player hunter is part of an ocean-bound fleet that has been sent to assist the research commission on finding out more about the surrounding area and monsters that roam within it the player and their recently introduced handler arrive in estera which is a base of operations set up to help the commission while being safe from monster attacks astera functions like most hunting villages found in past releases here players can accept quests eat forge weapons and armor and explore their player quarters world does something similar to older releases where the players living quarters are upgraded as they progress through the game caught endemic creatures can also be displayed here the argosy system is reintroduced and the player can send them off for themed sets of items that cost research points to buy once the argosy captain returns additionally the player gets harvest boxes that they can use to grow various gathering items another major addition is the melding pot where players can turn in items worth varying amounts of points to create other items they may not have the traditional gathering materials for through getting rare permits the player can even meld some rare drops off of monsters like plates or rubies or even make some low-level decorations the game first focuses on the hunter and multiple fleets dealing with the new large elder dragon introduced to world known as zora magdaros monsters are known to migrate to a specific location in the new world known as the rotten vale when they are ready to die but zoro magdaros is instead on its way to a place known as the everstream which is a large underground system of tunnels and rivers bioenergy is introduced in world and if zora magdaros dies there the bioenergy it releases could destroy the entirety of the new world through their endeavors to explore more about zoro magdaros the player explores the various areas of the new world as well as visiting the airship research base controlled by the third fleet nurgagante the flagship monster of world is an elder dragon known for preying on other elder dragons with zora magdaros being next on the menu when the fleet works on their initial capture attempt of zoro magdaros nurgagante shows up to protect its new prey and shows up again a second time during the fleet's second and final attempt where they finally managed to drive zoro magdaros into the ocean where it dies the death and release of its bioenergy creates a new aquatic ecosystem around the new world with zoro magdaros out of the way nurgagante travels to the elders recess a location elder dragons flock to and hunts many of the elder dragons there driving them away to the surrounding areas that the player has already visited the player is forced to research and hunt many of these elder dragons before finally hunting and slaying nergigante the large amount of energy within the elder's recess is traced back to an incubating elder dragon that is feeding off of the bioenergy and eventually hatches into a powerful infant beast known as zenojiva the player hunter successfully hunts xenojiva and ultimately completes the main objective of the expedition however many of the expeditioners decide to stay in the new world for further research there are multiple new locations for the player to explore within the new world most of these areas include more than one campsite generally one or two of these campsites are unlocked automatically but multiple others can be unlocked by completing various tasks or deliveries once the site for the camp is found these areas can also be freely fast traveled to as long as the player doesn't have anything aggro to them at the time additionally the player has full access to their item box within these camps meaning all stored items can be picked up here and the player can change equipment during a hunt whenever they want there is even a little canteen at each camp allowing the player to eat if they forgot to before heading out on a mission or if the effects of the last meal have worn off and the hunter has become hungry again new areas include ancient forest the first area introduced in monster hunter world where the player will spend most of their early time it consists of multiple sub-areas including a shoreline which is much more open and spacious a lower forest area which is more dense and packed with aggressive creatures and an upper forest area surrounding the ancient tree near the top of the map is a flying wyvern nest wild spire waste a new desert location it's also broken up into multiple sub-locations with a muddy swamp area small forest area and traditional desert area underneath the waste is a tunnel system that the players can traverse coral highlands a very unique location unlike anything we have seen in a monster hunter game all of the foliage is based off of coral found underwater and the area consists of two subsections the lower section where many grounded monsters roam and the highlands which can reach up to the clouds rotten vale another unique area introduced to the series where many monsters including elder dragons come to die it's inhospitable to most creatures and hunters will often take damage from some of the deeper areas it is situated under the coral highlands but is thought to be how the highlands came to be in the first place it consists of three subsections the upper sections which are fairly open the lower sections which are full of poisonous gas known as effluvium and the deepest depths full of acidic pools multiple monsters in this area have the ability of inflicting the effluvium status ailment where a hunter's maximum health bar will be lowered significantly elder's recess is the last big hunting area the player will be introduced to and generally acts as this entry's volcanic zone the upper and middle sub-areas consist of crystallized structures created through the bioenergy of elder dragons while further down is a large volcanic area at the very deepest section of the volcanic zone is an arena-like area that generally hosts creatures like teostra or lunastra next up are some special locations for unique assignments within the game first is the great ravine an area that has been reinforced with plenty of special weaponry by the fleets to hunt zora magdaros the player transitions between fighting on top of zora and running around the weaponry to damage it from a distance the end of the great ravine leads to the coral highlands next is the ever stream where the hunter will have their final encounter with zora magdaros the fight functions very similarly to the initial one but with the goal of driving the elder dragon into the ocean a path created by zora leads to the elders recess confluence of fates is the final area introduced in the base game before any updates and is an arena-like location covered in bioenergy crystals this location is broken up into two separate arena areas and where the player will hunt and slay xeno jiva the release of the cool turoth siege event brought with it a new unique location known as the caverns of eldorado here players will fight and chase kulftura through multiple zones that lead deeper into the cavern until they either break the horns off of it or it runs away how players tracked these monsters had to be updated to work with the map's design instead of using paintballs players can now find monster tracks which would help their new tool the scout flies and tracking the monster scout flies create a trail throughout the map that the player can follow to more tracks or to the monster itself additionally if the player cites the monster it'll be available on the map for the rest of the quest and won't require more tracks to find if the player loses sight of it onto weapons and armor both armor and armor skills have been reworked gone is the points and skill system of past games where players require a certain amount of points then a skill to activate it and further point requirements to upgrade it instead each skill has a specific amount of levels and just one point of a skill will provide a level and some sort of benefit to the player they can wear multiple armor pieces or slot in decorations to increase the effect some pieces and decorations offer more than one level of bonus allowing players to easily mix and match sets no longer are there blade master and gunner options now all armor is universal and what really differentiates them is the skills they come equipped with there have been changes in decorations and charms in comparison to the older games in previous entries charms were randomly generated items with randomly generated skill bonuses but the player only needed to equip one of them and craft the decorations for their empty slots to better fine-tune their armor set now it's the opposite decorations are randomly generated while the player can craft charms due to the amount of grinding involved in decorations armor sets were reworked slightly to help players who didn't want to grind through rng armor slots have been changed as well in previous games each slot would be equal and the level of decoration would determine how many slots it took up now each slot has a specific level which dictates the maximum level of decoration that can be equipped to it a monster's armor set now comes in alpha and beta versions these different versions have multiple visual differences but the biggest difference is how skills work on them alpha sets offer more built-in skills from the get-go with either less decoration slots or slots of lower levels if the player is looking for more customization they could work towards the beta set instead which will either completely remove a built-in skill or lower the amount of levels of the skill installed to make up for this the set will either have decoration slots of higher levels or more slots in general players can get through most of if not all content using alpha sets but to be the most effective beta sets are usually preferred taking a page from generations ultimate world also introduced layered armor sets which function like armor fusion and allow the players to put specifically designed layered sets of armor over what they are currently wearing this was originally a very limited feature with few armor sets available and didn't allow the layering of crafted sets but instead special sets that the player received through events new quests deliveries or the deluxe edition release weapons also receive various changes within world the biggest being their designs worlds focus on melding all the designs together is very apparent with a lot of bone weaponry and branching trees for it looking incredibly similar with few visual differences as you upgrade them a late game engine ath weapon can look almost identical to any other late game bone weapons this isn't the case for every weapon in their respective trees however and some come off looking truly unique speaking of weapon trees the player now has the ability to see all paths for all weapons at any time by talking to the smithy which better helps them plan out how they are going to upgrade their various weapons all weapons have also been reworked to include new abilities built in similar to hunting arts from generations ultimate for example the long-star now has a move that allows them to evade monster attacks after a successful evasion they can follow up with a counter that will automatically level up their spirit gauge if it connects extreme forging makes its return in the form of weapon augmentations by hunting tempered elder dragons players had the opportunity to obtain special stream stones players would need to obtain these special stream stones specific to their weapons so that when fully upgraded they could apply an augmentation to it the weapon being augmented would have varying amounts of augmentation slots and each augment would take up one of them the possible augments at this point were attack defense or affinity boosts an augment that upgrades the slot on the weapon or a health regen effect that will heal the player as they land attacks armor pieces also had the ability to be augmented which would unlock the ability to level it up further for higher defense monster hunter world has one of the smaller monster counts in the series after all the updates and the iceborn expansion they still only reach 31 large monsters and 17 small monsters a far cry from games of the past this was almost certainly due to the limitations introduced through creating a next-gen experience and the work required for that still it boasts 18 large monsters before any updates let's take a look at what was introduced great jagras new to the series and one of the first monsters the player hunter will encounter in the new world they are fanged wyverns and have the ability to swallow large creatures by expanding their body kulu yaku a small bird wyvern similar to a dodo they can carry boulders and eggs that they are usually stealing from a nest the rock can be used both defensively to block attacks or offensively to stun hunters tzitzi yaku another bird wyvern similar to a raptor it has fins on either side of its head which can expand the fins have the ability to reflect light and allows the monster to create a blinding effect that can stun hunters and monsters alike pukepuke a unique chameleon-like bird wyvern slightly similar in designed to camellias though much less threatening it has the ability to poison the player and can enhance the abilities of its poison by eating specific nuts paulumu a flying wyvern that resembles a bat its neck has a special air sac that can be inflated allowing it to float in the air while using its tail to attack tobi karachi a squirrel-like fang wyvern that has the ability to use electricity it can jump around the surrounding trees of the ancient forest to attack its prey when electrified the fur on its back will stand up anginath an incredibly aggressive brute wyvern that resembles a t-rex i said the same thing about glavinus but apparently that was wrong it has the ability to unfold a large nasal crest on its head which it can use to spread mucus and market's territory giratotus a piscine wyvern which hasn't had a new large monster introduction since the release of lavasioth similar to bare off it has the ability to cover and protect itself in mud it will spread mud throughout the area during the fight and the player can use these to run through the swampy areas with ease greyjiros a pack leader found in the rotten veil and fanged wyvern that resembles a cobra its fangs have the ability to paralyze players and will generally have its pack help harass its prey it can also spit paralyzing fluid leguana an ice-based flying wyvern that thrives in the coral highlands it has a pair of antennae on its head and it is incredibly fast it has the ability to create incredibly cold winds to attack its prey with odogueren a grotesque flesh-like fanged wyvern that acts as an apex predator within the rotten veil it has the ability to inflict bleed status and is highly aggressive hunters will often find it carrying some sort of prey between its strong jaws rattlebond a brute wyvern found in the rotten veil covered in bones that it uses as armor it is incredibly similar to an eragon along with its strong jaw typically seen on their species and can also roll around the map like a wheel dodogama a fanged wyvern similar in appearance to a great jagras it primarily exists within the elder's recess and its main diet consists of rocks it can make these rocks explode and use them to attack aggressors basal geys a flying wyvern who functions similarly to devil joe when it was first introduced it's an incredibly powerful and aggressive monster that will show up to ruin the deva hunter while they are out trying to slay something else since the update that introduced devil joe to the new world basal guys can be seen in conflict with them regularly finally we have all the elder dragons introduced in monster hunter world zora magdaros an incredibly large monster and the main focus of the game's storyline until the hunting fleet manages to send it off into the ocean it's so large that hunters can scale it and fight on top of it and stores an incredible amount of bioenergy nurgagante the flagship monster and elder dragon hunter of monster hunter world it actively preys on multiple elder dragons to feed off of them and their energy it's incredibly aggressive and covered in quills which it can fire off at will valhasak a unique elder dragon found in the rotten veil a grotesque beast that has the ability to cover itself in effluvium making it incredibly dangerous it has a very prominent double job producing the image of a monster that is falling apart at the seams xenogeva the endgame hunt of the monster hunter world questline it is a creature that has incubated for a long period consuming large amounts of bioenergy leading to its glowing blue and translucent appearance it can use its attacks to heat up the area around it and even collapse into the ground to create large energy bursts all of these monsters were featured in the game's base release but to improve the longevity of the series capcom began introducing various events and title updates to introduce additional content some of these updates brought returning monsters and new monsters entirely behemoth from final fantasy xiv was introduced in an event quest chain it holds the elder dragon classification and has multiple little mechanics to help emulate the mmo experience it also has the ability to cast its signature ecliptic meteor and players must hide behind comets to protect themselves from damage lesion and ancient lesion were introduced in a special witcher 3 quest chain in which geralt orivia appears in the new world they have unique mechanics requiring geralt or the hunter to use witcher signs or runestones to burn away branches created by the lesion and open it up for attack finally kulfturath was introduced alongside the siege mechanic a large elder dragon that covers itself in heavy molten gold it is rather slow until it's released from its golden encasement where it becomes more agile and aggressive many of the monsters mentioned can be fought with tempered status usually through the new investigations mechanic these monsters are more powerful and enter their enrage state or powered states faster than normal on top of this their attack status multiplied to make them much more powerful they're also resistant to items like flashpods players can tell they are going to hunt a tempered monster by the purple outline around their icon there is also a special arc tempered state that is only available on some elder dragons and is limited to special event quests for arc tempered monster icons have an orange outline around them sieges are special quests designed around more than 4 hunters cooperating together to take down large monsters like kulfteroth in these special quests multiple groups of hunters will go out to hunt a monster and while there is still a maximum group size of 4 all groups contribute to weakening it these monsters can be theoretically defeated in a single run and will offer bonuses if this happens however they are designed to be repelled and fought again when weaker kulfturath specifically brought back the mechanic of randomized weapons when players completed a siege they were rewarded with items that would transform into a random weapon with randomized stats generally a lot of these weapons would be extremely effective all monsters now have research levels most of the early monsters introduced have 6 total levels through low rank and high rank while monsters introduced in high ranks start and end with only four these levels are raised by hunting monsters collecting tracks and breaking parts increasing these levels have various effects but the most important is that they allow scout flies to find monsters easier early levels will help guide the player to their first set of tracks while later levels will point the player to the monster directly normal quests have also been reworked to help promote world's global multiplayer aspect all quests are found within the hub of astera and can either be done through single player or multiplayer if a quest is tackled with multiple people the monster will have additional hp as well as higher status and park brake thresholds players experiencing difficulties with the quest can fire off an sos flare which will allow other hunters to join in a quest even if it's already in progress doing so updates the monster stats to its multiplayer equivalents additionally the gathering hub marks its return in estera and players within the same server instance can meet up there and interact two new features introduced in world are bounties and investigations bounties are subquests that the player can pick up to complete over various assignments such as gathering a certain amount of mushrooms or completing a mission in the ancient forest twice by completing these the players gain various rewards usually as permits armor spheres and research points investigations are special optional quests that the player can unlock by researching and defeating monsters through breaking monster parts or collecting monster tracks investigations will unlock these are randomly generated assignments that usually have some sort of condition such as maximum of two hunters or a shorter period of time allowed to complete the hunt depending on the established difficulty of the investigation it will offer a certain amount and quality of bonus drops from the monster these quests have a limit on how many times they can be completed before disappearing the hunter now has access to multiple new objects to help them in slaying monsters these include slingers mantles and tools the slinger is always equipped to the hunter and is what allows them to climb faster and grapple or swing around the map this increases the player's aerial mobility and can even use it to grapple back onto a monster if launched off while mounting various small items like rocks or nuts can be picked up and equipped into the slinger allowing the player to shoot them at monsters additionally items like flash bombs have been updated to pods that can be equipped and shot by the player multiple mantles exist within the game and each has its own unique effect by equipping a mantle the hunter gains the effects for a temporary period of time which is shortened through the mantle's use the ghillie mantle for example allows the player to hide from monster attention in plain sight but will automatically wear off if the attack or take damage another example would be the temporal mantle which allows the player to automatically evade when attacked players can now equip various tools to bring them on a mission as well like health boosters which can be placed on the map allowing the player to heal over time while standing near it these items have a cooldown period like mantles but never run out like potions meaning players can use them infinitely multiple changes were made to other items from previous entries in the series since players couldn't switch zones for a brief interval of safety potions and other consumables were now made safer now potions gradually heal the player as they drink them and hunters have the ability to walk around while consuming gathering items like pickaxes and bug nets were now infinite and whetstones received the same update changes to mounting were also implemented players can still mount monsters by using aerial attacks to build up towards the monster's mounting threshold once mounted the player will need to mash the attack button to deal damage to whichever part of the monster they are currently attached to the old mechanic of being chased by the chomping dragon icon no longer exists now monsters may try to knock you off by slamming into walls rocks or various other objects and the hunter can jump around to different parts of the monster to dodge this the monsters will still thrash around and roar requiring the player to hold on tightly and stop attacking if the player runs out of stamina they will fall off once the player has dealt enough damage with their hunting knife they may receive the ability to perform a special attack that will deal high damage before toppling the monster new linear creatures like the grimmelkin and godzillaka made their appearance as well and had a more active role in the development of the player's palico now the player could find grimmell kind homes and earn their trust doing so would unlock one of the multiple tools for the palico to use in battle additionally these creatures would sometimes help the hunter in battle by trapping the monster or causing multiple status effects i talk more in depth about all linear creatures in one of my previous videos so be sure to check it out another brand new update to the series is endemic life in past games players could catch bugs and fish through the use of nets or bait and this returns inworld this new game takes things a step further and introduces the capture net which can be shot by the slinger to catch a large amount of various small creatures around each area there are generally small subquests associated with finding the rarer creatures and the player can earn research points by collecting them and also display them within their player home palico's also received a fair bit of updates in previous games the players would collect felines for various tasks and could train them and teach them skills to use in battle now the player is meant to focus solely on their personal paligo through character customization armor foraging and the unlocking of various tools the palico is meant to feel more like a sidekick and partner in this entry players can still hire palikos they meet through other hunters or on quests to go out on tail raiders safaris where they'll collect various items from the locations within the new world i don't think it'd be controversial to say that it's a fact monster hunter world is by far the most popular entry in the series not one other entry even comes close to the amount of success world has seen through the global market not only has it managed to be the best-selling monster hunter game ever created but it is also the best-selling capcom game of all time selling over 15.7 million copies the game also received universal praise on all consoles and for the pc release it changed the culture of monster hunter and opened it up to a plethora of new players now almost anyone familiar with video games knows of monster hunter and through their efforts to make the game more accessible it's much easier for novice hunters to get started and experience the series for the first time this generation of monster hunter is where my series of videos on its history are starting to reach their climax after this and my video about iceborn i'll be focusing more on specific aspects of monster hunter as well as other games that interest me videos on frontier and online will also be on the way but will require a lot more time and work in comparison to the past entries i also want to check out some of the side and non-mainline games like monster hunter stories in my previous video about world i heavily criticized its design philosophies and i do still feel like there's something some sort of charm that's lost through the direction that the series is taking but does that matter well i i don't know the series is reaching so many people now and while it's a little bittersweet for me i'll always be happy to know more people are experiencing monster hunter i met a lot of really amazing people through this series and i'm happy to know that there are others getting the opportunity to do the same thing these games are such a gratifying experience and we're so lucky to live in a time when we can play them so thanks for sticking with me through this series as far as you have and if you're new to my videos thanks for watching and i hope you check out the previous entries hello everyone and welcome back to another lesson on the history of the monster hunter series this is part 5.5 in this series and the final episode on the history of the mainline generations today we'll be focusing on monster hunter world's expansion iceborn part of the most successful game to be released in the series as well as capcom's best-selling game of all time covering all these generations leading up to world and iceborn has been a treat to say the least it's amazing to see the changes that the series has made from generation 1 to five where we are now is so drastically different from where we started and i can tell you that going through and playing each game in the series for these videos has been a nostalgia field marathon that i'm incredibly happy i had the opportunity to experience world changed the game and iceborn continued this paradigm shift with new features and new ways of going about how an expansion functions within the series iceborn isn't a separate release of the base game with additional content but a traditional expansion you're more likely to see in some other games like an mmo but the concept is still the same take what we know from world give us more to do and more better ways to do it even if some of those new ways are a little controversial [Music] i just want to say thank you to everyone that has experienced this series of videos with me they have been incredibly fun to make and i can't wait to make more in the future monster hunter is one of my favorite series and one i've been playing for over 12 years it holds a significant emotional investment with me and i look forward to seeing what's coming in the future what led monster hunter to become the capcom powerhouse it is today and how did the series perform since its initial inception and release in 2004 in this multi-part video series we'll take a look at all five generations of the monster hunter franchise as well as frontier monster hunter online and several other spin-off games that have been developed i'm super rad and today i'm here to bring you a brief history of monster hunter iceborn [Music] now i want to start things off by addressing a confusing statement i made about the amount of monsters in world i stated there was something like 31 total monsters after updates and the iceborn expansion but what i meant to be referring to was new monsters never seen before but even this was inaccurate and the total amount of new additions currently is about 39 at this point there are in total about 70 large monsters and considering the amount of work that has to go into bringing each monster to next gen that's a fairly high number now if you're a long time fan of the series you're most likely up to date on how their release schedule works with mainline games generally we see the base game released followed by a g or ultimate release around a year or two later this has been the model for almost every mainline release aside from a few exceptions like monster hunter portable 3rd that being said it may have come as a surprise to most players that there would be no ultimate release for world but instead would adopt a more globally accepted model of digital expansion release meaning players wouldn't have to repurchase the entire game full price just for the additional content that they were about to receive iceborn was released on september 6 2019 but pc players wouldn't receive this expansion until january 9th 2020. like past ultimate releases it introduced new areas monsters quests and equipment for the player to experience even before its release producer ryozo tsuchimoto made it clear to various publications that the iceborn expansion would be the first and last for monster hunter world and would wrap up the storyline introduced in 5th generation though the game was to continue offering free content in the form of collaboration events and title updates that would introduce new and returning monsters the base game of world did something similar bringing new monsters and returning ones like devil joe to the new world like with any other ultimate or g release in the series there is now a third rank for players to hunt within classified as master rank typically even in western releases this would be called g-rank but the development team opted to switch the term to master to make up for western players lack of familiarity when it comes to the title this makes sense considering there was an exceptional amount of new western players who were introduced to the series through world and wouldn't be used to the little nuances from previous releases the development team also wanted to up the difficulty curve for iceborn in the base game they wanted to ease players into getting introduced to monster hunter but by the time they reached iceborn it would be possible to offer a bigger challenge to help new players reach iceborn as fast as possible capcom introduced defender equipment which was incredibly powerful in comparison to low rank and high ranked monsters this equipment was used to allow players to breeze through world so they could experience iceborn as quickly as possible to complement this they even allow new players with the expansion to use the additional movesets introduced to each weapon and use the clutch claw within low and high rank content on top of this the developers wanted to make the game more inclusive for players that hunted online but with less than 4 party members to do this they added a third multiplayer difficulty scaling option for monsters now monsters would scale in difficulty from single player to two player to three and four players meaning players hunting in duos wouldn't be stuck hunting a monster design for 3-4 players all in all the game promoted inclusivity and accessibility and work to introduce new hunters to the series as a whole and bring back returning hunters for the new content let's take a look at some of the big changes released with monster hunter world iceborn [Music] iceborn picks up shortly after the plotline for monster hunter world with the expedition team opting to stay in the new world to continue their research after finding out about xeno geva a song is heard throughout the new world which leads to a mass migration of legiana from the current continent to a polar subcontinent that has yet to be explored the expedition sets up a base of operations similar to astera and names it's celiana this is the main area of the expansion and where the majority of the storyline takes place seismic activity is soon found out to be the main contributing factor to the migration of the legianna and this activity is causing a type of ecological disturbance within the new world the song heard at the start of the expansion is linked to both the seismic activity and a being known as the old everworm this disturbance also brings forth a new ice elemental elder dragon known as valtana with velkana active multiple areas of the new world begin to be frozen the player hunter manages to drive the velkana off and back to the polar subcontinent there the expedition team and the player hunter repel the vulcana as it attempts to attack zeliana followed by the player hunter tracking the velkana down and finally slaying it with one big threat out of the way the team of hunters and researchers focuses on finding the source of the seismic activity and learn to predict where the next event will take place here the team finds the old everworm shara ishvalda a large elder dragon that appears to be made out of rock however during the hunt against shara it soon breaks free of this rocky exterior to reveal its true appearance upon defeating shara ishvalda the hunter and team soon witnessed the elder dragon be attacked by a variant of nergigante known as ruiner nergagante who finishes the weakened elder dragon off it's deduced by the admiral that nurgagante's place in the food chain isn't simply eating other elder dragons but killing monsters that threaten the ecosystem like zoro magdaros the team tracks the variant nurgagante to another subcontinent later known as the guiding lands which consists of multiple ecological areas all mashed together including a forest region a desert region coral rottenvale volcanic and tundra the hunter can eventually hunt and slay the nergigante but the story continues through updates and event content specifically the team finding out about safi jiva the mature form of xeno jiva after interacting with safi and fighting it the player has the ability to participate in new sieges against it as of writing this the current storyline has the player hunter and team hunting in aletreon which has recently appeared in the new world so that's where we're at with monster hunter world iceborn currently we have one more big update in fall that we know about which will be featuring a returning monster from previous entries in the series we don't know for a fact what this monster will be but i can tell you what i'm hoping for okay with that out of the way let's take a look at the main hub town steamworks and player home [Music] [Music] celiana is the main hub area for monster hunter world iceborn and contains all amenities and features that astera has with a few additions one big thing that i personally enjoyed was how they managed to lower the overall size of the hub and keep all interactable areas and features closer together estero was nice but the size of it required a large amount of running around to remedy this they included little fast travel areas to help get around the map but especially for me on ps4 the load time still led to long waiting periods this was remedied in the pc release as long as you had the hardware for it but the real fix was how celiana handled it becoming a more condensed hub that was easier to navigate one of the key new features introduced to world through celiana was the steamworks the steamworks functions as a small mini game within the hub area where the player must input a three button sequence to get a desirable effect each round always has a correct sequence but the player won't know what it is without guessing if the player gets the entire sequence correct they receive a small bonus to their progress and receive higher quality rewards there's a few smaller nuances to it but i won't be going into more detail about it here try the mini-game out for yourself i know there are many videos showcasing how you can really get the most out of it another big aspect of celiana is the player home in the base game the home could be upgraded to new accommodations as the player progressed through the storyline in iceborn the player now has one home within celiana that they can customize with furniture players can even invite other hunters into their home to hang out similar to the gathering hub there are also weapon and armor stands where they can display their collected sets of equipment now icebarn has added a lot of new features when it comes to equipment and tools including so let's take a look at some of those now [Music] the most immediate change players will notice is the new moves introduced to weapons i've gone over them before in previous videos but each weapon now has additional moves it can perform in battle the long sword specifically gets the lie slash which can be used through the new special sheath mechanic and rewards the player with additional spirit gauge meter regen each weapon receives something like this that helps to complement their individual playstyles the slinger can now be aimed even while the weapon is unsheathed and players can outperform a move called a slinger burst where after specific attacks they can shoot the ammo attached to their slinger for additional high damage while continuing their combo the slinger burst also has the potential to stagger opponents opening them up for more damage one thing i forgot to mention previously about arc tempered monsters in my last video was that they offered their own special armor set called gamma similar to alpha and beta sets gamma sets differentiate themselves by offering large decoration slots as well as alternative skills already put on the equipment pieces these types of sets make their return in iceborn for monsters such as arc tempered namiel a new augmenting system was introduced for higher rarity weapons found in the expansion now using a slot based system players have more control over how they augment their equipment depending on what type of augment you attach it will cost a certain amount of slots these augments can even be leveled up for boosts to their individual effects but through leveling them up they require additional slots take a weapon with three slots for example this weapon could be upgraded to include up to three additional slots for a total of six the player could then add an attack increase augment for three slots an affinity increase for two and a defense increase for one these combinations can be mixed and matched or leveled up giving the player more control on the progression of their endgame equipment not only has the customization of weapon effectiveness been updated but players now have the ability to visually customize their sets even further throughout updates from the base game to iceborn players now have new event layered armor sets that they can wear and the ability to use any low or high rank armor set as layered sets in addition to this master rank sets are soon to have the ability to be layered in an upcoming update now armor sets aren't the only thing that can be layered within iceborn no now the player has the opportunity to layer their weapons as well don't like the way that specific endgame weapon you're always using looks well make it look like the raging brackie weapon instead we all know that the bracky long sword is the best looking longsword in the game since three ultimate well i know that i i think that it's just my opinion but it's also fact the biggest update to decorations is the new level introduced in the base game decorations could be anywhere from level one to three but iceborn brings with it a fourth level that adds extra skill points in comparison to its lower level counterparts however not only is there a fourth level now but mixed decorations that may contain more than one ability boost these new decorations can be used to better micromanage your armor skills to fully min max whatever build you're using and get optimal dps along with the upgrades to weapons and customizability tools like mantels and boosters have also been upgraded players can now complete various tasks or assignments in order to unlock a plus version of the tools these tools not only function for a longer period of time in comparison to their traditional counterparts but generally offer decoration slots as well this means that when a player equips something like a mantle they will temporarily gain the benefits of the slotted decorations this is particularly effective with tools like the glider mantel which the player can wear for a long period of time before it runs out one of the biggest additions to the player's equipment has to be [Music] through its introduction and use there's a lot of controversy centered around the clutch claw a lot of players don't really seem to appreciate the addition while others don't seem to mind it at all i won't delve too much into my opinion on the clutch claw specifically there's a video on that already mostly not really the clutch claw but mostly just like all about world and i got i got yelled at for it so i'm not gonna i'm not gonna talk about it again for a little bit but it has definitely become a contributing factor in how monster difficulty is designed for iceborn and kind of shapes how a player interacts with monsters as a whole players now have the ability in a hunt to grapple onto a monster using this new attachment to their slinger the clutch claw can be used with or without the weapon sheathed once they grapple onto the monster there are multiple options at their disposal first the player can perform clutch claw attacks multiple times doing so when grappled to the monster's head allows the player to guide the monster towards walls or other structures so that they may run into them and topple over if the players have slinger ammo equipped they can unleash all of it while grappled to stagger the monster finally the move that is most controversial to players in regards to the clutch claw players can perform a weapon attack on whichever part of the monster's body they are grappled to doing so allows the player to soften the hide of the monster and allows the player to contribute extra damage to the weakened area while hunting it having weapons like the great sword can do this in one shot while lighter weapons usually need to perform this action twice however claw attacks also contribute to softening the hide so light weapon users can perform about three claw attacks before the softening move to completely weaken the hide in one go performing this attack will also drop powerful slinger ammo for the player to pick up and use throughout the hunt it's hard to pick a specific reason why some players found this inclusion so controversial but it most likely has to do with its inclusion in comparison to various master rank changes mostly how high the hp pools are on monsters now keeping track of tenderizing uptime is basically a requirement in order to optimally fight monsters in icebarn and can take away from the traditional hunting mechanics to make sure that the monster's weak point is always softened but regardless of how you feel about it it is an option and a new feature within iceborn for you to use to your advantage now with that out of the way let's look over the new areas introduced to diceborn including the guiding lands [Music] the first of the biggest additions is the new tundra based hunting area horfrost reach like similar cold temperature areas in monster hunter horfrost reach requires the player to consume hot drinks to stop their accelerated maximum stamina depletion it's a beautiful area where the linen creatures boa boa live and even has a hot spring that players can use part of the map has an area where multiple parts of the ground can fall and be destroyed next is the selena supply cache where the player hunter attempts to repel vulcana the cache is designed with a large array of anti-monster weaponry including the new dragon razor which is just a giant cannon that shoots a huge spear at the elder dragon and it's actually really rad origin isle is where the player faces off against shara ishvalda and ruiner nurgagante shortly after the shape of the arena is that of a lotus flower and a large portion of shara's equipment is based on this secluded valley is the new siege location where players will fight safi jiva it consists of three levels that the player will chase saffie through as it drains the bio energy from each area the bottom area is a large arena where the player will finish their hunt on top of this being used for safy jiva the third level is also used for the alatreon hunt finally we have the guiding lands which is an amalgamation of all the previous main hunting areas introduced in the series it's a very unique area for many reasons mostly how the area's leveling system works the main goal of the guiding lands is to casually hunt monsters and gain research points these points will not only contribute to your total amount of points but also level up the individual areas these areas are limited to how high they can be leveled up but by raising your master rank and levels within the guiding lands you can unlock levels all the way up to seven here's the trick though generally there's only so many levels that can be distributed and eventually contributing to one area will take away from another meaning players have to decide which areas they want to level up and focus on them to help with this players can now lower the level of previously developed areas to make raising the level of other areas easier it is also theoretically possible to get all areas up to level 7 through the grinding of specific tempered elder dragons but the amount of kills necessary is so huge that you're probably better off just readjusting your levels if you need to so what's the point of leveling these areas well higher level areas produce higher tier monsters and items for example getting the rotten veil area high enough will allow brute tigrex to start spawning the desert area can begin to spawn gold rathians and the coral area can begin to spawn silver rathalos the items players receive from hunting monsters in high level areas are used to help augment their equipment even gathering spots can be leveled up by consistently using gathering spots in specific areas of the guiding lands you'll level them up and improve the rate in which they give you a high level gathering item so i mentioned a few returning monsters there but i think it's time to discuss all the new monster additions as well as the clarification of a returning monster's variant status let's take a look now [Music] a lot of new monsters have been added to iceborn both through its initial release and now with all of the updates there's around 17 total new monsters and one more returning monster on the way in the fall of 2020. now i said before that there's a lot of speculation on who that monster is going to be but i've been pretty vocal on what i'm hoping for iceborn even brought over a monster from a non-mainline game no i'm not talking about mitsutsune unfortunately however we did get glavinus and a new subspecies for glaviness within this release for me it was initially really weird seeing glaviness in a game like this because i thought generations ultimate was just so eccentric and crazy that we would never see aspects of that game brought over in the future now though with the new weapon abilities and how excessively aggressive and flashy some of the moves are i can definitely see it so it's a welcome addition if anything two brand new large monsters were added banbarro is a new brute wyvern native to the tundra-like area known as horfrost reach it has the ability to pick up large tree trunks with its gigantic horns and charge at hunters while covering a wide area of the ground when enraged a small horn will appear on its snout beetotis is a new piscine wyvern also found within horfrost reach it has the ability to shield itself by covering its body in the snow surrounding it similar to mud with a giratotus it's a fairly weak monster and one of the first the hunter will run into when exploring the new location on top of the new base species iceborn added in many new subspecies for the player to fight against viper toby kadachi is an incredibly agile and annoying subspecies to fight against on top of the warmer orange and brown hue surrounding it it also uses poison and paralysis to its advantage over electricity both poison and deadly poison are ailments under its arsenal and it will use them almost constantly nightshade paolumu is a stark contrast to your traditional paulumu with a dark black coat around it rather than gaining an element as a subspecies it instead gains the ability to inflict sleep on hunters or prey dropping areas of tranquilizer gas around the map coral pukepuke is an orange and yellow subspecies of your typical pukepuke and has the ability to use the water element over the poison element one would typically expect it can shoot out jet streams of highly pressurized water fulger and ginath is a really cool subspecies of anginath that uses the thunder element instead of fire it retains all of the features of your typical anginath but with a brighter blue scheme even its mucus can become electrified and hurled at prey ebony odogueren is one of my personal favorite subspecies introduced in iceborn and utilizes the dragonblade element on top of still being able to inflict a bleed it's a hyper-aggressive predator with a dark black skin tone in contrast to odagarin's typical red it'll even attack other odegarians if given the opportunity acidic glaviness is a subspecies that has a more cool blue-green color in comparison to the warmer tones of your typical gloviness it has higher precision of control with its sword-like tail and the acidic buildup it produces can also cause the defense down ailment subspecies aren't the only alternative monsters introduced to iceborn in fact iceborn introduces one of the largest amounts of variants within any generation of the series typically we might see one or two variants in an ultimate release but with iceborn there are currently a total of five an interesting point is that jan garuga a returning monster from the series has finally had its scarred counterpart listed as a variant but what about the new entries shrieking legianna is the first variant the players would run into as they progress through the game it's incredibly similar to your typical legiana but more adapted to the cold environment giving it stronger forms of ice attacks that can cover a wide area and spikes black veil val hazak an elder dragon variant that can be found outside of the rotten veil it is constantly emitting effluvium through these moss-like pustules and is effectively blind as they cover its eyes players can actually break these off of its head to allow it to see again in a special resident evil event quest collaboration it also has the ability to inflict a special status known as zombification ruiner nargigante another elder dragon variant interspersed throughout its regular bone-like quills are metallic-looking ones it also has the ability to inflict bleed unlike your typical nurgagante the monster is incredibly patient and will get more and more aggressive as the fight progresses rather than just instinctively attacking all of the time if you thought bazel geiss was bad get ready for its seething variant seething basal guys has a metallic blue coloration in comparison to its normal counterpart and the effect and range of its explosive scales has been improved frostfang berioth is the most recent variant released with the title update that brought alatreon to the new world its initial event quest ran in august the main differences are the lack of coloration in its hide which is now mostly white and the frosted over blue color on both its fangs it has much more control over the ice element and can use it to slow down and trap hunters finally we have multiple new elder dragon additions to iceborn including one that offers a new siege for players namiel is a brand new elder dragon that is similar in appearance to leviathans of past games however it has incredibly large wings on its back it also has the ability to use both water and thunder elements together its design is based on a deep sea fish and other sea life like manta rays falcana the flagship elder dragon of monster hunter world iceborn it has incredible control over the ice element and can not only cover the area in large spikes but even create thick walls of ice to block prey from escaping shara ishvalda is what one could consider the final boss of iceborn it has two forms the first of which it is covered in thick rocks once broken free it is much more agile it uses supersonic attacks to inflict the stun element on opponents finally we have safi gevo which is known as a mature form of xeno jiva the skin around it has formed into red scales hiding the blue translucent appearance seen in its geno counterpart it's incredibly powerful and has the ability to actively suck energy out of the surrounding area to use in battle one move it can use is so powerful it is guaranteed to wipe out any hunter that cannot find cover before it activates wait wait wait um i i i forgot to talk about the awakening system before i wrote the script someone reminded me and then i still didn't record it i recorded the footage so i have the footage here you're looking at it right now and how this system works is when you fight safy jiva you get randomized weapons similar to cool to tyroth i think you're guaranteed to get at least something that is the weapon you used in the siege when you completed it and then through that you can use these dracolites here to awaken your weapon through awakening your weapon you're able to add in basically other forms of augments and these augments come in different tiers so what's cool about this is that you can add in say an attack to augment and then you will have a better chance of seeing the attack three augment show up and then as you keep adding in these augments you have a better chance of seeing their higher level versions so you can mix and match or try to get your levels up as much as possible the highest level that they can go is six but only one slot is allowed to be six so all the other ones can only go up to level five so just keep that in mind uh armor abilities that come from armor sets like the barrio set for example can be applied to your weapon through one of the slots now you're not always guaranteed to get the armor ability you want those are probably like some of the rare ones to find since there's so many of them and most people will probably build around higher attack affinity or sharpness so yeah that's awakening and now let's go back to the video and look at some miscellaneous topics before the end [Music] i mentioned this previously at the start of the video but g-rank has been removed entirely or rather re-branded as master rank on top of this all iceborn content both single player and multiplayer takes place within master rank this is different in comparison to previous ultimate releases where the single player experience usually takes place through low and high rank followed by a multiplayer quest line through g-rank another small addition is the inclusion of a new lineage species called the boa boa i go over them and all other linen creatures within monster hunter in a previous video so be sure to check that one out finally players can now ride various small monsters within the new world from tamed monsters like jagras to passive herbivores like aptonoth these monsters will follow their own path and can't be actively controlled by the player this allows the player to travel freely while grabbing tracks along the way iceborn is universally praised and has average aggregate scores within the high 80s to low 90s critics made note of the sheer scale of the expansion and how the amount of content within rivaled if not completely equaled that of the base game that being said only one-third of players that owned the base game seem to have actually purchased the expansion while world has over 15 million sales iceborn only has around 5. despite this it is still an incredibly successful entry within the series at the time of writing this iceborn has at least one more update on the way in the fall of 2020 where we'll be receiving a returning monster from past entries in the series to hunt we've recently passed the 15th anniversary in the series so now would be the perfect time to see a celebration of one of the biggest and most notorious monsters ever released so fingers crossed we finally get to see that bad boy in the next gen release even if it's not fatalis i'll still be excited to see what they decide to bring over the sheer amount of detail they put into the next gen counterparts of monsters is absolutely crazy [Music] this video is the end of my monster hunter history series in regards to the mainline games and it's been an incredible journey throughout the past two to three months it is a really weird feeling to play through and experience each entry in the series within such a short period of time we started from monster hunter exclusively on the ps2 all the way to iceborn's global release on multiple consoles and pc that's something any veteran would have laughed in your face about if you told them back in the early 2000s for better or worse iceborn has changed and progressed the series in so many ways and it will be exciting to see what is in store for us in the future with these releases what is generation 6 going to look like how far will it deviate not just from old school but from this new generation and design i can only speculate at the moment and i'd love to hear your thoughts on it as well monster hunter is one of if not my all-time favorite series and effectively changed my life i have over a decade of history with this game and to be able to revisit it all and put my experiences into these videos has been significantly gratifying so i really want to say thank you to everyone for your support as i've created these videos these are long videos and require a lot of research if for some reason there's an error feel free to comment below and let me know i'll always try to add corrections when i can a multi-part series on frontier is on the way i'm happy to say that i have the means of getting all the information i need as well as all the footage so i'm incredibly excited to start on it in the meantime i'll continue to make smaller monster hunter videos as well as my typical larger history videos on other games i'm interested in i know for sure i'll be starting on the dot hack series sometime this week if you enjoyed this video and found it informative consider supporting the channel by liking commenting and subscribing again it only takes a couple of seconds and it helps support me in my goal of creating this content for you all i try to respond to every comment i can so if you want to hear from me be sure to let me know additionally i now have a discord channel and you can find the link below i made some channels specifically for monster hunter so it'd be great to go out on some hunts with you all or discuss the series in general be sure to stop by if you want to hear from me or offer suggestions thanks so much for watching everyone and i'll see you in the next video [Music]

Channel: SuperRAD

Views: 2,159,665

Keywords: monster hunter, monster hunter lore, monster hunter world, Monster, Hunter, World, Freedom, History, Kokoto, Minegarde, Flyann, unite, poogie, mh, monhun, all monsters, monster hunter games, evolution of monster hunter, monster hunter franchise, monster hunter series, history of monster hunter, monster hunter history, monster hunter game, mhw lore, iceborne lore, monster hunter explained, monster hunter movie, monster hunter rise, monster hunter rise review, monster hunter rise gameplay

Id: xzEKeMi-edg

Length: 198min 27sec (11907 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 24 2021