‘Monster Hunter’ Is a Global Hit. But What Makes It So Popular?

In the ever-saturated media landscape, blockbuster franchises are a dime a dozen, and video games are no different. Between perennial favorites releasing sequels annually, slews of nostalgia-driven remakes and remasters, and an entire ecosystem of live-service games — themselves amounting to nearly half of all games played daily — everyone is vying for audiences’ attention. With so much for players to focus on, it’s pretty impossible to experience it all. It’s entirely possible that a franchise, even one that’s sold upward of 100 million copies worldwide, can still end up a blind spot for many. That’s kind of the story for Monster Hunter.

Since its debut in 2004 on the PlayStation, the Monster Hunter series has accrued a devout fan base, yet even with over 25 releases and a major Hollywood film adaptation, it didn’t exactly become a household name until recently (at least, in North America). But even if your Friday night gaming group ignored it, the success of Capcom’s monster-slashing franchise is as towering as the creatures it features, becoming a staple for a company known for series like Mega Man, Street Fighter, and Resident Evil.

From the outside, it might seem like yet another action co-op game that primarily features big ass swords. If you only have a passing knowledge of the series, that’s understandable — as any veteran player would tell you years ago, getting into Monster Hunter required a daunting commitment to learning its often obtuse mechanics. But it’s gotten easier with time as modern entries become increasingly accessible, opening the door to a new audience.

After spanning dozens of releases, immeasurable count of collabs, and an influence that can be traced in AAA hits like Horizon: Zero Dawn (2017), the series is about to release its biggest entry to date with Monster Hunter Wilds (out Feb. 28). If you’re growing tired of the live service and hero shooter frenzy and are keen on trying something very different, there’s never been a better time to dive into Monster Hunter.

But what’s it all about? Where do you begin? Here’s everything you need to know about Capcom’s cult favorite turned global sensation.

What is Monster Hunter about?

Monster Hunter originated in 2004 with the release of the first game on the PlayStation 2. From its conception, the namesake of the series had already laid out the foundation people know and love today. It did what it says on the tin: Taking command of an unnamed hunter, villagers and guild members task players to overpower creatures way bigger than the average human. If successful, the reward is an assortment of monster parts, which are obtained by actively targeting specific limbs with attacks during the fight. These are then used to craft armor and weapons to become stronger and chase the next target. Rinse and repeat.

The steep difficulty was established as another series’ trait early on. However, co-op functionality, even back in the PlayStation 2 era, set a strong precedent for what the franchise became over time. Teaming up with others meant complimenting strategies, as well as a sense of camaraderie in defeating huge monsters. Quest variation also helped to prevent quick stagnation, with some tasks asking hunters to gather specific items or monster parts, capturing prey using traps instead of outright killing them, and taking part in time-gated event quests with equally rare rewards.

Playing with others also highlights another substantial core element, which is the ludicrously sized weapons. From the early days, players could pick from vastly different weapon types, ranging from the classic sword to the snappier dual swords. Over time, they all became staples that were iterated upon in future releases. Each weapon is deliberately different in terms of feel, move set, and role. If learning the difference in roles that wielding a switch axe has in contrast to a hammer doesn’t sound complex enough there are elemental weaknesses and resistances to keep in mind around each monster.

Various ideas expanded the already distinctive pillars of what a Monster Hunter game constitutes, including new monsters, weapon types, and mechanics, but the core loop has remained largely the same. As the series’ audience grew over time, so did its presence in the video game space in the form of collaborations. There have been many cameos from other Capcom franchises, from Street Fighter to Mega Man, but it’s the ones outside of their parent company that are more surprising, and outright bizarre at times. 

You can fight Rathalos, one of the series’ most iconic monsters, that resembles a red dragon, in games like Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (2010) and Final Fantasy XIV (2010). Monster Hunter: World (2018) incorporated missions themed around official collaborations with Horizon: Zero Dawn (2017), Assassin’s Creed: Origins (2017), and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015). Back in 2007, Capcom even collaborated with Pizza Hut (of all places), offering a reward for walk-in orders: an event code to download a longsword shaped like a pizza peel in Monster Hunter Frontier (2007). 

How did Monster Hunter get so popular?

If you’re unfamiliar with Monster Hunter, it might be surprising to see just how ubiquitous it is worldwide. Sure, 2020’s Paul W.S. Anderson-directed film adaptation wasn’t exactly great, but it also wasn’t a total disaster, especially for a pandemic-era theatrical release. But to even get the green light, the interest had to be there.

The original Monster Hunter game was a cult favorite in gaming circles that remained fairly niche for years. As it began to rise in popularity in Japan, the series’ incursion to handheld devices like the PlayStation Portable, PlayStation Vita, and Nintendo 3DS led to an explosion of growth. For Japanese fans, playing Monster Hunter cooperatively via ad-hoc multiplayer (i.e. playing with consoles in close proximity with one another) was “something you just did” with friends and coworkers. The cultural phenomenon arrived in North America and Europe more gradually, with Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate (2014) being the first game to surpass 1 million copies sold across both regions.

During the burgeoning days of Capcom’s now-unending stream of popular remakes and sequels, Monster Hunter: World was released alongside massive sequels, such as Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (2017) and Devil May Cry 5 (2019), as well as the popular remakes of Resident Evil 2 (2019) and Resident Evil 3 (2020). It signified a huge bet by the developer, sidelining its established audience on handheld consoles to target PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC instead — partly due to the company using the RE Engine, ensuring graphic fidelity at the cost of being too demanding for, say, the Nintendo Switch. Aside from a new visual presentation, the company’s goal was to ease the onboarding process to allow newcomers to engage with a series that always prided itself on being obtuse and complex at every turn.

And it worked. World has sold over 20 million copies in the past few years. As of September 2024, Monster Hunter became Capcom’s second-most profitable series, a monumental milestone considering the company has been an industry force since the Eighties with names like Mega Man and Street Fighter in its portfolio. Now, Monster Hunter is surpassed only by Resident Evil, with over 100 million copies sold in its entirety. The 2018 game struck a balance of easing the learning curve by presenting quality-of-life updates and less dense mechanics, without diminishing the actual difficulty involved in hunting monsters after the initial entry barrier.

While Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate (2018) was later ported to Nintendo Switch, offering a more old-school approach in a modern console, World became the staple to follow. Monster Hunter Rise (2021) launched as a Switch exclusive that was later ported to PC and other consoles, and both games received large expansions. Aside from spin-offs, including the more family-friendly Monster Hunter Stories and its sequel, as well as Niantic’s Monster Hunter Now, serving as the Pokémon Go equivalent on smartphones, every game has been following the shadow of World, including the soon-to-be released Monster Hunter Wilds.

Should you play Monster Hunter?

The popularity of Monster Hunter on a mainstream scale kicked off a video game subgenre of its own. Despite being a far smaller genre than, say, battle royale PUBG clones or Souslikes, games like Dauntless (2019), God Eater (2010), and Wild Hearts (2023), the latter two published by Bandai Namco and EA, respectively, serve as direct riffs on the Monster Hunter formula. One could argue that even behemoths like Sony’s Horizon: Zero Dawn have taken cues from Capcom’s series. Features like taking down mechanical beasts by targeting weaknesses, keeping elemental resistances in mind, and severing specific limbs to craft gear are all resonant in PlayStation’s flagship series.

Yet, Monster Hunter still excels at offering thrills, even when it remains familiar. There’s a simple yet primal excitement for taking down beasts that resemble dragons and dinosaurs, which coexist with wildly distinct creatures outside the usual role-playing norms, such as the puffy bat-like Paolumu that floats in the air like a balloon. The franchise benefits from two decades worth of knowledge from its developers, as well as a long-standing pool of mechanics and ideas to pull from and iterate. Monster Hunter Wilds, for example, adds a wound system that allows players to focus on visible weak points for extra damage, a simple yet substantial combat tool that further expands on the strategy involved in a fight, allowing you to more easily target the limbs you need to craft your next weapon or armor set.

The experience of playing Monster Hunter can be wildly different depending on what people are looking for. Latter games offer a playground that allows one to focus on the next target and slowly progress in a linear path, usually with a storyline that introduces monsters and expands upon the series’ lore. But it’s also possible to just take on quests like the old days, spend an absurd amount of time coming up with armor builds for maximum efficiency, and confront harder versions of enemy behemoths in large-scale battles.

There are different motivations to keep players returning to subsequent hunts, from mastering a weapon type and learning every possible attack combination until they’re second nature to hunting monsters just to see how their armor set looks. At the heart of it all, the sense of community of playing Monster Hunter with people online is as integral as it was a decade ago. Regardless of whether you’re grouped up with people over Discord voice chat or doing a hunt or two during a lunch break in local co-op, there’s no doubt that the thrill of banding together with others or severing Rathalos’ tail continues to withstand the passage of time.

For players looking to brush up on the series’ best installments, both Monster Hunter: World (2018) and Monster Hunter Rise (2021) offer accessible, but deep entryways into the franchise. For anyone looking for the most streamlined experience possible, Monster Hunter Wilds does a great job at being the most approachable iteration yet, without sacrificing the core appeal of the long-running franchise.

Whichever path you choose, Monster Hunter remains an engrossing time sink, solo or cooperatively, that could easily be your next 100-hour obsession. At the very least, it offers something very different as an alternative to the samey live-service malaise. 

Monster Hunter Wilds launches Feb. 28 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows PC.