During the nearly 20 years that Monster Hunter games have been around, a lot of game features have come and gone. So, which ones should play in the next game?
As of the day I’m writing this, Niantic and Capcom just announced Monster Hunter Now, and there are rumours that Monster Hunter 6 will come out sometime in 2023. This means that the Monster Hunter series is getting a lot of attention right now. Since it’s one of Capcom’s most famous series, it’s no surprise that the franchise has always been popular. And each new game improves on the gameplay and systems of the last one in many different ways.
With that in mind, let’s look back at some of the features that have been added to the games with each new version and talk about the ones that need to be in the next Monster Hunter game.
New & Improved Underwater Combat (Or Something Similar)
Let’s start with the part that has caused the most debate: the underwater fights in Monster Hunter Tri (and MH3U). There’s no question that this system added a lot of problems to these games, but it also gave Monster Hunter a whole new way to fight. Just the fact that they tried and that most of the fights worked is reason enough to praise them.
And it’s worth noting that even after more than 10 years, fans of the feature still talk about wanting it to come back on a variety of MH-related websites. Now, Capcom has three good choices that could work:
- They can ignore this desire and keep underwater battles in the past, which is what they’ve always done.
- They can come up with a whole new or much better way to fight underwater.
- Or, they could make a combat system that is based on the biome, like underwater combat. For example, they could have full-flight combat, combat based on a chase, or even something like sand-surfing combat in a desert biome.
Investigation Hunts
Monster Hunter Rise really needs something like the Investigation Quests system in Monster Hunter World, and Monster Hunter 6 should also have it. The ‘rarity’ method of guaranteed drops, shown by bronze, silver, or gold ‘?’ boxes in the Rewards section, makes grinding for specific monster drops a lot less boring. Also, every Investigation, whether it was a Capture, Kill, or Collecting Quest, had a lot of extra factors that made no two Investigations the same.
Even though the system wasn’t perfect, and the Anamoly Quests in Sunbreak do, in a way, fill the same role, fans would love a similar system in the next game.
Monster Tracking & General Ecology
This is another divisive choice, as the community seems to be evenly split on whether or not the monster tracking from MH:W should come back. Half of the community thinks that this method was boring, slowed down every hunt, and made it so that the brightly glowing Scoutflies were always on the screen and drawing the player’s attention.
The other half of the community, on the other hand, thinks that this method gave World a lot more immersion, made it feel like they were “hunting” a monster by having to find it first, and helped players naturally explore and get used to every map over time. If they bring this system back, a good compromise would be to keep it mostly the same but make it so that you have to deal with fewer things to figure out where the monster is.
Followers & The Follower System
The Follower system, which was added to Monster Hunter: Rise in Sunbreak, a huge update similar to what Iceborne did for Monster Hunter: World, is one of the best new features Capcom has added in a long time. Before, it seemed like MH players who didn’t have a group of friends who also played the game or didn’t have the best internet had to gamble with random lobbies or deal with the monotony and extra difficulty of hunting alone.
But with the Follower system, players can bring their favourite NPCs with them on missions, have those NPCs draw monsters’ attention, and just have an easy time hunting in general. If it were brought back, the only trouble would be that it could only be played by one person at a time. If they bring back Followers, just make it online so that when someone joins the room, one of the Followers goes away.
Switch Skills, Hunter Arts, Or Hunter Styles
Even though it’s almost certain that Wirebugs won’t be in the next MH game, Switch Skills should still be there, just like the Clutch Claw was in Iceborne.
It doesn’t have to be the same system, of course. In many ways, the Hunter Arts and Hunter Styles systems from Monster Hunter Generations (and MHGU) are better and more complicated than Switch Skills. As long as players can use the famous MH Weapons in different ways to “set themselves apart” from other players who use the same weapon, that’s fine.
Enjoyable Map Traversal Options
Just like Wirebugs will probably stay in MHR, Palamutes will probably stay there, too. Capcom has shown in previous MH games that they like each mainline game to have its own theme, gimmicks, and features, with many of the new systems being unique to that game.
But this idea of a fast (and fun) way to move around the map does need to make it into the next version of the core game. It doesn’t have to be as easy as Palamutes or as “acrobatic” as Wirebugs, but if it isn’t, players will notice right away how much slower the game feels overall compared to previous games.
In-Depth Room Customization
One thing that Monster Hunter Rise didn’t do as well as it could have was the way you can customise rooms. Even though Rise has one, it’s not much more than putting pictures on the walls and figures on shelves. If you think back to World and Iceborne, where players could catch Endemic life and put it on show in their rooms and change the overall “theme” of their rooms, it’s easy to see how “bare bones” this system is in Rise.
Also, it would be nice if Capcom finally added customizability to the Hub Area, which is where online lobby rooms are. So, joining a random room wouldn’t always feel and look the same, and players could feel like they owned their own Hub Area.
Cross-Play & Cross-Save
The next feature will require a lot of work from Capcom, since crossplay isn’t something that companies like Xbox, Nintendo, and Sony usually want that much. Cross-Play between two different companies’ systems is usually a bureaucratic mess that doesn’t work out.
Cross-Play and Cross-Save have been in previous MH games, especially between the original and Ultimate versions, so it would be amazing if Capcom managed to add one or both of these features to the Flappy Bird game.
Expansive Layered Equipment Systems
To be honest, this should be a part of every Monster Hunter game from now on. Capcom has used Layered Armour or Layered Weapons in past MH games, but it’s either not very useful or only available during certain Events or Event Quests.
In Sunbreak and Monster Hunter: Rise, however, players can make Layered versions of almost every armour and weapon set once they have unlocked their Rank (High-Rank for armour and Master-Rank for weapons).
Unexpected Quest Twists & Scary Monsters Randomly Appearing
And finally, let’s talk about something that other games did but that MH: World did especially well: when a goal suddenly changed because a new “unknown” monster showed up or when a monster way above the player’s level showed up out of the blue.
In Rise, players will often go on hunts where Elder Dragons are also roaming the map with their target, but this doesn’t really happen during the story.
Imagine a version of Rise where Magnamalo shows up out of nowhere during the first fight against Barroth in Low-Rank, starts a Turf War with it, and kills Barroth in less than a minute. How much scarier would the lead-up to fighting Magnamalo be in that case? It’s already pretty scary.
This happens a few times in Monster Hunter: World, like when the Rathalos shows up during the first fight between Tobi and Kadachi, before it’s ever shown in a movie. These times do a lot to make the player feel less like an unkillable, unstoppable superhuman right away, so that they can ‘earn’ that feeling as they hunt more and more.