Monster Hunter is an amazing franchise, how its weapons are made to suit the fans of different genres gameplay styles and, and even with hundreds of interesting creatures and a compelling world, the games center only around its core gameplay (and menues), leaving dialogue and story way to the side.
But by far its most interesting achievement is how it resolves problems that arrived with RNG and monetization.
But first, some backstory.
The very first real Trading Card Game (TCG) ever was Magic: The Gathering, It, like subsequent TCGs like the Pokemon TCG and Yu-Gi-Oh! among many others, give the players unique and custom made battles that could not be made with regular, set decks of playing cards.
The players had to build their own decks, with cards they had to collect from starter packs, booster packs and other packages, that meant the players had to mix and match cards to their own judgement to create strategies of their own.
While I do enjoy playing TCGs, the concept is broken nonetheless, making your own strategies is satisfying, but the internet exist, and better strategies are uploaded there, so your opponents may use those, and set strategies require set cards, from which you have to pay more money to get, buying them from people, trading them for extra cards and getting more cards from retail packs.
And this leads us to similar scenarios, Gacha games has you trying your luck to get characters that have rarity and stats, playing more usually means more tries to roll the characters you want...but you can also pay to get them, and better characters mean advantages.
Im not well versed in them, but Massive Multiplayer Online games usually have paid services, even if you already paid the game, which means some players can advance at a much faster rate, which can be disencouraging to players that don't want to spend more money (or any money), I'm not saying every MMO has to be like this however, just a thought.
And then come the more common RPG videogames that have a thing called "Drop rates", the game may give you different items based on a random number generator, which means luck basically, If you kill an enemy for example, you may have 70% chance to get a healing herb, but you could also have 2%, 1% and even 0.001% chance of getting a legendary sword.
Players can usually live without those extra rare items, but it can get very frustrating for collectionists, which leads to grinding, the repetitive action of repeating something to get something, be rare drops, leveling up or just stocking up in money, grinding can be fun for some, but its usually very tiresome for most people since it doesn't really add to the game. Some RPGs can have paid downloadable content for rare items for people that doesn't want to grind or give exclusive items, but since a lot of RPGs tend to be single player, these games usually affect the players the less in this regard.
Some games, like the Pokemon TCG for the gameboy color and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 take from the TCG and Gacha type of games respectively, you don't have to spend money on cards or characters, but there's a random aspect to how you get them. They are easier on the player since you don't have to spend money for extremely better odds, but the fact that it still doesn't proceed as a regular RPG leaves a bad aftertaste in my mouth.
Then we're finally back to Monster Hunter, MH is not free of the sins of the RNG, but it handles it extremely different.
First of All, the mainline MH so far has no paid DLCs or anything to you to buy outside the actual game, so there's no abusing the system in that regard, next, comes the fact that MH is a very skill based game, mechanical skill to be precise. For example, to get the helmet of an armor, you may need the scalp of a monster, which may mean that, aside from killing the monster (which can be a feat of its own), you also have to hit its head repeatedly until it breaks, and MH Monster move and are aggressive, so the player has to engage the monster in specific ways and attack in specific moments to have better odds at getting what they want.
This leads us to the "grind", and it may be a grind, but its a different type of grind, You want that helmet, you need that scalp, you may have gotten one but you need more, so you fight that monster again and again, and here is where the true glory of Monster Hunter reveals itself, it can make the game for you, or it can make it worthless, but in MH your character doesn't level up, you do, you learn how the monster attacks, when it attacks, what it does before it attacks, how your attacks land, and where to land them, you start hitting the head more consistently, because you as a player are improving your skills as hunter, and as a hunter you learn how to capture your prey.
But the RNG is still there, you may also get bad luck, you may have killed that monster dozens of times and still not get what you want, but you are still actively hunting, you can't just mash buttons, you have to fight, you have to hit the head, you have to run and to dodge attacks, the RNG is still there, but you have to fight it face to face until it gives you what you want.
The armor and weapon in monster hunter are important, but they aren't everything, the better you are and the faster you learn the more you survive, equipment aids you, but more than aid, they are a trophy, a trophy or your success over odds, because even the skills that aid you come with equipment that need monster materials.
And then comes the multiplayer, because in monster hunter you don't have to hunt alone, you should learn the monsters and the combat by yourself, but you don't have to grind by yourself, the weapons complement each other, the gameplay is purely cooperative, the enemies are the monsters, not the ranks of your fellow hunters, and its a very fun experience to share with someone else, be friends or strangers, and more opportunities to improve yourself, and you kill monsters to improve, and you improve by killing monsters, because its not about the grind, the weapons or the fancy equipment, its about how damn fun the game is, and how those systems make that effort and fun rewarding.
