A couple of weeks ago, Capcom had its Capcom Showcase. I didn’t watch it live but I did watch the replay. As a general fan of Capcom’s games, I was looking forward to it as I knew they were going to show off new stuff for Street Fighter 6 and the upcoming Resident Evil: Requiem. They did all that as well as show off more of the very delayed Pragmata. They also took the time to show off some of their other “smaller” titles, such as Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess and Capcom Fighting Collection 2, to just kind of reiterate these are still available for purchase.

However, the game they really focused a lot of time was stuff they were releasing for Monster Hunter Wilds. In fact, half of the entire Capcom Showcase was dedicated to showing off all of updates they have down the line for this singular game. The Monster Hunter franchise has been one of Capcom’s biggest selling games. So, it only makes sense for Capcom to really pool their time and effort to keeping their fanbase happy with these incremental updates as they know they’ll get a huge return-of-investment from them.

While I am happy for the Monster Hunter fans as they are getting a whole lot of stuff for Monster Hunter Wilds in the coming months, I am not one of them. That’s because I am one of the rare people who doesn’t really care for the Monster Hunter games.

Don’t get me wrong! I’m not a hater or anything like that. I don’t want Capcom to stop making Monster Hunter games because “it’s stealing resources from other games that should be made” and things of the sort. I just don’t like the Monster Hunter games. And believe me, I tried playing them and I just couldn’t get into them.

I remember playing the first Monster Hunter on the PlayStation 2 way back when it was first released. I do recall having some fun with the combat but never really gelling with the combat. It’s not that the combat was bad; it felt kind of slow. Also, I don’t remember there being an actual story to keep me playing. All I was doing was going on quests to kill or trap monsters. If I wasn’t doing that, I was collecting stuff… by killing monsters. It just felt rather pointless and, after a while, I just didn’t have the will to keep playing. This wasn’t a good first impression.

Of course, the meat and potatoes of Monster Hunter is online play. I understand there is a thrill to gathering a bunch of your friends to go out in the world and hunting down a Rathalos or something like that. Well, you have to remember I was playing the original Monster Hunter on a PlayStation 2! Although this game did have rudimentary online, you needed to get the PlayStation 2 modem to do that! So, I was basically hunting down Rathalos all on my own as I didn’t own the modem!

Then again, I was and never really been a big fan of “online” games. While I do dabble with online games and multiplayer games, I still find myself having the most fun playing single player games, especially ones with a compelling storyline to follow. So, when online gaming became the norm, Monster Hunter took it to the next level and, with that new focus on the multiplayer experience, I never really took a look at them as I knew I wouldn’t really enjoy them as much. So, I decided to skip them altogether. Besides, I still remember not having fun with the first game so it wasn’t a big deal to me.

It does look like Capcom wants to attract gamers with me in mind. You know, the ones who don’t really like playing online with others. They made a concerted effort to make Monster Hunter Wilds, the latest game in the franchise, have a more than adequate single player experience. There’s an actual story to follow this time around and Capcom seems to have made it so combat is much more manageable even if you’re playing all by yourself.

Even so, I do feel the general stigma that Monster Hunter is still a multiplayer game and that’s how it’s supposed to be played. That’s how to get the most enjoyment out of it. I mean, I guess it would be possible to take out the boss monsters all by your lonesome but, once again, I do understand part of the fun of Monster Hunter is getting your party, riding out in the Wilds and finally killing a boss version of a Rathalos. There’s always that thrill of surviving because one of your teammates distracted the monster long enough to heal or you doing the actual rescuing when you see one of your friends calling for help.

So, while I have thought about trying out the latest Monster Hunter game, I have generally decided against it. I may have a good time with it but I just know I would be missing out a lot of the actual experience because I would need to play online and go on quests with other gamers to take down monsters. So, why would I bother?

I’m not really complaining. I do appreciate Capcom trying their best to try to make solo gamers welcome to the world of Monster Hunter. But I also do realize not every game has to be made for me. I’m not the sort to demand games like Bloodborne should have an Easy mode because they’re too hard. No, part of the experience of Bloodborne is the high difficulty and taking it easy on gamers isn’t how it was designed. Simply put, there are going to be those highly successful and extremely popular games that everyone almost universally enjoys… but there are always going to be outliers such as myself.

So, yeah. I don’t play the Monster Hunter games. Sucks to be me.

What’s your take on the Monster Hunter games? Better question: do you prefer single or multiplayer games? Let me know in the comments section below!