I loved Monster Hunter on the PS2. I was lucky enough to beta it about a year before release and my addiction was born. 100’s of hours of gameplay and a lot of good online fun with friends and clanmates later and the sequel was released.. but not in Europe or the US.
I was so disappointed I imported the Japanese version and with some messing around with Hard-Drives and memory cards, got it working on my UK PS2. Unfortunately the language barrier was too big for me to get my teeth into the game. While I was able to complete the lower levelled quests through trial and error and prior knowledge of the game, when it came to crafting weapons and armour it all got too much for me.
When MH Freedom was released for the PSP I found hope again. MH Freedom is basically a port of Monster Hunter 1 and the addon that was released overseas called Monster Hunter G. Not surprisingly I went out and bought it on day one but was never able to get behind it as much as the PS2 version. I think it was because I’d already relentlessly grinded for ores and rare monster parts, spent hour after hour killing Rathalos in the hope that a plate drops to craft rare armour, seen Lao Shan killed what seems like a thousand times and obtained a lot of the high end weapons available. It just didn’t hold the same appeal to me anymore.
After a long wait, the second game has finally been ported over to the PSP and its just as good as I had hoped it would be. I’m about 20 hours or so into it so far and its great to be playing fresh content again.