MONSTER HUNTER – the fantastic role-playing game – has for years been carving a niché audience on the PS2, PSP, Wii, Wii-U and DS. However, this Japanese title has never fully migrated onto it’s most logical platform; the PC!
Now just to start by clarifying, there was Monster Hunter Frontier which released on the XBOX 360 and PC. However, this was to an Asia market only – MONSTER HUNTER on the PC has never seen a formal western release.
For those of you unaware, MONSTER HUNTER provides a well-designed combination of action, open world, role playing, resource management and epic large scale boss fighting.
The description of MONSTER HUNTER is complicated as we have to use genres to describe something that is a genre in itself. However, if you had recently played the excellent Final Fantasy XV (and particularly noted the combat system), you would have a fair approximation of what you have to do here.
Largely the game series has always been excellent with practically every release getting high review scores so again, why hasn’t it had a PC release in the west? You will find no answer for this enigma here because frankly we’re baffled too.
Given the massively popular PC MMORPG gaming markets in Japan and Korea, where Monster Hunter Frontier is about to mark its 10th birthday with likely another DLC, a PC release in the west would open so many possibilities for the franchise. Graphics could astound, massive online action filled boss fights, open world environments; the possibilities are endless.
That being said, we shouldn’t forget the demand for the PC release of Dark Souls 1 and just how awful a port that was. Although, in fairness to Fromsoft, lessons were learnt in the subsequent sequels. Perhaps that does explain it though. Fromsoft had no experience in PC releasing and made no secret that they had a hard time successfully porting the product. However, if it hadn’t have been for the success of the 3DS, MONSTER HUNTER may very likely have seen a permanent platform swap anyway given the overall disappointment of the Wii-U’s troubled life.
The good news is that MONSTER HUNTER is a Capcom product, and with them having recently released Resident Evil 7 on PC to a brilliant standard, surely this isn’t being too ambitious? This writer certainly hopes not!
