It’s fair to say, at this point, that Monster Hunter World is a critical and commercial success. As a longtime Monster Hunter fan, I personally am really pleased with the direction that World has taken the franchise, and I’m looking forward to seeing how Capcom plans to build on the game’s success and what the post-launch support will look like. (I am, for instance, already pretty pumped about Deviljho making its triumphant return this spring.)
Yet even as I look ahead, I also can’t help looking back. While I think Monster Hunter World has a robust and mostly satisfying collection of beasts to best, the franchise’s previous games are chock full of monsters with really neat designs and mechanics. If you’re a veteran hunter like me, join me as we take a trip down memory lane and revisit some of the games’ greats. If you’re new to Monster Hunter as of its latest installment, I hope you enjoy this look at some of the cool monsters that these games have included in the past.
Atoraru Ka
This monster made its debut in the Japan-only Monster Hunter XX, which makes it the most recent entry on this list. Sadly, this means that I personally have never hunted it, as that would involve either purchasing a Switch or a Japanese 3DS and then playing through the whole game in a language I don’t understand, but I still appreciate Atoraru Ka both for its design — “Egyptian mantis” is a super-cool motif — and the fact that it… well, just watch this.
This is easily one of the coolest phase transitions that I’ve ever seen in a Monster Hunter game. Going from fighting a relatively tiny final boss to suddenly having to contend with the enormous, janky mech that it’s wrenched out of the ground is really mind-blowing the first time you experience it. While large monster fights throughout the franchise have been rather hit-or-miss in terms of fun factor (like the improbably-boring Zorah Magdaros fight in World, where you spend most of it loading and firing cannons), some of them have been really neat — and I’d say that Atoraru Ka is probably the neatest of them all.
(The on-the-ground part of the fight is really cool too — later, Atoraru Ka grabs a broken dragonator and starts twirling it around like a spear — but the huge dragon mech part is definitely the standout moment.)
Nibelsnarf
I’m a big fan of desert zones in games, and I think that Monster Hunter has had some pretty good ones over the years — but their desert monsters can often be some of the most annoying fights in the franchise. Any Monster Hunter vet can tell you horror stories about the likes of Cephadrome, who spends half the damn hunt buried under the sand, or Diablos, who… who spends half the damn hunt buried under the sand. Sadly, monsters popping out of sight and out of reach for extended periods of time is a recurring and unfun theme of some of Monster Hunter’s most frustrating hunts.
What makes Nibelsnarf so great (aside from its name) is that it’s a sand-swimmer done right. Much of its back remains exposed as it’s moving around the battlefield, so there’s always something you can reach when you’re within range to wail on it, and it also emerges from the sand enough that you’re often able to get satisfying hits on its weak points. Also, if you’re able to destroy Nibelsnarf’s uvula — either by sniping it while it has its mouth open, or coaxing it into swallowing a barrel bomb while it’s charging toward you — you can then whip out your fishing pole and yank the stunned monster out of the sand, allowing for several follow-up hits while it’s recovering.
I hope that in future games, we can bring back the likes of Nibelsnarf and let Diablos fade from the pages of Monster Hunter history.
I hate Diablos.
Zamtrios
Sometimes, farming the same monster over and over can get a little stale, so I always appreciate hunts with lots of variety in them — fights where the monster transforms, changes its tactics mid-hunt, or otherwise spices things up. I always enjoy hunting Zamtrios because of the many things it can do to keep you on your toes.
First of all, Zamtrios can (and frequently does) coat itself in a layer of spiky, icy armor, toughening its hide and increasing the lethality of its attacks. It also instantly improves its look, transforming it from awkward shark-frog to horrifying badass.
While getting up close and personal with Zamtrios during this phase of the fight can be risky business, especially if you’re wearing armor that’s weak to ice damage, you can also chip off the ice to harvest special materials. Neat!
The first time I tangled with Zamtrios, I assumed that the ice-armor thing would be its whole deal — so I was pretty stunned when the thing suddenly drew in a big breath, and, um…
Yes, in addition to coating itself in sharp ice, Zamtrios can also inflate like a huge balloon for some reason! This gives it a completely new suite of attacks with which to harass you: it can roll over you like a huge, rubbery bowling ball; it can turn its enormous maw skyward and rain down a veritable hailstorm of ice; it can bounce around erratically and attempt to squash you beneath itself — and, of course, it can still shoot out big ol’ ice beams every which way.
As a bonus, its armor is really cool too!
Gore Magala
The Monster Hunter games are known to be fairly story-lite — Monster Hunter World’s story, for instance, is mostly pretty forgettable in spite of the game being the first fully-voiced entry in the franchise. While the story of Monster Hunter 4U is still fairly spartan compared to other games of its generation, it still has, for me, the series’s most compelling overarching plot, and a lot of that is thanks to Gore Magala.
Over the course of Monster Hunter 4U, monsters begin to catch a disease called the Frenzy Virus; its symptoms include increased aggression and, eventually, death. Your objective throughout the game is to eradicate the virus’s source before the entire ecosystem is irreparably damaged, and that source turns out to be Gore Magala, an ancient monster that’s reawakened after a centuries-long slumber. You tangle with Gore several times throughout the game, and each time — by changing the locale, throwing in NPCs you have to protect, or even giving the monster a super-boss variant later on — the devs found a way to ratchet up the tension and make the next fight more interesting than the last.
Aside from being a neat recurring antagonist, Gore Magala’s in-fight mechanics are also really satisfying. You can, and almost certainly will, get infected with the Frenzy Virus yourself over the course of the hunt, and the only way to shake it off is to deal as much damage to Gore as you possibly can. If you give the monster enough of a thrashing before your Frenzy meter caps out, you’ll ‘overcome’ the virus and get a temporary boost to your attack power and affinity. If, however, you succumb to the virus, you’ll be weakened for awhile. This forces you to attack Gore Magala much more aggressively than you otherwise might and adds an urgency to the fight that I really appreciate.
In addition to dealing with Gore Magala itself, you also fight the Frenzied monsters that it has infected later in the game — a task made easier if you farm and craft the Gore Magala armorset, which slows the rate at which you’re infected by the virus and increases the benefits of overcoming it. In the postgame, you encounter Apex monsters — beasts that, like you, have overcome the virus and benefited from a massive boost to their strength.
Rajang
I’ve always felt that the sense of progression in Monster Hunter is one of its key strengths. It’s really satisfying to improve your weapons and armor and become gradually more adept at squaring off against increasingly-difficult monsters, so that you can then look back at fights you once considered hard and see how far you’ve come.
No matter how accomplished a hunter becomes, though, there are certain monsters that are just really, really, really hard every single time.
Like Rajang.
This monster is absolutely horrifying the first few times you tangle with it, and even when you get used to its attacks and patterns, it’s still all too easy to make a single mistake and then get punched, slammed, Blanka Ball’d, or electric-death-beam’d into oblivion. I wouldn’t say that the fight ever feels unfair — like most monsters, Rajang has tells and tics that you can use to predict its attacks and outsmart it — but it’s just so incredibly, punishingly hard that even franchise pros don’t feel any shame about carting to this beast.
Also, shout-outs to Rajang’s roar, which is easily the most horrifying in the series.
Yama Tsukami
I love it when the Monster Hunter design team tries something really out-there, and nothing’s more out-there than Yama Tsukami, the (literal) oddball of the coterie of elite monsters known as Elder Dragons. This is another of the more successful large monster hunts — you fight Yama at the top of an enormous, circular tower, with it floating in the middle of a large, stone ring and you and your team of hunters spaced out along the outside. The setting — and the monster’s sheer size — combine to make the battle feel especially epic, and you spend much of the hunt dodging the slaps and swipes of Yama’s tentacles and avoiding its screen-filling breath attacks.
Once you deal enough damage to Yama Tsukami, it deflates and sinks to the bottom of the tower; if you jump down to follow it, you’ll be able to pay it back for all those times it smacked you around by returning the favor until it reinflates itself and floats back up. Then, the fight resumes.
I like the Yama hunt for its sheer uniqueness and scale. I also like its weapons, which are difficult to craft but allow you to paralyze the monsters you attack with them. Definitely worth making.
Daimyo Hermitaur
I think what I appreciate the most about Daimyo Hermitaur — aside from its awesome design — is the fact that it’s dangerous from any angle. Some monsters are easier to deal with if you stand on their weak side, but Hermitaur doesn’t really have any weak sides — it’ll bubble beam you if you’re in front of it; it’ll swipe its claws toward you if you’re standing on either side of it; and if you’re in back, get ready to have that wyvern skull slammed into you so hard that you’ll get knocked right into the next zone.
Daimyo Hermitaur was one of the first monsters to get away from the “vaguely dragon-shaped” motif that the original Monster Hunter had going on, and I think it really opened the door to the variety of monster designs we’ve seen since then. Props for that!
Yian Garuga
Most hunters faced off against a monster called Yian Kut-Ku early on in their careers — a wyvern with the appearance and mannerisms of an ugly, featherless bird. While those who are getting used to the game’s mechanics might struggle against a Kut-Ku, it’s generally considered to be among the weakest and easiest monsters in the game if you have even a little hunting experience under your belt.
Yian Garuga is sort of like Yian Kut-Ku’s scarier, more metallic cousin, and I love the way that it plays with your expectations. Its design and mannerisms will remind you, at first, so much of Yian Kut-Ku that you might lower your guard a little — but this monster’s poison tail, razor-sharp beak, deafening roar, and blinding speed (MH4U’s Level 140 Yian Garuga is, for my money, easily the fastest monster in any of the games) will quickly have you reassessing its capabilities.
I also really love the theme that plays when you hunt Yian Garuga, which is another hint that this monster is much deadlier than it seems.
Seltas Queen
One of the first monsters you’ll hunt in Monster Hunter 4U is the Seltas, a rather weak flying bug that’s about the size of a compact car. When I first took on the quest you get much later on that pits you against a Seltas Queen, I assumed it’d be a differently-colored variant of the regular Seltas and embarked from camp without all that much enthusiasm for the task ahead.
The cutscene that plays when you first encounter Seltas Queen does a great job of tricking you in this regard: at first, it seems as though you’ve merely encountered a Seltas, and one that doesn’t even look any different from the ones you were fighting toward the beginning of the game. But then…
Even beyond the fact that Seltas Queen is a much bigger, badder, and more difficult monster than you might’ve expected, she’s a real treat from a mechanical standpoint. She’s deadliest when paired with her Seltas mate — that way she can charge and swipe at you while he rides atop her and spits venom your way — but if she runs out of stamina, she’ll recover it by killing the Seltas she’s paired with and eating it. Afterward, she’ll just go find another one and use her pheromones to force it to do her bidding. That’s badass.
To top it all off, the Seltas Queen’s armorset makes you look like a cool bug mecha.
Chameleos
Elder Dragons are among the toughest monsters in the Monster Hunter franchise. In games previous to Monster Hunter World, you often couldn’t even finish them off in a single hunt — you’d just drive them away and finish the job later on, like a two-part episode in a really wild anime. There’s Kushala Daora, master of wind and ice; Teostra, fire-breathing supernova of destruction; Kirin, stupid lightning pony…
… and Chameleos, badass chameleon.
The Chameleos fight used to be more frustrating than fun — it’d spend most of the fight camouflaged so that you couldn’t see it, which made finding and even hitting it a chore. In Monster Hunter 4U, however, Chameleos received a substantial rework — now it’s visible for much of the hunt, but it can spit out a mist at key points that allows it to vanish, reappear, and teleport at will. This, along with its long, prehensile tongue; its powerful tail; and its poisonous projectiles make Chameleos a force to be reckoned with, and one of the coolest monsters in the Monster Hunter ecosystem.
Chameleos also has a great theme — it’s this sort of Metal Gear type deal that has a wet filter applied to it when the monster is hiding in the mist. Absolutely worth a listen.
The rich and fascinating bestiary of monsters in the Monster Hunter games extends well beyond the (really cool) ones featured in Monster Hunter World. Even if you never go back and play the previous games in the franchise (and I wouldn’t blame you, since some of them can feel pretty janky by today’s standards), I think it’s worth checking out some of the monsters that made the past games great.
Thanks for reading!
