I love Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate, but my first experiences with the game were brutal. This is a tale of how to not make a good first impression on a new player.

Despite Monster Hunter sounding like an awesome game in theory, I was turned off by the fact that the versions I knew about were only released on handheld consoles. I used to love playing games on my Gameboy Advance and Nintendo DS Lite in years gone by, but Monster Hunter just sounded like it needed something bigger than a handheld console to reach its full potential. If I was going to fight giant monsters, I wanted to see them in all their glory on a large screen so I could lean back on a couch and comfortably battle to the death for hours on end.

Thus, Monster Hunter floated quietly around my subconscious, until suddenly…

Monster Hunter World was released. This was the first major Monster Hunter game in a long time that was designed for non-handheld consoles. It was prettier, sleeker, and more accessible than any entry in the series before it. It seemed this was the game I was waiting for.

My Monster Hunter-obsessed girlfriend, however, disagreed. She bemoaned the fact that this game was ditching its deliberately obtuse elements in favor of being “Westernized” for more casual audiences. Frequently, she launched into rants about how this new entry was ruining the Monster Hunter she loved and wasn’t a “true” Monster Hunter game.

And to prove it (and to celebrate our anniversary), she bought me my own copy of the previous Monster Hunter game for the Nintendo Switch: Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate. Thus began my very first foray into the “true” world of Monster Hunter.

Starting off on the wrong foot

Did you know this game was ported from the 3DS? Well, if I didn’t know ahead of time, I would have figured it out about ten seconds in.

After watching a flashy opening cutscene where four powerful hunters fend off a huge dragon, I was pumped. I pressed A to move past the title screen and was confronted by an ugly main menu featuring oversized, pixelated buttons that looked every bit like they belonged to the touchscreen of a 3DS. No problem, I thought, graphics aren’t important to me as long as the gameplay is fun. I decided to take a quick look at the options before diving in, so I flicked the left control stick to move the cursor from “New Game” down to “Options,” and realized that the cursor didn’t move.

What?

I flicked it a few more times. Nope, the cursor definitely didn’t move. Okay, did my controller disconnect? No, because I was able to press A to move past the title screen, wasn’t I? Can I not navigate the menu with the left stick like literally any other game in existence on any console?

Perplexed, I tried the right control stick, and lo and behold, the cursor moved. I tried the d-pad as well, and the cursor moved again. It didn’t take me long to figure out how to navigate the menu, but this short episode was all it took for me to lose all my hype and excitement about fighting monsters. All I could focus on was wondering why this game couldn’t just use the left stick for menus like any other game. I figured it was because the menus were supposed to be navigated with the 3DS touchscreen. However, this still made me nervous about what other sacred conventions this game would break.

Once I hit “New Game,” I was thrust into a character creation menu where a semi-nude male character model stood before me in all his low-poly glory. I could practically count every polygon on his model. When the camera zoomed in to look closely at his face, I could even count the pixels in the texture that covered what few triangles made up the surface of his face.

At this point I started to get nervous. I really wanted to like this game. It was a gift from my girlfriend to celebrate our anniversary, after all. Plus, I had always wanted to play a Monster Hunter game. The conditions could not be any more favorable for this game to pull me in, but I was no longer excited to play. It seemed like the game was doing everything it could to turn me away, and I hadn’t even really started the game yet. If I didn’t have my own strong reasons for playing, I might have quit right here. But I was determined, so I took a deep breath and started making my character.

I realized that this character customization system was very limited, so I settled on something simple and not-so-serious. I chose the smarmiest expression available and accented the smirk with a neon pink mustache. To match the mustache, I dyed the hair neon pink and put it in an exotic samurai hair tie. Then, I set my character’s skin to be as orange as possible, like he took a bath in orange juice as a healthier alternative to getting a spray tan. I named my flamboyant avatar Big Mama, and I set out to make all the men in the world of Monster Hunter swoon over Big Mama’s grace and beauty in battle.

Welcome to Mushroom Hunter

After slogging through the first several tutorial missions, any lingering excitement I had for the game had totally evaporated. I had been playing for about two and a half hours, and all I had accomplished during that time was cooking a few slabs of meat, collecting ferns, and mining some ore. And it’s not like I was taking my time, either. My girlfriend was sitting next to me from the beginning, eagerly pointing to areas of the map where I could find the next item in a long grocery list that I had to gather. She kept insisting that the game starts slow, but it gets much, much better. I believed her and did my best to power through the early game fetch quests, but I could feel my life energy draining with every mushroom I picked.

If my girlfriend hadn’t been sitting with me throughout the entire start of the game, I would certainly have quit the game here and never looked back.

But I stuck with it for her sake as well as mine. I wanted to share my girlfriend’s hobby with her, and I wanted to fight big monsters, damn it. I was playing Monster Hunter, right? There were monsters around here somewhere. I just had to stick with it until the game decided I was finally worthy of fighting something. I had noticed that the controls felt clunky and slow, so maybe this was the game’s way of making sure I was used to the controls before it threw a demanding challenge my way. I held onto this sliver of hope as tightly as I could.

Let me play the game already

I had a distinct feeling that what I was doing, gathering endless resources while little animals harassed me for invading their favorite mushroom gathering spot, was not Monster Hunter. The real Monster Hunter hadn’t come yet, and surely I was still in tutorial land. But after eight hours of gathering and reading endless tutorial text boxes brimming with puns, I had all but run out of patience.

It was when I was about to quit for the night when something finally caught my eye: a hunting quest appeared! And this wasn’t a quest for hunting a bunch of little guys; this was a real, honest-to-God hunting quest for a Great Maccao, a creature larger than Big Mama! I was ecstatic and jumped right into the quest.

After eight grueling hours of gathering quests, I wasn’t about to take my time getting to know the Great Maccao before fighting it. I sprinted around the map until I found the bird-dino and ran towards it fearlessly. I was in a frenzy. Big Mama wanted bloodshed.

And to be fair, I got my wish. Blood was certainly shed. Not the Great Maccao’s, though. After my leaping strike got struck down for the eighth time in a row, I started to realize that this wasn’t the kind of game where you could just rush in at the enemy and rely on quick reflexes to get you out of danger.

Every move I made had to be extremely deliberate. Moving towards or away from the enemy. Drawing or sheathing my weapon. Dodging out of the way. Drinking a health potion. Even pressing an attack button. Every action you can think of has a long, uninterruptible animation that you have to be sure you have time for before you do anything at all. Oh, what’s that? You thought you had enough time to heal before the monster charged at you? Well, tough luck buddy, you forgot that your character had to flex for one and a half seconds after drinking the potion, so you got hit again. Now your health is low and you need another potion. Try to be more careful this time.

Once I started to understand the flow of combat, I felt increasingly frustrated with the game. You know what I would have appreciated instead of doing all those gathering quests? How about tutorials that teach you how to safely attack, dodge, and find time to drink potions? Teaching major combat game mechanics in the tutorial? Wow, what an incredible addition that would be.

After a grueling 25 minute battle, I finally took down the Great Maccao. I triumphantly stood over its head and started carving pieces from it to use for making weapons and armor. Somehow, I carved a tailspike from its head along with a scale and a piece of hide, and I couldn’t carve anything else off the rest of its body. Whatever. I was exhausted and just wanted to bask in the glory of my first successful hunt.

After receiving quest rewards and making my way to the smithy, I had a hard realization. I couldn’t make any new gear. I had one tailspike, but I needed two for my new weapon, and the armor set I wanted to make required at least four times the Great Maccao parts I currently had.

Something clicked in my mind. Grinding. That’s what the tutorial was trying to teach me. Hours of collecting resources were not meant to teach me combat mechanics. They were conditioning me to grind.

And as that thought clicked into place, the rest of my mind shattered. I let out a primal cry as nine hours of sheer frustration and exhaustion culminated to seemingly nothing. There was no satisfaction. My fight with the Great Maccao ended as a Pyrrhic victory. I retired to bed for the night and cried myself to sleep.

Welcome to Mushroom Hunter?

After a full night’s rest (and plenty of time to rant to my girlfriend about how awful the new player experience is in this game), I felt rejuvenated enough to continue where I left off. Fortunately, the fight with the Great Maccao was the barrier to the next level of quests. There were still lots of gathering quests to do, but these were interspersed with other hunting quests for large creatures. None of them were that terrifying, especially after I figured out how the combat system worked, but they were entertaining and varied enough to hold my attention. At least I could finally enjoy playing the game.

Fast forward a few days of dedicated playing. I reached 3-star rank (tier 3) quests, put about 30 hours into the game, and only recently finished making my first full set of armor from Great Maccao parts. I noticed a suspicious entry in the quest list for a gathering quest. The description read:

I’ve run out of Abyssal Mushrooms for my research. Could you pick some for me? There’s been talk about odd, blade-sharpening sounds coming from deep in the forest, but I’m sure you’ll be fine! -Wycademy Mycologist

It was another mushroom gathering quest, but this description was clearly different from everything I had seen thus far. I was keenly aware of the “DANGER” symbol in the description. I stocked up on battle supplies before heading out for this perfectly normal mushroom gathering quest.

Welcome to Monster Hunter!

To my surprise, rather than starting me in the safety of the base camp, this quest dropped me directly into a deep area of the map. Before I realized what was happening, I was face-to-face with a terrifying, fire-breathing, T-rex-like monster: Glavenus.

This lad was far bigger, faster, and scarier than anything I had come across, and for the first time, I felt that I was totally out of my league. I tried my hardest to fight him, but he was far too strong. Half of my attacks reflected harmlessly off of his tough scales, leaving me completely open to a swing of his red-hot tail that nearly killed me in one hit. After battling desperately with this beast for 45 grueling minutes, I realized that the 50-minute time limit for the quest was almost up. I had no choice but to retreat and deliver the eight mushrooms I had collected at various intervals when I ran away to heal.

Although having to retreat was somewhat unsatisfying, I finally felt that I had truly experienced Monster Hunter. The pure adrenaline rush of coming up against a terrifying foe for the first time, the feeling of being totally overwhelmed by the monster’s ferocity, and the pure satisfaction when you learn its behaviors and outsmart it—these are the hallmarks of Monster Hunter that make it great. I finally understood the thrill of the game, and I couldn’t wait to play more.

I just wish I didn’t have to play for over 30 hours before I could truly experience the game.

Less Mushrooms, More Monsters

I share this story for two reasons: it’s entertaining (or at least I’d like to think so), and it speaks volumes about the importance of making a good first impression and providing a positive new player experience. Fortunately, I was determined enough to stick with Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate to push through the awful new player experience, but I can imagine many players would have quit. Therefore, I would like to wrap up this cautionary tale with a few lessons for developers that I learned the hard way as a player:

1. Put the awesome first

Is your game awesome? Great! Let me experience it now. If I can’t experience what makes your game awesome in the first five minutes, then chances are good I’m not going to get hooked. Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate was lucky; I was determined to enjoy this game. But most players don’t have the determination to slog through hours of terrible exposition and tutorials before finally reaching something compelling. Less mushrooms and more monsters at the start of the game, please.

2. Don’t reinvent the wheel

Sometimes, you don’t need to try too hard. Stealing ideas and following common conventions can be a good thing. This is especially true when it comes to UI design. Imagine if every game had a radically different UI from anything that had ever been done before. There would be so much new information to process when starting the game for the first time that it would be totally overwhelming! People have already researched solutions to most of the design challenges you will face, so make sure to look for these common solutions and don’t be afraid to recycle them.

3. Graphics aren’t everything, but they make strong impressions

I have always been a strong proponent of the mindset that graphics don’t matter as long as gameplay is fun. I still adhere closely to this idea, but I admit that graphics do serve a critical role in making first impressions. If your game doesn’t immediately start with something compelling, you had better make sure it is at least easy on the eyes. The ugly UI and low-poly models presented at the start of Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate made the slow start unbearable. I still argue that the game should have started with me fighting a monster, but I could forgive a slower start if it at least gave me something pretty to admire.

4. Let me jump in the deep end of the pool

Admittedly this can be a bit tricky to implement depending on the game, but sometimes players don’t need all the tutorials and starting levels to acquire the skills they need for later in the game. Maybe they’re quick learners, or maybe they’re veterans of the franchise or genre. Whatever the case may be, letting players skip the tutorial and jump directly to the more compelling parts of your game will hook players much more effectively than forcing everyone to experience your long tutorial sequence (I’m looking at you, Pokémon). Just make sure that players have the option to go back to the tutorials if they want to.

An elegant and famous example of this is the use of warp zones in the original Super Mario Bros. for the NES. Players who were familiar and skillful enough with the game could take these shortcuts to skip entire worlds and get to harder levels without replaying the entire game each time. Features like these are great for both new players and veterans alike.

5. Show me, don’t tell me

There is nothing more frustrating than constantly being interrupted by long textboxes explaining what you need to do. Now, I’m not saying there’s no place for textual instructions in games. I believe the most efficient method to convey accurate and concise information to a player is through text. However, text should be used sparingly, and only when a point really needs to be emphasized. If you can teach a player a mechanic through gameplay, you should.

6. Never underestimate the power of community

Monster Hunter is a unique series in that its multiplayer features are purely cooperative, and this system fosters a positive community that wants to introduce more people to the Monster Hunter franchise. I can confidently say that I would never have stuck with Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate if my girlfriend had not introduced me to it and stuck with me through the long slog at the start of the game. If you know your game is difficult to get into, make sure you support your community. They’ll help you out.

Final words

I love Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate. But based on my experience, would I recommend people try it? Honestly, if you’re totally new to the franchise, no. Play Monster Hunter World if you’re curious—I’ve heard the new player experience is much better in that game. But if you’re a fan of Monster Hunter World, a fan of the older games, or you have a friend who is a fanatic, then sure, give it a shot. Just make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into.