Why are Monster Hunter's in-game tutorials so unfriendly to new players?

Update: A reader wrote in to inform me that there is indeed an in-game encyclopedia for encountered monsters, including drop rates for materials. Still not the most intuitive thing to find, this encyclopedia is under Menu > Info > Hunter Notes > Large Monsters. As always in these cases, I appreciate the correction and regret the error.

Original Post:

Let me just get this out of the way right here: I love Monster Hunter games. I am in the middle of my playthrough of Monster Hunter Rise for review, and I'm having a blast with it. These games have hooks that other games can only dream about. Monster Hunter games have the best grind in the business, with battles that are amazingly fun. The player actually feels like they are accomplishing something when they defeat a monster and snag the materials they were looking for, and the reward for doing so is powerful and immediate. 

Monster Hunter games are full of wonderful details, a uniquely goofy sense of humor, and some of the best gameplay in the business. Why, then, are the in-game tutorials so damn terrible? Learning to play a Monster Hunter game as a new player is akin to learning a new language. It is morbidly complex, and wide swaths of information are kept from new players.

It almost seems a point of pride among fans that Monster Hunter games are semi-impenetrable. People often talk about having to push through a barrier - sometimes accompanied by a friend as a "guide" - before everything clicks and they finally "get it". I remember my first time trying to play a Monster Hunter game on 3DS. The visuals and silliness appealed to me greatly, but I just couldn't seem to burst the bubble preventing me from truly understanding the game. I bounced of the game and returned it. It wasn't until Monster Hunter World took the time to teach players its systems that I was able to push through to enjoy the franchise.

Series veterans likely don't even notice how difficult it is to get started on a Monster Hunter game. But truth be told, I was considering recommending Monster Hunter Rise to friends, and I stopped myself short, simply because I don't have time to teach them how to play, and I know full well that they would bounce off the game without someone to demonstrate the game's many intricate systems. When I feel that reluctant to share a game that I truly love, there has to be a problem.

Monster Hunter games are glorious, but they are also mad complex. There is a ton going on beneath the surface, and a lot of micromanagement of resources needs to take place to be successful. Monster Hunter games don't really fill you in on any of this stuff, or if they do, the information comes in a barrage of pop-ups that many players likely skim through. The opening hours of a Monster Hunter game are like a data shotgun to the face, with the player being peppered by popup after popup, many with multiple pages to read before closing out. Often, closing a popup leads to another popup immediately appearing. This waterboarding of instructional material delivers too much information, too quickly, presented in far too dry a manner.

I'm maybe 15 hours into Monster Hunter Rise, and I realized that the game never taught me how to capture a monster instead of slaying it - an act that is 100% necessary to obtain certain materials. I actually just retained that information from my time with Monster Hunter World, and I honestly don't remember if that game taught me how to capture monsters. I'm pretty sure I looked it up online.

While some of Monster Hunter Rise's new features have dedicated level-based tutorials (wyvern riding, for example), many of the basics completely catch the short shrift. For example, I know that I have to eat a meal before every hunt to increase my stats (and the game continually reminds me "Don't forget to eat!"). But it took me about four hours to realize that I needed to sit at the counter to order food. I kept going to café lady and talking to her and her palico assistants to no avail, because the game never told me where to go. Same thing with hiring new buddies. I knew contextually that this was a thing I could do. But until I decided to buckle down and speak to every person over and over again until they offered to let me hire some new palicos, I was completely at a loss.

I like to think that I'm not a dummy. I mean, I review about 50 games a year, so I'm used to getting up and running with new systems. But there are a ton of mechanics like this that Monster Hunter doesn't bother telling new players about, let alone showing them. How do you cook raw meat into steaks? How does crafting work? What information is lurking in these 500 menus that appear when I hit the start button?

Monster Hunter games check a lot of boxes, but "ease of use" isn't one of them. The franchise is obstinately opaque. Sure, you can see what materials you are missing for that next chest piece, but where can you find them? You had better be ready to hop onto the internet to find out, because Monster Hunter isn't telling. Why can't there be an in-game materials repository, which keeps track of where to find stuff? Hell, it doesn't even have to tell me where to get things I haven't encountered yet - just keep track of where all the crap I've found came from.

It seems to me that Monster Hunter games are overly reliant on collective memory, and depend far too much on players' desire and ability to jump on the internet whenever they get stuck by something. For a franchise as fun-loving as Monster Hunter is, why is it so unfriendly to new faces? Monster Hunter is a major franchise from one of the biggest publishers in the video game business. Why does it deliver information in an endless barrage of text boxes instead of showing the player what to do? And why does it withhold so much vital information from players?

Fans of the Monster Hunter Franchise probably take this stuff as a matter of course. They know how things works, so they zero in on the new stuff and move forward with the game. But for new players, picking up Monster Hunter is akin to a research project. The rewards are great, but I imagine that a lot of folks simply don't want to put in the work. 

Monster Hunter Rise is now available on Nintendo Switch. Watch for our review in the coming week.