Reading Report: 27 September 2026

『モンスターハンター』プレイ日記 本日ももっと！逆鱗日和

モンスターハンター

くらえ、ドスファンゴ！！

A haphazard week that included some MH2, P2G, and MHP (yes the first Portable Monster Hunter). A couple of days ago I was really feeling the itch to play MH2 (Dos) knowing how different the experience was from P2G. I loaded my character up and assisted the village to hunt a bunch of ドスファンゴ, ドスランポス, イャンクック, ドスゲネポス, and ダイミョウザザミ. I've been using the Hammer partially because of the convenience of charge attack being on R1, but I also made a Hunting Horn and tried that out on my first ドスゲネポス quest. Honestly it was pretty fun, though managing the buffs is much harder pre-third gen. Additionally I connected to the Dos online servers hosted by MH Oldschool (shoutouts to them and their website here) and did two random quests with some other hunters. Honestly for as little as I do it in the more modern games, there's a real pleasure in just jumping online and ganking large monsters for fun. It's a totally different vibe from the resource-starved grassroots experience of the village, and for that reason partially I feel guilty doing the online quests for spoiling my village experience. Once I'm done with the village (one day) I would like to do the online in a more dedicated way, though.

Upon joining the MH Oldschool discord an even newer seed of thought was planted in my mind. Are there really definitive versions of Monster Hunter games? People always say "Just play Freedom Unite (P2G) it has all the stuff from gen 1 and 2", but obviously Dos is different to P2G. I thought to myself, surely MH Portable must be different to P2G as well, being released a full generation earlier. And wouldn't you know it, it's a completely different experience. Naturally the set of maps is the "old" maps (available only later in P2G); the item box is much smaller, similar to Dos where part of the gameplay involves really managing your materials, what you can bear to keep and what you can bear to sell to supplement the expensive armour and weapon upgrades; the number of weapon classes is limited, but it doesn't really feel lacking (unless you're a bow main and refuse to play any other way); and also the small monsters are even more aggressive and numerous than in P2G. I always assumed P2G's minimal small monster count was a hardware limitation, but it turns out it was a balance change. How curious. I also saw chatter about how even Portable 2nd differs from P2G, but... I should probably beat one of these games before I start thinking about starting new files. Maybe I'll import my Portable 1 character into 2nd if it gets to that.

As I play the older games I feel myself better understanding 大塚角満's (Otsuka Kadoman) writing (see my reflections on his essays in this and other reading reports). He positions himself as constantly afraid while playing Monster Hunter and I think all the elements of the game coming together actually make it all make sense. For example, area 9 of 森と丘 (forest and hills) is annoying in P2G, sure, but it's never been more than a nuisance to me. But in MH Portable when you enter the area the camera is intentionally glued to your back, giving a really narrow field of view. In area 3 of 沼地 (old swamp) the fog is thick and oppressive, limiting your range of vision. P2G still has the nice, thick bushes (which I love about old maps), but most of these camera and fog tricks are absent in the game. I wonder, when I finally get to the P2G part of Kadoman's writing, will he talk about these quality of life changes, or just ignore them. While I love Monster Hunter XX, I think its biggest failing is a failure to convey the original vibes of the older games. Considering it was made to be a love letter to every generation, I wonder if it would have been an idea to properly bring back every map and to adjust the camera, lighting, and small monster behaviour (and numbers) based on which monsters you're hunting (a 1st gen experience for 1st gen monsters, a 2nd gen experience for 2nd gen monsters, etc).

となりの席のヤツがそういう目で見てくる

A very pleasant 6th volume that really peaked in the first half for me. It concludes the summer festival that was hanging from the end of vol 5. Eguchi claims to have broken her glasses after bumping into some strangers, so Ikezawa takes her hand and they go to the fireworks together. Ikezawa utters sweet words towards Eguchi assuming that the loud fireworks will muffle his speech, though some of it slips through, and when it's all over and Eguchi is home she reveals to the reader that she actually didn't break her glasses and it was just a ploy to receive some of Ikezawa's unguarded tenderness. In a recording of the fireworks she also hears clearly what Ikezawa was saying to her. The second half of the volume was mostly about setting up a beach arc, better introducing Ikezawa's older sister and Eguchi's older brother, both of whom gently tease the young not-yet-couple. Eguchi's brother is kind of a weirdo though, not gonna lie.

モンスターハンターストーリーズ２　破滅の翼

Getting more アユリア backstory, how she met ヒョウガ and how she chose him over her own village when they told her not to bring a monster into their space after the frenzy virus scare of yesteryear. Helped defeat a Barroth causing a blockade. Not a whole lot more to note. I started finally going into the ruins that give the bottle caps you trade for rare items because I finally have a team that can do most of the traversal methods, and I hadn't wanted to retrace my steps into those caves too much. I ended up with tonnes of bottle caps, most I traded for useful item recipes like throwing knives and traps. I also traded for the 砲モロコシ gunlance (it's a play on 砲 (cannon) and トウモロコシ (corn), known as the Cornpopper or something in English). I just think it's neat.

『モンスターハンター』プレイ日記 本日ももっと！逆鱗日和

This was mostly such a success because I was away last weekend and had nothing else to do lol. As per usual it was a flurry of small essays. There was one fairly long series of essays recounting Kadoman's challenge to beat Kirin with a gunlance (his main weapon). Despite his professed love for gunlances, he seems to hate fighting most things with it, and Kirin was no exception. I liked how the story involved all steps of the hunt, including preparation and failure. He starts with a setup to have maximum sharpness and hit the Kirin through its tough hide, but it doesn't work out and he comes back with a different set focused on guarding with guard+2 and guard up, allowing him to block some of Kirin's nasty lightning attacks. It was a fun little epic. He also writes about going to several MonHun Festas in 2007. Apparently there were a few held in different cities. In general content he discusses the 武具探求の螺旋階段, the endless loop of wanting to optimise gear for a hunt, meaning you need to optimise the gear for grinding the hunt that will get you that gear, meaning you need to optimise the gear for grinding the hunt that will get you that gear, and so forth. It's just another case where everyone in every time and place makes the same observations about monster hunter, and I think that's cute.