>>45750748Honestly, I don't really enjoy any monster (raising/collecting) games. I think Pokemon has poisoned the well and that most mon-games have fallen in the trap of trying to be "Pokemon but better!" when Pokemon itself isn't even good and is in fact a bad example to follow, and the ones that do make for an interesting experience fall flat in other departments. Usually in design department, but sometimes a game just lacks polish/game variety because making a game where you have to account for 100+ "playable characters" is understandably a lengthy, difficult process.
Now don't get me wrong, Pokemon has phenomenal designs and that's why it sees such success - I love creature design and I've checked out a lot of series for them, there's several that I got invested in because there's monster designs I love and I wouldn't get into any of them otherwise - but the actual games on their own are never really that fun and that applies to every other competitor as well. The genre is cursed as a whole. Part of that is because Pokemon is the behemoth that it is and the other part again being how laborious creating a game with so many playables is. It's an unfortunate combination.
I do have hope for MH Stories 2 though because the original comes very close to getting things right, it just has a few kinks that need working out. My biggest gripe with the game being how mons were distributed. Every time you get to a new area you're met with a bunch of them at once and left with too many options to reasonably try them all out (compounded by the fact that they always hatch at level 1 making grinding a nuisance). Then after that, once you have all of that area's monsters, you're left with a dry patch of nothing new available until the next area. If 2 goes for a more trickle approach and makes grinding new monsties less of a pain then I'll be happy.
