i keep
thinking about old world mh. specifically ceadeus
to this day that is my favorite setpiece fight in the whole series. The whole damn thing. like
jumping into the deep dark blue. seeing the eye-con light up by your name. hearing the Lunar Abyss vocals start up.
Ceadeus shows up on your targeting widget
but you don't see it. so you turn around- and then, slowly, from the pitch-dark green-blue of the passage behind you
it looms. the moon in the abyss. bright white in deep dark. the water is a clear, light blue, unlike in the flooded forest, where the silt renders your vision murky.
ceadeus does not care that you exist. it merely continues, its movement ponderous yet by its sheer size traveling further than your blade can reach for the next strike.
it shakes you off like a gnat.
and so this dance of hunter and moon travels through a procession of sunken stone, carved edifice, ancient ramparts.
it's all you can do to trim its beard. anger it enough that it chooses to stand its ground instead of simply leaving. and even then... you aren't here to kill it. you're just here to break one of its horns, so massive and overgrown that its left eye has been completely covered.
killing an ocean's moon is beyond your means.
so you simply treat its pain, whether or not it understands the... percussive medicine.
once you've reached the final arena- a decrepit, rusted, tideworn fortress- the one thing you know can break its horn is a massive set of spear-mechanisms, rusted and blunt, like battering rams. and you're ready, because you've prepared for this hunt; bartered with the Argosy captain, offered an ancient mask to your Shakalaka companion, and(for your sanity) stocked up on Dash Juice.
so you set to your task, in the depths of the ocean, light shining down from the surface to illuminate this arena, all to the chanting, the constant drumming, of Moonquake.
and the moment that horn breaks... you've saved an entire village from being sunken by the elder dragon's attempts to relieve its own pain.
and the Ceadeus simply swims away. up, into the light, to breach in the sunset.
all this is to say: for all of its jank, all the bullshit and all the questionable design choices, old world MH has some of the greatest atmosphere in all of gaming.
I experienced this on a tiny 3DS screen, with its shitty little built-in speakers. It still rewired my brain chemistry. It still gave me my first taste of the sublime. Please give these games a chance- especially 4U, FU, and 3U. Emulate them if you need to. They're worth it.