Monster Hunter games pre-World

Finished Village LR and now I'm doing Hub LR (mainly for that sweet, sweet Readiness). Crafted a decent LS to play more with Guild/Striker, but in general I don't like the Spirit gauge mechanic. It was perfect in FU and didn't need another bar to charge up imo, but it is what it is.
The beauty of this game is that if you find a monster too spazzy, just equip Valor/Adept and laugh in its face. Did this with Garuga since he doesn't fucking stand still in this game.
Valor Hammer is garbage, how are you supposed to charge three times in a row without the possibility to evade (except at the very beginning of the charge) in order to do damage (since there is no golfswing and superpound)?
Aerail Swaxe is nice, I like how the vault does good damage in Sword mode, but I have to practice more with it. In general I'm getting the hang of Swaxe a bit, but you need to be very on point with your evades in order to punish the monsters with the sword attacks. Or I could just play Valor and say fuck it.

Beat Hub LR, mainly with Guild LS and the weapon is pretty nice, love the sideways Fade Slash.
Nakarkos was a decent final boss, if not a bit confusing at first.
Still bashing my head trying to git gud with Swaxe. The problem is that Sword Mode is the only sustained DPS weapon that also has a slow walking speed (and no block also). With GS you get in, sheathe and run away, but here you can't do that, you have to stick to the monster (and the weapon is also slow as fuck to sheathe). Also I wonder if the Valor dashes SA gets have more iframes than a normal roll, but they prolly don't.

>where to start
Concur on FU, an obtuse game so look up guides when needed.

>Guild LS
One of my favorites, great fundamentals weapon. The meter is also pretty lenient in GU.

>Valor Hammer
It's extremely good, the dodging and charging is fast enough that you can kinda spam it, bullies head-weak monsters extremely hard. Don't play it much though

>Glavenus
I love this fight, the key insight is that he always moves his head to where his tail slammed the ground. Great one for GS, almost like a duel.

>Cheesing
Yeah it's nice to have a safety valve. As mentioned, Adept DB is extremely braindead and broken and will get the job done for pretty much anything.

>obtuse game
To be fair that's every pre 5th gen game, but every post FU game has a significantly easier early game, so you can do well even if you don't know shit.

>meter
Especially with Sakura Slash. Hunter Arts are good but not as broken as I thought they would be. Love the evasion arts because they enable a lot of aggressive plays, much more interesting than using them just as a panic button (even if you can just do that).

>Valor Hammer good against head weak monsters
Thought so, you'd have to take advantage with every stagger in order to charge the other moves.

Barioth is cancer, had to dust off the Adept DB. Very small openings, moves around a lot and is super aggressive. Fortunately the stomach takes some good damage, so you can camp under him without too many worries.
Now onto Valstrax. Didn't beat him yet but holy shit is this a hard fight, way harder than anything else I beat until now. I like how he has a move that hits only directly below him (so you can't just hit the stomach forever). The comet attack is definitely flashy but its timing feels natural. I hate that when you die you have to walk accross like 4 zones to get to him but whatever.

EDIT: Beat the damn thing, used Adept LS (first time using it in a quest). Took like 30 minutes and 2 carts. Of course he killed me while he was one hit away from death, oh well. Fun fight overall(?). Have to fight him more and then decide, but in terms of difficulty and spectacle he was a worthy final village boss (much better than Rusted Kushala in 4U lol).

Was Deviljho always this fucking annoying fucking piece of shit why the fuck has the guy so much health. Staggers, chip damage, tremors, debuffs, health sponge, shitty spazzy movement, variable hitzones and trash design to boot. Why is the portable team so much better at designing monsters? When the main team does it you get trash like Jho and Najarala, with the portable you get Tigrex, Glavenus and Zinogre.
Rant over.

So, what are you supposed to do about Valstrax exactly? Tried to farm him but I don't understand his fight. You're obviously rewarded for getting close (since his wings attacks won't hit you), but the quick bite attack and paw slam are super fast and punish you... for being close. There's something I'm missing.

Kinda figured out Valstrax but still have to practice him, as well as lots of other monsters. It's incredible how you can play these games for hundreds of hours and still be shit at them.
Anyway, just wanted to say that whoever decided to make the arena multi-monster quests to have two mons at the same time is a moron. These games simply aren't made for fighting two monsters at the same time (except for a couple of cases) and it all boils down to using dung or smokebombs.

Currently grinding weapons in G2. I've played enough and seen/read enough to get an idea of the game in its totality. The combat with the vanilla styles (Guild, Striker and Alchemy) with Arts is great and basically fixes a lot of the bad in the MH4U combat while also not breaking the game. Despite the fact that the game is unbalanced as fuck at least is unbalanced well, with the top options being disgustingly OP while the rest is mostly good (in contrast to MH4U where the top weapons where just good and the rest was trash).

My biggest gripe is the grinding. For whatever reason this game decided that you can only create lv.1 weapons, even if you have High and G rank mats. This means that if I want the Lagi DB for example I have to grind LR and HR Lagi, instead of offering me an options to create the HR o GR version immediately instead. This grinding nonsense also extends to the armor and the deviants. Apparently if I want to fight the hardest version of a particular deviant I need to fight them FIFTEEN times. What the fuck. Fortunately some of the best weapons are from deviants which are exclusive to G rank, which only require 5 quests total.
Finally the armor. Why do armor now require monster parts to upgrade instead of just Armor Spheres? If I want to upgrade every armor piece to the max I'll require FIVE of the rarest drop the monster has. When the time comes I'll surely use a save editor to cut down the grinding. A game with this much content doesn't need it.
At least this is the only big problem, otherwise it's a fantastic experience.

Started a new save in GU, running Hammer. I had intended to swap around between all the styles, and I may still do that later, but for now Valor Hammer has stolen my heart. The stance+X attack is like a golf swing but not locked behind a combo and easier to aim, casually oneshotting small monsters like Bullfangos with it is great. In Valor mode I never have to let off the gas. I'm not one to pay attention to hunt times but they are ending noticeably earlier than I'm used to. Definitely getting more KOs and flinches than I ever did with 4U's Hammer. I stunlocked the 2* Cephodrome to death, lol.

Valor Hammer feels great to use but it's effectiveness is a lot monster dependent. Mons that have their head sticking out a lot like Narga and Valstrax get demolished by it, but the skill ceiling remains pretty high. Don't like the pseudo golf swing you get since it's super slow and the only reliable way of building the meter.
Fortunately the other styles are also pretty good and decently balanced (except maybe Aerial but I haven't messed with it). I use Striker Hammer against Royal Ludroth since I found it inconsistent going for golfswings or uppercuts on his turns. The Superpound is much more reliable and deals a lot of damage in Striker. Wonder if it's also good for other mons.

The way I've been using Valor Hammer is constant damage output, and thus less head-focus than usual for Hammer. It's a bit like SnS mentality, repositioning to continuously attack from whatever angle is safe at a given moment. Narga is the first monster that's given me a lot of trouble, because its movement naturally creates gaps where I can't attack it at all. I get better results maximizing the limited openings with golf swings and superpounds. Now when you can successfully chain several headshots in a row with Valor it's awesome, but I'm definitely not good enough at Narga to do that consistently.

>Aerial
The double pound is pretty strong, and you can choose the direction for each swing in case the monster moves underneath you or you just got a bad jump angle. I hunted Narga half a dozen times to make the armor set, and I had the easiest time when I used Aerial.

I don't like using Valor Hammer for constant non-head DPS compared to other weapons (which are more effective thanks to the cutting hitzones and more usability in general), but it still works.

>Narga
I found headsniping easier with Valor compared to the other styles, since he loves to do the 360 tail spin, making golf swings unreliable. Maybe Striker can work decently in this matchup too.

>Aerial
Interesting. Never really used it all that much, can't get used to the vault, but I'll have to try it at some point.