Matthew Reynolds is the founder of One More Catch and a former editor at Polygon and Eurogamer.
Out of all of Niantic’s follow ups to Pokémon Go – from the now closed NBA-All World and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, to the still-going Pikmin Bloom – only one has really stuck for me: Monster Hunter Now. Capcom’s beloved series, which sees you track down huge, intimating beasts so you can cut them open to craft a nice new coat, is a natural fit for location-based gaming, dividing the real world into biomes and points of interest of whatever’s around you – whether it’s parks, pubs or shops – to spawn resource-rich mining outcrops and bonepiles.
Though its location-based gameplay works similar to Niantic’s other games, which all share the same underlying data but transform them enough to provide their own distinct flavour, Monster Hunter Now excels for a different reason: its combat. It distils the franchise’s famously long battles – which see you hunt monsters for 10 to 20 minutes at a time, or more for trickier beasts – down into snappy, phone-friendly 75 second encounters, played out entirely with responsive taps and swipes.
Monster Hunter is a series about learning the behaviours and attack patterns of its roster, and thanks to the same gorgeous, expressive monster animations, the transition to mobile is almost seamless, to the point where long-time players can apply the same knowledge and come away victorious. These battles can all be engaged in multiplayer, too, with up to three fellow hunters turning your screen into a flurry of activity as you all whale down on hapless creatures – a far cry from Pokémon Go’s comparatively static encounters.
Capcom’s co-development duties on Monster Hunter Now means the beating heart of the series remains intact, but it all has to fit within that location-based framework. As condensed as encounters are, 75 seconds is still a long time to be standing in one spot, so it offers a smart nod to the main games by allowing you to ‘track’ monsters with paintballs to be engaged at more convenient time later.
On the map screen itself, you have a heads up on monster spawns for as far as the screen allows, and are spaced out enough to make each diversion to their position feel meaningful. This tempo compliments other location-based games perfectly: Pokémon Go is a game about joyously hoovering up as many creatures as possible, whereas Monster Hunter Now is a more deliberate experience. It’s a game I switch to occasionally, taking note of what’s around me, and deciding to engage with if something takes my interest.
For something that leans heavily on the Niantic template, it carries the essence of Capcom’s storied series over remarkably well, but its transition to mobile isn’t flawless. Monetisation relies partly on a health mechanic, where you can either use potions or wait for a period of time for the HP gauge to recover.
This is less of a problem in time, where the more familiar you become with each monster, the more likely you’ll come away unscathed, but in my first few months, I regularly came to the end of my daily free potion allocation and had to weigh up the painful choice of not playing for a bit or coughing up cash.
Elsewhere, while Monster Hunter Now has excelled in delivering meaningful new features and frequent quality of life updates since its 2023 launch, it suffers from the same issues as Pokémon Go in bolting new additions onto its interface in confusing ways, meaning it regularly takes me a few moments to figure out how to navigate its menus for what I need.
Finally, and most importantly, this is a game with a fairly modest userbase, and while it welcomely leans on online matchmaking for many encounters, I haven’t ran into a single other player in person during my time with it. Which is a shame, because Monster Hunter Now is superb, and I’d love to stand next to others scrapping huge beasts on small phones one day.
While Pokémon Go’s healthy, bedded-in community and long tenure means it’s remains my go-to mobile game, Monster Hunter Now regularly muscles in when I need a more concentrated action fix. And in those moments, it’s Niantic’s best work to date.
