Monster Hunter Now is an Augmented Reality Action Mobile Phone Game in the Monster Hunter series created by Niantic Labs in collaboration with Capcom for iOS and Android, released on September 14, 2023. It is the fourth such adaptation of a popular franchise by Niantic, following Pokémon GO, Pikmin Bloom, and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite.
You take up the role of a normal human, who finds themselves caught in a strange situation when a talking cat called a Felyne and an elaborately dressed woman named Qualily appear in the real world out of a portal from the sky, alongside a plethora of fantastical and hostile creatures. Qualily is revealed to be from the Hunter's Guild, an organization from a faraway land called the New World that recruits Hunters, men and women who hunt giant monsters for a living. Recognizing your potential as a Hunter, Qualily officially inducts you into the Hunter's Guild as a Hunter and teams you up with the Felyne as your Palico. Your mission? Protect the real world from the arrival of the monsters and uncover the mystery of the interdimensional portals.
This game contains examples of:
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- Similar to how the Pokémon GO Plus works for Pokémon GO, the game will automatically "play itself" to an extent even when it is inactive by letting your Palico automatically tag large monsters with Palico Paintballs and collect items from Gathering Spots. There is a limit to these actions, as your Palico can only tag up to thrice per day (refreshed daily) and any items your Palico collects will go to the Palico Bag, which has a maximum capacity and must be manually emptied out every so often.
- The Paintball mechanic lets you tag large monsters that you find and intend to fight but are unable to do so at the current moment. Large monsters that you Paintball will be registered to a docket with a rather generous expiration time limit, letting you handle them whenever you have free time later.
- Compared to other Niantic games, the importance of interacting with landmarks is much lower. Landmarks take the form of Large Gathering Spots, which will spit out a large quantity of materials at once, but each kind drops only one unique item and the other materials can also be obtained by Gathering Spots found randomly in the overworld.
- Unlike other Niantic games, upgrading your inventory space costs real money, but in exchange the default inventory cap is much higher, to the point where upgrading it is largely superfluous.
- You are given 5 First-Aid Meds for free every day, ensuring that you have some sort of supply going into fights even if you do not have the Gems to spend on Potions. However, there is a hard cap of 10 First-Aid Meds you can hold at once, encouraging you to play the game and use them frequently.
- Boss-Only Level: Chapter 13 consists entirely of a single Urgent Quest to fight a Rathalos. This essentially makes up for the fact that Chapter 12 does not end on an Urgent Quest, unlike the previous chapters.
- BFS: The Great Sword and Long Sword weapon classes, as per series standard.
- Charged Attack: Any weapon with a charge move, such as the Great Sword and Hammer, can be charged up by pressing on your screen.
- Co-Op Multiplayer: Much like normal Monster Hunter titles, you can team up with up to 3 other players to fight Large Monsters. If encountering a Monster in the overworld, you can fight it with nearby players, but if you are fighting remotely using a Paintball you can create a QR code to allow other nearby players to join your hunt.
- Excuse Plot: Something about magic portals happens and your Palico loses his luggage along the way. It's largely inconsequential; the main attraction is the monsters.
- Item Crafting: The main mechanic of the game, just like standard Monster Hunter games. Materials you collect from slaying monsters and interacting with Gathering Points are used to craft and upgrade gear. Better gear lets you hunt stronger monsters, which gives you better materials, rinse and repeat.
- Limit Break: Once your weapon reaches Grade 2, you will unlock a Special Skill for that weapon. Attacking fills up the Special Skill gauge, and when it is full, you can press it to activate a powerful Special Skill. In addition to dealing a ton of damage, you are completely invulnerable during a Special Skill, letting you wail uninterrupted.
- New Game Plus: Once you beat the Main Quest story up to Chapter 13, you will repeat the story starting from Chapter 1. However, the monster difficulty continues scaling upwards from 5* beyond this point, making the second loop far more difficult than the first, and the requirements to complete Main Quests are bumped up to make them take longer to finish.
- Pragmatic Adaptation: Due to the game's extremely simplified single-touch format, a vast majority of the mechanics from the core games have been axed. This includes stuff like Sharpness, capturing, most usable items, most weapon moves beyond the standard, etc.
- Regenerating Health: Your Health recharges when outside of combat, at a rate of 100 HP per hour. You need at least 33% HP to challenge a Large Monster.
