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Monster Hunter World Switch: Ah, shareholders’ meetings; that ever-reliable source of off-the-cuff info about a publisher’s plans for new games, franchises, and release schedules. God bless corporate capitalism. The latest gaming info dump arrives courtesy of a recent Capcom shareholders’ meeting this week, in which the publisher specifically shed light on its plans for the series on Nintendo Switch.

Monster Hunter World released for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in January, with a PC port scheduled for later this year, so Nintendo fans have long been wondering whether the game would be hitting their home-handheld hybrid at some point in the future, especially given the franchise’s rich history with Ninty consoles.

But sadly, it looks like Monster Hunter World on Nintendo Switch definitely isn’t happening, not because Capcom doesn’t want to, but because it’s almost impossible to port such a massive, technically ambitious game to the little console that could.

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The world is an action role-playing game played from a third-person perspective. Similar to previous games in the series, the player takes the role of a player-created character who travels to the “New World”, an unpopulated landmass filled with monsters, to join the Research Commission that studies the land from their central command base of Astera. The Research Commission tasks the Hunter to hunt down and either kill or capture large monsters that roam outside Astera to both protect the Commission and to study the monsters there.

The player’s character does not have any intrinsic attributes, but instead, these are determined by what equipment the character is equipped with. This includes a weapon, selected from the series’ fourteen archetypes (such as long sword, bow, or hammer), which then further defines the types of combat moves and abilities the player can use, and pieces of armor, which can lead to beneficial or detrimental combat skills if matched properly.

 This creates a core loop of gameplay that has the player fight monsters they can beat to obtain the right loot to craft improved weapons and armor to allow them to face more powerful monsters and the potential for even better equipment.

The player must traverse zone to zone, though they can quick-travel to any of the base camps in that particular region when outside of combat. From camp, the player can acquire limited provisions, rest to restore their health, and new to World, have a meal that provides limited-time buffs to the player.

Investigate the traces of the monster leads to improving the Scout flies’ abilities for the quest, eventually enabling them to lead the player via their glowing flight path towards the monster they seek; further, investigating these help the player to gain research towards the monster that helps them gain insight on its strengths, weaknesses, and behavior.

Monster Hunter World Nintendo Switch

Earlier this year Capcom’s Monster Hunter franchise went from being a semi-obscure cult favorite to a full-blown triple-A masterpiece with the release of Monster Hunter World on current-gen consoles. The only console left out of the hunt was the Nintendo Switch, and it looks like it’s going to stay that way too. While the Switch will be getting a port of Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate later this year, fans holding their breath for a full-blown port of Monster Hunter World as Capcom has now stated that they have no plans to port the title.

According to Game Informer, Capcom revealed at a recent shareholder meeting that, simply put, they just couldn’t port Monster Hunter World over to the Switch. There was no clarification provided to those in attendance as to whether or not this was due to technical restrictions or if there was some sort of marketing contract in place that was preventing the company from making a port. It seems unlikely that Monster Hunter World wouldn’t be technically portable, even Iron Galaxy’s CEO, Adam Boyes stated earlier in the year that he thought his team to make a decent port, but it would appear Capcom won’t be taking them up on the offer.

While Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate is an older title, it would be a safe bet that at some point the Switch will be getting an original title of their own. Perhaps a parallel series of games, as Capcom does have a history of making portable Monster Hunter games while simultaneously developing console titles.

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The harder adjustment, however, is that Generations Ultimate is mechanically and structurally the same as pretty much every other pre-World game. I played most of those games myself, and at the time, I might have even defended some of their quirks as part of the series’s DNA. But for World, Capcom did a fantastic job of preserving that DNA while judiciously excising unnecessary elements. It’s tough to deal with some of those elements today.

Here are just a few examples:

• The levels are separated into discretely numbered areas with short loading screens between them. This isn’t a huge deal, but you will definitely accidentally somersault into a neighboring cave while trying to avoid a monster’s attack, which is annoying. The trade-off is that you can run away to sharpen your weapons and heal up in peace. That’s good because, unlike in World, you have to stand still for several seconds and triumphantly raise your hands in the air every time you drink a health potion.
• This game doesn’t have World’s occasionally annoying but generally useful “scout flies” system for tracking monsters. You basically have to walk around the entire stage yourself until you find your target, then throw a paintball at it to make it show up on the map for a while if it escapes.
• Items like whetstones and pickaxes are no longer unlimited. You need to make sure you’re stocked if you want to sharpen your sword or mine for materials while in the field. It adds another layer of busywork.
• The quest structure is vastly more complicated: there are separate single-player and multiplayer missions and no clear indicators about the best way to progress. I particularly missed World’s SOS feature, which lets you search for specific monsters you want to hunt and jump into active quests with other players online.

I really could go on for thousands of words about this kind of thing, but I won’t because — for me, at least — it doesn’t matter. Once you get over the initial shock of its clunkiness, you’ll find that Generations Ultimate is one of the best Monster Hunter games ever made.

The game has value for World players simply as a bestiary of what might come along down the line.  It has more than three times as many monsters as World, which helps the game feel fresh for much longer.

Monster Hunter World On Switch

 which is statistically likely since the game has now sold more than 10 million copies worldwide — and you’re hungry for more, I have good (and possibly bad) news. The good news is that Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate is out today for the Nintendo Switch, and it’s great. In many ways, it’s a better package than the World.

Monster Hunter World was a huge overhaul of the series, which had always been hugely popular on handheld systems in Japan but never found as much success in the West or on home consoles. Designed from the start for the PS4 and Xbox One, with a PC version following later, World not only represented the first significant technical upgrade in the series’s history, but it was a major redesign of its structure and systems in a bid to make it more accessible. It was more open and fluid than past games, with a world that felt truly alive.

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In Japan, Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate came out a year ago for the Switch and 18 months ago on 3DS as Monster Hunter XX. This makes its belated Western release feel like a relic from the past. Most obviously, the fact that this started out as an expanded version of a 3DS game means that it’s basically two generations behind the World on a technical level. (The 3DS version isn’t being released outside of Japan.) The game has received resolution and texture bumps in its transition to the Switch, of course, but returning to simple plains and empty caves are jarring after the lush, living environments of World.