In fact, the second game actively renders your Ratha LESS unique after the story ends despite there being many ways to at least make him look significantly different while still curing him of the whole Razewing thing.įurthermore, that issue is made worse by the fact that both games actively provide you with statistically better and more visually distinct forms of Rathalos once you get into High Rank. Generally, not everyone is as big of a fan of Rathalos as they are with other monsters, and the name "Ratha" was already honestly uninspired when there was just one Rathalos with that name.Īnother issue with Ratha is that both games, after their stories are over, do little to distinguish them from other Rathalos. However, that's roughly where the logic in these things ends. Rathalos being the Protagonist Monstie of the second game also is justifiable by Stories 2 more or less being a revival of Stories as a spinoff. Rathalos having as much focus as he has had so far makes sense since Rathalos is the flagship monster of Monster Hunter as a whole, and the name made sense in the first game considering that, canonically, very young children were responsible for the name ( along with the first game being marketed more towards children as well). Granted, there is some logic in all of this. That is a lot of Rathalos, all with the same name, and a name that many people simply don't find creative or interesting at that. These are the Protagonist Monstie of the the first game, the Monstie of the protagonist's grandfather in the second game ( more specifically, this one was referred to as Guardian Ratha), and the Protagonist Monstie of the second game.
It's hard to talk about some of these issues individually, but a good starting point would be that there is, canonically, a total of three separate Rathalos named Ratha. Many of these issues also either were exacerbated or created by Stories 2 more than Stories 1. Well, there are actually a multitude of issues, which the answers available on the poll likely clued you in on.
The first question at hand here is simple: "What exactly is the issue here?". Beyond that hiccup, it is clear to see that more people believe that the situation with our Protagonist Monstie could have been ( or for some people, should have been) better than those that were fine with or neutral about it.
While I will go into greater detail on each of those issues shortly, I would first like to share the results of a poll on this subject that I posted to the r/MonsterHunterStories subreddit ( and cross-posted into r/MonsterHunter) a little over a week ago in an effort to gauge the community's opinion on the topic.Īdmittedly, there is a lack of a definitive "I like how it is currently" option ( I did not consider the option when originally making the poll, plus you can only fit 6 options into a Reddit poll), although it's reasonably safe to assume that a lot of votes that would have went into that option went into the "I have no strong opinion about it" option. However, despite how the inherent concept of a "Protagonist Monstie" ( which from now on I will be using to refer to any Monstie that fills this central role in the narrative) hasn't been necessarily executed poorly, it has certainly still been somewhat problematic for a number of reasons. It is the name of the Rathalos that acts as our primary companion throughout the main questline of each game, and the focus of much of what happens during those storylines.
Ratha a name that most of ( if not all of) us Stories fans are likely very familiar with, regardless of which of the two entries in the Monster Hunter Stories franchise/sub-series/spinoff-series you are more familiar with.
This post is merely meant to be an analysis of and discussion around how certain things in the Stories series have played out so far, and how they could play out in the future. Stories and Stories 2 are some of my favorite games.
Full disclosure before we begin, this is not an attempt to bash against either of the Stories games or complain for the sake of complaining.