A beautiful and fairly gritty tale of man's connection with nature, conflicting ideals, growth, and camaraderie.

The series does a splendid job in enriching the world of Monster Hunter in ways the game could not do, showing the lives of hunters and monsters through its well-written characters and the scenarios they find themselves in.

Though as it is a game-based novel, it is still recommended more to those who have already played the series' games beforehand.

The translation, made by Baka-Tsuki contributors, is medium-high quality, with a good localization overall but is still... more>> overly literal in many parts. Terminology and character names are lifted from the official localizations of the original games, and are kept perfectly consistent. <<less

A novel adaptation of the Monster Hunter video game series, specifically the very first game on PS2, its upgraded re-release Monster Hunter G, and its PSP port Monster Hunter Freedom.

Since the game has virtually no story, the novel is largely original, focusing on a young and inexperienced Hunter as he heads to the city and learns the ropes from legitimately skilled veterans he just happens to meet... while also getting mixed up in conflicts with wildlife preservation activists and corrupt authority figures of the kingdom (volume 1). He then goes... more>> on to challenge an unfamiliar monster to prove his worth, and is later forced to risk his life fighting a strange monster to rescue a friend (volume 2). Each volume is a self-contained story arc, so it's perfectly fine to stop at volume 2 for now, as the last two volumes aren't translated yet. The tone is mostly serious and gritty, with some humor during the downtime sections and great emotional impact during key story moments and fight scenes.

Also, for what little bit of story the game has, it's included as one of the characters' backstory, so there's no need to play the game itself. I'd still recommend being somewhat familiar with any of the titles though, at least to have a little reference for monsters and terminology.

I've already read all for volumes in Thai translation and original Japanese, and also two volumes of the English fan translation. The fan translation on Baka-Tsuki is contributed by the user "Barnnn" and is good quality overall, preserving the tone of scenes and keeping terminologies consistent with the games, though their English writing is a bit unrefined. <<less