A recent feature in online publication Venture Beat talks about Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate‘s success in the West and its journey through localisation. Since its launch one year ago today in the West, the title has become the fastest selling Monster Hunter game outside of Japan, with over 1 million copies shipped to retailers within two months of its release.
The feature talks about the long localisation process, including everything from translating the tons of dialogue in the game, to adding icons to help in areas where text menus could not be expanded. Game director Kaname Fujioka mentioned that the icons were used where the Japanese word would fit, but changing it to English with the same font size would impact readability:
“For example, the Japanese word for ‘fire’ is only one letter, but in English it’s four, and we couldn’t change the font size to accommodate the translation without impacting readability, so we switched it to an easy-to-understand icon,”
The team who worked on localisation of the title also worked on making Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate more user friendly for beginners. This involved adding more tutorials for players as well as reminders and prompts within the game.
Other changes also included the creation of Palicoes that helped out Hunters within the game, this helped aid players even further by having them fight for them and also the extra dialogue about types of armour that can be forged.
“We wanted to make the most intuitive Monster Hunter title that we could, so we reviewed the action portions and game progress, and planned more intuitive tutorials to help player progression.”
Fujioka also spoke with Venture Beat about the addition of online multi-player to the title. One of the previous titles, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate for the 3DS, did not have online functionality but the Wii U version did. This time around the team were keen to introduce online multi-player for the 3DS in the western release of Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate.
“Obviously in Europe and North America it’s very difficult to play with others locally due to everyone being so spread out, so having online multiplayer in the game really showed the appeal of Monster Hunter’s multiplayer to a wide range of players.”
Founder and CEO of Capcom, Kenzo Tsujimoto, also adds that the demo prior to release contributed greatly to the title’s success in the West, he believes that this was partially due to the fact that it allowed players to realise that the gameplay was beginner-friendly. The team had acted on previous feedback from overseas and made it easier to find monsters in MH4U.
Finally, Tsujimoto and Fujioka also stressed the importance of community events and growing groups of loyal fans of the franchise. They mentioned that going to these events themselves helped get an honest and invaluable opinion from the fans on the game and its development.
“While we haven’t reached the numbers that we see in Japan, the fans who have stuck with us have helped us out a lot, they’ve created their own communities for the game and spread the word out for us. We really appreciate the hard work of those fans!”
You can find more details in the full feature over on Venture Beat.
I really want to try this game but i haven’t had the money.
Best game of 2015 without a doubt.
doubt it
Against Splatoon, Mario Maker and other games outside Nintendo like Undertale, it’s very hard to tell
MH4U isn’t GOTY of 2015. But for me it is!
And I am so glad I got into the series with MH3U for the Wii U.
I bought it back in April and I have only played for maybe 5 hours. I don’t really enjoy it. Don’t know why I still have it.
Monster Hunter is one of the rare games where you have to invest some time until it gets fun. The first 10 hours are mostly boring. Easy quests and the monsters are not really exciting.
But later on the monsters ~get bigger, faster and stronger too~ and then the game pick up.
Its definetly the right game if you enjoy building equipment since you can make an armorset out of everything + weapons. So if you like a monster you can basically wear it :D
Should have a sweet spot for repition though. Some monsters have rare drops which means you have to kill them a lot. The game allows for different strategies though so the first few times it isnt too bad.
Yeah, MH3 was unable to stick its claws in me. Not sure if I should try again or not. :/ I mean there was a time I didn’t like turned based RPGs and now I love them. Maybe I didn’t give it a fair chance.
MH….turn based?
I was only comparing how I first felt about turned based games to how I first felt about the MH series. I know it isn’t turned based. lol I’m just saying I gave turned based games another shot and liked most of them, perhaps I just need to try playing MH again before writing it off completely. x3
I’ve actually had that same experience when I first played Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Persona 3. I just couldn’t get into them, playing them for a little while, I ended up enjoying them a lot. FE and Persona are two of my favorite game series now :3 I always give a game 5 hours to decide if I like it :p
I put SO much time into MH3U on Wii U…like 500+ hours…MH4U came out, got it on launch day and haven’t touched in like 8 months…I just don’t care for it the same, once you’ve played 1 MH game you have played them all. Yes there are new things in it, but you expect me to kill Rathian’s and Rathalos and all these creatures I killed 1,000 times in the last game all over again??? I got better things to do Capcom lol. If each new game had ONLY new monsters it would be better.
I really wanna play a Monster Hunter game… I don’t like how you can attack the cat villagers though >_<
Didn't they make a Pokémon-like spinoff with Monster Hunter monsters?
Monster Hunter Diary: Poka Poka Airou Village?