Monster Hunter Frontier is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game Spin-Off of the Monster Hunter franchise, instead of being released for consoles it was released for computers, employing a monthly fee to play it. The game puts a higher emphasis on multiplayer, opting to go for a full online experience requiring online servers entirely to play. Using Monster Hunter 2 (dos) as its base, it nonetheless goes in a very different direction, starting from having no story or plot and taking place entirely within the Mezeporta Square, a Hub City where more than 30 hunters can gather and have fun, prepare for quests or do other social activities together. The original version (Season 1.0) was released in June 21, 2007 for Japan, August 2008 for South Korea and June 24, 2010 in China (though it was released there for the Xbox 360).
Unlike most other games in the franchise, Frontier did not receive a traditional Updated Re-release but instead received Expansion Pack patches (known as "Seasons") that expanded the game's content with new monsters, weapons, maps, mechanics and more. In April 17, 2013 the game received an Expansion Pack that changed its name to Monster Hunter Frontier G and introduced the G-Rank quests, monsters, weapons, armor, materials, etc. It was also given releases on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation Vita and Wii U the same year in the following months, the game allowed for crossplay between all the platforms except for the Wii U which had its own servers. Another expansion was released in April 23, 2014, renaming the game G Genuine and introducing a new weapon type: The Battle Tonfas, which had the special ability of switching between cutting and impact damage.
In November 9, 2016 Frontier G Genuine was updated into Frontier Z (later Z Zenith) which introduced the Zenith species as their main feature, which are stronger versions of existing monsters with whole slews of new powers and abilities, a year later the game celebrated it's tenth anniversary. In September 26, 2018 Frontier Z was renamed Frontier Z Zenith and given its last update, introducing the Magnet Spike, a weapon that works differently from all others and is based on switching between cutting and impact damage as well as employing magnetism to move around in the air and get close to monsters to fight. The game's servers were ultimately shut down in the year of 2019 due to the developers not having much ideas left anymore and simply finding the second generation's engine too difficult to keep using, wanting to move on to the newer technologies of the more recent generations. As such, December 18, 2019 marked the last day of Frontier.
The game does not have a "true" flagship monster, though its many seasons have their own flagship each. The most recognizable out of the flagships and even the monsters is perhaps the Flying Wyvern Espinas, introduced in Season 3.0 and had multiple reappearances as the flagship of future seasons thanks to its subspecies, rare species, and Zenith species. The monster made its first mainline appearance in Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak.
The game employs examples of the following tropes:
- Achilles' Heel: All Zenith Monsters innately have one in their Zenith part, or the body part that has been mutated or enlarged. Given that this is what gives them most of their strength and/or performs most of their strongest abilities, breaking it, although difficult, will generally cripple the beast for what's left of the fight, on top of being the only way to actually get their most exclusive material. This does vary on a case-by-case basis: some extremes include Zenith Doragyurosu, who will outright lose most of its attacks if its horn is broken, as opposed to Zenith Hyujikiki, who will barely be affected at all if you break its spikes, with most of the others falling somewhere in between.
- Adaptive Ability: The appropriately named Adaptability skill, if the user is at a high enough HP value, cause the damage type of the user's weapons to change depending on what is most effective against the target struck.
- All Your Powers Combined: Many of the most powerful skills starting from the lategame will be "combination skills", or ones that combine multiple lesser skills into a single skill; for example, the "Three Worlds" skill combines Earplugs, Tremor Resistance, and Wind Resistance into one. Not only does this make it easier to acquire multiple key skills at once, it also serves as a way to fit more skills into the skill cap.
- Attack Reflector: The aptly named Reflect skill allows guarding weapons to retaliate with a blunt attack whenever blocking a hit. Naturally, one of the original main providers of the skill, Hyujikiki, has a similar defensive stance in its fight.
- Boss Rush: The Hunting Road is an endless battle gauntlet where each stage has the party choose one of two randomly selected monsters of gradually increasing strength to fight, with a fight against the "Emperor" White Fatalis every 10 stages. Hunters are notably forbidden from bringing items, instead having to use currency from slaying monsters to buy temporary consumables, and are given 3 carts each, with the campaign continuing until all hunters are out of lives. At the end, it offers points, goodies, and new items in the shop for said points depending on how far you got.
- Canon Foreigner: Many of the monsters, areas, mechanics, weapons, hunting assistants and characters introduced in this game have yet to appear in the mainline series.
- Cap Raiser: Zenith Skills provide one level of a skill immediately when active and, if you already had that skill maxed out, will increase the cap of that skill's level to let you make it even stronger. Of note is the Skill Slots Up Zenith Skill, which increases the limit of how many skills you're allowed to have active at once, up to 7 more from the original.
- Darker and Edgier: As the game progressed, it gradually turned darker for both monsters and hunters. First many monsters started to show far more aggressive and murderous intent than previous ones, hunters were now not only just fainted by attacks but could now die (though you'd still be sent back to camp as if nothing happened unless you were carted a third time) with certain attacks (such as Zenith Akura Vashimu dragging you under the sand to eat you offscreen, Barlagual sucking up your body fluids, Zenith Doragyurosu liquefying you with unstable Dragon element, or Laviente and Zenith Khezu swallowing you whole). Also monsters like Supremacy Pariapuria count, as it is a blood-coated version of a usually goofy monster with its lair covered in dozens of Bullfango and Bulldrome corpses with blood splattered everywhere.
- Discard and Draw: The Heaven and Storm Styles for weapons unlocked at Elite Rank (with Earth Style being the default) generally discard one or more functions of the weapon in exchange for either enhancing an existing one or adding a new one. The Extreme Style, unlocked in G Rank, instead largely combines the movesets of all three styles at once, albeit losing some power in its individual moves.
- Dungeon Crawling: The Sky Corridor sub-mode has hunters traversing a series of ancient ruins in search of treasure while avoiding or fighting all of the various traps, terrain hazards, and wandering monsters. It can also be accessed as a Boss-Only Level for hunts against the Duremudira.
- Expansion Pack: This game's expansions were divided first in numbered seasons (Season 1.0/1.1/1.2, Season 2.0/2.1/2.2, etc.) then came a bigger expansion in the overhaul of the Forward expansions which were followed up by the G expansion, which itself received an expansion in G Genuine, followed by Z, and concluded by Z Zenith.
- Expy Coexistence: Among the mainline monsters that were eventually added to the game were Nargacuga, Barioth, Uragaan, Deviljho, Amatsu and Gore Magala who all had Suspiciously Similar Substitutes in the game beforehand.
- Gathering Steam: A recurring theme among many of the lategame armor skills and some weapons is the need to build up buffs by blocking, evading, or dealing attacks. Examples include Rush, Thunder Clad, Ice Age, and Furious.
- Infinity +1 Element: Downplayed; Frontier adds in unique elements that act as a combination of multiple elements at the same time, each one simultaneously dealing damage equal to a listed percentage of the elemental stat.For example While this sounds like the trope in question, it ends up not being the case since the elements in question tend to not actually be inflicted at full power, so for monsters that are largely weak to a specific element, using a pure element weapon will likely be better.note
- Life Drain: The Vampirism armor skill allows the user to recover HP when dealing damage, while also buffing their attack when draining health.
- Non-Player Companion:
- Aside from Felynes you can bring to hunts, this game also features a Partner hunter that you can give equipment and items to and spend points to give them skills, as well as hireable NPC hunters to help you on difficult hunts. You do need a ticket to hire the stronger Legendary Rastas, though.
- Halks are flying wyverns that assist the hunter during gameplay as Support Party Members that can be given skill books to gain abilities such as healing their hunter, attacking monsters with elemental breath, knocking hunters out of statuses or detecting monsters on the map.
- Poogies can be brought to assist on hunts once you unlock the Tore feature, periodically appearing mid-hunt to give you items. They can also be given Skill Cuffs which give your hunter more points into specific skills, similarly to decorations.
- One-Hit Kill: In multiple flavors:
- Many monsters starting from late High Rank to early G-Rank will have combo attacks that deliver two or more potentially fatal blows in succession, often chaining the first one into the subsequent ones to prevent escape. This is specifically designed to bypass Last Chance Hitpoint skills like Guts.
- Some attacks will deliver an obscene number of hits (as in anywhere between a few dozen to several hundred) that ignore Mercy Invincibility, ensuring a near-instant death if you remain in the attack for more than a second (or just get touched at all), unless you're a Lance player with enough guarding skills to completely negate chip damage instead of only reducing it. These include the beam attacks used by Zenith Toridcless, Zenith Rukodiora, and Emperor Fatalis.
- Some endgame monsters, particularly Zeniths, have attacks or gimmicks that, if they connect, will cause an instant faint no matter the target's health or skills. "Faint" is a generous descriptor for many of these, as many of them will outright kill the hunter without leaving anything behind.
- Purple Is Powerful: Subverted when it comes to weapon sharpness. Purple sharpness, the highest sharpness level in the console and handheld games, is superceded by cyan sharpness.
- Serial Escalation: After a while, the developer team began to make much harder and Harder Than Hard versions of existing monsters in updates, seeing as most of the other ways to expand the game were running out in terms of ideas. Same can be said for the newer species such as the Burst and Origin Species, or later, especially the Zenith or Extreme Species, which turn their original species' abilities up to eleven.
- Superboss:
- The Extreme Species/Musou Monsters are the single toughest challenges in the game, featuring variants of existing monsters with absurdly high stats and incredibly over-the-top moves that more often than not flooded the entire screen with hitboxes. Players could choose to Repel the monster (which toned down their stats to a slightly more reasonable level) within 20 minutes, which would give an item used to create special decorations and armor, or Slay the monster at its full strength, which would usually entail killing a lightning-fast, one-shotting beast with roughly a million HP within 10 minutes or less. However, the slaying provides no exclusive reward, merely dropping the original special item at a greatly increased quantity so the victor wouldn't have to grind as much, although most players that actually challenge them do so for the challenge and not the drops.
- The "Upper" Shiten/Solstice War variants of Vorsphyroa and Unknown function the same as their usual counterparts, but have their stats cranked up the wazoo even considering their normal variants, ensuring they tank damage like no tomorrow while being able to deal twice an endgame player's health bar with so much as a scratch, all while having a ten minute time limit. They're largely optional to do outside of build optimization, as they drop materials to craft a special tier of weapon Sigils even higher than the normal Solstice ones.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Various mainline monsters debuting after the game's release that weren't added to the game in later updates were instead given similar substitutes whose only difference usually was the setting where they were fought and designs. Examples are Lagiacrus and Agnaktor who get a composite substitute in the form of Kuarusepusu, Deviljho which gets Abiorugu and other composite substitute monsters in Nargacuga, Barioth and their subspecies getting Dyuragaua and Hyujikiki. Some of them were lessened after the aforementioned monsters were much later added to the game.
- Takes One to Kill One: The only thing that can protect against Zenith statuses and disruptions is a Zenith skill of your own, namely one that will raise the cap of the normal skill to the point where they can resist the massive strength of the Zenith species. While wind pressure, tremors, and roars can be outright negated with the right skills, Zenith Paralysis, Poison, and Sleep can only be mitigated instead. Weapons made with Zenith parts also come with a special Zenith Partbreaker perk that, naturally, increases the damage dealt to a Zenith's signature part and makes them easier to shut down.
- Took a Level in Badass:
- Any monster from later games (e.g. Nargacuga, Zinogre, Gore Magala) are now classified as Exotic Species with new, incredibly souped-up attacks and rage states. In exchange, their equipment is a good bit stronger than that of other monsters around their tier, notably providing a full skill that doesn't count towards the skill cap just by equipping a single piece.
- All three Fatalis variants are given unique variations (often nicknamed "Black Flame Fatalis", "Crimson Demon Fatalis", and "Emperor Fatalis" to distinguish them) in G-Rank, packing hugely revamped movesets, fight mechanics, difficulty, and gear. The former two are classified as Conquest War monsters that are fought over multiple levels of dramatically escalating difficulty, while the latter is a Recurring Boss in the Hunting Road sub-mode.
- Updated Re-release: An updated, expanded version of Monster Hunter 2 (dos), albeit with various music pieces replaced with original compositions. It since was massively expanded over multiple generations until far dwarfing the game it was based on.
- Video Game Raids: The resident "siege" fight is against the Raviente, a colossal Kaiju of a monster that dwarfs the very arena it's faced in. Multiple parties of hunters will have to work together over multiple hunts to whittle down the beast and finally kill it through cumulative damage.
