This is a challenging game series like Dark Souls with a stiff learning curve. It's big in Japan with annual releases practically like Call Of Duty outside of Japan. You could easily sink 300+ hours into this game grinding large monsters on missions for rare drops to upgrade your armor, weapons or items for crafting better items. MH3U was originally a Wii game -- non U -- and this ups the ante with new weapon classes, new armor, more missioniplayer though, which is major part of the game where half the missions are: I haven't tried it once. I like to play at my own pace and don't want to hold or bes, new monsters and probably a better online match making system. MH3U is essentially an HD upscaled directors cut of the Wii game.About mult held back by anyone as I come up with equipment strategies for hunting or capturing monsters on missions. All multiplayer missions can be attempted solo and regardless of what you've read online, even if you play solo their gonna be harder than the Moga Village single player missions. I've played for about 100 hours and have hit a difficulty wall trying to do level 8 Moga Village quests, got bored and moved onto other things. Where does that leave the online quests you may do solo? As far as I'm concerned, you deserve a pat on the back if you play though enough to defeat the Ceadeus which pretty much sums up the Single player story, but that's only a level 5 difficulty mission. I've thoroughly gotten my money's worth out of this game just playing the Single player to this point and intend on going back to it sometime. This game takes commitment with missions running over 30 minutes commonly, so it's not exactly pick up and play. Managing your items and equipment can also be quite time consuming. There's no HP number system for yourself or the monsters you fight, just meters without numbers for yourself and NONE AT ALL on the monsters. For the large monsters you need to pay attention to their mannerisms to estimate how much health they have left. Limping while running away means their health is low and ready to capture and salivating means their stamina is low and ready to eat. In a nutshell, you attack big monsters until they get injured, then you attack them until they die.This game series is well suited for local coop among friends which is why it's primarily a 3DS game series now. Having 4 Wii Us setup in the same room would be a challenge and I'm not qualified to judge mic chat on Wii U because I've never heard or have used it. MH3U must be the best entry in the series on console. It sounds like the series has expanded a lot since the PS2 days when it originally debuted like Pokemon has evolved over the years. I find myself playing sitting back in a recliner with my feet up, my Wii U gamepad plugged into the wall so it never runs out of juice. MH3U supports OFF-TV PLAY so you can play everything from the gamepad screen. I actually prefer it that way because my seating for the TV where the Wii U is hooked up is a bit too far for me to read the small text in the game. I can read everything well enough on the wide screen SD screen up close compared to 8 feet away on a 42-inch 1080p TV.My biggest criticism of the game maybe the small text being unchangeable for TVs. Sit up close or play entirely on your gamepad to remedy. The Wii U gamepad maybe the best handheld Nintendo has ever made from the way I use it. I don't like handheld consoles, but in-home streaming from a beefier box somewhere to a comfortable controller w/screen is a wholenother story.My biggest tip to learning how to play this game is to find someone who knows what they're doing and pick their brain. Monster Hunter Wikis are your best friend for charts for item combos, weapon crafting trees and armor crafting requirements. Don't know what something is or does, look it up! You could play the Wii version emulated on Dolphin for now or take it as a demo for what's going on in MH3U. The flexibility and functionality of being able to customize how you wish to play the game by altering what's displayed on your TV screen and Wii U gamepad while doing your missions is a testament of how in depth this game is. This game series is not for everyone. Tread lightly and keep asking questions.