The Dota 2 Monster Hunter collaboration was good, but had missed opportunities

I’ve been playing Dota 2 (including DotA Allstars) and Monster Hunter since I was in high school. For perspective — and because I’ve revealed my age on more than a few occasions here on Hotspawn — that was back in 2011 at the very latest. Dota being a massive part of my life is already evident by the fact that I’m writing this article, but Monster Hunter is almost on the same level to me.

So when Valve announced that there would be a collaboration between them and Capcom involving those two titles, you can bet I was pretty excited. Two of my favorite things in the world getting together? Sign me up. But now that the collab is over, why don’t I feel completely satisfied?

Capturing the essence

So as not to start off on a negative note, I will give Valve this: they translated the Monster Hunter grinding experience pretty well upon bringing it to Dota 2. For those that didn’t play during the event, here’s a summary of how the Dota 2 x Monster Hunter collaboration worked: you had to craft individual skins yourself by gathering specific materials, which were dropped by specific heroes. Winning granted more materials than losing, and you also got bonus drops for killing a targeted hero at the start of the game — which you had the freedom to choose.

For example, if you wanted the Dragon Knight Rathalos Armor set, you had to gather things like Rathalos Carapace and Rathalos Rubies, which were dropped only by a limited list of heroes. This made the event play out pretty much like a less restrictive version actual Monster Hunter, where materials would only be obtainable from hunting the monsters they were named after.

As a longtime fan of the franchise, I can say that this was a truly delightful way of merging the two games together. And while I tried not to let the tunnel vision get to me and change what I would otherwise normally do in a pub, I will admit that hitting my hunt objectives always felt damn good.

I also want to commend Valve for including the Hero Atlas, complete with Monster Hunter-style artwork of each hero. It incentivized players to go out of their comfort zones and try new heroes. The lore progression in this was fantastic, and added a ton of flavor on top of the goodies on offer.

Incidentally, the presence of the Hero Atlas helped to solve one of the problems that the event presented — that it was going to be difficult to get all the materials organically if there was no reason for anyone to play something they normally don’t. Overall, it’s clear that a lot of love and care was put into this event, and that whoever it was at Valve that cooked everything up didn’t just phone it in.

Elusive quarry

But even with that in mind, the event unfortunately still felt too grindy, especially for casual players that didn’t have the time to bang out game after game to farm materials. And given Dota 2’s older playerbase relative to other esports titles, I’m not going to pretend that doesn’t apply to most of us. The amount of materials you had to go after was a bit much, and I wasn’t even able to complete some of the sets as a result.

And for the unlucky among us, crafting all the cosmetics truly ended up becoming impossible. I’m sure there’s more than a couple thousand players out there that got left high and dry, by never encountering the heroes they needed to drop specific materials. Indeed, several of my own friends didn’t get to collect everything before the event ended on February 6th.

This obviously isn’t a problem in a game like Monster Hunter where you can play alone and don’t have to pray that the opposing team picks the hero that you need. Monster Hunter also allows you to farm materials in your own time, while the crossover with Dota 2 was a limited-time event. Given the cost of licensing IPs, it’s hard to imagine that we’ll get another crack at it.

Where are the actual monsters?

And now for my biggest gripe about this event: the lack of skins on the many non-humanoid heroes in Dota 2. How in the world can you do a Monster Hunter collaboration and not even touch Primal Beast? That’s an absolute layup if I’ve ever seen one, and yet Valve failed to capitalize on it with some Tigrex-themed skins. Winter Wyvern as Velkhana? Phoenix as Teostra? Hello? What are we even doing here?

Hell, Lala Barina debuted in Monster Hunter Wilds just under a year ago, and somehow it didn’t occur to anyone in Valve that Broodmother should get something from it. The monsters themselves are the bread and butter of, you know, the game called Monster Hunter — so it’s baffling that this ball was dropped so hard.

If — and this is a big if — we somehow get a second part to this collaboration in the future, I need Valve to recognize this massive mistake. Yes, it’s fun to play Fashion Hunter as it is in the actual game, but come on, man. Now, I will concede that it’s entirely possible that Capcom only gave the developers a limited set of monsters to work with. But given all the possible combinations here, Valve maybe having their hands tied would nevertheless be utterly disappointing.

Overall thoughts

But even with the negatives I just presented, I was still pretty happy with the collab in the end. Could it have been better? Oh yeah, absolutely. Did Valve do what they could given the legal and intellectual limitations that normally come with a crossover event? Sure, I’d say so. And as someone that holds this franchise near and dear to their heart, it was really cool to see it all on the same screen as one of the games that changed the course of my life.

I can certainly empathize with those that didn’t really care for it, though. If you’re not a fan of Monster Hunter, I can see why you would think that the skins were mid relative to what we’ve got in the past, and why you would think the event itself was mid as well. To be fair, it always had big shoes to fill in this regard, knowing how amazing like Aghanim’s Labyrinth and Crownfall were as limited-time events.

If I had to rate this collaboration on a scale of 1 to 10, I’d say it was a solid 7.5. Lots of room for improvement, but as a whole I felt like Valve eked out a pretty healthy amount of content after Capcom gave them the green light.