Best Monster Hunting Games for PS5 & PS4

Why it's here: Start here, and if you only ever own one of these, stop here too. World is the entry that made the series legible: track a beast through its own ecosystem, learn which parts break, then build the next weapon out of what you carved off it. The recurring complaint in Steam reviews is the cutscene gating that leaves friends idling at the start of a hunt. Rated Teen, 4.71 from over 126,000 players, the highest-rated Monster Hunter here. This is the one I would clear first.

Why it's here: The pick for hunting alone. Forbidden West is the western answer to the formula: scan a machine, find the component that falls off when you shoot it, then rip it loose and fire it back. No party to assemble, no lobby to wait in. The complaint that repeats in PlayStation Store reviews is the upgrade layer, which buries good gear behind resource menus. Rated Teen, 4.63 from 63,000 players. If co-op is the part of monster hunting you would rather skip, take this one.

Why it's here: Wilds is the softest landing the series has ever offered, which is why it sits third and not first. It explains its own systems, keeps a mount under you between fights, and drops the loading screens that used to sit between camp and quarry. The technical state is the asterisk: Steam reviews were brutal about crashes and frame pacing through 2025, before Capcom's early-2026 performance patches turned the recent score around. Rated Teen, 4.10 from 88,000 players. If the older games have ever bounced you, this is your entry point.

Why it's here: The story pick, and free if you already pay for PS Plus Extra. Aloy's hunt is a mystery as much as a fight, since every machine you take apart is a clue about who built it and why the world ended. Steam reviewers are consistent that the human enemies are the weak half of the combat, so the robots are the reason to stay. Rated Teen, on PS Plus Extra, 4.74 from over 215,000 players, the highest-rated and most-reviewed game on this list. Play it before Forbidden West.

Why it's here: Built for an hour after work. Rise cuts the travel and the setup, hands you a Wirebug that turns every cliff into a shortcut, and gets you into the fight in about a minute, so a hunt ends while you still have evening left. Steam reviewers consistently flag the Rampage defense missions as the part they skip, and nothing is lost by skipping them. Rated Teen, 4.25 from 18,000 players, with four-player lobbies. Short sessions make this the Monster Hunter to own.

Why it's here: Not a hunting game by name, but the griffin settles the argument: you climb it, it takes off with you still holding on, and the fight carries on in the air. This is the roaming entry on the list, where the monster finds you on the road instead of waiting behind a quest board. Steam reviewers are blunt that the enemy roster repeats long before the map runs out. Rated Mature 17+, 4.05 from 38,000 players. Choose it when you want the world between the hunts to matter.

Why it's here: Speed is the whole pitch. God Eater 3 trades Monster Hunter's weight for anime pace: dashes that cancel into air combos, a weapon that shifts from blade to gun mid-swing, and missions that resolve in ten minutes rather than forty. Steam reviewers who like it still say the mission variety thins out well before the postgame does. Rated Teen, 4.50 from 5,900 players, with lobbies up to eight. The right call if hunt length is what has kept you away from the genre.

Why it's here: The deepest grind on this list, and the rare case where the extra content is tracked rather than padded. Rage Burst folds God Eater 2 and its expansion into one package, with character episodes, blood arts and weapon trees that keep unlocking long past the credits. Steam reviewers do say the mission structure repeats. Rated Teen, 4.59 from 7,300 players, the highest-rated God Eater here. Worth the hours when you want a single hunting game to live in for a season.

Why it's here: The odd one, and the only hunt here built for PlayStation first. You play a prisoner serving a million-year sentence, cutting years off it by hauling citizens away from building-sized Abductors with a grappling line called a Thorn. Steam reviews split on whether the remaster fixed enough, with crashes the complaint that repeats. Rated Teen, 4.25 from 1,400 players, the smallest review base on this list, and eight-player co-op. Buy it for the premise and the Thorn, not for a polished package.

Why it's here: Last, and listed with a warning rather than a recommendation. Wild Hearts owns the best single idea here, the Karakuri system, which lets you build springs, walls and whole watchtowers mid-fight and turn an arena into a trap. What it lacks is a stable technical base and a population: crashes and stuttering dominate its Steam reviews, and EA stopped content support months after the 2023 launch. Rated Teen, 3.67 from 6,200 players, the lowest rating on this list. Take it on sale, solo, knowing that.