MHP HR2: A Pair of Giant Shadows

Before heading out on the Monster Hunter Portable quest 'A Pair of Giant Shadows' featuring Rathalos and Rathian—man, this game is tough with all the overpowered small monsters everywhere! Looking through my weapons, I found a nice Light Bowgun that could fire three types of Pellet ammo. I thought using Pellet ammo would be the way to go, but upon closer inspection, I realized it can also fire three kinds of elemental ammo: Fire, Water, and Thunder. It's a bit weaker than what I was using before, but isn't it absolutely perfect for this quest?!

In this game, if you shoot monsters from up on a cliff, their attacks won't hit you at all even if they charge right at you. So cliff cheesing is totally viable. I wonder if this was intentional or just a lack of playtesting? Either way, since the tough Rathalos and Rathian are hard to handle normally, I might as well make full use of it.

On my first try, I casually started with Rathian, which took quite some time. At the very end, Rathalos spent way too much time in the air, and without any Flash Bombs to knock it down, I couldn't defeat it in time and got a time-out.

For my next attempt, I remembered reading somewhere that Rathian circles around in the sky and refuses to land. I thought, 'Wait, isn't that Rathalos instead of Rathian?' so I decided to take out Rathalos first this time instead of Rathian.

However, Rathian flew up into the sky and wouldn't come down. It turned out this wasn't just the famous reputation of old-school Rathalos constantly flying around, but an actual, unavoidable bug with Rathian in this specific Gathering Hall quest where she gets stuck in the sky and literally never lands.

I was so disappointed after spending all that time on it.

I finally cleared it on my third try! By then I had gotten used to the quest, so I managed to defeat both of them in about 15 minutes. The more your skills improve, the better you get at defeating monsters and the faster your kill times become—that really is the best part of Monster Hunter.