Nothing much. But I would recommend Dark Arisen easily since it's a rerelease with not only all the DLC, but new quests and a region (Bitterblack Isle) in addition to the old ones. It's much better than playing both the first game and the expansion to be honest.
I too hope that the Monster Hunter team can losen that grip around their characters. Any character from that verse can work as a fighter, even the biggest beast if we were to go there. Imagine being able to play as the Deviljo in the roster (Or even Rathalos).
Nice to hear. I ended up getting Dark Arisen on PSPlus a while ago and heard good things about it, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't going to miss anything important.
But yeah, both the Hunters, the Felynes and the Monsters can work as Playable characters. The hunters have plenty of weapons and movesets, the Felynes have weapons and Gadgets, like the Tank and Rocket, and depending on the Monster, you can get some cool moveset potentials, not to mention the Monsters come in alot of different sizes, including tiny sizes, so size is definitely not an issue as you could have a human sized Tigrex be playable and whatnot.
Although to be honest, it's hard to imagine Rathalos being playable, due to it's lack of usable limbs. Like it can do bites, tail whips, flips, toe grabs and fireballs, but it can't exactly use it's wings and feet for bunting people and doing crouch attacks. Unlike the likes of Kushala, Tigrex, Zinogre, Brachydios and Gore Magala, who have the extra limbs to swipe and scratch and do anything else that Rathalos can also do, besides fireballs.
I'd especially love to see Brachy or Gore, as Brachy has the slime mechanic and Gore has the Dragon Virus mechanic.
If any of the monsters were to be playable, I'd gladly like to never hear "Ridley would be impossible" ever again.
Too bad for you, as in the main games, you can actually fight monsters that are smaller than your hunter and, in some cases, are actually pretty human-sized. Size is definitely not an argument for why a Monster from Monster Hunter cannot be playable.
Speaking of which, I wonder why the Female Kirin Hunter is heavily requested on Pixiv for a MvC game.
It's because she's hot n' cold isn't it?
It's definitely because of her design. She's got a very popular design among JP Monster Hunter fans. The weapon designs and the Kirin itself also helps. The only other armors that I think reach her popularity are Male Rathalos Blademaster armor, Female Rathian Gunner armor and Female Nargacuga Gunner armor. I don't really know any other armors that reach their popularity, except for maybe the Barioth and Lagiacrus Blademaster armors.