Like the minigames you mentioned, there is one major difference between Frontier and the PSP MH games: interaction between hunters outside of mission.

The PSP games are designed with the idea that they players are sitting face to face, and can therefore interact with eachother directly. Frontier on the other hand has to facilitate player interaction. Those minigames you mentioned, as well as contests and hunting events.

Even the post-release support is different… P2G will get new missions now and then, but Frontier gets new weapons and armour, as well as other significant content all the time.

And speaking of equipment, the balancing for armours strength and skills is VERY different from P2G. In MHF you can get amazing skillsets that featuring a huge list of powerful skills are impossible to get in one set in P2G. And now they’re even bringing out these weird ranged weapons that let players choose between the safety of a long weak weapon, or the super attack power of a risky short weapon.

And then comes the question of why you even need these (compared to P2G anyways) super powerful equipment. It’s because while the 100s of HR levels doesn’t affect your character directly, it does indicate the difficulty of the game. If P2G had missions as hard as the later ones in MHF, I’m sure we’d be seeing some of the same crazy armour sets as we do in MHF. But we dont. Thats the different between HR9 and HR100+

Sure in general both games look generally the same, and for a while they even play the same, but endgame P2G is VASTLY different from endgame MHF. Add in all the online community supporting elements, and you can see why I feel it’s so wrong to say MHF is just P2G with built-in online.

I play both games and enjoy them but they are very very similar. There is only so much a company can do with a game about killing monsters to collect their body parts for gear.

No something that is different is the wonderful mini game at the bar, that’s not in 2nd G. And the city is different, as if that really matters considering the same type of vendors are around.