I always liked the complexity of the combat. You need to observe and find weaknesses, you have various tools used to do things like trap, or pin down the monster. You actually want to switch up your gear to the appropriate monster you're hunting because there isn't a singular "this fucks everything up" set. The actual attacking and shit is very Dark Souls-ish even before Dark Souls existed.

I don't know how much deeper they got in recent times; last one I played was on the Wii. But if they ever added shit like Shadow of the Colossus or Dragon's Dogma where you can climb on large monsters to find and hit their weak point that would be amazing for MH.