Monster Hunter Stories 3 hits a record player count on Steam for Capcom's cozier spin-off RPG series

Monster Hunter Stories 3 has had the best debut for the series on PC, with almost exactly 20,000 more players at its peak than the previous entry in the RPG spinoff.

While a mainline Monster Hunter release is perhaps the biggest deal when it comes to Capcom's titles, its RPG spinoffs have been quietly leveling up with every release. The original Monster Hunter Stories launched on the Nintendo 3DS back in 2016 and was a fun, novel RPG that felt like a solid Pokemon homage, but not something too intense on the RPG front. Its sequel Monster Hunter Stories 2 felt like a solid, if a bit uneven step up, and from the looks of our Monster Hunter Stories 3 review, the series finally hitting its potential, and the numbers seem to back that up.

According to the stats over on SteamDB, Monster Hunter Stories 3 hit a peak of 54,778 players on Steam on Sunday, March 15, which already cements it as the highest peak of any of the RPG titles. The original Monster Hunter Stories peaked at 2,001 players when it launched on PC in 2024 – although it was a late port of what was at that point an eight-year-old 3DS game – while its sequel, Stories 2: Wings of Ruin, peaked at 34,995 at its launch back in July 2021.

Of course, none of the Stories games are near the heights found by the mainline Monster Hunter entries, with Rise peaking at 231,360, World at 334,684, and the most recent entry, Monster Hunter Wilds, peaking at 1,384,608 during its opening weekend last year. But regardless, it's an impressive win for a spinoff release.

After Monster Hunter Wilds' performance struggles, Capcom says it'll apply the lessons it's learned to future games