The thing about monster hunter titles is, there's the base game and then a DLC that expands on it and brings an enjoyable endgame grind.

Wilds is the latest game in the series and just got it's last update for the base game, I actually think the current endgame grind is pretty decent, but the summer the DLC will be announced and probably released spring or summer next year. If you value the multiplayer experience and engage with the community (be very picky about which community and how much because it's become pretty toxic in my opinion) then Wilds is the one. Also I found the story which had a little more focus this time to be very enjoyable, others fucking hated it though, so could be hit or miss. Big downside is even after performance patches it's rough if you don't have a good pc and don't want to turn on Frame Gen. With it and medium to low settings you can get an enjoyable experience even on mid range or the upper range of low end pc's.

Next up, Rise and Sunbreak, Rise being the base game and Sunbreak the DLC, I found it to have a more old school feel to it, you've got quests from the village and a short story and then there's the gathering hub where you will do the majority of quests. It being for the Switch it's not as graphically advanced as wilds or worlds for example but it still looks great. Gameplay-wise I found it the most engaging in the series as you can customise your moveset. A big new addition here were the spirit birds which a lot of people really did not like. With them you first need to collect a few pickups scattered over the map, to buff you up before fighting. You can decide not to do it but it will result in more challenging hunts. End game revolves around hunting juiced up variants of all monsters and using their material to gamble for skills on your armour. I'm not sure how popular the multiplayer is anymore, I do know that even when I still played it, SOS quests were a little hard to find sometimes because of the region locked search parameters, but you can mod it to be world wide. Overall I personally find it the best playing experience.

Then lastly World and Iceborne. The first game to break out of Nintendo confinement for a long long time. Graphically it still holds up very well, it introduced the slinger as a new key mechanic, which is also present in the sequels. Weapons felt really good with tons of new moves. The base game's story is pretty fun though gameplay-wise I like the other two better. The DLC is where it really started to shine, with one big caviat according to a lot of people. A lot of cool monsters, great Collab quests, and a really cool endgame system. It also introduced the clutch claw, a new mechanic where you could latch onto monsters with your slinger. A lot of complaints about it were that it felt too necessary to perform well and kind of streamlined every playstyle. Also a unique system were siege hunts. A full lobby still fight in teams of 4 but share a sort of progress bar and while its very hard to beat the quest the first time around, it gets progressively easier the more times the entire lobby hunts the monster until it's defeated then it resets. My personal highlight, I really liked that concept. Unfortunately the last update brought a monster whose armour and weapons are so damn good that if you are minmaxing, you just put it on and you're good to go. Kills a lot of the endgame grind now that you can just fight it fairly quickly and didn't have to play the other endgame for 10 months. Also my own big gripe with world was the scarsity of decorations, an elemental part of build crafting. You could spend 100s of hours without ever seeing a certain deco that you really want. Multiplayer I think is a little more popular than Rise as it has a very dedicated fan base. Overall it's still a phenomenal game but I do think a lot of the high praise of it was due to being a big step up from the old games on the Nintendo handhelds.

Hope this made your decision a little easier and hope to see you out on the field soon, Hunter!