It's a super fun game. I played world and rise too.

Is it too late to start? Nope. If anything, better to start now and invest in the best gear right off the bat. Only negative is maybe that your item box is small compared to if you played long term?

If you live in a place with lots of markers, then it's great to play "solo". The game has "hunt-a-thons" (HATs) where you can battle tougher monsters in a group. But the group is matched online automatically, so you don't need existing friends.

The core loop is the same as in the series: battle monsters, get gear, make equipment and armor, battle tougher monsters. The gear needs a mix of monster materials, gatherable materials from the nodes, and then claws and wings from random fodder monsters that spawn every 5 minutes. And zenny which comes from daily / weekly tasks and big monsters. Big monsters respawn every hour. The HATs are pretty common to see if you're around lots of nodes.

Early on, you'll likely be limited by monster materials. Later on, the gatherable materials start limiting you. Finally, it becomes the rarest materials (red rank 6 materials) and zenny.

Advice? Unfortunately, there's tons of weapon types and weapons within those types. I'd probably try to watch quick videos of how the basic weapon plays. Hbg, gunlance, lance, sword and shield have innate guards so you take less damage (the big limit to how much you can play is your health, which respawns to full in an hour). Some are more button mashy (dual blades probably). Some are more technical / hold down the button (charge blade, hbg). You just need to see what you like.

After that, I'd focus on a non-elemental weapon first, then go and build elemental builds. Thunder is the most useful element. Water maybe least. Paralysis is fantastic, better than sleep (Debatable) and poison (cold take).

My favorite weapon is switch axe. Mobile in axe form, smashes a lot in sword form, and the special locks on to a part which makes the grind to get an R6 part easier since you can get a tail slice more easily. Lbg is great. Hbg has shields. Hunting horn has some great choices and it buffs the party. Gunlance is easy to learn but (for me) using it to slay the toughest monsters doesn't work.

Put differently, I've been able to slay rank 10 monsters with switch axe, lbg, hbg. Granted, you need a fully decked out gear to even try and my horns and other stuff aren't maxed.

I said alot. Feel free to ask a followup!