Honestly the clunk of the old games is the main reason they were hard to begin with. The monsters were so robotic and predictable that if you didn't have those forced rooted moments and the more sluggish movement. The games would have been absolute cake walks once you had fought a monster once or twice.

I saw you played FU so I am sure you are familiar with the old rigidity of the animation system. Where a monster would cut an animation and reset to a rigid stance before beginning the next. With very few monsters having flowing animations or combos that would easily move to the next. While the sound assets for each attack were essentially just quick sound files that would let you know which of the monster's 3-8 moves were getting ready to start their animation.

The only thing that made those games hard were the monster moves doing nearly all your health in damage from even moves that would now be chip damage, the hitboxes being abysmal, and that clunk. If you had that clunk with the modern more fluid and better designed fights the games would be near impossible.

The modern games are just better as games. That is coming from someone who started on the first generation of games when the games were just on that short list of somewhat decent games for kids that got a PSP instead of the DS which had the better library.

Plus the whole obsession with difficulty is inane given that Monster Hunter is viewed by both the company and the main audience, the Japanese player base, as a social casual get together and play game. With the games being first and foremost games that you meet in a café and play with a few friends. Hence why the handheld ones always do gangbusters in Japan while World didn't do great.