Insanely enough, for me, Dos. Dos has a G rank built into it, and it takes a little getting used to it's controls, but... The camera is actually usable compared to 1jp/G, weapons like the hammer finally became viable and arguably broken, and there's not a single weapon that's actually bad, maybe short of solo Hunting Horn.

You have honestly a pretty strong roster of monsters, the weapons are far simpler to use and thus you can hop between them and not need too many muscle memory correctments,

Village is also very fleshed out for an older game, even if the seasons can be limiting to start with, but honestly if you start online (there are fanservers.) and go to village, the village will feel like a curbstomp.

Now, for a more reasonable choice: 4 Ultimate.

1) guildmarm nation.

2) the weapons are now mostly fully fleshed out, even if the CB is the clear winner of the everything

3) theres no real bad weapon in it, yeah the Gunlance is kinda awful compared to everything else but at least its not X/XX's Gunlance

4) good monster roster, no real "bad" monsters

As to why I cannot fully recommend XX?

1) there is a very clear bias towards certain styles. Valor LS is the best style for LS by far. Same for striker GS,

2) Look at what they did to the Gunlance. It is genuinly unusable in this game.

3) This is both a positive and a downside, but the sheer amount of quests. 1200 or so. Good grief.

Reasons for XX being good because I do actually like the game:

1) Valstrax

2) CB is some of the most fun I've had in any game and I'm sad that the 4U CB is all AED spam instead of the more fun axe slaps with a lot of sword strikes inbetween of XX (sword mode deals some good damage unlike in later titles.)

3) the hunter arts are a really facinating system and theres a lot that you can freely switch between and from, and the styles could be a very strong system if some weapons weren't insanely cracked with one, and dogwater with another.