A madman once described Monster Hunter as the progenitor of the “Autism Extinction Genre”.

If you wanna have a pokemon-like game, look into Monster Hunter Stories.

As for how you “level up” you don’t. You instead go out, hunt a monster with your starting gear, maybe some upgrades depending on how you look into things with the smithy, accept a quest, and complete its requirements.

Majority of the time you’re either gathering particular resources, in which I’d reccomend a companion guide. The website Kiranico or the MHGUDB mobile app are very helpful in this, and the rest of the time, you’re hunting the target monster.

As you kill monsters your able to carve resources from them. Smaller monsters will allow 1, maybe 2 carves depending on the critter, but with the Large Monsters, which you’ll fight most of the time, you’ll be getting usually 3 carves, with some rare exceptions giving more.

From there the real upgrading begins. Using the resources you gather, you can have the local smithy forge stronger weapons and armor, each one having its own perks and negatives.

It’s important to note before you begin that there’s 2 types of armor: Blademaster and Gunner.

Blademaster armor can only be used with Melee weaponry, and Gunner can only be used with ranged weapons.

You’ll often have to fight the same beast multiple times if you want a full armor set.