1. Learning the moves of a monster you have to fight helps immensely.

Either get bodied a few times and take notice of their moves, or watch videos of fights against any given monster.

2. Adjusting your weapons and armor for the monsters resistances and vulnerabilities.

As others have said, the old monster hunter games are best played as a turn based battle. Take the fights slow. Stay safe and watch exactly what the monster does. Only go in for an attack when you know it's safe. You might time out on a few monsters the first time, but every hunt you will get faster, as you figure out both the monster and your own moveset. The caveat though is you need to make sure you're paying attention! Just going by feel will get you wrecked and you won't learn anything doing it. Always be watching and analyzing. You can spend 10 hours throwing yourself at the monster and get 10% better, or you can spend 1 hour learning the monster and get 50% better.

Another thing to be aware of is that these games are capital S Slow. Fights are going to take forever, and that's only going to get worse when you get into the guild quests, which are intended to be played with 4 person parties. Singleplayer health scaling was not added until World. If you've been wailing on a monster and it's just not going down, don't get discouraged. As long as you're doing damage and not getting hit, you've got 50 whole minutes to kill the monster. You'll get it eventually, I promise. Just keep at it and at some point you'll break through, and the thrill of having conquered what once seemed so impossible will bring you a rush like no other! Good luck, and happy hunting.

Lance is the best! But it's also one of the hardest to use effectively.

Look up the actual combos, because most of the games I've played in the series do not tell you every single combo you can do in game, and some of them are extremely helpful. Especially with the lance.

It helps to think of fights against monsters as a turn-based encounter. As long as you can dodge or the monster misses its attack, you should be able to land a hit. If you get hit or are too far away when the monster attacks, you probably won't be able to land any meaningful offense or heal without getting punished for it.

I was introduced to MH with Freedom Unite, then convinced to jump onto the World bandwagon, but it wasn’t until Rise that it finally “clicked”. It might have been that I discovered I am more a Light Bowgunner than anything else, but I enjoyed the heck out of Rise, then discovered I actually love playing LBG in World.

Unfortunately Freedom Unite is still a step too far out of “modern streamlined” for me to really enjoy, but perhaps if I tried LBG there as well, I could finally find a way to look past all the inconveniences.

Lance or sword and shield might be good to stay a bit safer and learn the monsters. This game series is all about understanding what you're fighting, they will all have a "tell" when they go to do something. Some might take one step backwards and arch in a specific way, some might make a specific noise, and they'll always follow with a specific move. You have to understand what they're going to do so you can figure out how much time you have to attack.

You're going to die a bunch, but after a while you'll come to know how the monster you're fighting will move and it will get easier.

After all that also get to learn the skills that come with armor pieces, you want specific skills to compliment play styles. I don't remember freedom unite specifically, but for weapons with a shield you'd want a skill called "guard" that improves how blocking works, whether it's taking less stamina when you get hit or allowing you to block once unblockable moves.

And as others have said, with the older monster hunter games you have to learn "the claw" lol they had absolutely atrocious camera controls

I keep editing as I remember other important things lol there's a move called the "superman dive" that will save your ass. When your weapon is put away and you're running AWAY from an attack, you can "roll" but it will make you do a dive that makes you invulnerable for a bit. You cannot be moving towards the monster or it won't work and you'll just do a normal roll. I also don't remember if freedom unite has this as well, but in most monster hunter games you don't have to get up when you get hit to the ground. If a monster knocks you down and you see they're following with another move just don't move, let your character stay down and you shouldn't get hit.