Got it recently and having fun with it so far, I'm still digesting a lot of the changes and seeing what sticks and doesn't for me compared to the older MH games.
I'm not sure about how to judge it difficulty wise, I have only fought 2 large monsters and it was pretty simple but, I think one just get naturally used to being better at MH that it can make the early game on new entries seem easier, which sounds fairly obvious but,
I started a clean file on MH4 recently, and the game didn't really push me hard besides a few tricky monsters like Khezu and the Gore Magala battles until reaching the sky village, which is 4 to 5 ranks worth of monsters, a lot of them didn't took me around 10 minutes to complete, which is not knock on 4 as the fights are still exciting and you get a good feel for it even in that time frame. It is a sort of contrast that back when I was inexperienced with the series some monsters knocked me out or made me fail the quest outright, and it had been years since I touched the game, but it still didn't felt as intimidating. And some of the later fights can also take so long depending on how well prepared you are weapon and armor wise, you can still win them for sure with some lower power equipment, but it naturally takes longer and making them feel harder.
Is a very rambly paragraph but is how I see MH difficulty having replayed 4 and getting into Rise.
