User blog comment:Kogath/Monster Hunter X Discussion/@comment-4502434-20151020002955

I was looking at the monster numbers, and they seem lower than the previous games, 4U particularly has a lot more than X at the moment, but I realized the reason is becase near half the monsters of that game are subspecies. Most of them were done pretty well, but the 43 present in 4U are all unique, non-subspecies monsters (unless you count the Iodrome as a subspecies of the Velocidrome, which it pretty much is.) In 3U there are 29 seperate base species, if I counted correctly. In 4U there are 46 large monster breeds, excluding subpecies, again assuming I counted right. We're actually then pretty close on totally unique monters.

Though I like well done subspecies, these monsters all being pretty unique, I think, is better. I think it's likely we'll actually end up with more unique non-subpecies monsters than any other Monster Hunter game so far, though, unless subspecies suddenly appear, less total monsters to fight than 4U had.