‘Final Fantasy x Monster Hunter’ was a dream collaboration for Japanese gamers—except for one tiny issue. And that detail was so important that Capcom and Square Enix had to re-release the game just to fix it. Rathalos, Capcom’s iconic flying wyvern, first landed in Eorzea in 2018, but MMORPG players had to wait until 2021 to finally sever its tail—just like in the original Monster Hunter games.

Japan loves crossovers, and it’s not uncommon to see popular games featuring guest appearances from other franchises. Back in 2018, one of the most exciting collaborations in recent gaming history took place: Final Fantasy XIV x Monster Hunter: World. At the time, Capcom’s hunting game was still relatively new, but it had already become the company’s biggest release ever. This collaboration brought exclusive thematic content to both games.

Monster Hunter: World players got to battle the legendary Behemoth and even earn a Dragoon class emote, while Final Fantasy XIV players received new minions—like a Felyne companion or the beloved village mascot, Poogie. But the real highlight was the exclusive Rathalos fight, introduced in the 4.36 update during the Stormblood expansion.

The Near-Perfect Crossover with One Glaring Omission

Given the similarities between the two franchises, this crossover made perfect sense, and fans of one were likely interested in the other. However, the Final Fantasy XIV community had one major complaint: the Rathalos encounter was missing one of the most iconic mechanics from Monster Hunter—the ability to sever the wyvern’s tail. Without this, the fight felt incomplete.

If you’re unfamiliar with the series, cutting off monster parts is a key feature in Monster Hunter. Many rare materials used to craft weapons and armor can only be obtained this way, and in some cases, severing or breaking body parts even alters a monster’s behavior mid-fight.

Square Enix’s developers clearly understood the importance of this mechanic. The Final Fantasy XIV Rathalos fight allowed players to damage its tail—but not fully sever it. Naoki Yoshida, the game’s director (and more recently, the creative mind behind Final Fantasy XVI), explained in a live stream at the time that there was a legal reason behind this limitation.

The Solution? A Re-Release

Fast forward to 2021, and patch 6.0 finally addressed this missing detail. According to Reddit user SPECTR_Eternal, a new visual effect was introduced—players could now see Rathalos’ severed tail for the first time. But how was this possible? The answer lies in Japan’s strict rating board, CERO, which prohibits depictions of severed limbs in certain age-rated games. If Square Enix wanted to add this mechanic, they had only one option: re-release the game with an updated rating label.

The story could have ended there, but Yoshida and his team clearly hadn’t forgotten about the missing tail cut. In 2021, alongside the launch of the Endwalker expansion, the patch notes for version 6.0 contained a small but significant detail: “A new visual effect has been added to Rathalos’ tail.” Conveniently, this update was released alongside a physical collector’s edition of the game, which gave Square Enix the perfect excuse to sneak in the feature fans had been waiting for since 2018.

Source: 3djuegos