215 hours. That's how long it took me to clear this game's main quest mode. I had to really hold back from writing this review prematurely. There is so much to say about this game, and I really had to reign my emotions in until the end and reserve judgement. The entire monster hunter series is a cult favorite, and will generate mixed emotions in whoever gets involved with it.
I have to start by stating that this game is the definitive fraternity adventure RPG. I've covered reviews on fraternity games in the past on this blog, and my opinion has lightened over time with those games, which has been well documented. To reiterate, fraternity games are usually series that require foreknowledge in order to navigate through the universe. Armored Core was one of the other types that I reviews. To start off, I must say, it was hard to make it to the end of the game for various reasons, and I felt myself both appreciative at times and disgusted with the game. Monster Hunter is both the realized dream of all gamers, and a mountain of issues. I'll start by breaking down the insane depth the best way I can. I know fanatics of the series will scoff at me for this.
Gameplay wise, Monster Hunter has been called an action adventure, especially due to the lack of character stat building. However, it is very much an adventure RPG. In this game, you create a male or female character with attributes of your choosing and your own name. Your class of combat type is up to your preference, but still open for being adapted throughout the game. I must say the depth of character creation was more than adequate, and that was refreshingly new for this type of game. You have the following weapon types- Great Swords, Long Swords, Sword and Shield, Hammer, Bowgun, Gunlance, and Dual Swords. These also have subdivisions in the select classes. As far as levels of quests, you start with performing quests for the village elder in preparation to take on quests for the village's guild in the future. These quests more than prepare you. You have armor sets that are designed based on the hides, and remains you harvest from monsters in the field, which are quite extensive, and the ores and items you procure from the field in various settings and location.
The armor sets also have levels, and will depend on the rarity and complexity of the items used to forge it, which become available as the depth of the quest increases. One person put it very well when he said that the difference between this game and so many other RPG's is that rather than the character leveling up, the game is based on player skill and the evolution and leveling up of the person playing. That is extremely true about this game, and what makes it fascinating in its intent. I had to get into the gameplay first because that is where the heart of the greatness and nonsense lies. Of the weapon types I mentioned, there are various elemental inclinations for some of them. You have the standard elements of fire, water, ice, thunder, poison, and dragon type. The monsters you face will have susceptibilities to various elements. Also, many weapons have no affinity to an element and just do raw damage. Hammers specifically, are weapons engendered towards this. Besides these elements, you have various skills that can be added to weapons and armor that increase other combat and non-combat skills.
In this game, every little thing comes into consideration. Your character has a stamina gauge, health gauge, and weapon sharpness gauge. There is a scale uploaded online that shows the many factors that calculated into the damage dealt for a weapon. The sharpness contributes, as well as the area of the enemy, the affinity of the weapon, the element, and the weapon type itself. It is very deep, and not something you can calculate on your own mid battle. The armor sets are designed to be completed for attribute boosts. A particular monster will have abilities that can translate in some way to an armor set if you complete one by building each part of the particular monster armor type. For instance, one of the monsters is a Blangonga. His particular armor set, when completed will include- for a blademaster- A Blango Helm, Blango Plate, Blango Vambraces, Blango Greaves, and Blango Tasset. Once the set is complete, the abilities and drawbacks will take effect when the set is worn. This particular set gives you immunity to cold.
In this game the character is affected by hunger, temperature, fear, tremors, multiple blows, repeated use of a weapon, as well as poison, sleep, burning, freezing, blinding, and other effects. You have to take into consideration, where you are going, and what monster types are present. In the early parts of the game, you will be on location at a snowy mountain range with cliffs and snow elemental monsters. Amazingly, falling is not an issue in this game. You can actually jump from any height without care, other than the animation of slowly standing from a crouch at the end. Being in the cold affects your stamina negatively, unless you have a hot drink, and vice versa, in the heat, your health is affected without a cold drink. Regardless, over time, you character will lose stamina, to the point of being almost unable to move. This can be sped up, by being unprotected in the cold for long, or exertion for extended periods. This can only be remedied by sustenance. This can come in the form of rations, which can only be provided by the guild and elders, depending on the conditions of the mission, or by hunting creatures for raw meat, which must then be cooked by the player, either in the field on a barbeque set, or at home, ordered through your kitchen.
You will usually be given enough rations to last through your missions in the early outset of the game. In the later stages you will receive delayed supplies, which include rations and a map of the area, or you will receive nothing until you complete the quest, which requires your own preparation of supplies. Of the many weapon types, I particularly started with the dual swords when I saw the speed of the weapons. However, this is where things begin to explode. Everything in this game has an animation. Your character moves excessively slow. Even when using the dual swords, which are the fastest weapons in the game, you will be open for attacks after combinations, when sheathing and unsheathing your sword, and at various other times. To heal in this game, you must consume potions, and elixirs. Your character has a long, and elaborate animation that he does while throwing back the drink, that makes it almost impossible to do during battle at times. Some of the monsters are so fast, that you will simply need to be in another area to heal. When eating a steak, your character goes through the entire motions of eating, swallowing and rubbing his stomach before being able to move again. When drinking a health potion, he gulps the potion, swallows, and then flexes in a cocky pose before continuing. You can't do anything to shorten this. He also has the ability to rest at the landing site of each mission, where there is a bed and also containers with guild supplies and a collection box for mission items. You only recover the maximum of your current health and stamina threshold. So if your stamina is deathly low at max at that point, you will only recover what it is. Eating is the only way to regain the maximum threshold, which is done in levels according to how substantial your meal is.
To assist you in combat, you also have bombs that can be crafted from supplies you get in the field. In this game, you can fish, catch bugs in nets, mine, and dig in mounds and hills, as well as harvest from plants and wildlife. The items you receive, and creatures you catch can be used to either cook at home, or build and fuse items. Using an alchemy system, you can combine and craft items and ores. This is not spoon fed to you. There are endless combinations that you have to find, or go on the internet to learn. As you learn them, your character logs them in his book. You can combine materials to make gunpowder, bomb material, and several other catalysts. You can then build flash bombs, smoke bombs, sonic bombs, poison bombs pitfall traps and stun traps using the materials fused with animal parts you carve from monsters. Depending on the monster, it may be weak to certain types of bombs or traps. I hope you understand at this point, all I'm telling you is merely skimming the surface as a what they call a "newbie" player. There are endless more circumstances- some I'm forgetting.
On your quest, you have a comrade known as a Felyne assisting you. At this time, I'll back track to give you an idea. You start the game as a hero who was out on a quest to retrieve some items. In your journey, you ran into a creature know as the Tigrex, who was feared by many. He almost kills you, and you are found and rescued by villagers who bring you back to town. They narrowly escape themselves. You wind up in Pokke Village, where you are nursed back to health. The village is inhabited by little cat people known as Felynes as well as humans. You are given a house, and are allowed to hire Felynes to help you get on your feet, by working in the kitchen at your house. One of the Felynes will be your partner on hunting quests. You can hire additional replacements for him, but you really won't use the reserve in the beginning of the game, because he won't be as powerful. When at home, you can have them train in the meantime between quests, and learn abilities. They have limited attack and defense, but can learn to heal you, attack, throw bombs, raise your stats, and also distract the monster during combat to give you windows to attack or flee if need be. The village elder wants you to prove yourself and complete quests to assist and save the town to prove you are hero. Then you can be of use to the guild.
When I mentioned the genre before. The fact is that it is stat based to a degree. You have certain weapon types, and items that can raise your attack or defense in combat. You also have certain elixirs that can fortify your stamina limitlessly for a period of time. All of these must be synthesized by you. The gems I mentioned earlier also must be fused and build by the town weapon smith by gathering certain rare items. These gems slightly raise a sea of different abilities. If you have a armor set like the Blango mentioned, you have a weakness to fire. You can fuse a Crimson gem several times if you have the supplies needed and attach them to the limited slots on the different pieces of armor to try to nullify that weakness a bit. You have many skills, such as Reckless Abandon, which raises a weapons affinity to increase critical hits, or the Earplug skill which increases resistance to monster screams. You also have quake resistance which gives resistance to the quakes a monster can generate when slamming the ground, which freezes your character when it happens. All of these skill attempt to nullify the many issues you will face in and out of combat.
Now that the groundwork is set, lets get into where they lose control. In this game, the monsters move very fast. Some of them are slow, but overall, your character is overly human. It brought to mind when I played Lost Planet on the Xbox 360, and how slow the character moved while being chased and gunned down. It feels very intimidating and overwhelming to be either evading a monster in an open field, or trying to conserve stamina while journeying across a mountain map. Every step your character takes is ridiculously small. You hold the right shoulder button to run, but this rapidly pulls down your stamina, and if done excessively, it will begin to lower your stamina threshold. Some weapons, such as the hammer and dual swords, rely on stamina to attack with what are called spirit charge combos and specials. The hammer has 2 levels of charge which allow you to execute a double pound attack, or spinning combo special. The dual swords have a spirit gauge combo that switches the character to a hyper mode and allows customized combos. All of that depends on stamina threshold, so failure to conserve stamina can make a battle almost impossible. At times in the game, it feels like the character moves slower to assist the already difficult monster boss.
When you are knocked down, there is yet another animation of your character gathering his wits, and slowly getting up. This animation feels like it has no place in this game, as often the boss has several combination attacks that he can execute which often translate to what I call a death combo. It feels like a movie of losing when this happens. You have 3 lives in most missions, but when you continue from the landing base, you lose all stat enhancements, and also have to find the boss again. In this game, the boss monsters can flee if they are being overwhelmed, and as I said, they move fast. So many times, you will be chasing them around an enormous map, hoping they haven't found someplace to rest and heal. The game does offer some assistance in that area. Using paintberries which you can grow in your farm, you can make paintballs by combining it with other ingredients. You will often be supplied with paintballs by the guild on your quest in the early missions. This can be thrown at the boss to mark it for tracking, if you manage to hit it. You also have psychserum, which is a drink that gives you temporary ESP, allowing you to sense the monster's location. Neither last long. The serum lets you know for a few seconds, assuming he doesn't move, and the paintball is rubbed off after a few minutes. Many times, you will be frantically running around the map, looking for the monster, wasting stamina in the process. This gets very interesting when facing monsters that hide in the water or in the very vast sands of the desert, which requires sonic bombs to force them up.
The game has many elder quests to complete. When I completed the village elder quests, I assumed I had arrived, only to find that the Felyne elder was above her and had quests of her own. You will spend so many hours hunting to gather materials to make just a single component of an item. Each piece of armor or equipment, requires many different ores and monster parts. And you need several samples of each, meaning you will be fighting very dangerous monsters several times to gather them. The other issue with this is that, it is all based on probability. There is a small percentage chance of rare item drops when facing these monsters. If you fight it, and prevail, and don't get the item, you have to go back and fight them again, with all used items lost to you. This made it very tedious to complete armor sets. In the village, there is a Pokke Farm, where for a price of Pokke Points, you can purchase land to plant your farm, construct a bee hive and modify it over time, set up and build mining points, construct and renovate a fishing pier to fish, and harvest bugs. All of this took a very long time to build, but was needed to harvest the many ores I needed. There is also a worker named Trenya on the farm, who is an adventurer. He will journey to many locations that you've visited, on his own and bring back what he finds, for a fee. This too is probability based, and you will find that you blow through you points with no worthy catch returned by Trenya often. The only way to get those points is to go on gathering quests and find materials that the farm's owner desires.
As far as mechanics, there too I had issues. When in battle, many times, I would throw a precious flash bomb into a monster's face, only for him to charge through it and kill me. Many times, a monster would lunge in a desperation attack and kill me after I clearly dodged the attack. Many times, I found myself close to winning a fight, and then pinned under a monster's body like a glitch, unable to move, while he charged up a killing spin attack. This was infuriating, and this was probably one of the toughest games I have ever played due to that. I must say, that along the journey, I lost a Vita system due to the rage this game induced. The bosses in this game have what is called a rage mode. When agitated or hurt, they will go crazy, and get stronger and faster. They become absolute nightmares in that mode. One crucial thing to take note of is the armor sets. As hard as it may be, you must construct armor sets that suit the level of the enemies your are facing, or you will find yourself in one hit kill scenarios. The game was actually designed for multiple players to cooperated and play together. I played solo, and I feel that the game overly punishes you for doing so. Many of these gamers online who cheese about the game, have a group of butt buddies they frequent the missions with, which makes a world of the difference. I beat bosses that people have given up on with help. That in itself makes me very proud. And when you think the pattern has been set, here comes the mix up. There are enemies in this game called Elder Dragons, and Colossal Monsters. Elder Dragons are high level monsters that have too much HP to take out in the normal 50 minute quest. They have to be battled and survived across several quests and terrains in order to take down.
The colossal monsters, as I call them, are super huge monsters that you will tackle alone at a fort built by the town. This mission is to either take down the monster, or simple prevent him from destroying the fort and invading the town. You have several areas with vantage points, blockades, and weapons set up to assist you, as well as a final defense at the town wall. These missions were always tense, but also fun, and not as unfair as the usual bosses, yet equally epic.
With all of that said, my journey has finally reached a point of completion. I must say, this is a game that is the wish of every gamer from childhood on. We all want a game that immerses you, challenges you, and never gets stale. This is a game where every decision is heavy, and every quest and objective feel meaningful. However flawed the execution, the premise of the game is absolutely amazing. I didn't spend the typical 215 hours of other RPG's. Every hour and minute was spent working tirelessly, and dangerously toward bettering my equipment and tackling epic monsters. Every victory I had, made me pound my chest uncontrollably in victory, because it was that big of a deal. Every day, I rushed home or into my pocket, to play more of this addictive game.
As far as asthetics go, this game shines even brighter there. I played this game on my Vita, and I must highly recommend that for all gamers. The game supports Dolby Digital Surround, and it makes great use of it. The sound is intense and epic. Not only is the music beautiful and varied, but the sound effects and roars of the monsters even shocked those who listened nearby as I played. I honestly loved the music. I found myself picking up my trumpet and learning along as the many bright compositions played in the game.
The scenery is magnificent. As I stated, the worlds you venture out into are enormous. And they are not fillers. They are well put together. This game holds up so well over time. I kept thinking to myself that I would love to have seen what it would have looked like if it were a Vita game. Rainbows, waterfalls, beaches, shorelines, jungle foliage, trees, swamp and marsh, volcanic ash and magma, all look amazingly rendered and alive. All the smoke and ice crystals and mist and snow are almost tangible. There was even a time in the rainy forest where the light reflected off of the puddles of water, and it honestly didn't look like a PSP game. It was very current gen. And all of these settings change, such as the conditions and the time of day, making certain spots on the map accessible at times. This makes my initial reservations at having just the one hub town, disappear. This game is beautiful. This is the kind of world you always wanted to escape into as a child.
When I first heard about this game, it was many years ago after high school. Some friends were playing it, but I felt it was a Pokemon kind of game. The idea of fighting monsters seemed weird to me. I truly regret waiting to jump in. This is an RPG that was way overdue. This game is an absolute perfect 10/10
