GameSpot should stop hiring monkeys to review games. The Gamespot review is very inaccurate. This game simply rocks!!!!!
Here is my argument against Gamespot's review.
"5.0 Mediocre"
>_>
"The combat is aweful"
WHAT? The combat is amazing! The techniques you have to perform in order to slay a monster and to not get owned instead are very fun! By that, I mean rolling and diving. Those two moves are so smart! They basically save your life about 100 times in 10 minutes. Literally. I bet they said the combat was awful because they didn't know how to perform combos (continuous attacking without stopping) or they used the lance. Typical GameSpot.
"The crafting is worse"
So, what do you want instead? You want to just go and BUY the best weapons in the game? What the hell is this, Pokemon? Crafting adds a whole new dimension to the game. Without it, killing monsters and carving them would be completely useless. What about gathering quests? If crafting was taken off the game, the objective of the game would pretty much be 'slay this, talk to elder, repeat' until you see a flashing '100%' in the menu. If you don't have the patience to find ores and so on to craft, then you really should go buy a DS or, for that matter, a rock.
"The loading never seems to end"
Now this is where stupidity really takes place. Obviously, somebody never visited the 'Options' menu. Ever heard of 'Background Loading'? Probably not, seeing as they just instantly whined about the long loading times. With background loading turned on, the game basically loads once and once only, which is when you depart for a mission. Between areas, the load is not even a complete second. I'm going to leave it to them to figure out what BACKGROUND loading is, given that they can read English.
"Same as last year"
Aha, hell no. You might think so from playing one or two missions, but the game is entirely different. There are at least 3 times more monsters, adding a great variety of armors to craft and monsters to carve. There is, obviously, a new village, and there are at least 400 new items. The quests are all different except the obvious gathering quests, which is for crafting (aka, the little task the monkeys at gamespot are too lazy to accomplish.)
"Bad Camera"
What the hell did they do? Try to look inside walls? Ha, I bet they didn't figure out you can look up and down with the camera, and had a hard time killing vespoids (bugs).
Gamespot's reviews have been complete and utter crap for the past little while. Honestly, every review they write reeks of inexperience and lack of time playing the game. If the person applying for a job can't finish the first level of Doom, don't hire him!
As I said before, Monster Hunter 2 is the best game for the PSP, if not as good as Loco Roco, which is another PSP classic. It's a must buy. More so, even, if you have a friend with a PSP. Playing this game via Ad Hoc supplies you with over 500 hours of endless fun and comedy. You can't miss this!