After two years of playing Monster Hunter, what do I have to say about it now? A review to end all reviews.
In the gaming world, very few people really know what Monster Hunter is. Just approach any gamer and openly ask them if they know what Monster Hunter is, and they’ll most likely think you’re talking about Monster Rancher or even Poke’mon. Perhaps Monster Hunter wasn’t exactly the best title for the American Audience, but it also gives Monster Hunter just that much more appeal. It’s like finding a buried treasure that no one knows about, and when you open it up you’ll find hours of riches that make over hyped smash-hit games look underdeveloped.
But what is Monster Hunter? – Monster Hunter is the massive Japanese cash-crop that has broken record sales time and again over seas. At the most simplest definition, Monster Hunter is about dragon hunting. And this is not a hunter like Deer Hunter or a catch-um-all like Poke’mon, it’s completely different. To be honest, there is really no game like Monster Hunter. Gamespot compared it to Phantasy Star Online, but in reality these two games have nothing in common. Monster Hunter can be defined as an Action RPG, but it takes all the good of an MMORPG and compresses it into a PS2 Online game with amazing graphics with no monthly fees. With well over 400 hours of solid Gameplay, not including replay value, Monster Hunter has a lot to offer for the gamer seeking an MMORPG but doesn’t want to dish out the cash.
Please take a moment to watch the streaming video advertisement I put together before reading on:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrh7IopRpA4
Capcom put a lot of heart and soul into their Monster Hunter series, and that is why it turned out to be so very good. They designed it to keep that gamer busy for months, if not years with exciting gameplay and impossible odds that has yet to be truly matched. Monster Hunter unleashing dozens of massive dragons that dominate size and scale, and you not only have to defeat them -- but carve your spoils directly from the dead carcass of your hard fought kill. What really makes the game interesting is that these dragons are not simple boss fights, they are challenges that you must overcome time and again and in different environments and situations. The stronger dragon you defeat, the stronger the materials you carve from its corpse to improve and develop greater and more powerful weapons and armor.
Unlike games like Shadow of the Colossus that pit you against sixteen enormous bosses and challenge you to climb them to find their weak-points. Monster Hunter’s dragons do not have weak points, they do not have Hit Point bars, and most of them are not slow and lumbering creatures. Often for the beginner these dragons will take well over half and hour to kill, if not forty minutes or more, and every minute of it is an intense and heart pounding adventure. Even the weakest of dragons may take an inexperienced hunter close an hour to kill, and often the hunter will be defeated by the dragon before the time runs out.
Explaining the mechanics of Monster Hunter can often be confusing, so with great effort I’ll try to make it as simple as possible to understand. From the very moment you begin a new game on Monster Hunter, you are to create your character. This is because one of the most important elements of Monster Hunter is to understand that you are the star player. You are your hunter -- the game is about you and your own journey. So there is no story, there are no cut-scenes which further advance a tale of tragedy and adventure between the protagonist and the antagonist – it’s just you and your life as a dragon hunter. Does this mean the game is uninteresting and boring? Absolutely not, in fact it’s a 1-up over games with story, because ultimately Monster Hunter never ends. Since you are playing yourself, only you determine when the game is over for you.
Your journey as a Monster Hunter will have you doing a great number of things, as at the very start of it all it can be extremely misleading. In the first version of the US Monster Hunter, they mainly have you doing basic survival skills, such as hunting weak, defenseless dinosaurs, carving them up, and cooking them for your food. You’ll also pick various plants, herbs, and mushrooms too. It’s honestly not all that interesting for someone drooling for some instant action. This is why Monster Hunter 2 fixes this grave error. Since I’ve had the pleasure of actually getting my hands on Monster Hunter 2, I’m proud to announce they make the introduction of the game much more interesting, from allowing you to try out each of the games unique class-types, to even quickly advancing to hunting large prey which doesn’t effect your true character progress. So if anything, consider the first Monster Hunter slightly flawed in this area, but it quickly makes up for its losses if you stick with it.
What will dominate your time in Monster Hunter is the advancement of your character. Since there are no experience points, you character does not “level” up in the regular fashion that many other RPGs include. So your character’s states do not ever improve from where they are at the beginning. The only real way to make your character stronger is to hunt monsters and dragons. When you finally kill beasts on the field, you can pull out your knife and carve into their carcass, ripping out various materials you take back to town. You take the materials to local crafters and they will provide to you a list armor and weapons that use the new materials you’ve obtained. You will never get a full list of weapons and armors that you can create, you basically have to choose a weapon of choice and develop it level by level. Each new level will requires new materials and changes the look, the more your advance the weapon, the more options you will have to branch out over a the vast tech-tree of selections.
Most tech trees will always start with the exact same base weapon, so you’ll often build the same cheap weapon several times while on the road to making your weapon of choice. Armor is a little easier than this, as there is no tech-tree, armor just comes as it is and you have to find that materials, which can prove to be quite a challenge for some of the higher level equipment found Online. When online you’ll finally be able to collect some kind of point reward for completing a quest. These points are called Hunter Rank Points, they do not advance your character’s states, they only advance your characters fame. The higher the points, the more quests, armor, and weapons options you can unlock. When you reach Hunter Rank 13 and above online, most rare equipments are unlocked, reserving the truly hard pieces of equipment for Hunter Rank 17 and above.
Take a few minutes to watch another streaming video which features a mixture of cut-scenes, FMG films, gameplay footage, and oddly enough even some film footage of me at the end. I didn’t make this film, but nice to see people like my videos enough to edit them without my consent, hehe!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOaUFIQBfR4
The US Version of Monster Hunter doesn’t come completely without its flaws, but that doesn’t mean the game is horrible, on the contrary the bugs with the original Monster Hunter shouldn’t effect you too greatly, and they are not only fixed, but vastly improved with several other interesting features in Monster Hunter 2. One of Monster Hunter’s flaws is that the single player is dramatically lacking in gameplay content in comparison to its online multiplayer function. Yes, Capcom felt that Monster Hunter’s success would come from online, and it has, but it’s still disappointing to see a good single player go to waste. Again, Monster Hunter 2 fixes this with possibly one of the most amazing and in-depth single player games I’ve seen this year.
What makes the original US Monster Hunter’s single player so lacking? Compared to the online, the single player is barely even half of the game. They only give you one small sample of the impressive quest line up that the latter-half of the online game offers you as the final mission of single player. This makes single player a decent training campaign, but the only thing that really helps single player survive is that your character can freely move between online and offline without trouble. You’re always the same character, no matter where you are in the game. Another complication of single player is that your training ends very quickly, and you get very little advice on how to take out some of the truly challenging dragons that you’ll face in the game. Which pretty much forces you to figure it all out for yourself, thankfully Monster Hunter 2 does repair this error quite nicely.
Another great flaw to Monster Hunter is the complete lack of new quest content between the levels of Hunter Rank 13 and Hunter Rank 16, which leaves you completely dependant on those above Hunter Rank 17 for new and unique content to keep your experiences fresh and new. Everything between HR 13 and HR 16 is a complete repeat of first online quests, but with a slight addition of new and rare materials to find and obtain to make more advanced equipment. Reaching Hunter Rank 17 and then finally 20 allows your to unlock some of the more advanced challenges in the game, including the castle under siege by a giant black dragon named Fatalis and the gates of the town threatened by an ancient dragon called Lao Shan Lung which is the size of Godzilla at the very least.
Perhaps the greatest flaw of all is that most of the online players have become aware of an exploit in the game called Head-Locking. This term is coined because the hitting the heads of certain wyverns with a certain weapon, forcing the dragon to repeat an animation over and over again, locking it in place. This glitch is thankfully removed in Monster Hunter Freedom and Monster Hunter 2, but it stays in place in MH and it is simply endured. Many players continue to exploit the glitch and think themselves elite or extremely skilled because of it, since playing with these people is completely optional, it’s best to avoid them and enjoy the game at your own pace. Little to these exploiters realize that there is absolutely no skill in using the Head-Locking exploit, and that they are only harming themselves in long run since they will not be ready for the extreme challenges of Monster Hunter 2.
Now why did Gamespot give Monster Hunter a 5.7 when it is supposed to be such a truly intense game and a smash hit in Japan? The first mistake is that they took it at face value, and since the introductions of Monster Hunter were complicated to begin with, anyone who doesn’t put at least thirty hours into the game because giving a good comment really doesn’t know what Monster Hunter is about. They also considered the controls very clunky, and after two years of playing this game, the controls have never felt once too clunky at all. In fact, I find them to be very well put together and an excellent use of the Playstation 2 controller. The Right Analog stick is what you use to attack, and pressing the stick in each different direction will execute a different attack, even pressing down the R3 button will sometimes do a fifth attack depending on what weapon you are using.
The R1 button will also do a number of things depending on the weapon of choice, since every weapon type in the game has a different control setup, explaining them in complete detail would be greatly extensive. Gamefaqs.com has a number of very in-depth guides and instruction manuals which will further to enlighten anyone curious about how this game functions.
Check it out: http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/ps2/game/914914.html
Thankfully, the controls are just the same in Monster Hunter 2, so it’s really up to you to decide whether or not the controls are clunky. Thousands of satisfied Japanese and English customers agree that nothing is wrong with the controls, so it’s best to judge for yourself and not let Gamespot do all the judging for you. Another problem with the Gamespot review is the constant nit-picking on little things such as the extensive button pressing just to get online. I’ve never really paid to much attention to it, and all you really have to do is spam the X button until the Capcom Agreement appears, so it’s really a no-brainer. This too is fixed in Monster Hunter 2, so I do not complain.
Gamespot likes to mention that the game is like an old version of several already released online games, this is because they never actually played Monster Hunter for what it really was. You have to put several hours into the game to really understand the full depth of Monster Hunter. Its true beauty lies in the fact that it hides so many great features and little by little you will uncover them. Every time you play you will find something new and it will take you close to a full year to find out everything that Monster Hunter has hidden for you to find out and enjoy. Everything is not spelled out for you and no one is holding your hand, making Monster Hunter a very challenging and difficult game to master, but it’s so easy to enjoy.
Monster Hunter is also one of those games that don’t include a difficulty selection. It goes by the rule that life is hard and life doesn’t have a difficulty setting, so naturally you just have to take on the game as it comes and overcome the challenges. It tests you, and really makes you think and work at it. When you finally complete your goal, all the wonder of the game will come at you ten fold, making you realize just how fulfilling and satisfying it is to defeat such a massive dragon with only your wits, cunning, and strategic abilities.
Sadly Gamespot failed to realize this, and they gave it a very poor review and continue to treat any further Monster Hunter releases very harshly, this is because they don’t understand the game and never took the time to really get into it and play it. You probably won’t see the true powerful of Monster Hunter until you’ve spent well over 100 hours playing it. And since Monster Hunter is nothing short of addictive, making it to 100 hours will come faster than you think.
Monster Hunter is a family game, not only can it be enjoyed by any adventure seeker in your family, but it can also build some solid relationships too. Sadly since the game has been out for close to two years now, the Online portion of Monster hunter is still barely reaching 1000 players on the weekend. Not because the game is lacking, but because Monster Hunter 2 is out in Japan, and fans like myself who are completely obsessed with Monster Hunter have already imported the game and now spend our time playing that instead of the US original. Truth be told, getting Monster Hunter now would not be a loss. Getting the PS2 version now would not only help you prepare for the PSP adventure of Monster Hunter Freedom, which has all the fun of the PS2 Monster Hunter but with tons more content. Not to mention Monster Hunter Freedom looks just like the PS2 version and plays just like it too, but it’s smaller and handheld, and the internet connection to play with other hunters will have to be done through tunneling software like XLink Kia.
http://www.teamxlink.co.uk/
Playing Monster Hunter is more than just a game, it’s an experience, and it’s an experience you don’t want to pass up. Despite the flaws, go out there and get it, play it, love it, and prepare yourself for Monster Hunter 2. MH2 has 100 times more content that the original and even offers three more new class types to the fold and twenty of more new massive beasts to slay. It completely rebuilds the entire Monster Hunter universe, while still keeping the same fundamental gameplay features and system that all Monster Hunters love and Gamespot detests. So what are you waiting for? Get out there Monster Hunter and try the game out for yourself. You’ll be hard pressed to find the game still in stores, but some may have it. Your best bet is to order it online or rent it online. So join the fun and experience possibly one of the best under-the-radar games you’ll every play.
Just remember, Capcom USA didn’t support Monster Hunter very well. They didn’t even advertise it on television, and by only putting small ads on the back of magazine covers – few people really know what Monster Hunter is. Monster Hunter 2 may come out just the same way, so keep your eyes open and check into the places like Hunter’s Corner for very recent updates on what’s happening in the Monster Hunter World.
http://s15.invisionfree.com/Hunters_Corner/
This Column is by OrleanKnight, long time Monster Hunter.
Check out more film footage of Monster Hunter 2 at this address:
http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=orleanknight