Portable 3rd will make you fall inlove with your psp all over again. And make you ask your parents why your not japanese
User Rating: 9.5 | Monster Hunter Portable 3rd PSP
After I booted up Portable 3rd on my psp I was greeted by an expansive and extremely personal character creation. The wide selection of faces, hairstyles, voices, etc. is outstanding. After creating my character that remarkably resembled me, an introduction video began to play leading into your position in the village of Yukumo, which has been suffering from loss of trade because of trades folk being chased off by Jinouga attacks (not unlike the story behind MH Tri's Lagiacrus). Your starting default weapon is the sword and shield but you can change right away to any of the games other twelve weapons from your storage box in your house. For those of you that have never played Monster Hunter, basically you have to hunt and collect smaller monsters first, grind, build your better weapons and armor from the carves off other monsters you kill, and then eventually take down the Jinouga. Most quests have the usual 50min time limit and the maps here are the same as Tri's besides a few minor adjustments like the watery areas since this game has no water combat. When on quests your inventory bag also gets an extra page labeled "Quests Items" which is extremely nice compared to Tri's 3 page limit which almost always forces you to give up items on every quest. Getting to the boss Jinouga doesn't seem to take very long (of course that's just me, I played for hours nonstop) but even after you do get there don't expect to watch the credits and then walk away. Oh no, there is MUCH more to be done, and at this point you've only seen half of what the game has to offer. By the time you beat the "boss" Jinouga you may have mediocre gear at best. Take your hunt to the guild hall where high rank quests await you. In these quests you'll find new monsters and sub-species of monsters you've already seen, that not only change their appearance, but can have different attacks and strategies as well. Go even further and get the downloadable quests, and now your really in for a treat. These quests range from including game changing and sometimes difficult requirements such as not having any armor on or forcing you to use a specific type of weapon, to landing you armor and weapon rewards from Japanese clothing companies and popular anime's such as One Piece, Inuyasha, Negima, and more. There is an offline and online hall. In the offline hall you can take both of your felyne partners with you, which you can hire from a little old lady. When talking to her you can request so much as the felynes characteristics, attack style, and color. After choosing a cat partner you can re-name them, but you can only do that once. You can have an abundance of partners, but only two can go out on hunts with you at a time. And gearing them is a breeze because every time you make a weapon or piece of armor for yourself a scrap piece is left behind which is used for making cat armor. The Yukumo farm is a great place to train your partners. They can take on activities such as marathons, wood cutting, water fall training and more. They can also gather resources for you at the farm like mining in a tunnel and catching fish and bugs. You can also gather your own resources here through a number of resource areas your can buy with Yukumo points you get from quests. Now moving on to the multiplayer portion of the game, there is no online multiplayer here, only ad-hoc. But not once did I miss it, which is funny considering this game was never released in English, but my group a friends love Monster Hunter, so they had their own copies. The multiplayer is just as great as ever. Everyone meets in the guild hall, and a hunter chooses the quest to attempt. All quests are available which is great, especially for those quests that drive you crazy offline, and for those Elder Dragon quests that you downloaded. The hot springs stamina and health buff is increased for everyone to whoever has the most hot spring quests completed. After everyone has given the ready signal the leader of the group starts the quest. Now for as awesome and epic as this game already is, trust me when I say you haven't experienced Monster Hunter until you have played with a group of people. It feels great having people hunt with you that have your back, and its extremely fun working together to bring down a huge monster. Before everyone goes there separate ways don't forget to exchange guild cards. They can show you all the stats of that hunter like their hunt record, weapon usage count, gear, and tons of other stuff. It also makes their character appear occasionally in the offline hall, and they sometimes give you helpful equipment. All in all Capcom did amazing on this game and really dedicated themselves for a while to the downloadable quests, which are still there and are free. They revamped the graphics from previous games and added more moves to both weapons and monsters. There are also more weapons and monsters than ever in this game. Its a shame this game was never released to the west, but this game really isn't hard to get by in even if you don't know Japanese, and any Monster Hunter fan could import and play it easily. I already have 345 hours put into this game, and I will continue to play it until Capcom releases a new Monster Hunter for my vita. I honestly cant get enough of this game. I originally had it for psp, then I got my vita and bought it all over again on the HK store so I could still play with my friends.
Portable 3rd brings everything you love about Monster Hunter, plus more to the table, and you will constantly ask for more.
