Game Review: Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate

Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (MH3U or just MH from here on out, because there is no way I am typing that whole name every time) is the newest addition to the Monster Hunter Franchise. This game is not to be confused with Monster Hunter 3, Monster Hunter Tri, or Monster Hunter Portable 3rd (This series has ridiculous naming conventions). MH3U was recently released for both the Wii U and 3DS systems. Both versions of the game are exactly the same in terms of content, with some difference between network play (I'll get to that later).

Monster Hunter is one of those series that's always been a huge hit in Japan with only a cult following in Western markets, but in the past years has been gaining more widespread popularity. Of course, now it is widely enjoyed by Westerners, and we can look forward to having access to most future Monster Hunter Games.

One thing to note about this franchise is that every game in the series is pretty much the same game. New games tend to add access to new weapon types, equipment, monsters, zones, and items, but make no changes to gameplay (other than doing some fine tuning and re-balancing here and there.) What this means is after buying one game you are probably good for awhile, and can possibly skip out on the entire next game. I don't really have a problem with Capcom pushing out games with slight additions every time (think Call of Duty syndrome) so this won't be something that detracts from the score, because the only way it could negatively affect my experience is players migrating to newer games leaving older game servers empty in online play (which will not happen anywhere near enough in the future for me to still be playing the game). With all that said and done, let's start the review!
Warning: Blogger destroyed the formatting and I can't get the Heading to re-size.

Story

I decided to get the easy part out of the way first. There is no story. WELL, there is some kind of story, but it is so trite and basic, it really only serves to explain what your role in the game is. You are a hunter who hunts giant village-eating monsters for money. You have been sent to Moga Village to fell the Lagiacrus, a giant Lightning-spewing crocodile. In your quest to fell the beast, you train by fighting weaker monsters, and when you finally kill it... well there's just more things to kill!

The Lagiacrus

And that's about it. The story isn't so much story as it is exposition. Now, is this a problem? No, not really. While I love me a story driven game, a story would make this game fall apart. You see, a story demands character development, progression, and a world to explore. This game does not require you to really progress anywhere, you can sit around and fight the same monsters over and over all day. A story would pretty much remove the repeatable fights aspect part of this game, you simply can't have both. Of course, ignoring story, the writing in this game is actually quite good. Some dialogue interactions between NPCs can be quite funny or charming, which is always nice. In summary, this game is pretty much entirely gameplay driven, if you want a game where you fight huge monsters AND have a good story go play Shadow of the Colossus.

Gameplay

Okay this game is pretty much ALL gameplay, so I will break this down into subsections to prevent a giant blob of text.

Controls

MH has always been known for its crisp and responsive controls, and I can attest to that. I haven't noticed any latency, and the player character is always doing what I tell it to do. The rare exception to this might be underwater combat, where orienting your character in a 3D space often confuses what direction you are facing, what direction you are moving, and what direction the camera is in. This can cause you to dodge expecting to go one way, and go another. I will get more into underwater combat later. Overall, the controls are quite good, but take some getting used to. Being able to customize the buttons (a feature which way too many modern games are missing) would have been nice, but after playing the game for awhile I don't have complaints for the setup. Warning: using a ranged weapon takes the most getting used to.

Pace

Now, to the observer, MH appears to be slow, your character taking long, dedicated attacks, and moving around at a veritable crawl. This puts a lot of people off from the game (myself included until I decided to stop making assumptions and play it). The pacing of combat is one of the things that makes MH what it is. The attacks and movement are slow to create balance, you are not some hack-and-slashing pseudo-god, you are a human wielding giant swords. The sluggish speed forces you to plan your attacks wisely, waiting for the monster you are hunting to leave itself open, and finding an opportunity to strike without suffering a counterattack. Some weapons are quite fast, but you still need to pay attention to monster mannerisms to find the chance to attack or suffer taking a ton of damage. So be warned: this is not your day-to-day hack and slash adventure. Attacking requires thought, precision, and timing, as well as knowing when to get away. Also, once you are playing the game, it feels a lot less slow. You start to get caught up in the heat of the battle,and each individual action has so much weight behind it, that it makes the game very intense, and makes fights feel like they are happening quite fast. One second you could be at full health and the next the monster just tackled you and took out a third of your health because you were too dedicated to your attack.

Preparation

Another huge part of MH is the preparation for the hunt. You are in fact hunting monsters, which have varying attributes and attack patterns. Much of the time your success is determined by the items and gear you bring to the fight. Did you bring antidotes to the monster that spews poison? Did you wear armor that has low fire resist to the fire-breathing dragon? Does your weapon have an elemental advantage against what you are fighting? These are all thing you have to worry about when preparing to fight a large monster (more so later in the game). Preparing can often be a tedious process, hunting down the items you need for potions or finishing your armor set is task that takes time and dedication, and that brings us to our next topic.

Grinding

Another thing that turns people off about Monster Hunter is the grindy aspects to it. There are a TON of items in game. With a huge quantity of gathering supplies and usable items, comes a lot of grinding. You will often have to go out into the field to mine rocks, catch bugs, or gather berries just to make sure you have the essentials you need to make items. Fortunately, the game helps you out a bit with the Felyne farm, where you can set anthropomorphic cat slaves to till the fields and breed bugs for you. Of course, this process costs another resource, actually called resource points. These resource points are also used to hire fishing boats to get treasure and well, fish for you while you are off questing, and to make improvements to your farm and masks for your Cha-Cha. To get these resource points, you must visit the Moga Woods while not doing a quest and... hunt monsters. This is slightly less annoying than gathering resources, because combat is fun and you can often find monsters whose parts you need to complete armor or weapons anyway. That brings us to the next thing, armor and weapons in this game are made from the parts of your dead enemies (pretty fucking sweet) and you hardly ever get enough parts from one hunt to make an entire armor set or a weapon. This means you will be fighting the monsters you want to fashion equipment from over and over, often being required to break a part (basically damage it enough until it gets smashed, torn, falls off, etc) or capture the monster just to have a chance of acquiring the item you need. This isn't as terrible as it sound, because this allows for you to grow as a player, learning monsters inside and out and getting down to a science your ability to attack weak points. The grinding isn't terrible, but making gathering and resource points less of a chore could be an improvement.

Equipment

So once you've found all the pieces you need, you can start forging weapons and armor, with some Zeni (in-game currency) as well. The game usually provides you with enough Zeni from quest regards to forge your stuff (especially considering you will be redoing quests to get parts), however do not expect to make every set of armor and every weapon. There are 12 weapon types, every weapon has a huge weapon tree, and every monster has a light and heavy armor set. Every couple of monster you may choose to complete an armor set,  but I feel like completing every set would drive you crazy. Maybe as a completionist thing once you've beaten all the monsters. A lot of the time you have un-matching armor pieces and just look ridiculous, but complete sets tend to look rather cool, and the design for most armors is very good. In this game, there are no level ups, and all stats and abilities are determined by your weapon and armor. Skills are armor attributes, and a piece of armor will give somewhere between -3 and +3 to a skill, usually giving a bonus at + 10 and +15 and a detriment at -10/-15. For example a level 10 Poison skill will grant you immunity to Poison, while -10 will increase damage you take when poisoned. Completing an armor set from a monster typically yields +10 in at least one skill (usually closer to 3 skills) and getting you to -10 or close to it in another skill. Sometimes you will want to complete an armor set for a skill that will be particularly useful against a boss. You can also equip one accessory, which will usually give a big bonus to one skill. Also some armor and weapons have up to three decoration slots, filled with decorations you can make at the forge that provide small bonuses and/or detriments to your skills. Armor, obviously, provides a defense stat which reduces damage. Finally, armor gives you plus or minus points to your elemental defenses, providing you protection form or weakening you to elemental attacks. Weapons can also be imbued with these elemental attacks, or with status effects such as poison or paralyze. The armor system is very in depth and expansive, and is a huge part of making proper preparations. Bringing the right gear to the right fight makes a world of difference.

Combat

I went over most of what makes combat unique in the Pace section. But basically combat is a third person action affair. You have to control the camera yourself, with no lock on, but a feature to snap the camera onto the monster (it won't stay there). Like I said before, combat is all about knowing when to attack and when to retreat, how to dodge, and where to attack, all of which comes from experience of fighting the monsters. This makes growth in the game largely skill based, not determined entirely by your stats.

Underwater Combat

I am not sure how I feel about underwater combat. It adds a whole new dimension to the game, as well as allowing the addition of a bunch of new types of monsters. Typically more is always better. The thing is, underwater combat is kind of annoying. Camera control and movement is a lot harder underwater, and dodging isn't nearly as efficient. Underwater fighting can be very irritating at times, but I don't want it removed from the game, it simply adds too much to the scope. Just let it be known that, in my opinion, fighting on land is a ton more fun.

Multiplayer

A lot of people would say that the heart of the game is in Multiplayer. I would agree. Nothing is better than assembling a hunting band of friends, getting prepped, and fighting an epic battle with a monster (whose difficulty is scaled for online play). Most monsters that appear online also appear in single player, but sometimes the quests are different, such as hunting multiple large monsters in one run. The online system also has its own quest ranking, and after beating all the quests and an urgent quest for one ranking, you get promoted to the next Hunter Rank. There is also an Arena that allows you and your friends to dive right into combat with some pre-built gear sets. In Arena you pick one of these pre-built sets and fight a large monster in one area, and are rewarded with coins that you can use to forge guild armor or sell for cash.

Difference Between Wii U and 3DS

From what I understand , in Japan, Monster Hunter is more popular on mobile systems because people like to walk around and play on the go, meeting their friends and what not. This explains why Monster Hunter 4 will be 3DS exclusive. While having a mobile version is nice, the 3DS does not have a second analog stick, making camera control a pain. In addition, The 3DS version does not have Network Mode, you can only play with others close by through LAN. To balance things I guess, the Wii U cannot play through other Wii U systems through LAN, but can act as the host for up to three 3DS users (which is how you do cross console play). It seems kind of silly to not give both systems Network and LAN, and to allow multiple Wiis to DSes. I don't really know much about the complexity of implementing such a system but it's kind of annoying. For example me and my roommate both have the Wii U version, but disconnect from each others games without fail around 20-30 minutes in. We've looked it up, no one else is having problems so it's not the servers, and the only suggested fix was changing ports on our router, which we can't do because we live in University Apartments and aren't allowed to modify the routers. The Wii U also does not have an Ethernet port. You can buy a USB to Ethernet for $8 online, but my point is that not having Ethernet and not providing LAN is a headache to users with spotty wireless connections. In summary, the online features are great and expand the game, but usability can be an issue.

Graphics and Animation

Playing the Wii U version, everything looks fine. The game doesn't have super realism, and it shouldn't. The design and aesthetics fit the feel of the game. Textures and shadows in the landscape could use some updating, but it doesn't take too much away from the game, since the focus is on you and the monster your fighting. The monsters themselves have great detail, and the models look very good. 

As for animation, most of the animations flow very well, your characters attacks look natural, swings with large weapons taking a long time to start and follow through. Most of the monsters' attacks are animated pretty well, but sometimes their attacks seem very jerky, almost as if their body is moving but their parts are not. It doesn't happen a lot, but sometimes a monster attack or movement looks wholly unnatural. A good example is the Barioth.

The Barioth

I think these jerky animations are due to an attempt to make the monster move suddenly, giving an air of speed and agility, but come off wrong. Again this case is quite rare, and I can forgive it because, seriously, it's a SNOW SABER-TOOTH DRAGON. That's really fucking cool.

Badassery

So I decided to include a new topic not really used in formal reviews. One thing that always attracted me to Monster Hunter was the idea that you were a small and ordinary human fighting giant, awesome creatures. David versus Golaith type scenarios are always really cool because you feel like a badass taking down these giant, terrifying Dragons, Leviathans, and Bipedal Mound-Bearing Tail-Smashy things.

Pictured: A Giant Bipedal Mound-Bearing Tail-Smashy thing.

Few other games allow for this epic scale of combat. Some that come to mind are Shadow of the Colossus, Lost Planet, Dark Souls, and God of War. But Monster Hunter is unique in that the giant monsters are the entire focus of the game, and unlike Shadow of the Colossus, has a TON of different monsters. Also, as I mentioned before, some of the armor from these guys looks really sweet.

SOUND

MH is not one of those games accompanied by a magnificent orchestral soundtrack because of the lack of story. Music should fit the atmosphere of the game, and there aren't any plot points with heightened emotions to allow for the sweeping instrumental pieces in other games. The little music there is in Moga Village and that starts when you first enter an area does fit the locales pretty well. Monster cries are all fitting and well done across the board. The weapons attacks sound good, but could be a bit grittier or more realistic. Most melee sounds are the sounds of swooshing the air and contact on an enemy doesn't exactly sound like you are cutting flesh. It's fine as is, but it could be interesting to hear more realistic sound effects.

Verdict

Monster Hunter is another niche game, one that I believe that needs to continue to exist to fill its role in the world. Though the barrier of entry is rather high, and the game has brought me to curses, it is a very fun, action-packed, and rewarding experience. The gameplay has been polished and perfected over many generations, and the sheer length of the game is impressive. Definitely a game to get your hands on if you have the new Nintendo systems and the combat sounds like it's up your alley.

Lows:

• Needs work on textures/up-scaling to Wii U's capabilities.
• Good multiplayer, but questionable accessibility.
• Item grinding (not monster parts) provides some variance, but becomes a nuisance.
• A couple unnatural animations on monsters.

Highs:

• Hundreds of hours of potential gameplay.
• Completionist aspects in terms of gear to be had.
• Insanely fun and rewarding combat once you get a hang of it.
• Hunting with friends (and strangers!) is a ton of fun.
• Hunting giant monsters is awesome.

Score: 9/10. This game is very refined, and the problem areas are small to unnoticeable.