I purchased Monster Hunter 4G from the eShop to play on my Japanese 3DS LL. This is my first Monster Hunter experience, and I can now say that I understand the hype. As I cannot compare this Monster Hunter 4G with any of the previous Monster Hunter games, you can call this review “Monster Hunter for the uninitiated.”
What’s this MonHun All About?
Monster Hunter has you guiding your hunter across plains, up hills, climbing cliffs, and jumping off ledges. You collect resources by, carving up dead monsters, fishing, hacking at mineral deposits with a pick axe, foraging for herbs, and catching bugs with a net. Your character has a few attack buttons that will have you swining a sword, axe, lance, shooting a bow, or attacking with one of the other many varieties of weapons in the game. The play areas are filled with minor monsters, and usually one huge monster that may require a 20 minute hack fest to bring down. Tons of fun! The major monster battles are very difficult and really get your blood pumping. The monsters do not have health bars, so you only know when they are close to death by their behavior — the monsters will start to breathe heavily, limp, or attempt to escape back to their nests. The whole effect makes for some really epic battles. If you time a jump attack off of a ledge correctly you can grab on to a monsters back, hang on for dear life, and hack at it when it’s not bucking like a bronco. I have done few things in action games more satisfying and exciting than this!
The Language Barrier
I should say that you would likely need to have good Japanese to fully enjoy this game. Some of the quests have unique requirements, such as, collect three eggs… Or, capture the monster but don’t kill it. If you can’t understand what is required to complete a quest it would make for a very frustrating time. If you can find an online resource to tell you what is required to pass the quests then you might be alright without Japanese language skills. The only other thing I can think of that might be frustrating regardling language would be item collection. There are so many items that you can gather to create weapons and armor, and keeping track of it all even WITH a solid understanding of Japanese is tough. I can’t imagine doing it without.
Fight Monsters, Play Dress Up
In Monster Hunter your character is super customizable. You can select everything from hairstyle to skin tone, and then your appearance changes further with each piece of gear you equip. We’re not just talking about helmets and armor, but even minor accessories like gloves have an impact on your characters appearance. Good stuff. You gain access to new equipment as you collect resources during your adventures. This collect and create aspect is extremely addicting, yet not annoying. Even if you do not have all of the necessary items on your person when you go to the weaponsmith you are still able to create the equipment based on the items you have in the storage chest in your house. This is extremely convenient.
Capcom Fight Night
There are numerous weapon types in Monster Hunter, and each weapon type changes the control scheme and actions available to your character. For example, if you are using the gun lance, a huge lance that can also fire off a shot like a cannon, your character will waddle around like a tank and you can stab at enemies while hiding behind a shield. However, if you are using the dual-wield swords you can sprint around slashing at your enemies when the time is right while diving and rolling to avoid counter attacks. The bow is entirely different, and you can use the hunting horn to play stats enhancing music for your party. The different weapon schemes makes learning a new weapon sort of like learning a new character in Street Fighter. It creates a fun dynamic early in the game where you have limited resources so need to make a decision about which weapon you really want to invest in and learn – or, which weapon you want to “main” as Monster Hunter veterans seem to say.
Out with the Old and in with the New 3DS — or not
As mentioned, I am playing on the “old” 3DS LL, so I do not have the extra analog stick that the New 3DS includes. The new analog stick is apparently used to control the camera, but I have been getting on fine without it. You can double click the L button to shift the camera directly in front of your character, and you can “lock on” to a monster, after which you can tap the L button once to center the camera on that monster. It’s very handy. You can just run around the map tapping L to keep an eye on that monster to make sure it doesn’t trample you. In fact, even if the camera stick were available to me I’m not sure that I would use it much during a battle because my right thumb is too busy working the other action buttons. I was also browsing the game reviews on Amazon.jp and noticed that a few Japanese people were also saying that the game plays fine on the old 3DS. Loading times on the old 3DS are a little long, sort of like in the Smash 3DS demo, but not anything that detracts from game play. I’m sure the overall experience is better on the New 3DS, but it is by no means bad on the old 3DS hardware.
Smooth Like Butter
Once the game is up and running it runs great. I have not noticed any slowdown. I have also played quite a bit online as I have a Japanese friend who is a total Monster Hunter geek. I was connecting from India and he was connecting from Japan and we hunted together without issue. If there was any slowdown I did not notice. We also played a few open quests where we were joined by two other random Japanese players (a max of 4 people can hunt together). Again, no slowdown. Once out of probably about 10 online games my connection completely dropped. When this happens the quest continues with you alone, and you can still continue on by yourself and if you complete the quest it seems to count. I suspect it dropped because of my poor Internet connection, but who knows.
It’s Dangerous to go Alone
One last note on the multiplayer. Some of the monsters are so tough that I cannot imagine fighting them alone. If you do not have any friends to hunt with and the thought of hunting online with randoms on the Internet does not appeal to you, I’m not sure how much fun this game would be played alone. Having said that, there is a ton of single player content, so if single player is your thing I think you can have plenty of fun.
The Verdict
I would give this game a solid 9 out of 10. The only reason I would not give it a 10/10 is that basically every quest is some sort of fetch quest. It’s either kill the monster or collect some stuff. I could see that getting old after a while. However, I shouldn’t ding Monster Hunter too much for using that forumula, because, that’s what Monster Hunter is all about as I understand. The format is great in that you can pick it up for a quick 20-30 minute quest, and then put it down again to get back to real life.
Get hunting! Contact me on Twitter at @japannewbie if you want to hunt together!
9/10
Review by Harvey. For more information on Monster Hunter 4G go to http://www.capcom.co.jp/monsterhunter/4G/ or http://www.nintendo.co.jp/3ds/software/bfgj/index.html
Buy Monster Hunter 4G and New Nintendo 3DS LL [Monster Hunter 4G Special Pack]
