Firstly – Hello. I’ve dusted off the cobwebs off my old wordpress and in this current break in my life I feel compelled to write. There is something about writing that calms me. It’s a strange feeling. I feel my life has taken a turn that I did not expect or necessarily want. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t feel like I’m wasting my life and I will forever be optimistic but I never expected to be where I am now in the position I am in and I’m unsure for how long I will be in this position.
Enough about myself though, you’ve clicked on this article to read about MONSTER HUNTER! Yes, Capcom’s 20 year old series about hunting monsters and making armour out of their corpses. I played the games since 2013 when Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate came out on the 3DS and I’ve played every game released since then, much to the current pain and aches flowing through my thumbs (yes, I’ve been playing Rise: Sunbreak and I’ve absolutely destroyed my thumb through overplaying it). I need to address the button mashing issue in the room here, in its original state Monster Hunter is not a button masher but as the series has progressed it has become a power fantasy with an impressive selection of foes that feel compelling to defeat. Progress is the gameplay loop for monster hunter, you hunt the monster and then make armour and weapons out of that monster, repeat if necessary and, yes, I get it that it may be boring to continually farm monsters for rare drops but the sense of always having an upgrade to work towards is something that a lot of games these days cannot say they have.
I really enjoyed the format of my previous Persona 5 journey so I am going to try and mimic that structure whilst I talk about my experiences with the games. Hope you guys enjoy and I hope that you will leave some of your Monster Hunter memories in the comments. I’m also going to put my favourite monster from each game next to the game title. Also one final thing, I’m just going to talk about my experience with each game, no indepth reviews – just memories and feelings when I played these games.
Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate 3DS March 2013 – Brachydios
That faithful friend from the Persona post makes a return here too. It was just after we first started becoming friends he says to me, “there is a game I want to get on 3DS – have you ever heard of Monster Hunter?” I replied that I had not and I started watching Projared’s Monster Hunter tutorial videos. You see the game’s tutorial was frankly terrible and, to be honest, the series still doesn’t do a good job of teaching you what all these things you’re gathering are for, although it is much clearer at least.
Anyway, do you guys remember when Nintendo wasn’t doing well during the WiiU and 3DS era? From 2012-2013 Nintendo 3DS games had this awesome promotion where if you bought 2/3 Nintendo games you could input the codes and then claim a free game. It was called the I bought Luigi’s Mansion 2, Animal Crossing New Leaf and Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate and then picked out Fire Emblem: Awakening as my free game. What a cracking promotion.
Anyway, I picked up the game and me and my friend had our typical game night, we had junk food and played Monster Hunter for what seemed an absurd length of time yet we only hunted one monster! We were terrible – I was using a hunting horn and my friend used a longsword we got carted multiple times by the Royal Ludroth and finally decided that we would hunt Qurupeco and succeed before the night was over. The feeling, the sweaty palms, the intensity trying to take down this stupid bird. Qurupeco’s gimmick is that it summons others monsters by mimicking its cry – on our first hunt this bird summoned a very aggressive Rathian. This was before Monsters engaged in Turf Wars so now both large monsters were after us! We ran like crazy, we were yelling it was intense but eventually after nearly the whole 50minute limit we did it! What a rush! But we packed up and called it and night and I think we played MH3U once more together.
But I had a new game and I loved that rush. I went through the single player experience all the way to high rank with my new found weapon of choice the Sword and Shield. I had Projared and Gaijin Hunter on repeat all the time whilst I was playing, to try and improve my skills and eventually I progressed through the single player mode! I loved fighting Barroth, Qurupeco, Brachydios, Lagiacrus and so many more. Agnaktor and it’s Glacial counterpart were two my particular favourites. They had a slick design with awesome beam attacks and a cool hardening mechanic that made them challenging to fight. I beat most of the single player content and then I decided to unlock Grank weapons to help me beat some of the hardest fights in the game… Turns out I had to start from Lowrank again in the multiplayer area too… oh lord! But yes! I did it. All through Low Rank, all through high rank – hated Plesioth so much – beat Goldbeard Caedeus and then I hit G… and then I hit a big old wall since G-rank was unbelievably difficult. I made Wroggi G-Rank gear and then bought MH3U on my WiiU later the following year.
Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate Wii U – 2014
The problem with MH3U on 3ds was that it did not have online play… so in essence I was stuck. I remember learning how to use the lance and to play around this. The lance in 3U was once of my favourites to learn. But after getting the WiiU version I went back to the trusty sword and shield. The games offered a fantastic save transfer system where you could beam your 3DS progress to the WiiU and vice-versa. Unlike the 3DS version this game had online play so I could finally get past those troublesome G-rank quests. This was also my first introduction to Twitch as when looking for people to play with I joined a live streamer. He unfortunately booted me since my HR was too low. I eventually found a group of people to speed run through GoldBeard Caedeus and I forged my strong set of G-rank armour. I then progressed and carried on through the game, further learning monsters like Deviljho and Brachydios turning them into two of my absolute favourites.
I had clocked around 250hours on my 3DS version at this point and then probably another 70+ on the WiiU version. Looking back on 3U I think the monster line up is quite small and stale. I love that it has classics (to me at least) like Lagiacrus, Ludroth and Brachy but I think it’s sequel has a far more impressive line up of monsters.
I should also mention the end game here, Alatreon and Dire Miralis. I managed to beat Dire Miralis once online but I could never beat Alatreon. The Black-Dragons have a reputation for being impossibly strong but Alatreon and Dire Miralis were both enjoyable challenges at the end of an already challenging GRank. Speaking of Dire Miralis, I feel like this game deserves a 7.8… too much water! HA! I kid, but it’s impossible to talk about MH3 without mentioning the swimming and underwater combat. Having practiced the swimming mechanics again, the Wii U version feels much better with its swimming mechanics than the 3DS. I remember dung bombing Plesioth so much just to get it to go to a ground zone. Underwater isn’t bad, some weapons work better and this affects your overall opinion. One of my roadblocks was Green Plesioth (so glad this stupid fish hasn’t returned), it kept diving under water and I couldn’t defeat it with my sword and shield. I swapped to the lance and eventually I was able to do it. The lance feels far more natural underwater than the S&S and I had a lot of fun using it in water hunts. I understand why they never bought water mechanics back, but I feel like the lack of water only makes people want Lagaicrus back more. The swimming mechanics feel like a product of attempted innovation and looking back it did seem like a necessary addition to the series but eventually they would discover that the solution was to go up rather than head under the water.
Brad talks about things. 