If you read the blog entries during the Japan trip, you would have noted the numerous references to the Monster Hunter game franchise. During our trip, the fifth in the series (and the third PSP version) was released in the US: Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (known as Monster Hunter Portable G 2nd in Japan).
The game owns my soul right now.
I imported my save from the previous version, which itself had used the save from the first PSP version. My character (named Miki) is now over 170 hours old and is only (I estimate) about 35% of the way through the game. I’ve completed most of the village Elder quests but have barely scraped the Guild quests, and am not even yet at the level required to take G rank quests (my esteem level is 3 out of 12). Even so I have downed almost a hundred monsters and have amassed a large collection of armour and weapons.
But the best is yet to come.
This is a game about killing ‘monsters’, which often resemble european dragons. It is entirely mission based, and each mission sends you into one of a half dozen zones (a mountain, swamp, desert etc.) with the task of downing one or more monsters. Each zone is filled with ‘fodder’ enemies and lots of places you can gather materials and whatnot, but the objective is to down the big beastie. If you kill it, you can then ‘carve’ pieces from the corpse which can then be used to make better armour and weapons. Even better, you can capture monsters for more rewards (but it’s much riskier).
There are well over 1000 weapons in the game (divided into 9 main types) and over 2000 pieces of armour. If you’re into games that promote character advancement through gear (cough, WoW, cough) then this may be the ultimate game.
But it’s hard. As in really hard. The controls take a lot of getting used to, and any particular fight can be quite different depending on not only the opponent, but your weapon. It’s strangely similar to a 2D fighting game (like Street Fighter) in it’s complexity. Also, the game is designed around multiplay but Capcom has never added internet play to the PSP versions, so most US players solo the game, which means it’s a lot harder. But oh so rewarding!
To give you an idea of what it’s like, watch this brief video of someone killing a Lunastra elder dragon (bad video quality since it is a PSP game).
I haven’t killed a Lunastra, but I have ‘repelled’ one (the Elder Dragons have so much health you have to fight them many times over many missions to actually kill one). There is an amazing amount of opponents in the game, as you can see from this beautiful piece of official art:
monster-hunter-freedom-unite-20090513010910924.jpg < Click on this (it’s big)
The biggest monster I have actually killed is the one whose fishy tail is visible at the extreme right of the image. It’s called a Green Plesioth, and is a amphibious beast who must be lured out of rivers and lakes via bombs. He was tough. But as you can see he’s a shrimp compared to the behemoths lurking in the back of the image. And yes, you actually do fight them one-on-one. Check out the giant octopus thing! The gargantuan tarrasque-y thing! Or the ‘mount from Dark Crystal’-like thing, visible only as legs disappearing off the top of the image.
I can’t wait to kill them! The sweet joy when they fall screaming to the ground and I extract their parts for armour! Wonderful!
I absolutely love this game. I even adore it. The satisfaction of downing a new challenging foe is unparalleled, and I really think I have the skill now to break the HR4 barrier into G-Rank play (solo, no less). Let’s see if that happens.
The series has struggled in the west in the past, mostly due to the difficulty and poor marketing on Capcom’s behalf. But apparently initial sales of MHFU are promising, and it seems western fans are finally realizing the beauty of this game. This bodes well for Monster Hunter 3 Tri, coming next for Wii (no less). Although some suggest MHFU – the version I am playing now – will forever be the highpoint of the series (the Wii version is adding some sweeping changes). Time will tell.
