Monster Hunter Tri

I’ve recently been playing a lot of Monster Hunter, it’s a series I’ve been an avid fan of for a while so the recent Wii release has had me really excited as it has brought a whole swarm of new monsters into the mix and introduced aquatic combat.

The solo play has been improved and players must now venture through a few missions to introduce them to the hunting essentials before they venture out into the vast depths of the internet. The change to the single player campaign makes it more inviting and expands your options in the village to allow you to easily gather materials and trade for exotic treasures from far off lands.

Aquatic combat is fun, fighting in three dimensions helps with aiming at monster locations and the seamless transitions in the mix land/water environments are delightful. Just running to the edge of the sea and diving in is so much fun and being able to hunt giant catfish, jellyfish and sharks with harpoons is one of the highlights for me. The aquatic monsters have some interesting design with the Gobul being by far my favourite as a strange chimera of catfish, angler fish and puffer fish.

The new monsters seem to be quite interesting with each one doing something more than just ladling on damage and soaking up attacks, one mimics the calls of other monsters to bring in aid in battle, one hides in the river bed and lures you in before attacking and another covers itself in mud that protects it from elemental attacks.

One thing that has changed for the worse is that the prolific selection of weapons and armour has been cut down to its bare bones, now it appears one weapon exists for each element and status effect leaving you little choice for picking correct armaments for each mission. This is such a shame as one of the most exciting parts of having managed to defeat a new monster was running to the blacksmith and finding what weapons you could create.

Another factor that could let Monster Hunter Tri down is that it is still not really new starter friendly, as a seasoned veteran I knew how to make potions and other items to help me in my missions but someone without prior knowledge would struggle. The new single player experience certainly is better than the PSP versions but doesn’t manage to communicate the little tricks that make a hunter excellent

All in all, MH3 has been a successful move in my eyes. It has provided new and interesting monsters, updated the core gameplay which has managed to sort out some of the awkward issues that marred the PSP versions (a certain fishy beast had magical hips that could damage you from well beyond its physical reach), squeezed a huge amount of power from the Wii and provided more of that team based adventure which my friends and I have been consuming with gusto for years.