Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate

Have you have ever wanted a simpler life, unplugged from all of this 3D handheld technology and NSA/CSIS taking away all your freedom? If you ever wished you could just grab your blade and hunt a giant, spiky, electrified menace willing to trample and maim you in a heartbeat, Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate on Nintendo 3DS has landed. Life is simpler here: Attack, dodge, repeat. For those unfamiliar with the series, Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate is the most action-packed RPG you could ask for.

The opening sequence introduces you to a beast that dwarfs the sand skiff you’re riding on. Don’t panic. The Caravaneer is there to guide you through how to use the skiff’s defenses and when it’s safe to climb on top of the dreaded Dah’ren Mohran to deal damage with your weapon of choice. He’s looking for a Monster Hunter to defend and supply his caravan and he has chosen you! After a short fight with the monster you will arrive at the first stop of your new caravan and meet the team. There is the Guildmarm, a blacksmith, a merchant, a farmer and trader, and a weapons and armour dealer, as well as a street cook. All will have roles to play in the adventures to come, both offline and online.

There are plenty of options when it comes to character creation, from skin colour to voices and everything in between… including the colour of your underwear, which will forever be covered by armour. In all of the cut-scenes your current gear and character are loaded in seamlessly and there are plenty of them.

You can pick a different weapon at any time in town and there are a lot to choose from—all sorts of blades, hammers, bows, lances, and switch-axes—with different play styles to match your preferences, whims and strategy. Some monsters with thick shells are more vulnerable to being smashed by hammers than sliced by a blade, for example, and others require a sharp cut to slice off their tails. There is even a new Insect Glaive that lets you smear a monster with goop, allowing you to direct an insect ally (a Kinsect) to attack that spot. All of the animations excellently sell the physics of the often over-the-top weapons.

The Guildmarm will supply you with quests (for a small fee) and plenty of sarcastic humour. (She refuses to call me anything but Doodle no matter how high I climb in the ranks.)  The quests are generally “go out and kill monster X”, but they also include capture missions and gathering expeditions across large maps split into numbered sections. The maps are filled with gathering locations and a few secrets. Gathering is important to do as you search the map for the monster(s), as the items it yields become your potions. Aside from gathering points there are calico cat companions to find, or (sigh) Meownster hunters as they prefer to be called.

Meownster hunters will be essential to your survival, with your main companion training the recruits you find along the way. They will have various abilities (healing, bomb chucking, ranged, melee, etc.) but their best attribute is distraction. As you progress your calicos can fish and mount expeditions on their own for rewards. You can either participate in the minigame or come back after the next quest. You can equip them with armour and weapons that you can make at the smith.

The quests are broken into low, high and G-rank levels, and there are plenty of quests to keep you hunting in each level. Killing a monster once isn’t enough for a suit of armour. You’ll be hunting for pieces, taking quests over and you’ll usually need parts from more than one beast. Some drops will only happen as low as 2% of the time, but as you progress to higher ranks the percentages get better. You can then forge decorations to enhance sets further.

Unlike previous entries in the Monster Hunter franchise, the town carries a lot more story than before.  As you progress through the quests the caravan improves and changes locations and you will help the people defend their areas from monsters. In turn they will improve your ship and send you on quests. You will also have to deal with beasts inflicted with a strange blight and the Caravaneer’s quest to find the origins of a scrap he carries with him. This gives the game more of a linear feel than the previous entries, where you just hunted and hunted with no changes in town scenery and few requests from the townsfolk.

Since the game is essentially a series of boss fights, how the monsters behave and how you react to them is the heart of the game. There is no health or stamina bar for the monsters, and hunters must pay attention to the monsters’ behaviour in order to fell them. Monster Hunter 4 encourages climbing, giving the zones more dimension and—more importantly—aerial attacks that result in lots of damage and an opportunity to mount monsters for a ride-the-beast minigame.

Riding the monsters is fun and easy to get the hang of.  You grow the blue power bar by stabbing; if the head chasing your power bar goes red and speeds up, you need to hang on with for dear life until the beast settles down and repeat if necessary. Fill up the bar and the monster will go down, but if you fail you will get flung directly into the path of the next attack.

There are a wide variety of monsters, and the level progression is a lot less off-putting than in previous Monster Hunter games. It really eases you in for the first few levels before unleashing the truly unruly and large shit-kicking beasts. Every one of the monsters feels unique and their movements match their body type, giving them a sort of life instead of just straight-up “boss patterns” that have plagued these types of games and bosses in general.

The graphics and monster design look great on both the 3DS and 3DS XL screens. The animation and graphics blend together to give the whole game a very animesque feel.  The movements are smooth and the many cut-scenes look great. The designers expertly blend action and humour with tests of skills and reflexes to keep you laughing even as a Gore Magala sends you careening through the air. The folks at Capcom are the kind of hilarious sadistic bastards that (probably) get a laugh at the many deaths due to the celebratory gun show animation after drinking a health potion or buff. The music in town is fun and light-hearted, and exciting while being attacked in the field, and blends with the excellent sound effects in fine form.

This version of Monster Hunter does its best to streamline the town tasks. At the start of the game you will need a BBQ and raw meat in the field in order to make steaks, (which will become your main source of stamina). Soon you will be able to do this in the comfort of town with the street-cook and even cook more steaks at once, eliminating the need to go out and cook steaks ten (max) individually in the field. In town you won’t need to change zones to visit your farm anymore either. Choosing a new weapon is much easier, with a tutorial quest for each weapon and complete instructions for how to use them. If you want to see a weapon in action you can meet up with other hunters online.

One of the most addictive parts of Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate is the online mode. You can access the Guild Hall from the bottom screen in any town. The Guild Hall quests are designed for four people, so the monsters pack more punch. The difficulty level comes down some if there are less than four players, but the monsters still pack more of a punch solo.

When you go online you will be able to open up your own hall or enter someone else’s. You can lock your hall with a passcode for friends or allow anybody to join. When looking for open halls you can search for people of various levels or play types (people specifically gathering or playing key levels), or search for people hunting a specific beast. After meeting people online you can exchange “Guild Cards” and they will appear in your hall offline; you can then send them off on hunts and collect monster parts after. It’s a shame that the microphone included within the 3DS is left to waste here; lack of communication is the only apparent flaw with an otherwise immersive online experience.

Unfortunately, limiting the chat to text also makes it a bit harder to explain things to newbies.  When first introduced to Monster Hunter 3 my friends and I would often hang out in the guild tavern and exchange notes on different monsters or ways to use weapons effectively. It’s not a deal breaker and younger folks out there seem to enjoy typing a lot, but texting is a bit of a cumbersome experience for these fat fingers and I worry about losing my stylus every time I use it (Am I getting old?).

This is all getting a bit long so let’s start wrapping things up. That’s something I often say to myself as I attempt to turn off the game. Did I go fishing after the last quest? Is there anything I can upgrade now? There is always something to do in the town between hunts, and if you fail to keep your item box stocked you can find yourself out of healing potions quickly.

Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate looks so simple on the surface, but it has so many layers that it will suck you right in. Infinite diversity in infinite combinations is the motive behind the massive weapon, armour, and item system and that philosophy will keep you coming back for more if you dare to pick it up. The first few monsters are intentionally the easiest of the lot in order to acclimate you to the game’s combat style of dodge, attack, flee and heal.  Within the combat Monster Hunter 4 fits different styles of play from ranged to hack and slash, and many moves are based in real-world martial arts.

After 100 hours of gameplay this reviewer hasn’t ranked G yet.  It is so easy to get sidetracked from quest progression; hunting for rare pieces to make armour and weapons, heading out on expeditions with random monsters, and looking for more cats to add to my army of the night is just as addicting as slogging my way through an ever-expanding quest log. While nothing is perfect, the imperfections here are not enough to warrant a loss of a star in a 5 star rating system. This may be the best 3DS game to date, in any case, it is certainly my favourite.

As the Guildmarm would say: “Come on Doodle, you can do it!…And if you can’t it’s only your bones and organs. I’m sure you’ll be okay though. Wanna pick a quest?”

Scroll down for some more screen grabs courtesy of Miiverse!