| Senior Member PSP Elite Hacker
Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: houston, TX
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1 - Monster Hunter Freedom
Before I bought Monster Hunter Freedom, there were some doubts as to exactly what the game was about. I hadn't heard much about the story, or the mechanics; all I knew was that it had a big ass sword on the cover, is an RPG, and is ported from the PS2.
While MHF is an RPG, the story isn't one in the traditional sense. Monster Hunter is more like WoW rather than the cut-scene RPG; the story is told through quests given from NPCs rather than line upon line of text. The problem in Monster Hunter is that there isn't a story, MHF is just a collection of quests that amount to no climax, suspense, or any emotion at all other than the anger felt when you die. Monster Hunter is about killing monsters (heh, monster hunter…get it?) and getting phat loot.
The player, after you customize his/her looks, starts off in Kokoto village, and before you can start killing monsters you need to accept a quest. Quests are split into gathering (items) and hunting (monsters). The hunting quests are, at the start of the game, the more fun of the two types. You find some monsters and then kill them, easy enough. The quests are repetitive and easy for the first few hours, but after that the hunting quests become much more difficult and thus, much more fun. You have to equip the right weapon and the right armour to fight some of the tougher monsters, but that isn't always enough. You will have to learn the movements and attacks of the beast by heart in order to kill it, which makes that final blow ever-so-sweet.
Each quest has a time limit, so some of the later quests will have you working as fast as you can to kill the beast. After 40 minutes into a quest, with ten minutes to go, I always feel rushed, so I make a drastic decision when I should have just stayed the course. Usually that drastic decision causes me to die and thus, become frustrated that my 40 minutes amounted to nothing. I always wanted to try the quest again though, which I think is, in part, due to the difficulty.
The second type of quest is the gathering quest. They require you to collect a couple of specific items, and, at the beginning of MHF, are quite boring. That being said, gathering plants can also be somewhat relaxing, since you don’t have to constantly be attentive for monsters. The interactive plants just look normal, so if you sheath your sword and press the circle button around a plant, you might find an interactive plant. From these plants you can gather herbs, mushrooms, dung, etc. Sometimes the required items you have to find are from these plants, but other times they are from a monster. Most gathering quests are rather easy, but offer a different, healthier experience than the hunting quests.
Quests aren't the only thing to do in Monster Hunter, since there are always things to do in Kokoto Village. The village, being the only town in MHF, has the typical item and weapon salesmen, as well as your house. In your house you can save, put items into a storage box (since you can only hold a couple during quests), and read books that give hints and tactics for monsters. A few hours into the game you gain the ability to have a cat cook for you. This is a neat little feature that can help or weaken the player for the next quest depending on the meals the player chooses. Also in the town there is the Kokoto farm, which is run by cats, where you can mine, fish, gather bugs and mushrooms, and farm. The farm is restocked with materials after each quest, which is really nice, since the mining materials help in upgrading armour and weapons. The farm gave me a little bit of relaxation from the repetitive nature of many quests.
From the opening CG of Monster Hunter I knew it would be a pretty looking game. The weapons and monsters look very nice, but the player's character model and textures aren't as great. It is obvious that the player can move through small trees and brush in the jungle area of the game. This seemed like a major flaw at first, but I realized that it would be difficult to kill monsters if they couldn't move through the trees. While Monster Hunter isn't without its fair share of graphical glitches, it can hold its own in the portable world.
The player is able to change the angle of the camera using the d-pad, which is required for the unstable camera. If you don't constantly have your index finger on the left and right d-pad buttons, which is uncomfortable, Monster Hunter will be almost unplayable. Otherwise you must constantly press L, which brings the camera facing the back of the player. This, however, isn't always the view you need, so you are better off using the D-Pad. While the camera can be a problem at times, overall it isn't terribly difficult, albeit uncomfortable, to have it be exactly where you want it to be.
One big problem I found in Monster Hunter was how the player collected materials from slain beasts. First, you must sheath your weapon, which takes a second, and then you must press the circle button to 'carve' items off of the beast. In total, five seconds are wasted getting one material. Beasts disappear in about 10 seconds after you kill them, so you must 'carve' the items off of them as quickly as possible. In some areas once you kill a beast, another of the same type will respawn around the vicinity; this flaw gives a monster 5 seconds to hit, and thus cancel your carve of the dead beast. You might then be knocked down, so by the time you can get back to the beast it might have disappeared. This would all be fixed if the developers didn't let monsters evaporate into thin air.
Another problem I found in MH was that in order to fight monsters you have to accept a quest. Once you finish that quest, you are automatically returned to Kokoto Village. If the time runs out, then all the items you gained from monsters are erased, so you received nothing for 30, or more, minutes of your life. The flaw is somewhat dampened since you can redo any quest. Therefore, you can choose easier quests, so that you can kill as many beasts as possible and get the quest done without too much trouble. I would have liked to be able to kill monsters without a time limit always nagging at the back of my mind. Free roam would be incredibly nice.
Monster Hunter, although simplistic and somewhat boring at first, became my favourite game on the PSP. Trying to upgrade my weapon in order to kill tougher beasts became quite addictive. While Monster Hunter has its faults, there is much fun to have in the game as long as you can stick with the first couple of hours. People that need a great story to keep them motivated should stay far away from this title, but any action RPG player should check it out.
+ Big Monsters = Great challenge!
+ Getting the best gear is satisfying
+ Graphics are great
- Where is the story?
- Dead monsters evaporate
- Quests only, no free roaming
8/10
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