95
Yea, I have logged 60+ hours on this game and I STILL can't put it down. So, I decided to write my first review on this game. Here is a breakdown of the individual sections:
Graphics: Wow, what can I say. The graphics are amazing and really show what the PSP is capable of. The detail of the monsters is outstanding with as much detail as showing the damage you inflict on them.
Gameplay: I know this game really doesn't have a solid storyline, but it doesn't need one. The constant striving to improve your weapons, armor, and kill count of creatures is enough motivation to get at least 100+ game hours.
Multiplayer: This is where Capcom really messed up. This game would have gotten a 100 score easy if it was infrastructure. This would have made it so much easier to get past guild quests instead of looking for friends that have the game or begging them to get it.
Load times: The load times are about average for a PSP game and could be shorter. Just to put it into perspective, I feel that games like the first Untold Legends and Midnight Club 3 have outrageous load times.
I know that there have been complaints of the lack of a lock on feature in this game. Well, boo hoo. I'm sorry that so many games out there have handicapped people by automatically targeting your opponent so all you have to do is move around them and pull the trigger. This game takes a more practical and logical approach and makes you actually have to judge where the creature is and how you will hit.
All in all, this game is amzing and I would recommend it to anyone, especially my friends so I could get some ad-hoc play. :D
Note: I have heard that the next Monster Hunter for PSP will have infrastructure. If so, then don't hesitate to pick that one up.
98
If you, like me, went to Gamespot for a review of this game, you've been mislead! For those who don't know, their reviewer gave this game a (6.5). 6.5!?!!?! Their MEMBERS gave it a 9.1 (684 of them) and it's the #2 game right now! Me? 97.8. I think that the Gamespot reviewer either a) didn't play the game for more than 1/2 an hour, or b) was biased for some reason, or c) had his head up his backside while attempting to kill a Rathalos. His review reflects his lack of intimacy with this game. Beware: my review is more in depth and lengthy..kinda like the game itself. Here's my review of this game and why I think Gamespot should recend thier rating.
This game isn't easy. I just want that out of the way. Don't buy this game if you want a ez hack-n-slash..buy Untold Legends. If you want a challenging, in depth game that defies you to kill even the more mundane monsters, that requires a commitment of time, thought and patience, that rewards you with a real sense of accomplishment when you gain a level or fell a giant foe, then this game is for you. One thing about this game, while you CAN 'pick up and play' it, I don't very often. It requires some real 'me' time. Time to sit and plan a strategy for dealing with your next adversary. Time to figure out just what combination of supplies and weapons will allow you to survive the 50 mins <on avg.> time allotment for this quest and still have enough power to KILL whatever beast you've been assigned.
Not that this game only involves killing Monsters. There's ALOT more to it than that. Perhaps that's what caused the Gamespot reviewer to whimp out. I mean, it IS hard to get started. From the first time you load it, it will take approx. 30 mins of gameplay before you're ready to even FIGHT anything, and that's one reason this game is so much fun! You're not just handed a weapon and a ration and told to 'go slay this dragon', instead you're given very little to start out with. You DO however have the ability to upgrade almost everything you OWN.
So, you find yourself in a strange village with a knife and armor and a penchant for hunting dragons. While it might SEEM like a good idea to just rush out and kick some butt, you'll quickly learn you're ALOT smaller than you feel and a little patience and planning will be required if you want to truly master this sport. It will take a good half hour of wandering around the village meeting NPC's and collecting things before you're even ready for your first hunt.
One of the main aspects of this game is combining items to make better items or to improve on armor or weapons you already have. For instance, to make a net you combine a fern and a spiderweb. What good is a net? Well, combined with a trap-tool you get a pitfall trap. A pitfall trap is exactly as you might imagine it. You set it on the ground and it springs open into a circle about 30 feet in diameter, with a trigger located in the center. Now, using either raw meat as bait or by getting a monster to chase YOU across the trap, you can cause the trap to trigger, causing the monster to fall into it. While the monster is trapped in the ground he's at your mercy. You can shoot him or wail on him with you're edged weapons. Not that this means a sure kill, since the monsters your trapping are HUGE. (A quick word on the graphics..the animation of the trap and the trapped monster is beautiful. The trap looks and ACTS like a real trap might and the monster flails about as though trying to extricate itself..it just LOOKS right!)
So now you know you can combine things, but where do you GET things? Well, you search. You search under trees, beside ferns growing in the forest, beside rocks in the desert and near Yucca plants. You search everywhere that looks like it MIGHT have something hidden or growing there. Thank god thats not the only way to get things. You are also given a farm. On your farm is a mine, a fishing dock, a place for planting things and a bug catching area. So, every time you return from a quest, you stop by your farm and harvest items. You use a net to catch bugs, which in turn you use for fishing. (A quick word on fishing. Fishing is FUN and challenging. A mini-game where you drop your line into the water and watch your bobber. Hit X as your bobber goes under to snag a fish. The animations are FUNNY and if you vary your bait, you catch different fish. Rumblefish, sleepyfish, knifefish all can be used in combination with other items or are useful in their own right! Different bugs, make good bait for different fishes.) Your farm yields an endless supply of combineable items and can be expanded as you gain experience and levels. Your ability to combine things can be enhanced by buying a book of Combo's. Which increases the 'chance' of things coming out the way you hope. Every once in a while, you'll combine 2 items and it'll turn out to be garbage. That HURTS. That's part of the reason this game is superior. Things aren't just handed to you. Sometimes things don't go as planned.
So you've got an idea about combining items, you've found your farm and you've figured out how to buy/sell things and save. Now is the time to start your first quest. After speaking with the village elder you find yourself at the edge of town. Up until now the graphics haven't been that impressive. A 3rd person perspective of you're avatar wandering around an extremely small village. As you leave town on your first quest that will change drastically.
First, the load times. Heres the only negative I can honestly say might cause you grief. There are loads between every area of the map and when you find yourself knocked out of an area or running from one a 20 second load EVERY time gets old. For me, it allows a quick respite and a few seconds to allow my hands to rest, but I can see how it would annoy some people to no end!
As you walk out of the cave that serves as an entrance to town, you find yourself on a vast green plain beside a river. In the distance you see waterfalls and birds circling in the bright blue sky. Off about 300 yards ahead of you you'll see a herd of what look like dinosaurs. The first 'monsters' you've encountered. These things are more or less cows. *The graphics REALLY take a step up at this point and, while still in 3rd person perspective, you're much closer to the action. The environments are beautifully rendered and the monsters move according to their size and shape.* The 'cowthings' lumber along like cows, pausing and turning slowly as they chew the grass of the open plain. These things are 4 times the size of any cow I've ever seen, and have big nasty tails that can deal a blow that'll send you rolling. They are pretty easy prey as long as you don't let them run for the river and escape. Once you've killed one you can gut it's carcass using your hunting knife. You'll harvest raw meat and bones, hides and horns and all kinds of usefull stuff. The meat can be cooked on a barb-que you will buy in the village. <Another mini-game that involves pulling the meat from the fire JUST as it turns brown, if left too long you get burnt meat!> Ok, you've gotten your first kill and your about 45 mins into the game. You are still a LONG ways from leveling or even SEEING a dragon. (Don't worry though, before you finish all your first level quests you'll see a giant Wyvern and understand why you're not even CLOSE to being ready to fight one.)
In one of the last quests for level 1 you have to get an egg from a Wyverns nest and return it to the village. By now you're starting to realize how very small you are in this land of giant dinosaurs and raptor like beasts with mosquitos the size of condors. As you enter the area outside the nest you will see a Wyvern for the first time. It's TERRIFYING! It lands on the grassy clearing and it's size becomes apparent. It makes the cow-things look tiny. It has scales, claws and viscous looking teeth. <Btw, one of my favorite subtleties to the game is seeing a Wyvern shadow pass over you, just before one lands nearby..it'll scare the bejesus out of you!> These things just look MEAN and are the epitome of how a dragon should look/behave. You're inclination will be to run. Wise choice! You'll need to sneak in and get the egg. The egg itself is nearly as large as you are and you waddle as you try to run with it . Thing is..while carrying this egg, you can't FIGHT anything and running wears you down quickly! You'll find yourself dropping the egg , or getting knocked down within sight of your goal only to have to run back and get yet another fragile prize. Though hilarious, trying to run past a raptor like creature carrying an 80lb egg is foolish and you'll quickly figure out that what seemed like a simple quest is really quite a bit more challenging. It's just EASIER to slay everything that lives between you and the village <except the Wyvern itself> before attempting to run home with an angry Wyvern following you!
Weapons vary quite a bit. You start with a hunting knife, a sword, a pike and a crossbow gun. As you progress you can upgrade these at the local weapons shop using items you've collected. You can also buy new weapons, but the cost is MUCH higher than if you just use items to improve the ones you have. I've used the knife, sword and crossbow. All have advantages and disadvantages. The crossbow allows you to sit back and shoot, but does alot less damage per blow than the sword.It also uses ammo which you have to buy and CARRY. The swords are giMONgeous and deal ALOT of damage, but are so big that each swing can take up to 5 seconds to complete!
I have left alot out of this lengthy review, but I've given you a jest of what this game involves and hopefully wet your apetite. If you still think this game sounds boring, you should apply for a job with Gamespot.
This game takes the art of the RPG to a new level. It puts you in the shoes of a novice monster hunter and makes you EARN everything.The depth of this game amazes me. You never feel as though the game is too easy or the next challenge will be a breeze.You are constantly discovering new aspects to the game that keep it fun and interesting. It's a constantly increasing learning curve. As your skills increase so do the challenges, making this an interesting and rewarding yet UNIQUE game. This game will be a part of my life for a long, long time. The depth of this game amazes me.
Looking for a game that'll last you ALL summer? A game that you'll still be playing in a year? This is it. It's the one game I own that I know will still be a challenge NEXT summer!
92
This is a purely must have game for the PSP. It would easily be worth 50 dollars even. I was waiting for this game for, about 5 months, and it was all worth it, and even without online play, a purely incredible PSP game.
Graphics
Purely amazing. Also the movie clip in the beggining is just so awsome I end up watching it every time I start this game. The in-game graphics are also extremely awsome, a whole lot of detail, I love the backgrounds, and its almost never pixely, this game's graphics are definitly up high in the chart of the PSP library. You can easily tell the difference between different armor, as well as small details on the monsters, as well as the enviornment.
Sound
The soundtrack to the game is OK, nothing to special. But what makes it amazing is the noises of the different creatures and sounds of the envoirnment. You can tell if a monster is close or not by the noises it makes. It actually feels like a real forest when youre running through one in the game. With headphones this games noises are unmatched, this is what I found to be the biggest surprise for me.
Loading Times
Heres the biggest problem with the game. The loading times, to enter the village can take a while to load, not that long but its about 40-60 seconds I think, I dont know Im really estimating here, but it can be a little annoying. Also when you go to a different part of the map it can take 4-10 seconds to load, and is usually short, but can get a little annoying. However the load times are easy to overcome with the great content of the game.
Gameplay
I might as well start from the top. At first you create a character, boy or girl, with a lot of faces and hairstyles, and you can even pick the voice. However, the hairstyle in this game doesent really matter. When you put on armor for youre head your hair changes or sometimes even covered. However you can still see your hair color and eye style so thats all good, but my hair style of my character changing so much was a little dissapointment.
There is a crapload of different weapons and armor in the game. The types of weapons are sword, great sword, lance, double sword, gun, and mace. By collecting materials you get from killing monsters or finding in the lvels you can forge new weapons or improve your other ones(which is the #1 thing youll be doing, improving your weapons). You can also forge and buy armor the same way. The variety is great.
You move with the analog stick, you can hold are to run but it uses up youre stamina bar. CLick L to make the camera go back to your starting view, what I mean is it looks directly the way youre facing. Some poeple complain about the camera but its rarely ever a problem for me. Click triangle to draw your weapon, with it you usually cant run very fast, and for most weapons the are button becomes the guard move, or with the mace, it becomes your special spin attack. Click circle and triangle or both of them together to attack and you can continually click them with different weapons to stack up combo moves. However you can only just shoot with a gun. Hold L and click circle or square to scroll through your usable items, and then let go of L and click square while your weapons inst drawn to use the item. This feature is made so items can be a lil hard to get to, but its supposed to be that way, and works very great with the difficulty of the game. In order to heal yourself you have to get away from the monsters and make sure you have nough time for you to use the poition or herb, which usually takes about 4 seconds. It makes healing not be cheap like it can be in some games. You cant lock onto creatures and usually have to time your attacks (especially with mace and great sword) and the game feels hard and challenging this way with the battle system. I absolutely love how its been done. Yuu can also click X to roll in a direction but you use up a little bit of stamina. (However when youre stamina isn't in use it replenishes automaticly in several seconds).
Most monsters in this game need timing and skill to fight, not just rushing in and mashing buttons. Ofocurse when youre weapons is super upgraded you can kill some weak creatures in one hit, but thats obvious once you get strong. But the way you have to fight most tough enemies is planned out very well.
The number of items you can use to help you is extremely high as well. You can aslo combine some items to make other ones, but this isn't random and is pretty limited to what makes what. One more thing, if you use a gun you can make or buy a whole lot of different ammo for it, and thats a great feature. In the village you can buy and sell items and get weapons and armor. You can also have cats cook a meal for you to upgrade your stamina or vitality for the next stage, if you pick the right combo of food. Theres also a Kotoko farm where you can mine materials for crafting or improving weapons and armor, catch bugs, fish, get msuhrooms, plant plants, and a few other features. A must visit in between quests.
Overall
A great game. Something seems to be missing but I cant quite put my finger on it (other than online play). Maybe its that the quests you go on usually have certain creatures, and if there was a free exploring mode with random creatures and unlimited time that would be pretty kool. Non-the-less, this game has very few flaws, laod times are one, and sometimes you get knocked into another part of the level or kill a creature where you cant get items from it. But that doesent happen very often and is quite easy to avoid. A MUST BUY, GO GET IT NOW!
85
I'm tired of buying a game that I usually finish in a week for the PSP. This game is packed with alot of detail. With great graphics, sound, and customization it is a awesome experience. Oh yeah and one more thing, if you own a pair of nice headphones, this game is alot better with them on awesome monster sounds.
85
Monster Hunter Freedom, my first experience with the MH-series. And I like it, I like it a lot and cannot understand why it is that I haven’t heard of this before, seeing that I do own a PlayStation 2 (even though it’s only been two years since I purchased it).
Anyhow, let us not discuss my gaming background but get down with the game instead. The title “Monster Hunter” tells you exactly what the game’s all about - tracking down and slaying monsters of various sizes, using a handful of different weapons, items and traps. When you first come to life in this game, after having spent a decent amount of time with the surprisingly well made character creation system, your character wakes up inside his house where there’s a bed (duh) for saving the game, an item box for storing whatever you wish not to carry around, and an info magazine where you may read up on things like how combat works, some notes on the areas where you’ll be hunting, and other topics that should be of great interest to a newcomer like myself.
Outside is the village in which you seem to be living and apart from having a couple of merchants and ordinary people wandering the streets, there’s also the Guild Hall where you embark on quests offline as well as “online” (ad-hoc, more on that later), a sword stuck in a tree stump, and a road that leads to a farm where you may do a number of activities without the risk of getting ambushed by Velicoprey or crushed by a descending Yian Kut-Ku. From what I have come to understand, the Kokoto Farm is a new feature even to veteran players and here’s a brief description of what it’s good for: planting seeds, mining resources, fishing and catching bugs. At least that’s all you can do at the start of the game, but as you buy and sell wares - you’ll gain Kokoto Points for helping the village grow and these points are used for expanding the farm. Not only will you be able to get more out of the stuff already mentioned above - but it seems that you can open up new activities as well. I recently added a Mushroom Tree allowing me to gather different types of mushrooms, for example. Kokoto Farm is a neat little feature that will allow you to get some resources without having to embark on a quest.
Because that’s the only way to leave the village - by embarking on a quest... Wandering off to the village border will only result in discovering an invisible wall, unless you’ve accepted a quest and thus will have the option to leave by pressing the square button. Not to worry though as there are quests that are pretty much impossible to fail and these only seem to serve as a way of leaving the village for resource gathering and weapon practicing. Quests are provided by the Village Chief and, naturally, the Guild. It is suggested that you go speak to the Village Chief first, since his first quests will serve as a tutorial where you learn more on combat, healing, combining items, traps etc. All quests provided are divided into five levels of difficulty, represented by an equal number of stars, and contains a number of quests ranging from 8 and all the way up to 20 (from what I have seen so far). Each quest has a reward, a contract fee (except for the first five missions given by the chief), a time limit and both goal and fail conditions. Quests are also divided into five categories: Gathering, Hunting, Capture, Event and Special and take place in one of five maps: Forest & Hills, Desert, Jungle, Swamp and Volcano. Each map consists of a number of areas - once you leave an area, you’ll have to wait until the next has loaded (think Fable).
So, you’ve accepted and embarked on a quest and thus are now standing in the camp; a place to rest up, do some minor resource gathering, and equip yourself with whatever starting equipment that the Guild or Chief has provided you with - which can be found in a giant, blue chest. Usually you’re given a map of all the areas, something that will restore your health and stamina, a whetstone to help keep your blade sharp, and basic ammunition if that’s the road you’ve taken. For inside your house, at the item box, you have no less than five different weapons to choose from - all with their own advantages, weak points and combat strategies. There’s the “weak” but very mobile Sword and Shield, the strong but very cumbersome Great Sword, the lance for keeping a distance without losing too much attack power, the extremely powerful though slow hammer, and the only ranged weapon available - a crossbow gun (heavier versions are available). You should try at least two of these before deciding on which to use. A sixth weapon does exist but you’ll have to find it first: the dual swords with their lethal combos.
Attacking is as simple as one, two, three. Mastering your weapon, however, isn’t. Believe me when I say that newcomers will wonder why the hell you’re unable to lock-on to creatures... But once you get the hang of it, you’ll forgive them for trying to make a realistic game where aiming and timing is of importance. Unsheathe your melee weapon by pressing triangle and then unleash combos by pressing triangle, circle and both together to perform different types of attacks. Timing is not a must here - simply bashing the buttons will do, but it won’t take you too long before you know exactly when to press the next button in order to extend your combo. The more you use a melee weapon, the sooner its edge will become dull and this will affect the weapon’s attack power. There are four levels of sharpness, presented in colors when examining your weapon (red, orange, yellow and green) and by a changing knife-icon when wandering around the map. Green sharpness gives you a 1.125 damage modifier, yellow is 1.0, orange 0.75 and red will reduce all your damage by half.
Once you’ve slain your first monster, you’ll want to cut it open. Stand next to it and press circle to cut the corpse with your hunter’s knife. This will typically provide you with a fang, some hide, raw meat or something else like that. This is also the main reason to why you hunt - to gather resources from both creatures and the nature itself (piles of bones, honeycombs, plants etc). Fangs are good for both weapons and ammunition, hides and scales will let you create new armor, and herbs can be eaten or combined with blue mushrooms to brew healing potions, for example. There are a ton of stuff to create in this game, it’s just a shame that you don’t have a clue on how to do it... I miss having recipes for what items and potions can be created (however, once you do manage to pull something together, you’ll receive a recipe for it). Thankfully, when it comes to armor and weapons - the shops will instantly tell you the requirements.
Monster Hunter Freedom also has an interesting way of developing skills: all armor will raise a certain skill by a certain number. So what you do is combine pieces of armor in order to raise a skill up to 10 points or more. This will activate the skill and you are then able to e.g. carry more, can withstand knockdowns, or are resistant to stealing - just to mention a few of the skills and their various effects.
Visually the game’s very impressive, as you’ll come to understand the moment you embark on a quest. The environment is highly detailed and monsters do both look good as well as move and behave like you expect them to do (hitting and slaying one Aptonoth may very well cause the rest of the herd to flee in panic). So far I haven’t had any slowdowns either - be it five Velocipreys or one, big Yian Kut-Ku attacking me, the game runs perfectly fine.
But there is one thing that slows the game down significantly, and that’s the frequent loading times. Entering the game as well as loading your next quest can take up to 30 seconds and while a map’s different areas thankfully only takes 4-10 seconds to load, they are all quite small and thus walking across the map will take some time to do.
Overall, Monster Hunter Freedom has been a great experience to me. It’s an incredibly fun and addictive action-RPG and definitely one of the top games out for the PSP. Very appealing visually and the sound isn’t too bad either, with good ambient effects and a nice (though short), Celtic soundtrack. It’s just a shame that they didn’t include more tutorial quests, left out Infrastructure (though ad-hoc play naturally is very enjoyable!) and that the gameplay is plagued by such time-consuming loadtimes. Still, I definitely recommend this game to everyone who finds the concept interesting but be aware that if you’ve never played a MH-game, you might have a hard time grasping the controls and will probably only think of it as an “OK game” the first hour or so, until you’ve completed at least the first five tutorial quests given by the Village Chief and thus have learned more about the game (even though you’ve still only scratched the surface). Now, let’s hope for a sequel with Infrastructure play and that they continue to support this game by giving us downloadable content!
Pros
• Detailed environments
• Good character customization
• Item creation
• Rich on content
• Ad-hoc play
• Downloadable quests?
Cons
• Load times
• Somewhat hard to get into
• Some areas are a little too small
• Infrastructure left out
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15