Reviews// Monster Hunter 3: Ultimate

It may be apparent from the title that there have been a number of Monster Hunter games before this one. If you’re at all familiar with Capcom’s history and practices, you may also catch on to the fact that there have been a few other versions of this particular Monster Hunter too, though Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate does mark the series’ debut on the 3DS.

I, of course, haven’t played any of them, despite my general enthusiasm for games which let me hunt monsters. Seems like something of a faux pas on my part. But is this the day I am finally won over by a series I have so far managed to evade?

The art style is a bit funky for my taste, but the graphics are undeniably impressive despite that. Once you adapt to being dropped into a world where everyone dresses just a bit weirdly then you’re sure to appreciate the wide open planes, verdant forests, sandy beaches and all that jazz. Sort of like our world, thinking about it. But with loads more dinosaurs. And they all look great.

There’s a lot of variety and every kind is smoothly animated. It’s not just about dinosaurs either, there are plenty of big bugs and little cat bandits and fish monsters before you even get into the more mythically-themed giant dragon things. The 3DS’ 3D feature doesn’t add much here. It’s pretty and ups the impressiveness of the cutscenes a few notches, but you probably won’t want to use it for extensive play. And Monster Hunter does tend to lend itself to extensive play.

The game’s most glaring, immediate problem is probably the loading times. It’s not that they’re especially long; the problem lies more in each hunting zone being divided up into many small areas. Your adventures will be frequently broken up by loading screens literally every few minutes as you pass through. It kind of kills the pace a bit.

And it’s not like the pacing needs slowing down any more. The start of Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate is excruciatingly dull. Dropped into a quaint little fishing village, there’s no hint of a plot or anything before you’re sent out to get some meat from killing your first monster. And then you’re sent out to bring back some ore from mining your first rock. Then you finally get your first proper Hunting Guild-sanctioned quest that some NPCs have been hyping up a bit (if you’ve bothered to talk to them). And they want you to go out and get some bloody mushrooms.

If, as a brand new player, I am already impatient to really get into the thick of things I imagine a seasoned Monster Hunter would find the early stages of the game a nightmare to sit through. Admittedly, the game doesn’t take too long to start unlocking new features and letting you cut loose, but those first few hours of the game are so boring I’d forgive anyone for giving this a quick go and then shelving it. Fortunately things do start to pick up pretty fast after you’ve finally finished running around doing stupid chores.

My early woes weren’t helped as I struggled to get to grips with the inventory system. Even a few minutes running through the wilderness, hacking apart the local flora and fauna, would leave me with pockets full of bits of animal skin and meat and no room to pick up anything else without returning to town.

Worse still, the game doesn’t make it at all obvious which bits of stuff are useless. Some can be sold without consequence while some will come in handy later on in the crafting system that lets you create and upgrade new weapons and armour. But you're not told which is which. Eventually I gave up and just started dumping everything into the storage box back at my house.

Quests are where you’ll be spending most of your time, and while there are a lot of them they all fall into a small number of categories. The most common of these challenges you to head out and either dispatch a certain number of enemies or bring back a certain number of items (which themselves are often found by dispatching a certain type of enemy). Quests don’t like to stray too far from that formula, but when they do it’s quite refreshing. Some quests merely challenge you to survive in the wilderness for a set length of time, but it’s up to you what you get up to. I spent one such quest playing with the fishing mini-game, only briefly stopping to explore the surrounding area and beat up some dinos.

Outside of quests your main goal is to amass resources for the village, resources which can be spent upgrading the local farm and fishing fleet so that they in turn can amass more resources for you. Things can get quite hectic between quests if you’re making proper use of your facilities, with the fleet providing a steady supply of assorted fish and the farm growing crops of whatever you provide them with. Between these sources of extra income and your own hunting outings you’ll be visiting your house on a regular basis to empty your backpack.

One minor gripe of mine is that you have to visit your house in order to save by using the bed. Yes, you can abandon quests and warp back to town at any time, but not being able to just save whenever you like isn’t exactly conducive to the play-on-the-go factor usually afforded by handheld platforms.

To say you have to do so much of it, combat isn’t quite as perfect as you’d hope. There’s no lock-on feature so you have to manually aim your attacks at enemies. This might sound like nit-picking, but it can combine with a few other small problems to become a big problem. Firstly, the camera isn’t terribly effective and you’ll have to keep hitting the shoulder button to realign it behind you. This wouldn’t be too bad but it’s made worse by the fact that you’re frequently fighting faster and smaller foes or more than one enemy at a time and you’ll be adjusting the camera almost constantly while you fight.