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You Have Got to “Tri” This: Monster Hunter 3 – Nintendo Wii By: PoisonRamune, the Apathetic Lizardman While I wasn’t impressed with the Monster Hunter 3 demo that was given away at Gamestop last month, I was very interested in owning one of those new redesigned black classic controllers. Seeing as the preorder bundle included: the game, classic controller pro and a $5 Wii points card for about $55; I figured I could just resell the loose game, if it turned out to be a stinker and make most of my money back. However, not only did the actual game turn out to be way better than the demo made it out to be, but as of this moment Monster Hunter 3 may very well be my favorite game on the Nintendo Wii.
Monster Hunter 3 is an action RPG in the ever growing list of mock MMORPGs available for home consoles. It shares a lot of the commonalities with other games in this genre such as: the emphasis on item gathering, killing swarms of the same enemy numerous times, resource management, etc. In fact, the only major thing that truly sets Monster Hunter 3 apart from other action RPGs done in this style is its lack of character levels and personal stat gains. That’s right! Killing a monster yields no statistical gains for your characters (just items). This actually keeps the game very fun and above all very challenging. On one hand, you’ll never have to worry about just chasing a couple herds of Jaggis (velociraptors) for some crafting material and coming out of the skirmish inappropriately overleveled; but on the other hand, if you’re stuck at some point in the game, you’re either going to need to cut the slop out of your play style and strategy or hope that you can afford a better weapon somehow since grinding is not an option.
Naturally, with the lack of leveling your character up the only way to grow is by your equipment. Lucky for you, getting better gear (by means of crafting and/or upgrading) is pretty much the basis and motive for everything you do in this game. Your game begins humbly and is pretty much devoid of any story (aside from the typical “one day you might be a great hero” claptrap found in games of this nature), after receiving some fair starter equipment and doing a handful of tutorial tasks you’re then thrown into the world of Monster Hunter 3 (though not quite so readily to the wolves as in previous Monster Hunter titles). Your first quests are primarily based on gathering scattered items in the “hunting grounds,” a series of rooms set up as various wooded environments while you fend off lower tiered baddies. Eventually your work diversifies and you’re: gathering various resources from specific monsters, exterminating a certain species of baddies, and even doing crazy tasks like capturing monsters that are several stories tall pokemon style (I’m not joking).
Acquiring and creating your gear is fun, addictive and really plays off of my OCD. Every weapon and piece of armor in the game comes from either purchasing the goods with money and/or crafting them out of various items that you’ve gathered from quests and slain monsters (a good majority do require both supplies and cash). This works out very well since you know exactly what new gear you’re trying for, rather than waiting for some random monster to magically drop a sword that’s superior to the one you’re carrying. This system will consume you though, as I admit most of my evening last night was spent chasing around giant boss type velociraptors just so I could attain their claws for a sword I had my eye on.
The game also has an online function that works very well for being on the Wii. At first, I did have my doubts because I’m utterly sick of friends’ codes and the sterility of Wii’s online mode. However, I’m very pleased to say neither is present in Monster Hunter 3. When you first login online, you’ll be given a character ID# (which I guess does act as a “friend code” but is much shorter), this can be used to add and find others in the game (and also allows different characters with the same name to exist in the same server, I assume). You’ll also find that there are near no limits on terms of chat (aside from common 4 letter words showing up as stars/blanks), so it actually feels like you might be playing with a real person. The game is also pretty light on the lag. While I can’t say it doesn’t exist here, I can say that it’s not prevalent enough to use it as an excuse as to why you’re holding your team back and not slaying anything. Another thing to note is that the online community is pretty nice. Being as this game series has been around on quite a few consoles, there are quite a few veterans there; however, most of them are very helpful and will more likely give you a helpful tip rather than berate you online (much thanks to that random guy Ephraim, who taught me how to better use my rock club the other night by telling me to go for concussion moves with it). In fact, most people who did get mad/frustrated with my apparent newbness simply said crap like “You suck!” as they left my town after a mission.
There’s also a splitscreen mode called Arena in this game. It’s basically a boss rush/arcade mode that you can run your characters through. There’s very little depth to it and it’s mostly used as a means to tease your buddies into buying their own copy of the game, since transferring your data from Arena mode nets very little objects (much less than questing/free hunting would) the bulk of which being useless trinkets for your save house. You’re also forced to use preset equipment combinations in the Arena making it pointless to even have you import a character to begin with. As I mentioned before the game does come bundled with a redesigned black classic controller pro and let me tell you, it’s pretty amazing. The original classic controller was always lacking in some way. Despite the fact that it was modeled after a Super Nintendo gamepad, it had always felt a little off with that soapy satin finish. The addition of the grip surface on the back, ergonomic wings and extended shoulder buttons makes a huge difference in how the classic controller feels and above all plays like. While the classic controller had this knock-off/third party feel to it, the classic controller pro actually feels like a legitimate first party developed controller (which is ironic, since it was a collaborated design between Capcom and Nintendo). It’s well worth it to get for not only Monster Hunter 3 (since the game does get tough without it, but not impossible when you’re taking on quests in the 3rd tier or higher on your own), but also for the numerous Wiiware and Virtual Console games you’ve accumulated over the last 3 years.
In terms of raw graphics the game is amazing. This is the Wii at its best. While many games on the Wii have this PS2/Gamecube feel to them or are so vividly bright that it’s hard to give them an accurate evaluation, the graphics in Monster Hunter 3 are simply stunning. The monsters look great even in large swarms, the backgrounds are breath taking and really put you in the locales they’re portraying (most notable is seeing the barren desert sea for the first time), and the cutscenes are top notch. That isn’t to say that the game is on the same graphic level as a standard optimized PS3 or Xbox360 game by any means, but still looks very nice compared to what we have been looking at on the Wii The music and sound is very appropriate for the setting and situation, but that’s really all they are. The music never goes farther than just acting as an audio cue that a dangerous monster has appeared. You get these orchestrated snippets and/or fanciful production intros that sound as if they were made for a radio commercial or some generic action show on TV. There are also long spans of game time where there is no background music playing, so maybe you want to consider keeping your radio/MP3s/CDs jamming as you play. The sound effects get a touch repetitive especially with annoying monsters such as ferlynes (thieving cats) with their purrs and mews attacking your ears from all sides. Even though the preorder bundle offer is gone, the $60 Classic Controller Pro bundle is a steal. The game is well worth $40 (especially since I’m probably going to net about 100 hours in this game) and is a must get for a fan of action-RPGs/hack and slashes/loot based games. So be sure to check the game out, even if you had tried the demo and weren’t sold by it; and when you do get the game, make sure you contact me somehow and we can run a few quests together, I’m sure I’ll be into this game for some time.
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