Monster Hunter Tri Review (WII)

The hunt is on!

The highly popular Monster Hunter franchise has returned to bring us hours of creature hunting goodness.

Having played all the other Monster Hunter games and loving every single one of them so far, I am pleased to see Monster Hunter Tri hit store shelves. This game is the main reason I own a Nintendo Wii.

Monster Hunter Tri promises a lot the rest of the franchise does; Countless hours of hunting monsters, collecting stock for villages, defending your village and many other styles of missions. For those of you that have never played a Monster Hunter game, you need to know that these games are not easy, actually there “hardcore”. Hours of play learning attack techniques, monsters moves and item usage are all facts that you must face in order to master the game and become a true hunter.

Tri starts you off steadily, your character arrives at a village in which the people there take a shine to you and give you tutorial missions to complete. These tutorial missions are definitely worth paying attention to if you are a newcomer to Monster Hunter. As soon as your done with the tutorials you are on your way!

Like all the previous games you are set to help the village and complete any quest that is thrown at you. All quests can vary, from monster hunting, supply gathering, mining ore, etc. The Monster Hunting quests are clearly the best and most liable quests for you to get the maximum amounts of fun out of this game. Hunting giant monsters and carving them for goodies never gets old.

You will have to make sure that your fellow hunters know what they are doing or you will fail

Going after specific monsters is a great way to try and upgrade your weaponry. Monster Hunter has a pretty impressive amount of weapons and armour for you to use. You can gain short swords, switch axes, lances, bow guns, hammers and long swords. Within those classes are many different types of that weapon, you will spend hours trying to grab yourself that one awesome weapon you want but you will have to earn it buy finding supplies as well as creatures. The same goes for the armour sets. Some of the armour sets in Monster Hunter Tri look amazing, I turned my little squirt into a buffed up dark knight, and it just looked immense!

The game is easily one of the best looking games on the Nintendo Wii. Each of the monsters look fantastic, and when you come across a monster that fills up your entire screen, it’s breathtaking. The giant monsters look unique and unlike anything else you have ever seen in other games. Along with the brilliant attention to detail on the creatures, each of the beasts have they own distinctive moves and animations. You will have to learn their move patterns thoroughly if you wish to survive and become a master hunter. Certain monsters will do a specific animation that shows if they are healing up, calling other monsters or hardening their armour and many other things. Paying attention to the state of your prey is essential. As good as the monsters look, the environments look gorgeous too, desert lands and jungle terrain especially. The back drops look outstanding within this game too. A sense of scale hit me when I saw rising mountains in the distance even though I’m within a small map.

A new addition to the game is the online multiplayer mode that’s been included with Monster Hunter Tri. Now hunters can take their skills and expertise online with friends to carry on the hunt. The online feature is pretty much the same game, but it’s a lot more fun. You and your friends will definitely get the most out of Monster Hunter Tri online whilst battling through quests together and gaining new weaponry to show off. You will have to make sure that your fellow hunters know what they are doing or you will fail an awful lot as the difficulty seems to have increased once you have more than one player within a quest. I would have liked to have seen a few more co-operative actions to have been available, such as the option to trade rarer items to players to give them a hand with grabbing certain armoury. I’m still struggling to gain certain items from monsters but it’s nothing that an honest bit of hunting can’t fix!

Monster Hunter Tri has impressed me within all aspects of the game. The game is still addictive and fun to play, and it also stays true to the “hardcore” difficulty with ridiculously hard quests to handle as well as learning all of the different types of manoeuvres monsters throw at you. The game looks fantastic all around and heavy attention to detail is paid to the environments. Multiplayer is a triumph for the Monster Hunter franchise and will have you scrambling back for more.

Keep the monster hunting sweetness coming Capcom!