Monster Hunter Tri

[Krimson Kun]

I had a friend try and convice me to play his copy of Tri. I got to the part where you've just collected enough to make the base camp bigger before I died of boredom. Because in effect, its a small MMORPG with fewer people, fewer locations, fewer monsters and some button mashing. While the mashing was interesting for a bit, Fighting off one set of monstrs and then turning to gut them, only to find that the corpses of the first ones you killed have dissappeared is evil.

Erm... what? If you're button mashing then you're doing it wrong...

not necessarily, with SnS I just come down to run around hit it couple times and lay bombs everywhere which is just aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa and I seem to do fine. Also its nothing more than button mashing in the first few quests, since there is no need for dodging

 

[Dora]

Based on the commercials, I was expecting the game to just be massive battles between your character and progressively larger and nastier beasts. Like Punch-Out, but with fangs. As soon as the review mentioned "quests" and "villagers" I had lost interest. I might rent it at some point, because God knows I haven't tweaked by "giant sea monster phobia" (seriously) enough lately, and fortunately that's what my GameFly membership is for. It can't possibly be any more dull that 70% of Red Dead Redemption.

 

[troqu]

1. Ofcourse
2. Ofcourse

Well then. More power to you hope you enjoy the game.

 

[milskidasith]

Based on the commercials, I was expecting the game to just be massive battles between your character and progressively larger and nastier beasts. Like Punch-Out, but with fangs. As soon as the review mentioned "quests" and "villagers" I had lost interest. I might rent it at some point, because God knows I haven't tweaked by "giant sea monster phobia" (seriously) enough lately, and fortunately that's what my GameFly membership is for. It can't possibly be any more dull that 70% of Red Dead Redemption.

After the 1* quests, 90% of quests are "Go kill this big ass monster" and then "Go kill this bigger ass monster" with the occasional "capture this big ass monster" quest. The other 10% are quests where it says "Go roam around and collect materials if you need them" where you literally have to do nothing to complete the quest.

 

[Krimson Kun]

Based on the commercials, I was expecting the game to just be massive battles between your character and progressively larger and nastier beasts. Like Punch-Out, but with fangs. As soon as the review mentioned "quests" and "villagers" I had lost interest. I might rent it at some point, because God knows I haven't tweaked by "giant sea monster phobia" (seriously) enough lately, and fortunately that's what my GameFly membership is for. It can't possibly be any more dull that 70% of Red Dead Redemption.

the game is pretty much that, all else is just to let you prepare for the battle with monsters with huge asses

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Well, I knew this was coming. So many "Yahtzee didn't play the full game" gripes were filling last weeks review's comment section that even Yahtzee had to notice it.

A game essentially made up of fetch quests? Sorry, not for me.

 

[Mindmaker]

I'm just saying, if most people are going to play all the quests, and they have no way of knowing which ones they can skip, I want them all included in the tutorial hour count.

They were included in my count.
But if you're really renting it, you will soon find out yourself.

 

[mike1921]

Well excuse me for assuming, when someone critisizing the game says "This game has a long ass tutorial" and when someone defending it says "this game has a long ass tutorial", that I assume the game has a long-ass tutorial.

So, 50 minute to an hour tutorial. Still Pretty long and annoying if you ask me.

My definition of reasonable weapon is derived from what I can tolerate using.

I keep trying to explain it to you, maybe you just need to play it, but the weapon speeds aren't an issue, because the enemy monsters are so damned fast. You'll be dodging and trying to position yourself for attacks a lot more than you'll actually be attacking on most bosses until you learn their movement and attack patterns pretty well.

And other people have tried to get this across, but it's not really a tutorial, it's just a slow start. And as I've tried to say earlier, yes it's a bit slow, but not without reason. In the past, the Monster Hunter games have taken shit for not having enough build-up and just kind of throwing you into the shit with huge monsters. This was an attempt to allow people to learn their weapons a bit and be better prepared when they finally got to the big monsters. Maybe it's a bit slow, but it's also rather rewarding to beat the big monsters when you finally do.

Furthermore if you do rent it, make sure you get through Barroth. He's the barrier between noob and competent hunter in this game, which is saying something since in the past games, it's been the FIRST BOSS that has been roughly that difficulty. The game may start slow, but it's for your benefit.

I don't care how often I hit, how often I dodge, how effective the weapons are, nothing, if the weapon is not fast.

So "It get's better once it picks up'. The only reason I would play a game like that is to prove a point.....So I'll go to blockbuster tommorow when It's not raining.


Barroth? According to the wiki that's not where the game ends, as if I'd stop before the game ends if I get that far and I'm playing to prove a point.

So your argument is reliant on A: personal preference on weapons (None of them are that slow once you understand the patterns monsters have, and lances, longswords, and Sword and Shields aren't even slow to begin with) and B: going into the game with a clear bias to say you don't like it?

How will that prove anything, exactly?

.................Alright, how is the pattern of a monster relevant to the speed of a weapon? I'm getting incredibly confused as to what your definition of speed is. Mine would be based on how many times you can swing the weapon in a minute, or just how long it takes to swing. I don't understand how it could be based on the enemy your fighting.

My definition of "slow" and "fast" is relative. Why? Because, objectively, all t weapons in the game are slow, when you compare them to, say, an assault rifle, or a semi auto pistol, or a fighting game. Objectively, the weapons are slower than, say, slashing stuff to death in God of War, but God of War has faster enemies and tends to surround you more.

So the weapons in this game, while they might look slow, are in no way too slow to fight monsters. That's what my definition is. A weapon is only "too slow" if it will get you hurt attacking where other weapons would be safe, and it is very rare that would happen (usually, it's the greatsword, which is slow and has a lot of lag after the attack, though you can roll out of that so it's not all that bad).

Yet again, thank the fans for making the game seem as bad as it possibly could. But, If I'm renting this I'm playing through the whole game, which is apparently incredibly long. Do you really think bias will persevere over me actually not liking the game if I play through a 60-140 hour game?

Yes. Fuck yes. Oh hell fucking yes.

If you're the type who will argue about how the game sucks for pages without ever playing it, you're not going to magically lose your bias. Humans don't like to admit defeat, ever.

Alright, how about this:
I really doubt the game is as bad as the fans make it sound (although...If it was it would probably be the worst game of all time). and since they're all I'm going off of, it's probably better than I say too.

 

[Rayansaki]

Although this is a decent way to review a game when you have little time for it, this mentality does cheat you off very good games, even great games.

I'm not talking only about FFXIII and MHT. A great example is Yakuza 3. It has 4 slow hours on the beginning with tutorials and story picking up and kids to feed, but eventually leads to a game with one of the best stories in the last 5 years and a great, fun and rewarding game, with around 15 hours if you stick to the story, or 75 if you want to do every side mission, and meet every girl and play every minigame (You will want to).

There's even people that say they got bored with Fallout 3 before they left the vault and never played it, even though the vault lasts 30-40 minutes

I still can't believe Yahtzee liked Dragon Age with this mentality, since it has one of the slowest weakest starts in recent years, or that he got through the painful beginning of GTA4.

 

[MR.Spartacus]

A ten hour tutorial? There are full length games that don't last that long! Why the hell would any game need a ten hour tutorial? What could it possibly teach you that can't be picked up in the first ten minutes?

 

[shadowmarth]

Based on the commercials, I was expecting the game to just be massive battles between your character and progressively larger and nastier beasts. Like Punch-Out, but with fangs. As soon as the review mentioned "quests" and "villagers" I had lost interest. I might rent it at some point, because God knows I haven't tweaked by "giant sea monster phobia" (seriously) enough lately, and fortunately that's what my GameFly membership is for. It can't possibly be any more dull that 70% of Red Dead Redemption.

But... That is the game.

 

[Icecoldcynic]

Wow that was hilariously bad. I mean I haven't played Tri, but I'm sure it's not too far off from 1 and 2.

1) 10 hours to get through the tutorials? No. This is an outright lie, and I refuse to believe he played the game even 3 hours, because it's never taken me more than an hour to get to the first drome in previous titles.

2) He clearly spent all of 5 seconds trying out all the weapons, since anyone who's ever played a MH game would not call hammers slow.

3) Half an hour to kill a drome? Yeah, I don't think so mate. Unless you're sat there letting it slap you about the whole time it'll go down in 10 minutes TOPS. Even with a starter weapon.

4)Only changing equipment at home is an oversight, sure, but you'd have to be an idiot not to notice that you actually get your deposit back if you abandon a quest. Another outright lie.

You know I actually think he has something against capcom. It's all well and good exaggerating in ZP for the humour of it, but half of the stuff he said in his EP is just lies. He did NOT play the game for 10 hours that's for sure. I find it a stretch to believe he even played it for 2.

 

[Krimson Kun]

A ten hour tutorial? There are full length games that don't last that long! Why the hell would any game need a ten hour tutorial? What could it possibly teach you that can't be picked up in the first ten minutes?

Again, Yahtzee loves what?
(if you answer correctly you get nothing.)
The tutorial lasts about 1~2 hours max.

Wow that was hilariously bad. I mean I haven't played Tri, but I'm sure it's not too far off from 1 and 2.

1) 10 hours to get through the tutorials? No. This is an outright lie, and I refuse to believe he played the game even 3 hours, because it's never taken me more than an hour to get to the first drome in previous titles.

2) He clearly spent all of 5 seconds trying out all the weapons, since anyone who's ever played a MH game would not call hammers slow.

3) Half an hour to kill a drome? Yeah, I don't think so mate. Unless you're sat there letting it slap you about the whole time it'll go down in 10 minutes TOPS. Even with a starter weapon.

4)Only changing equipment at home is an oversight, sure, but you'd have to be an idiot not to notice that you actually get your deposit back if you abandon a quest. Another outright lie.

You know I actually think he has something against capcom. It's all well and good exaggerating in ZP for the humour of it, but half of the stuff he said in his EP is just lies. He did NOT play the game for 10 hours that's for sure. I find it a stretch to believe he even played it for 2.

1. look up
2. Hammers are slow, even though they can hit a lot they are a slower weapon.
3. if you're new to the game(and using a wii mote) it will take longer, since the game is more about skill than equipment
4. You don't get quest fee back ever since monster hunter frontier came out, and I'm still against changing weapons all the time, did you see how huge those things are?

 

[shadowmarth]

Wow that was hilariously bad. I mean I haven't played Tri, but I'm sure it's not too far off from 1 and 2.

1) 10 hours to get through the tutorials? No. This is an outright lie, and I refuse to believe he played the game even 3 hours, because it's never taken me more than an hour to get to the first drome in previous titles.

2) He clearly spent all of 5 seconds trying out all the weapons, since anyone who's ever played a MH game would not call hammers slow.

3) Half an hour to kill a drome? Yeah, I don't think so mate. Unless you're sat there letting it slap you about the whole time it'll go down in 10 minutes TOPS. Even with a starter weapon.

4)Only changing equipment at home is an oversight, sure, but you'd have to be an idiot not to notice that you actually get your deposit back if you abandon a quest. Another outright lie.

You know I actually think he has something against capcom. It's all well and good exaggerating in ZP for the humour of it, but half of the stuff he said in his EP is just lies. He did NOT play the game for 10 hours that's for sure. I find it a stretch to believe he even played it for 2.

Agree with most of what you said, except #3. If you're new to it, have a shitty weapon, and it's your first time, I could definitely see the Great Jaggi taking 30 minutes. It's significantly beefier than the glorified minion that was the Velocidrome.

 

[StriderShinryu]

I can't remember any of the newer MMORPGS putting emphasis on story or roleplaying.
Epic stories and the roleplaying experience is nothing that appeals to the wide masses.
And yes I have once been playing these games, which makes it hard to comprehend, why they should have a better earlygame than MH.

And comon, comparing Diablo and and Monster Hunter?
I agree, they may have some elements in common, but they are completely different games.

For the first point, Lord of The Rings Online is an easy example. The main draw of the game is not raiding or grinding, it's "living" in Middle Earth and following the epic storyline (both through your own personal epic quests as well as the widely known LOTR storyline).

Early game in LOTRO as a Hobbit: Nearly get captured/killed by a Nazghul, try to save a doomed town from a brigand attack, be let loose into the world where you can pursue quests, Epic or not, in a variety of areas or just head off on your own and explore or Role Play.

Early game in MH as it's been explained here: Go out into an instanced world, collect some stuff, kill some little monsters, collect more stuff, kill some big cool monsters.

Different strokes for different folks, but I think it's pretty easy how some (many?) would consider the LOTRO early game to the MH early game. Oh, and while Epic Stories and Role Playing don't appeal to the masses, neither does repetitive grinding and looting.

As to the Diablo comparison, I think it's quite obvious. An action based but mainly gear oriented RPG crafted around completing simple quests with the focus on entering instances to gather bigger and better loot than was found in the last instance. That statement could easily be used to describe both Diablo or MH, could it not?

 

[Gizen]

To the people arguing that the tutorial isn't ten hours long, maybe it isn't for people who've actually played a Monster Hunter game before, but to somebody who hasn't, it very easily can be. If you assume that everything up to the first fight with a Great Jaggi is tutorial, that's 10 quests, each with a 50 minute time limit. If you've never played before, don't know which items are useless and which ones aren't, you can easily hit that limit for every quest while you relentlessly gather everything until your bags are stuffed to bursting before you actually complete the quest, for fear of wasting the opportunity to gather. Then there's also exploring when you go to an area the first time, doing all of your running around in the town, as well as your first four trips into the Moga Woods before you even get to go on a quest for the first time, plus any additional trips into the woods you may take in between quests up to the point where you first meet Great Jaggi. True, people who know their way around a Monster Hunter game can blow through all that in an hour or two, but speaking from experience, people who have NO prior history with Monster Hunter can easily take 10 hours to get to the first giant monster.

 

[Dora]

After the 1* quests, 90% of quests are "Go kill this big ass monster" and then "Go kill this bigger ass monster" with the occasional "capture this big ass monster" quest. The other 10% are quests where it says "Go roam around and collect materials if you need them" where you literally have to do nothing to complete the quest.

Eh... maybe I'll have to have a look at some gameplay footage. It still doesn't sound like my cuppa, but I appreciate the old school try. I don't want to receive quests, or talk to NPCs, I just want big battles. I'm extremely simple that way. Closer would basically be, I dunno... Mortal Kombat with behemoths or something, only with a free-roaming arena for me to cower in. Maybe literally an arena. Maybe it could be like Gladiator, but with bigger and meaner monsters someone has collected that you have to fight your way out to win your freedom. And maybe the ultimate boss is Roger Ebert on a dais. Aw, man, now I'm even more disappointed.

The problem is that I know what I wanted the game to be, which was based on me not doing any research whatsoever beyond seeing the occasional commercial spot, and the game itself wasn't that. At least, not really. And that's my fault, not the game's, so it's cool that so many people seem to enjoy it.

On the plus side, the review did make me want to play Harvest Moon again.

 

[mjc0961]

Bravo, bravo! I agree wholeheartedly. "It gets better later" is the sign of a shitty game made by shitty developers. If they were truly great, they could make the entire game not suck. Even if it is only 1.5-2 hours instead of 10... That's still too much sucking for my taste. Either find a way to make the entire thing fun, or your game is going back on the shelf while I play something else.

 

[Icecoldcynic]

A ten hour tutorial? There are full length games that don't last that long! Why the hell would any game need a ten hour tutorial? What could it possibly teach you that can't be picked up in the first ten minutes?

You realise that's a quote from yahtzee, right? Just saying because you seem to think it's something other than a MASSIVE exaggeration. The tutorial is an hour at most, and that's if you're some slow troglodyte who needs everything explained to you 5 times before you understand.

 

[StriderShinryu]

Wow.. this thread is just.. wow. *sighs*

Monster Hunter is different though. Really, there is no game yet designed like Monster Hunter (which is surprising to me).

Actually, there are a ton of games that are designed like Monster Hunter and they've been around for a long time. Diablo could be cited as an example (generally not story oriented game based on performing fetch/kill this quests in order to acquire loot). Most MMOs, however, are actually even better examples. Many MMOs have an abundance of go there, kill this, collect that quests but they generally aren't boring or off putting at the beginning. Even if early game MMO gameplay can be derivative (as can late game play, really) there's always the common reliance on story, role playing and an open gameplay experience to make them interesting.

The big difference is that Monster Hunter requires the skill of the player to beat the game rather than the skill of the armour/weapons. Stronger weapons only become mandatory after a certain point in the game (a loooong ways into the game), armour is not even necessary at all.

It is different in that you won't lose because you did not hurt the monster enough or the monster did a lot of damage to you, you lose because you SUCK at fighting the monster.

Quests and gathering are the only things in common with other games. Monster Hunter's main gameplay element is it's unique combat style which is not shared with other games.

If that is your belief, then perhaps you should have stated that.. though if you're looking for a combat based game there are undoubtedly many others out there with better deeper combat. It isn't the game design that's different, it's simply certain aspects of the combat system.

Either way, yes MMOs are very gear based but based on the commentary here it would certainly seem that MH is as well. And I would certainly say that better designed MMOs aren't about just having strong enough gear for the situation you're in. The gear will help, and in some cases it is needed, but if you don't know what you are doing you will die no matter how good your gear is.