SirMax said:
So... did the game have a plot? Was there any value to collecting anything and upgrading it? Or was it literally just a circle of upgrading to make it easier to collect so you can upgrade more?
Also, on the note of visual novels, I've "played" good visual novels and enjoyed them, it's just I enjoyed them in the same way I enjoy reading a book. If you come into them expecting a gaming experience then they are undeniably the worst games in existence, but you want to read a book that sometimes has multiple endings then they can be lovely.
I've played "Monster Hunter" on the PSP, but have not tried this version. It's a fantasy hunting sim. Pretty much the entire thing is to move through the hunts that the village elder gives you in order to collect materials so you can take on new hunts. There really isn't much of an overarching plot like "go kill Dark Foozle to save the realm", although the lead ins for some of the monsters can be fairly dramatic. Sort of like in Pokemon how your out to "catch them all" and become the Pokemon master, in this game your out to "hunt them all" and become the greatest hunter in the game.
As far as I played, part of the fun is finding out how to attract/lure/kill differant monsters, and some of them have nasty gimmicks which require you to build special devices/armor to fight them. You also need to do things like make bait, place it in the right place, and use things like marker dye to chase the monsters from area to area as they flee from you.
As you progress you have like a hunter card, which records some of your progress, and you can allegedly show to other people playing the game when you do co-op with them. I have never done this, so I can't say for sure, but apparently there is a pretty massive community of Monster Hunter players in Japan that get really into this kind of thing, so part of the appeal is intended to be social.
This is a grind-tastic series, but I don't mind grind if it's done well. However things like that don't appeal to all people, Yahtzee for one has never been into it (going by his other installments). If you don't like it, your not the target audience, and that is why they make differant kinds of games. Simply put in this game part of the gimmick is that you have to make everything from weapons to armor, to devices and traps, so if you want to try a strategy to kill some big bad monster, you need to collect all the pieces from other monsters you've beaten to construct the traps/weapons/whatever. Likewise the versions I've played have you picking one of 8 or 9 styles of fighting at any given time, all with various strengths and weaknesses, some of which are infinatly better than others. A monster that falls easy to sword and shield, but be harder to beat with a lance, but the lance itself might be better against a differant monster. Then of course you have various flavors of ranged weapons like arrows which cause differant FX from poisons, to light bowguns (cannons) which let you shoot and move, to heavy bowguns which do insane damage but prevent you from moving while you shoot and kind of need to be "Set up". So prepping a properly beefy weapon for the right monster to try a strategy can be tricky.
That said I didn't get all that far with Monster Hunter games even though I wanted to like them, generally because the controls for the PSP are absolutly awful, and none of the grip strategies people use to make it more managable worked for me. Monster Hunter is a game that really screams for two control nubs like other games (one to move, one to move the camera), which the PSP does not have. I've been hoping for a PS-3 or 360 version to appear for this reason.
I guess the best way to look at it is a sort of cult classic, with a sizable cult of people that play it overseas. You either get this specific sim/action-RPG hybrid, or you don't. You have to be the kind of guy that is going to get satisfaction from like spending a dozen hours finding out how to lure, track, and finally defeat some big-bad monster, which is similar to the appeal of having some ultra-rare, shiny, perfectly leveled pokemon. Having other people who also play the game to brag to, hunt with, and strategize about possible ways of doing specific things probably also helps... as I said, it seems like it's the kind of game that is decent on it's own, but would really benefit from a strong player community in the area your in.
Well, I'd say after that review I'm probably not likely to buy the game, not that i would be likely to buy many games on the wii, but still..
