Review for Monster Hunter Tri

Monster Hunter Tri is an Action-RPG on the Wii. The basic premise is that you are a, well, monster hunter, and your job is to hunt and kill monsters for fun and (primarily) profit. The game does a good job of making you feel like the world is alive and that you are a part of it, such as in the Moga Forest, where if you are trying to get to the caves in area 7, you could take a shortcut through areas 4 and 6 if you are willing to walk through both a pitch black cave and a nest of carnivores that want to eat you. Or, you could take a different route and only deal with herbivores. If you want to go fishing, you could just take a shortcut from your campsite to area nine, where you can get to the water.

Unlike most RPGs, there is no experience or level up system. Instead, you hunt the monsters and then loot their body. With the materials gained from their corpse, as well as what you mine and scavenge, you can get better armor and weapons to hunt bigger enemies. Whenever you defeat a boss, (or wyvern, as they are called in the game), you gain access to a new set of armor that uses the elements from their body as materials. Hence, you can often judge how deadly a weapon is and how well-equipped the owner is by what armor and weapons they are wearing.

The story is basic, although witty. You are the resident hunter of a fishing village, and a giant sea monster called the Lagiacrus is terrorizing the village with earthquakes and other disasters. Your job is to train and gain skills to prepare yourself for the final battle with the Lagiacrus.

Or, if you are like me and absolutely terrified by that initial battle with the Lagiacrus (there is one early mission where you have to avoid while hunting other sea creatures for their guts), you can try the multiplayer option.

In multiplayer, you have access to most of the stuff that you can have in the main village, but with the added bonus of being able to make all weapons at the forge. You can form teams of up to four members, and most of the early mission include hunting bosses, so it is really good for gaining better armor.

I have yet to encounter other people with the microphone, however, it truly does make you feel like a part of the team to go group hunting. Everyone can loot the bosses corpse up to four times, and then they each get an individual reward for killing it.

On the weapons, there are six types. My personal favorite is the sword and shield, which deal the least damage but have the added bonus of being able to use weapons while they are drawn and that you can carry a torch with them. So, the aforementioned early carnivores, for example, are dog-velociraptors and are wary of fire, so they will not attack you if you have a torch. Or, you can take advantage of your shield to stun the monsters or block attacks.

My second favorite is probably the switch axe, a weapon that switches between an axe and an elementally-charged sword. You can only have it in sword mode for a few attacks, and then it switches back. It's about five times more powerful than a sword of a similar level, but twice as slow and you can't block with it. You move at a snail's pace with sword, but it attacks faster.

The hammer is slightly more difficult. It has a short range, and no blocking. You are forced to wear really heavy armor, because it is also slow. Thankfully, it can and often will stun your enemies.

The Greatsword is so slow that I took one swing with it and put it back. The long sword is like a katana, and has the size of a lance but is easier to hit with due the fact that it is mostly slashes. It also is longer. The lance is a pain to use. Slashes make life easy, and with the lance you are stabbing things. The shield is bigger on a lance, but that is offset by how much of a pain it is to attack enemies with it. I have not tried the bowgun.

The underwater levels are often rather interesting, if you ignore the fact that a burly, muscled hunter wearing heavy armor and a eight feet long sword could not possibly attack or float underwater. Underwater, you also have to move downward as well as upward and side to side. The underwater monsters also usually look a lot cooler.

The environments and interesting and varied. The most basic area is the moga forest, as it is called. It is a grassy area with most kinds of areas in it, although its focus is on mountains. The next area that I've seen is a flooded forest, a rather interesting and awesome-looking area that is mostly full of murky waters and some areas in it are fully flooded. After that, there is a desert with obnoxious shark-things called Delex that swim through the sand. They attack you and then run back under the sand, causing much annoyance.

The music of the game does a quite good job at setting the mood of what is happening at the moment, and usually helps. For one example, when a boss sees you, a dramatic single, loud, accented, and fast note plays from completely out of nowhere, making you jump, and then it switches the the normally light-hearted music to dramatic music that scares you. Smaller enemies are sent flying as you dodge the attacks of the boss, being killed it one hit by its almighty power.

The animations of the characters and monsters are interesting and varied. The animation and character models are very fluid, and it is a sight to be seen when you are running and a giant boss is chasing after you. The animation that you are doing is hilarious. However, like most games with 3D graphics, there are some collision issues. For example, when your sword and shield are sheathed, your sword's tip is sticking out of the shield. Also, when looting the dead corpse of an enemy, you walk through it and just do the same animation for all enemies. You walk through it or stand on the ground below it and then gather from it.

The game is difficult, although not impossibly so, and it definitely rewards you for learning and playing it. It is a very good feeling to kill that boss, or find yourself killing easily enemies that used to give you a lot of trouble. I've decided not to give the game a rating, mostly because if I make reviewing regular the numbers would mostly be high with no lows, so I'm just going to end it here.