Ok, ok, I get it: Monster Hunter is Godzilla-huge in Glorious Nippon. They can't get enough of the stuff. For the past month or so, it seems like that's all I ever hear about -- we get tips about it all the time, and I can't seem to escape the TV commercials for the recently-released Monster Hunter Freedom Unite. Up until now, I've been resolutely refusing to be interested in the game because a.) if it's popular, it's the law that I have to dislike it, or I'll lose my street cred and b.) I honestly don't know that much about the franchise.
Well, stupid old Capcom broke me down with a brand new trailer for Monster Hunter Tri (that's the Wii-exclusive one). It looks cool, and not just "for a Wii game." It looks cool in the way that says that three million Japanese people must be on to something.
If the title of the franchise doesn't make it obvious, Monster Hunter is kind of like MMO Pokémon for "adults": there's no Pokedex, but the goal is to guide your up-and-coming hunter to glory by battling monsters and completing quests. All of the Monster Hunter games (Tri included) feature online multiplayer, allowing you to team up to tackle the biggest monsters.
I use quotations around the word "adults" because, while Monster Hunter seems to be a deep, fully-fleshed action-RPG (with the trailer to match), everyone knows that only children play videogames, and that only the most childish children play them on the Wii. Waggle is kids' stuff, amirite?
Monster Hunter Tri will be out in Japan at the end of the month, but publisher/developer Capcom has been tightlipped about a North American or European release.
Assuming it does make it over here, are you guys willing to pay monthly fees to play it? Hit the jump, watch the trailer, and then let me know in the comments.
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I'm so going to borrow back my Wii from my parents for this game!!
I'm a long time MH lover, been playing the PSP versions for YEARS now, racked up 500+ hours on the last one and after a week and a half I'm at 80 hours of unite. That's more time than I spend at work!
It's a game you've got to try and you can't just give it a 5 min blast and dismiss it, it takes, say, 10 hours to get properly into it, figure out what you're doing and get "hooked".
But once you're hooked, that's it, you are now a monster hunter and any time spent playing the PSP is ALWAYS most productive if playing monster hunter. It's like a violent, grown up Pokemon.
I will pay to play this online, but I'm hoping there's a decent amount of free, solo-able quests too.
It looks really interesting, but monthly fees are a definite no. 6 months of paying for this game and I could have bought another game in its place. If its addictive as some other MMO's I know I'd be playing it for longer than that too...I can't bare to think how many dollars some of my friends have sunk into WoW. Same goes for XBL vs. PSN, those little fees add up over time after a year of XBL you could have paid for an extra game...and in a ten year life cycle that sure adds up to your potential library you're missing out on. Paying for online on the Wii is a big turn off to something that was a plus about the system.
Thinking about it like that, I would be WAY WAY happier to pay a monthly fee for this had it been on my PS3. I mean the PS3 is perfect for this kind of game...
Tonnes of content - massive capacity disc
Beautiful battlegrounds - HD display
Uses controller anyway - No Wiimote
Online heavy - PSN > Wii address numbers bullshit
So yeah, i would pay a fair bit for a PS3 Monster Hunter subscription. But I'd still probably pay a little for a Wii one.
It's kind of balancing on the pricing. Too much and they're going to ruin MH in the West, by putting it in front of a massive casual audience then screwing them out of the market, or they're going to put it in front of that audience with a reasonable price and secure Monster Hunter in Western hearts.
Hmmmm, fingers crossed, in 5 years time, I want to take my PSP on a train and find 2 or 3 people within range to play with, like they have in Japan.
1) A PSP UMD can already hold over 400 quests, movies and assets. Even more can be downloaded onto a memory stick.
A Wii disc has the capacity of a DVD and the console also supports running content from a memory card.
2) Monster Hunter Tri is mainly designed with the classic controller in mind. In fact in Japan it comes packaged with one. The game contains no waggle.
3) Monster Hunter Tri does not use friend codes. It uses a profile login system like every other MMO.
But imagine the amount of quests and items they could fit on a blu-ray? Not to mention how many high definition textures? To be honest the quests will take up no space, they're simple rules, but it's all the items, weapons, armour, monsters, music, videos etc. I'm not saying there's not enough on the MHFU UMD but just "imagine" how much they could put on a blu-ray!
Classic controller - that's my point, it doesn't even use the main aspect of the wii. I can see putting waggle games on the Wii because of waggle, but to put it on the wii without it being waggle based seems silly.
Releived that it uses a log in and not those stupid bloody numbers. Phew.
Bottom line is that you can't say it wouldn't be far far better on a PS3, or even on both "real" consoles....
i mean, HD for one, Monster Hunter looks amazing on the PSP but HIGH DEF monster hunter would be frickin awesome!
@Monster w21 Faces
Would I have played it for 6 months or paid for 6 months and got bored somewhere along the line? WoW came highly recommended to me by some friends. It was cheaper to buy long term rather than pay each month, so after a week of playing I on my free time I bought 3 months subscription only to get absolutely bored to tears with the game about 2 weeks into the time I was paying for it. 2.5 months of paid time wasted. So I'm weary of Pay 2 Play games.
Games I've bought in the last year that have lasted me six months? Bit Trip Beat, Super Smash Bros Brawl, M.U.S.H.A. I play those quite often and 2 of them cost less than 1 month of MH3 Tri would.
The argument goes that if you find value and entertainment in a game then you're willing to pay a monthly fee regardless of how much that ends up adding up to over the life of a game. It's when a developer misses that sweet spot between providing great content and charging a reasonable price that people start to turn away.
If you don't like WoW then you're likely to find little value in it and therefore see monthly fees as a waste of money. If you, however, are enamored with the game (for whatever reason) then the monthly fees seem trivial. You're more likely to be upset over missing a payment and losing access to the game than watching $15 fly out of your bank account every 30 days.
Regardless, based on the trailer alone, this title has my interest. I haven't had any experience with MH but if, in fact, it comes to North America, they'd better make sure it hits the mark in terms of quality vs. price otherwise the franchise may be lost on the Western audience who might see too high a barrier of entry to the series.
So... do you ever end up fighting monsters other than dinosaurs? I'm really curious because I tried the demo of MHF2:U that was up on the PSN, and every picture I've seen of anything MH-related always has some huge dinosaur-looking thing as the baddie. I mean, I guess it's not a big deal, but there are other monsters besides giant lizards, you know?
Bird type monsters, Primate style monsters, the dragons and elder dragons, the dinosaur types, the crab monsters, the swimming fish-esque monsters, Cat/lion type monsters, tigerish monsters etc etc the list goes on, not to mention the wierd one off monsters!
There are multiple monsters under most of those different types and thousands of weapons to kill them with which all fall under 6/7 different weapon types.
I suggest anyone with a PSP knocking around somewhere picks up Monster Hunter Freedom 2, must be super cheap these days and if you get really into it, MHFU carries straight over from it, if not you only wasted <$10.
On the point of playing a game for 6 months+ - you must have never got into Monster Hunter, It's taken me over 3 years (importing save to new versions) to get to Hunter Rank 9. Probably 1000+ hours now.
The game looks awesome. I love how epic the monster battles are. But pay-to-play online? FUCK THAT! The other MH games were free online, now they're just being greedy.
I tried a Monster Hunter demo for PSP and it seemed interesting but I'm not sure how I felt about the controls.
Depending on how many people can play at once (I'm guessing either 4 or 8), I'd be willing to pay. I've never been an enormous fan, but I've spent well over 300 hours on the series overall.
I just came.... so where do I put my money, on the nightstand?
I would pay to play this, just how much though? Well according to where the info came from:
30 days ticket = 800 Wii points, 60 days ticket = 1500 Wii points, 90 days ticket = 2000 Wii points
And 100 Wii points is about $1 in the US, so $6.6-8 bucks monthly depending on which ticket you get. That's not so bad.
What would be awesome is if only the days that you played actually counted. So like if I get the 30 day ticket and play on day 1 online, then play 5 days offline, then play online again for one more day, I'd have 28 days left. If Capcom is too greedy for that, I could settle for 'week' chunks instead of days.
I would just hate to play online for a few days, then take a hiatus for three weeks, and essentially waste a month of online time. MMO's don't suffer from this because they have no offline single player. We'll see how it all unfolds.
MH is an incredibly deep game which is it's greatest asset and it's biggest flaw
You can have the best armor and weapon in the game but that doesn't mean anything because this game is all about raw skill and tactics, something I miss about newer games. It's fucking hard but incredibly rewarding to take out a monster four times your size in a 10 minute long battle of attrition.
At least try this game, it's refreshing to see a game which takes dedication and rewards perseverance like MH does and Capcom takes a huge gamble bringing it over in the first place (the PSP ones anyway, who knows if the Tri will come over, MH has never sold particularly well overseas)
First off, for anybody that compares this game to World of Warcraft...don't. They're not even in the same freaking galaxy. If what I heard was correct, you would be paying equivalent 15 dollars in Japan for 90 days. You pay 15 dollars a month for WoW. And I'll tell you right now in terms of gameplay, Monster Hunter, even the very first one, has a great deal more replay value than any crappy ho-hum run-of-the-mill MMO out today. Oh yeah, and don't forget that this game has split-screen two player. So maybe we need to not be whining about paying to play online?
And what Goblin says is right. This game hinges progression on SKILL, not time invested or rolling dice and who has the higher stats. The player can do everything they can in the game, and then take what they've learned and apply it to a brand new character and do much better than they did originally first starting out. Monster Hunter is a breath of fresh air for this genre and gaming in general right now, and this is already my game of the year for this decade and probably next decade, since you can literally get that much playtime out of just about any of the games, alone or with friends.
I don't know if a lot of people on here really know much about Monster Hunter aside from "Look how pretty it is." so allow me to clarify:
-All Monster Hunter games (including this one) feature both a fully-realized single-player and multiplayer mode. Furthermore, if Capcom takes cues from the PSP iterations of the games, then all the online content will be available for the single-player to have access to, without necessarily having to go online. If not, then there is still the ability to play two-player split-screen with a friend. So in that way, I don't imagine they will repeat the single worst mistake that marred the original Monster Hunter's replay value if you couldn't get online.
-Monster Hunter games are skill-based. There is no level-grinding. Gear is created by killing monsters and using their parts to make weapons and armor that thematically represent what they were made from. Armor carries skill ratings that unlock skills that back up your playstyle in combat. Combat is totally in realtime and features very tactical hack-n-slash gameplay. You simply can't button mash and win. You have to pay attention to how the enemy behaves and anticipate their next move, and all the weapons have their unique pros and cons. They are not simply textures with numbers attached for damage.
-The monsters are the fulcrum around which the series pivots. They are the challenge, and the goal. Each monster is a character, with their own nuances and behavioral patterns, and it's up to the player to decipher these to best tackle each one of them. Furthermore, monsters can get pissed off. When they do, they get tougher, faster, and more aggressive, and in some cases can change their physical appearance drastically and even get new attacks. (go look up Rajang on youtube to see a very perfect example of this)
-The environments are instanced but quite vast (and apparently the largest they've ever been with 3). They are filled with things to gather such as plants to gather and ores to mine. The environment can also adversely affect the player, such as snowy places sapping your stamina, and desert terrain drain your health from the heat. The areas have day and night cycles that can change the layout of the terrain in many cases.
-You forage for items by looking, by mining, and by carving parts from monsters. You can use these parts to make weapons and armor (or decorations, which are used to customize skills on armor and weapons), but also to combine into consumables such as potions. Consumables can be traded, but weapons and armor can't. Everything in Monster Hunter focuses on the gameplay, so naturally everything is geared towards the player hopping into the gameplay as painlessly as possible without having to do a lot of aimless running around and doing trite fetch-it quests. You got out, and you kill shit.
-Because the combat is real time, you can dodge enemy attacks, and block them. There's no magic, instead there are ranged weapons that can fulfill a number of roles on the spot, such as firing ammo that heals your allies, firing status ailment-afflicting ammo (which is VERY useful in Monster Hunter), and as a ranged weapon, is the only way to attack enemies out of melee range.
There's more but I think that's enough to answer some questions.
@Vanor: you're on the money. If anyone wants to try and imagine combat in monster hunter... think of Nightmare/Mitsurugi/Taki from Soul Calibur, running around and hunting the shit out of critters and enormous monstrosities alike.
Tactical, fighting game inspired combat, with 11 kinds of different weapons (I think there will be less in Tri.). You can't button mash in MH, you'll die. You can't block all day (some weapons don't allow it), you'll die. You need to think, pay attention, and develop a strategy that varies with ever weapon and armor you have access to.
Monthly Fees? I'm a big MH fan and thats ridiculous. The games are known for their difficulty, so that would only add to the frustration...
If wiimotion plus worked with this though...
Monthly fees unless $5 or less is out of the question for me.
But this game really looks major. Theres no doubt this'll be a console seller in japan but here......who knows.
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Contest:
4:00 AM on 07.08.2009
| 
I'm a long time MH lover, been playing the PSP versions for YEARS now, racked up 500+ hours on the last one and after a week and a half I'm at 80 hours of unite. That's more time than I spend at work!
It's a game you've got to try and you can't just give it a 5 min blast and dismiss it, it takes, say, 10 hours to get properly into it, figure out what you're doing and get "hooked".
But once you're hooked, that's it, you are now a monster hunter and any time spent playing the PSP is ALWAYS most productive if playing monster hunter. It's like a violent, grown up Pokemon.
I will pay to play this online, but I'm hoping there's a decent amount of free, solo-able quests too.
Ohhhhh I cannot wait!!!
MH FTW.
Tonnes of content - massive capacity disc
Beautiful battlegrounds - HD display
Uses controller anyway - No Wiimote
Online heavy - PSN > Wii address numbers bullshit
So yeah, i would pay a fair bit for a PS3 Monster Hunter subscription. But I'd still probably pay a little for a Wii one.
It's kind of balancing on the pricing. Too much and they're going to ruin MH in the West, by putting it in front of a massive casual audience then screwing them out of the market, or they're going to put it in front of that audience with a reasonable price and secure Monster Hunter in Western hearts.
Hmmmm, fingers crossed, in 5 years time, I want to take my PSP on a train and find 2 or 3 people within range to play with, like they have in Japan.
1) A PSP UMD can already hold over 400 quests, movies and assets. Even more can be downloaded onto a memory stick.
A Wii disc has the capacity of a DVD and the console also supports running content from a memory card.
2) Monster Hunter Tri is mainly designed with the classic controller in mind. In fact in Japan it comes packaged with one. The game contains no waggle.
3) Monster Hunter Tri does not use friend codes. It uses a profile login system like every other MMO.
But imagine the amount of quests and items they could fit on a blu-ray? Not to mention how many high definition textures? To be honest the quests will take up no space, they're simple rules, but it's all the items, weapons, armour, monsters, music, videos etc. I'm not saying there's not enough on the MHFU UMD but just "imagine" how much they could put on a blu-ray!
Classic controller - that's my point, it doesn't even use the main aspect of the wii. I can see putting waggle games on the Wii because of waggle, but to put it on the wii without it being waggle based seems silly.
Releived that it uses a log in and not those stupid bloody numbers. Phew.
Bottom line is that you can't say it wouldn't be far far better on a PS3, or even on both "real" consoles....
i mean, HD for one, Monster Hunter looks amazing on the PSP but HIGH DEF monster hunter would be frickin awesome!
Would I have played it for 6 months or paid for 6 months and got bored somewhere along the line? WoW came highly recommended to me by some friends. It was cheaper to buy long term rather than pay each month, so after a week of playing I on my free time I bought 3 months subscription only to get absolutely bored to tears with the game about 2 weeks into the time I was paying for it. 2.5 months of paid time wasted. So I'm weary of Pay 2 Play games.
Games I've bought in the last year that have lasted me six months? Bit Trip Beat, Super Smash Bros Brawl, M.U.S.H.A. I play those quite often and 2 of them cost less than 1 month of MH3 Tri would.
If you don't like WoW then you're likely to find little value in it and therefore see monthly fees as a waste of money. If you, however, are enamored with the game (for whatever reason) then the monthly fees seem trivial. You're more likely to be upset over missing a payment and losing access to the game than watching $15 fly out of your bank account every 30 days.
Regardless, based on the trailer alone, this title has my interest. I haven't had any experience with MH but if, in fact, it comes to North America, they'd better make sure it hits the mark in terms of quality vs. price otherwise the franchise may be lost on the Western audience who might see too high a barrier of entry to the series.
@ShawnKelfonne: Yes. Check out the monster hunter wikia.
Bird type monsters, Primate style monsters, the dragons and elder dragons, the dinosaur types, the crab monsters, the swimming fish-esque monsters, Cat/lion type monsters, tigerish monsters etc etc the list goes on, not to mention the wierd one off monsters!
There are multiple monsters under most of those different types and thousands of weapons to kill them with which all fall under 6/7 different weapon types.
I suggest anyone with a PSP knocking around somewhere picks up Monster Hunter Freedom 2, must be super cheap these days and if you get really into it, MHFU carries straight over from it, if not you only wasted <$10.
On the point of playing a game for 6 months+ - you must have never got into Monster Hunter, It's taken me over 3 years (importing save to new versions) to get to Hunter Rank 9. Probably 1000+ hours now.
I tried a Monster Hunter demo for PSP and it seemed interesting but I'm not sure how I felt about the controls.
However, I've heard that the other Monster Hunters were all pay to play in Japan, but were free when they came here. I'll play if it's that way.
I would pay to play this, just how much though? Well according to where the info came from:
30 days ticket = 800 Wii points, 60 days ticket = 1500 Wii points, 90 days ticket = 2000 Wii points
And 100 Wii points is about $1 in the US, so $6.6-8 bucks monthly depending on which ticket you get. That's not so bad.
What would be awesome is if only the days that you played actually counted. So like if I get the 30 day ticket and play on day 1 online, then play 5 days offline, then play online again for one more day, I'd have 28 days left. If Capcom is too greedy for that, I could settle for 'week' chunks instead of days.
I would just hate to play online for a few days, then take a hiatus for three weeks, and essentially waste a month of online time. MMO's don't suffer from this because they have no offline single player. We'll see how it all unfolds.
"There will be a 14 day free online trial campaign"
So not 3 months sorry, but 14 days is better than nothing :)
ive got a feeling itd be a lot shorter on ps3 though..
You can have the best armor and weapon in the game but that doesn't mean anything because this game is all about raw skill and tactics, something I miss about newer games. It's fucking hard but incredibly rewarding to take out a monster four times your size in a 10 minute long battle of attrition.
At least try this game, it's refreshing to see a game which takes dedication and rewards perseverance like MH does and Capcom takes a huge gamble bringing it over in the first place (the PSP ones anyway, who knows if the Tri will come over, MH has never sold particularly well overseas)
And what Goblin says is right. This game hinges progression on SKILL, not time invested or rolling dice and who has the higher stats. The player can do everything they can in the game, and then take what they've learned and apply it to a brand new character and do much better than they did originally first starting out. Monster Hunter is a breath of fresh air for this genre and gaming in general right now, and this is already my game of the year for this decade and probably next decade, since you can literally get that much playtime out of just about any of the games, alone or with friends.
-All Monster Hunter games (including this one) feature both a fully-realized single-player and multiplayer mode. Furthermore, if Capcom takes cues from the PSP iterations of the games, then all the online content will be available for the single-player to have access to, without necessarily having to go online. If not, then there is still the ability to play two-player split-screen with a friend. So in that way, I don't imagine they will repeat the single worst mistake that marred the original Monster Hunter's replay value if you couldn't get online.
-Monster Hunter games are skill-based. There is no level-grinding. Gear is created by killing monsters and using their parts to make weapons and armor that thematically represent what they were made from. Armor carries skill ratings that unlock skills that back up your playstyle in combat. Combat is totally in realtime and features very tactical hack-n-slash gameplay. You simply can't button mash and win. You have to pay attention to how the enemy behaves and anticipate their next move, and all the weapons have their unique pros and cons. They are not simply textures with numbers attached for damage.
-The monsters are the fulcrum around which the series pivots. They are the challenge, and the goal. Each monster is a character, with their own nuances and behavioral patterns, and it's up to the player to decipher these to best tackle each one of them. Furthermore, monsters can get pissed off. When they do, they get tougher, faster, and more aggressive, and in some cases can change their physical appearance drastically and even get new attacks. (go look up Rajang on youtube to see a very perfect example of this)
-The environments are instanced but quite vast (and apparently the largest they've ever been with 3). They are filled with things to gather such as plants to gather and ores to mine. The environment can also adversely affect the player, such as snowy places sapping your stamina, and desert terrain drain your health from the heat. The areas have day and night cycles that can change the layout of the terrain in many cases.
-You forage for items by looking, by mining, and by carving parts from monsters. You can use these parts to make weapons and armor (or decorations, which are used to customize skills on armor and weapons), but also to combine into consumables such as potions. Consumables can be traded, but weapons and armor can't. Everything in Monster Hunter focuses on the gameplay, so naturally everything is geared towards the player hopping into the gameplay as painlessly as possible without having to do a lot of aimless running around and doing trite fetch-it quests. You got out, and you kill shit.
-Because the combat is real time, you can dodge enemy attacks, and block them. There's no magic, instead there are ranged weapons that can fulfill a number of roles on the spot, such as firing ammo that heals your allies, firing status ailment-afflicting ammo (which is VERY useful in Monster Hunter), and as a ranged weapon, is the only way to attack enemies out of melee range.
There's more but I think that's enough to answer some questions.
Dolphin can run this in HD :D
Tactical, fighting game inspired combat, with 11 kinds of different weapons (I think there will be less in Tri.). You can't button mash in MH, you'll die. You can't block all day (some weapons don't allow it), you'll die. You need to think, pay attention, and develop a strategy that varies with ever weapon and armor you have access to.
If wiimotion plus worked with this though...
Monthly fees unless $5 or less is out of the question for me.
But this game really looks major. Theres no doubt this'll be a console seller in japan but here......who knows.
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Ed Hardy