A very solid RPG and a very solid adaptation of the gameplay loop from the core MH series. The literal rock paper scissors mechanic is well done and interesting while mixing in all sorts of neutral and elemental skills (especially once the rite of channeling is unlocked) adds a little more complexity than you'd initially expect. Hunting monsters and collecting eggs is fun though I wish there was just a little more variance to some of the dungeons.

I always have to appreciate the Monster Hunter teams putting so much effort into the visuals and layout of their environments. Capcom understands that stomping through a knee high river is a lot of fun and I'm surprised how well that made the transition here from the mainline series to this pseudo open field format. I also like that how with series tradition, beating the main story just gives you a shitton of brand new post-game content full of new monsters, items, weapons, etc.

I think it's biggest faults are more so with this being a slightly radical change for the series. The ideas are there just need a little more polishing to make a more compelling RPG. Otherwise, I've more annoyed with the focus on Navirou in the story since your character doesn't actually talk or anything. Given they Navirou has an incredibly annoying voice, him being basically YOUR voice just really gets exhausting. His story also kind of feels more like a distraction and padding. I'm also gonna say the cat puns that have been part of the Felyne vocab since the beginning were never meant to be spoken out loud. If I have to hear this little fuck say pawtner again I'm going to scream.

This is the definitive version of the game. Includes nearly all the DLC from the 3DS version, and improves a lot of the issues that occurred there, like texture pop in. The museum is nice, and adds a lot of nice artwork, and the soundtrack to the game.

My only beef is that the pre-rendered cutscenes look very blurry, as if they were pulled directly from the 3DS. There also could have been some more visual touch ups to the field areas, like some extra vegetation.

Otherwise, it's a pretty good port.

Monster hunter stories is an interesting spin on the monster tamer genre, and one that has some real stand out qualities.

That being said the early game is a slog with you only having access to a handful of monsters in the first three hours. Even after leaving the first area gaining new monsters is slow when compared to other monster tamer games. You have to go through mini dungeons to get eggs and there isn’t an easy way to discern if you already have the monster you get in the den without a guide.

I think my least favourite thing about the game is the lack of need to have a complete party, with it being very possible to complete the game only using two or three monsters. This lead to me not feeling much of an attachment to many of the monsters like I do when I play other monsters tamers.

So combat is a tricky one to talk about, its RPS approach is unique and memorising an enemies attack patterns and countering them is great fun. Having both you and your monster out at the same time adds some depth with you being able to choose how you approach the RPS with having two turns at once. These two thing are absolutely positives and help to make this games combat stand out, that being said I do think there are things that could be improved. You’ll be seeing the same basic attack animation many times over and over again throughout the game with basic attacks being used frequently even in the late game. I feel like more than other monster tamers you can use a group of a few moves throughout the entire game and beat it. I only really used two moves each on Ratha and Bulldrome and beat the game fine.

That being said while the easier bosses were a drag, the tougher ones were actually fun and engaging. There were a handful of bosses that beat me and I then had to go again. For some I was just too under levelled for the boss but others I was able to beat with a different approach, mainly being memorising what moves the boss used and figuring out a counter play. This leads to the bosses being my favourite thing about the game, while there isn’t much of a need to have a variety of moves there is still an element of skill in playing around the bosses moves.

The story was pretty decent all things considered. The cast of characters were fun overall and while the beginning dragged for me, the last section of this game was great, complete with a climactic final battle.

Even though this is a ported 3ds game I actually really enjoyed this games visuals. They are simple, however the environments are vibrant, the character designs are very charming and the developers did a great job of converting the monsters into a new art style. These all come together to make a still quite aesthetically pleasing end product.

The open areas are pretty bland overall, not really containing much that is intractable besides the monsters and the pickups. They mostly exist as a way for you to fight more monsters and find dens and that’s about it, with the bigger areas really dragging before finding the fast travel points.

When the credits rolled I realised that this game, while quite flawed was a great starting point for the developers to build on and I’m probably going to try the sequel soon because of how much promise there is with this formula.