Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin is essentially Monster Hunter: Shounen Anime Edition. The story is a very heartfelt and emotional tale about coexistence and the bonds of friendship between humans and monsters. You could say it is trope laden and cliche, but it is also still very wholesome and touching regardless. There's also a cast of charming human characters that the protagonist learns to work alongside besides their monster friends as well. I think the narrative and the characters are the strongest, most enjoyable part of the game.

The actual gameplay leaves a lot to be desired though, I don't think Monster Hunter translates well into a turn based game, at least not the way it was done here. A lot of core Monster Hunter mechanics are here like fighting monsters, getting materials to create and upgrade weapons and armor and even breaking monster parts, but I am not a fan of the rock/paper/scissors style turn based battle mechanics, though I will say the animations are flashy and cool and there is even the option to speed them up to make battles go by faster however the battles still go on for too long and get too repetitive and the worst thing of all is not being able to control your partner because the AI constantly uses the wrong attack types. I also often found hunting for eggs a chore thanks to very bland dungeon designs that mostly look the same and give little incentive to explore thanks to minimal secrets to discover and what rewards you do find in chests not being worth going out of the way for.

All in all while Monster Hunter Stories 2 has a cute story with charming characters it is held back by simplistic, repetitive gameplay mechanics, uninteresting dungeon design and poor AI and for that reason I would honestly only recommend it to the most hardcore Monster Hunter players or J-RPG fans.