REVIEW

Monster Hunter Generations Review

by Dominic Coles, August 7th, 2016

There is no other franchise quite like Monster Hunter. Going out into the world to battle the biggest and meanest beasties is something you truly need to feel for yourself. Every battle has you grasping at your controls as you try your hardest to stand up to some of the most intimidating and challenging opponents in gaming history. With the newest edition, Monster Hunter Generations, the developers have planned to celebrate the series like never before with a blend of new and old content as well as free monthly DLC inclusions. But in our review we look to see if Generations is worth putting the time into.

The title kicks off with you creating your character with a nice variety of choices. You can decide your hunter’s gender, initial clothing, voice and more to make them feel your own. This is only the initial look of your hunter as in time, you will gain armour and weapon sets that will completely change their appearance as the game progresses. You are then welcomed to a new village of the game known as Bherma, a nice little place with your smithy, shops, cook and little pet Moofa. With Sword and Shield in hand you are ready but in your equipment box is all the other weapons available to you, so you can experiment and see which works best for you. This is where the Monster Hunter gives you an option to either kick off a series of tutorials to introduce you to the game, or to throw you straight into the action if you have played previous titles or the demo. I highly recommend the tutorial for both old and new players as you will go through the basics of weapon types as well as learn the games new mechanics which come in the form of Hunter Arts.

Hunter Arts allow your hunter to unleash more powerful attacks or passive skills in the heat of battle. These must be charged up in order to use by battling enemies small and large. The amount that needs charging can be checked as you equip the hunter arts from your equipment box, identified from XS (Extra Small) to XL (Extra Large). These abilities are very engaging and are very welcomed within the game as they don’t subtract from the experience. Finishing off a Rathian with a massive swing of your Greatsword is an amazing sensation. How this works is that overtime you will gain more skills to equip depending on what weapon you have equipped. Changing these around is very easy and what they do is explained well enough for you to dive into them straight away. If anything there is no reason not to equip at least one of these for every hunt you engage with. If this takes away from your play style you can switch between one of four styles that allocate new move sets to your weapons, including one which removes arts entirely and gives you the moves from Monster Hunter 4 instead. Seeing these options available for a mix of different play styles is brilliant, anyone and everyone can come in and play as they want and dominate in that area over time.

The game is split in two sections with your village missions and the hunter hub missions. The first will let your partake in quests that progress the plot and introduce characters new to the series, as well as returning cast members from the original game all the way to Munster Hunter 4. You will occasionally receive requests which upon completion will reward you with Wycademy points, which can be spent on food, trading, cat training and unique items such as passes or new ingredients that can be used with the cook. Ingredients are very important as you can mix and match them to create new meals that you can then eat before taking on a quest to buff up your health and stamina as well as possibly giving you some unique abilities such as improved gathering, increased toughness or possibly starting the hunt in a secret area. All of this is just a taste as to what rewarding factors Monster Hunter Generations gives you as a player as the main bulk of the rewards come from hunting down the game’s biggest threats and taking their pelts for your own.

Of course hunting is only as good as the friends you play with and the game has both local and online multiplayer to help you team up and hunt together with friends. This is based around the hunters hub which you can also undertake solo if you so wish. These quests are different from the regular ones but will also feature villager requests as you go through the single player story. The reason for going through this part of the game solo or online is because of the bigger games you will hunt and the including of your HR (Hunter Rank). As you progress up the ranks you will gain more and more quests to undertake. Eventually you will have your rank completely unlocked revealing how high and mighty you truly are, possibly going into the hundreds. This is a great way to show off to your peers as well as a way to show yourself what you are capable of. All those times hunting down run away Jaggis or tackling big Deviljhos can finally feel as if they have paid off with these multiplayer elements in hand. With the time spent online I am happy to say that there is no lag what so ever either online or locally. Even if communication is restricted to twitter length comments, the game does allow you to create short and sweet statements you wish to make to players on the fly in and out of fights.

As for new beasts this time around we have small newcomers like the Maccao who acts like a Great Jaggi with a Kangaroo tail, as well as the four new creatures that are the games flagship monsters. These include the likes of the electrifying Altaros, the towering Gammoth, the fearsome Glavious and the bubble dragon Mizutsune. These four play a big role within the game and can reward you with some really nice looking armour with great abilities to boot. All of them feel like great inclusions into the game and this is backed up more along with the large returning cast of monsters including MH3U’s Lagiacrus and Uraggan. All of the battles have their own difficulty curves along with strengths, weaknesses and environments that keep adding to the challenge every time you go in to fight. It becomes addicting to the extent where you will spend hours against the same monster hoping to carve or claim a rare drop to finish the weapons and armour you wish to build.

This however can lead into a problem that some players of the game will have, the grind. In order to make the best sets for your play style you will possibly have to battle the same monster a lot…and I mean A LOT. The chances of getting some of the rarest items can be as low as 1-10% on both carves and rewards which can cause a lot of frustration. Especially if you are only after the one part which you can only claim by breaking specific areas of the monsters body in the battle. If you prefer a game that is more lax when it comes to finding rare components I would suggest purchasing or waiting for the remaster of God Eater 1 & 2. Another problem that the game sadly falls into is its reliability on nostalgia to immerse players. If you are a returning hunter then you will instantly relate to battling Tigrex and other classics as well as go crazy when you see some characters from the previous games turn up. But with no prior knowledge to the franchise you can seem either overwhelmed with the sheer volume of characters or you may see the story lack lustre as it concentrates too much on the nostalgic feel. Even the four new flagship monsters, although they are great, feel as if their presence is not as demanding as Gore Magala or Gogmazios from Monster Hunter 4. The game takes some great strands forward with some areas taking a step back in return.

With great confrontations, awesome looking armour & weapons and brilliant new monsters, Monster Hunter Generations is the ideal blend of nostalgia and innovation to encapsulate you for hours. Even with the rare drops being hard to get at times you will find it within yourself to power through and grind it out until you are the most powerful hunter in the land. As well as the new improvements it is also a great entry level game to the Monster Hunter franchise that I would suggest new comers to climb on as soon as they can. Just be warned that if you are looking for a compelling story this time around, the game may not be able to supply.