Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate Review

Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate came out on March 19th, 2013 for the Nintendo Wii U and 3DS systems. This review will represent about 40 hours of game time with 3U plus another 700-1000 hours spent with Monster Hunter, Monster Hunter Tri, Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, and Monster Hunter Portable 3rd. 

The Monster Hunter franchise faces a very noticeable lack of coverage or fame in the English-speaking world. I believe that this comes from the fact that this game is predicated on how it is most often reviewed as an MMO. So, instead of using the tired MMO language that makes most folks shut down and check out, I thought I would take a different approach in that I’d like to compare this game to Nintendo’s popular NES game, Punch-Out in order to help gamers understand why they should play one of the most popular game franchises in the world.

Let us use a little NES nostalgia to explain why Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate should be the game you’re playing right now. 

Introduction
Nintendo released Punch-Out: Featuring Mr. Dream for 30 cents the same week that MH3U appeared on shelves. While these two games are decades apart (over 20 years between them!), it is useful to discuss them as a pair because they are very similarly designed games. 

In fact, these games share a variety of design elements that have uniquely benefited from increases to processing power and procedural complexity over the years. The similarity can be boiled down to the fact that players fight a massive computer-controlled opponent that employs complex pattern recognition paired with artificial intelligence that can change given a variety of criteria.

While this sounds like something that would be easy to describe, there is a reason that this franchise has remained off the radar in Europe, the Americas, and Australia – it is more often compared to a grindy MMO than to an action game like Punch Out. 

The Basics
In Punch-Out, you play as Little Mac – a new boxer who wants to become the boxing champion. The game teaches you how to fight by pitting you against the lowliest fighter – Glass Joe. Only, Glass Joe is probably the most important fighter in the game because he introduces you to the patterns of the game. He has a dramatic but easy to read tell before a punch; he introduces you to combos (use left and right punches to get more damage in); and finally, he introduces you to extreme weaknesses via stars and uppercuts once his pattern changes. 

With Glass Joe out of the way, you head on to Von Kaiser and Piston Honda for the first belt. These two show you how diverse those timings can be by building tiny subtleties into Glass Joe’s foundation. It could be a shaking of the eyebrows that lets you know you’re going to have to dodge, perhaps it’s crouching down with a fist on a particular side that lets you know which way to dodge, or it could be as complex as Piston Honda’s dance before his flurry of lefts and rights lets you perfect the skill you were taught clear back at Glass Joe – punch him as he gets to you to get massive damage or an immediate take down. This model of game design is robust and has been used for all manner of games. 

From Punch-Out to Punching Dragons
So how do we plug Monster Hunter into this Punch-Out formula? I suppose the first thing we could note is that Monster Hunter accomplishes the same sort of progression as Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out Featuring Mr. Dream. This is a bit of a double-edged sword though as this “grind” to the top is most often blamed for the MMO comparison. And it’s true, in the past, this progression has been artificially long. As an example of how long and slow it can be, see the Zero Punctuation review of Monster Hunter Tri. 

With that in mind, it is very important to note that Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate’s progression is nearly perfected. Like Little Mac’s player after fighting Glass Joe, the player of Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate is perfectly able to progress in game using the beginning armor and beginning weapons. In fact, by the time you get to a place where you can’t use those weapons, almost every player should have enough parts gathered from defeating all those monsters to upgrade them – or create something new. You receive one of every type of weapon at the beginning so any player can experiment with the mechanics that separate each weapon.  

Now, I may be getting ahead of myself. Let’s take a step back and list a few other ways that Monster Hunter and Punch-Out are similarly different.

• Little Mac can now swing a Sword and Shield, dual swords, Hammer, Great Sword, Lance, Hunting Horn, Gun Lance, or fire a bow/crossbow
• All of these different weapons look, play, and feel extremely different 
• Little Mac now has to run around an environment to look for his opponent
• Conversely, Little Mac's opponent can run away if you find them
• They can also run freely around an environment and can perform their patterns randomly instead of in a set fashion given health (though health still impacts behavior)
• You can also break off certain parts to change behaviors
• Progression is now multi-linear instead of strictly linear 
• Meaning: progression follows a path but in different ways given player choice of weapon, etc
• You can take on a boxer (or in this case, a wyvern) with up to 3 friends
• There is no set amount of continues in-game but all players have 3 KOs per hunt
• 3 total KO’s in Multiplayer

So What is Monster Hunter Then? 
Now that we’ve sufficiently linked Punch-Out and Monster Hunter, what exactly does it mean to Hunt Monsters? Why should you bother? 

The easiest answer to this question is that it makes you feel like you are a hero. No really, I mean it (it's even a song title). When you hunt something like a Rathian (a giant green dragon) and slowly whittle it down, watching it limp off to eatis one of the most incredible feelings you can experience in a video game. When you see something enormous like the Uragaan fall over because you knocked it out is indescribable. Even after this many hours, that feeling never goes away. When you cut off a wyverns tail and it runs off screaming, you might feel a little guilt until the wyvern gets up and tries to start killing you again. 

Do yourself a favor and go pick up a Wii U or a 3DS…or both (since they share saves files through a transfer system). This game boasts an incredible amount of content that will keep you (and your friends) busy for what hundreds of hours. One note though, the Wii U version is the only version that can get online right now. In April, Nintendo will be releasing a tool that will allow the 3DS to get online through the Wii U. 

If this isn’t enough information about Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, I have been co-hosting a podcast on Monster Hunter for the past few years over at www.teamworkcast.com. Come schedule hunts, ask questions of your fellow hunters and enjoy a community of helpful hunters eager to be on your team.

The final verdict for this game would have to be around 4 out of 5 if only for the inclusion of an incredibly powerful weapon series that is amazing for farming things by yourself but will no doubt be used to cheapen the feel of the game. I can only hope a patch comes later (there will be patches for this game) that balances this out.