First off, I would like to say something: I have not fully completed the latest installment in the Monster Hunter bloodline. It's not because it's bone-crushingly difficult, or because I have no time. It's because it has so much content. Downloadable content, a wealth of armours and weapons, each of which has its own path. Not to mention the menagerie of monsters. That, my friends, is its first and foremost trump card. It encourages slow and steady exploration of every inch of the various lands, each of which is different and interesting.
You may recall that I did an 'early thoughts' review, which has already covered several points that I will elaborate on in this interview. Yet needless to say, my feelings have only grown for this scrappy little number. While not as difficult as its predecessor, it is still every bit as enjoyable. It has been de-clawed for the more 'casual' players, although those that these kind of games attract are rarely lax in their playing style. You still must plan for battles ahead, collecting resources and ingredients to create various potions and salves. It is about as far away from a button-basher as you can get.
Not only that, but armours have different resistances to different elements. You will find yourself at a point where a certain armour set no longer does the trick and you must shed it for something hideous yet effective. For me, this was the Jaggi armour being traded in for Wroggi armour. While the former had generally good stats, the latter lessened my chances of being poisoned. Useful when you're fighting the Gigginox, a mutant slug lizard with wings that spews out clouds of poisonous gas. It is very much a strategy game first, and a monster-killer second, which is refreshing.
Strategically fabulous.
Unfortunately, water battles didn't improve much as I went on. I have yet to purchase the Circle Pad Pro XL, but I really shouldn't have to. I can work the camera using the virtual D-pad, but it is clunky and uncomfortable. It was fine fighting less agile creatures like Ludroth, but fighting the Royal Ludroth, or even the great Lagiacrus, was a nightmare. This really is the one of the weakest chinks in the game's armour and lets it down. However, water battles really are few, so it is a rarely-occurring problem.
I was really feeling the pinch as the difficulty curve started to grow, unable to upgrade my gear quick enough to stay ahead of the game. While this should have frustrated me, it just gave me new finesse. I refused to be beaten by any beast, and I feel that it showed. Repeating quests was a must to gather the right materials, due to items such as the King's Frill only dropping via the Great Jaggi quest. But it was extra money and materials in my pocket, so repeating them didn't feel dull in the slightest.
The addition of Foraging missions was very, very welcome. Previously, you had to perform regular missions to gather items that could not be found in the central area, Moga Woods. In this version, you can now explore other areas within a fifty minute limit, which proves to be more than enough time. It makes gathering, the game's lifeblood, much easier to perform.
My final gripe is the lack of connectivity. This is a group game, and you can see that in every mission. Taking down the Lagiacrus would be child's play with others to distract it while you hit the weak points for maximum damage. The 3DS alone has only connectivity, and for a game so poorly-known in Europe, this is a curse. I do not own a Wii U, so I will not be experiencing any group battles any time soon. This must be fixed for Monster Hunter 4, and I believe it is. Who doesn't want to hunt down huge creatures with their buddies?
To wrap this all up, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate is a great game. Not brilliant, but great. The only things stopping it from achieving legendary status are the heavy camera and its lack of online connectivity. The camera could not have been that difficult to fix, and the subtraction of wireless features really was a bad move. I feel this is in an attempt to get you to buy not only a Wii U so that you can connect via that, but also to buy another version of the same game (which is necessary for cross-platform play). It's a greedy move on the part of the developers and publishers, and that has lost it major points in my books. But definitely check it out, its worth a solid 60-70 hours solo, double that if you have friends to play alongside.
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