Monster Hunter Freedom

[Aylmer]

First impressions, after an hour...

Depth like you would not believe. On a par with PSO, and maybe even more intense, if any of you have ever played that. I mean serious, serious layered depth. This is no pick up and play title, and you HAVE to read the manual and in-game help stuff to figure out what is going on. Quest based.

I was expecting a dungeon crawler, but it's character development and combat scheme is way beyond any Diablo or a clone thereof. It REALLY reminds me of PSO...but it's not sci-fi.

Sweet graphics and control. True 3d, with good camera control as well.

Sweet music and sound effects, with dolby II surround. Earbuds highly recommended.

Quite acceptable load times.

It seems Capcom has crafted a PSP hardware specific winner (uses all the buttons, and great movement control with the nub), though this is just a first impression. But I cannot imagine Capcom putting this much polish on a game thats going to suck.

Details at 11. Stay tuned...

[Gadfly2317]

I plead ignorance: what kind of game is this? Is this an RPG or what?

[Aylmer]

I plead ignorance: what kind of game is this? Is this an RPG or what?
A good question Gaddy, and a bit difficult to answer. I woke up in the middle of the night and did a quest. It is that absorbing.

You can take two main character development paths, a blade wielder or a shooter. There is no spell casting in this game, though there is elemental affinity, status conditions, and so on.

You can build your character any way you choose, and no two characters will ever be a alike, guaranteed. I get the feeling that this title was originally meant for multiplayer via network play, but it's ad hoc only.

It's quest based, and most of what you do is to go out and hunt monsters, then butcher them and look for rare body parts and other stuff. It's like a cross between Baldur's Gate, Phantasy Star Online, and an epic RPG. But it's not a hack and slash. Button mashing will get you thru the first few quests, but after that you need to learn defensive combos as well.

Lots of depth in the way of item combining, weapons upgrades, and cooking. Big on cooking. In fact there's this race of chefs that you hire that can combine and cook items you find into some cool stuff, and that's a big part of the game.

Lots of variety in weapons, armor, and so on, and they are all graphically represented on your character. There is no leveling up, you boost your stats by consuming items you combine/cook/have cooked, etc. Lots of rares, too.

Killer graphics, the best I've seen on the PSP. Lush vegetation, nice lighting, cool atmospherics, slow moving clouds, and so on. Excellent camera control, dpad up and down to change the vertical angle for combat against ground dwelling or flying enemies. Left and right to rotate. Very smooth and variable speed, with no stutter.

Some gamers will not like the lack of auto targeting, but the monsters and your characters move and fight with real world physical limitations. anyone who's played PSO will feel right at home, using the left shoulder button to auto center the camera behind your protagonist. The analog nub is used beautifully for movement, and frankly I did not realize it was able to be this sensitive in gameplay.

Very cool game indeed. I researched it a bit on the web. This is a franchise that has been popular in Japan for a long time. I'm very happy to see it localised.

[T.Tashi]

A good question Gaddy, and a bit difficult to answer. I woke up in the middle of the night and did a quest. It is that absorbing.

You can take two main character development paths, a blade wielder or a shooter. There is no spell casting in this game, though there is elemental affinity, status conditions, and so on.

You can build your character any way you choose, and no two characters will ever be a alike, guaranteed. I get the feeling that this title was originally meant for multiplayer via network play, but it's ad hoc only.

It's quest based, and most of what you do is to go out and hunt monsters, then butcher them and look for rare body parts and other stuff. It's like a cross between Baldur's Gate, Phantasy Star Online, and an epic RPG. But it's not a hack and slash. Button mashing will get you thru the first few quests, but after that you need to learn defensive combos as well.

Lots of depth in the way of item combining, weapons upgrades, and cooking. Big on cooking. In fact there's this race of chefs that you hire that can combine and cook items you find into some cool stuff, and that's a big part of the game.

Lots of variety in weapons, armor, and so on, and they are all graphically represented on your character. There is no leveling up, you boost your stats by consuming items you combine/cook/have cooked, etc. Lots of rares, too.

Killer graphics, the best I've seen on the PSP. Lush vegetation, nice lighting, cool atmospherics, slow moving clouds, and so on. Excellent camera control, dpad up and down to change the vertical angle for combat against ground dwelling or flying enemies. Left and right to rotate. Very smooth and variable speed, with no stutter.

Some gamers will not like the lack of auto targeting, but the monsters and your characters move and fight with real world physical limitations. anyone who's played PSO will feel right at home, using the left shoulder button to auto center the camera behind your protagonist. The analog nub is used beautifully for movement, and frankly I did not realize it was able to be this sensitive in gameplay.

Very cool game indeed. I researched it a bit on the web. This is a franchise that has been popular in Japan for a long time. I'm very happy to see it localised.

So, does it have a story (and by story, a PSO type storyline is acceptable) and how's the multiplayer?

[Aylmer]

So, does it have a story (and by story, a PSO type storyline is acceptable) and how's the multiplayer?

Hehe, yes, I suppose PSO did have a story now that I think about it, but as far as I can tell, Monster Hunter does not.

Now that I have about 15 hours into it, the feel of the game is even more like PSO than I thought originally, though the game elements are much deeper. It is very well polished, with some Harvest Moon-like farming and mining things. The sheer number of combinable items is amazing. And there is fishing as well. With mining, fishing, cooking, farming and just finding stuff in the field, item management is key to gameplay and successful missions.

Unlike PSO, your char. can climb. The physics of movement and combat are fairly accurate, so button mashing is pretty useless. If you are hefting a big sword, there is a delay between the time you execute an attack and connecting. A dagger lets you do quick combos.

The most noticeable parallel with PSO is the feeling of total immersion and absorbtion in the gameworld. I logged thousands of hours in PSO on both the DC and GC, and I can see that happening with this game too. In fact, knowledge of the terrain was key to beating the first boss. The levels, btw, are much larger in Monster Hunter than in PSO.

You can redo quests so you can more thoroughly explore an area. Like PSO, you can only save by quitting a session, there's no pausing or saving mid-quest. Unlike PSO, you MUST complete a quest to keep the stuff you find in the quest in that particular game session. If you give up, you revert to the previous save.

A lot of gameplay happens in town, with mining, farming and stuff. New NPCs will show up both in town and in the field.

I have the feeling that this game was originally intended for network, and not ad hoc, multiplayer. For instance, there is an inn where up to ten characters/players can congregate, but a max of four makes up a questing party. And, there is stuff you can have your char. do like funny moves in the inn, to show off in front of other players. another thing is the odd fact that you can have a max of three chars. per Duo card, regardless of size. And, you cannot copy/backup the character game data, not even with Media Manager. PSO again!

But, I have not actually played a multiplayer session.

There is some allusion to being able to download new quests as well, so again I have to wonder, given the PSPs architecture, would it be possible to, at some time in the future, have a network play option added or subscribed to with this game?

At any rate, this type of quality,depth, beautiful graphics and killer audio is why I bought a PSP.

[T.Tashi]

Well to say PSO has a story is certainly an overstatement. :) But noting this type of game I wasn't expecting something like FF. Just wondering if there was some motivation for going from point A to point B. I logged about a thousand hours on PSO too for the DC, and I played Harvest Moon long enough to get married and have a kid, so Monster Hunter sounds up my alley. I just wish it had network play. I wonder if you can trick the adhoc through some kind of online portal.

[Aylmer]

Well to say PSO has a story is certainly an overstatement. :) But noting this type of game I wasn't expecting something like FF. Just wondering if there was some motivation for going from point A to point B. I logged about a thousand hours on PSO too for the DC, and I played Harvest Moon long enough to get married and have a kid, so Monster Hunter sounds up my alley. I just wish it had network play. I wonder if you can trick the adhoc through some kind of online portal.

One of the things I loved about PSO was equipping cool weapons and armor and the way they looked on your char. Well, Monster Hunter has the same concept, but the equipment is way, way cooler looking. I am tempted to start another char. but I am still doing one star quests. You can switch your char. from a blade wielder to a ranged wep user, but all the old armor has to come off, and i dont want to do that yet. not to mention the fact that i don't have the funds to buy new shyt. but, I've managed quite a few combinations for ammo (you make your own ammo, and it's as varied as everything else in this game) and I'd love to see what it can do. I finally found some monster terds to fertilize my garden. the terds can be combined with other things to grow strange stuff, but I've not gotten into it yet. man, does this game have depth.

the quests are timed, and there's no way you can fully explore an area in just one go, so there's lots of incentive to redo quests. New areas to fish, mine, etc.

btw, i got a 2gig Duo at Target for $119. I've not set it up yet, but I'm looking forward to doing it, since I only have a 128 meg in there now.