This game continues to occupy most of my time. In fact, I think I am spending more time on it now compares to when I just started playing last month. All my time so far are spent on the single player quests. While it was fun by itself, Monster Hunter is a game meant to be played together with friends. And I finally spread the Monster Hunter disease to my brother, who despite endless complaints on the game’s controls and difficulties, can’t help himself but get addicted to the game, and we are now starting to hunt together.

I once read a Famitsu editor’s article on why MHP (or Monster Hunter Freedom in US) is rated Age 15 and above by CERO which would prevent him from buying the game for his kid, of which he eventually did after various considerations. In the article, the editor described so vividly how he enjoys the game with his kid and eventually being taken over by him in terms of skill and actually being “ordered” by him to put things like traps or bombs. And this is exactly why the game is so fun, the communication and co-operation elements have triple the excitement and the fact that now you can share your proud moments right after slaying an incredibly tough monster with somebody who actually knows what you are talking about is another completely different experience that the game gives.

While I do notice a few graphical flaws like your partners hitting the air when it’s actually a monster on his screen, it really helps that nothing is compromised for ad-hoc play. The number of items and rare materials also kind of increased compare to single player quests, this actually becomes a problem for me as I am the kind of gamers who would spend hours collecting stuff and my Items Box is actually full now, even with 5 pages of slots.

Back to the single player missions (Village Quests), I am not quite sure if this exists in MHP (okay, so I didn’t go that far) but one of the really fun quests for me in the game is when there are two boss-level monsters appear at the same time and area, giving you plenty of busy times and fun! There are two such quests so far in the Village 4 Stars Quests, one was easy but the second, with two Yian Kut-ku was really exciting. It was even better when I manage to capture instead of killing them as I alway has trouble judging when a monster is going to die. I am more than 100 hours into the game now, and it’s incredible that the game continues to spring up surprises and prevent me from touching the other game that I should really be playing.

I have posted my strategy on the quest above in my rather simplistic Monster Hunter Portable 2nd Guide.

Posted in Blog, PSP on Friday, May 18th, 2007 at 9:43 am | Comments Feed | Leave a response | Trackback