Monster Hunter Generations Review

Monster Hunter for the uninitiated is the game series which has you hunt monsters and that’s pretty much the gist of it: hunt, carve and craft the things you hunt. Known for its sluggish combat and insane levels of grinding, has Generations done anything to help solve this issue? Kinda, just not quite 1% drop for that monster plate or gem. But then the beauty of playing the game is of self discovery like Pokémon rather than researching everything before playing the game.

Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (MH3U) on the 3DS was my main entry into the series. This is the final debut for the fourth generation of the series before moving to five, which will be on a new engine. And when I compare MH3U to MHX (MHGen for some), lots of features feel fresh and new which were actually part of MH4U.

Style and grace of the Striker Longsword

Instead of a new weapon like 4U with the introduction of the Insect Glaive, it features Hunter Arts that require building up the Art Gauge to unleash a powerful Art. These can be a show stopper (quite literally) or incremental boosts that’ll make or break a style of hunting. Alongside this is the introduction of the four Hunting Styles: Guild (vanilla gameplay style), Adept, Striker and Aerial. In total there are 4 Hunting Styles for 14 Weapons and 52 Hunter Arts (discounting the level variants). Phew, and that’s not accounting for the introduction of Prowler, but this review won’t cover the nitty gritty aspects of the game and will cover the single-player portion of the game and its pacing.

The first hour of gameplay will be somewhat slow for the most part, the initial starting quests are mainly gathering and slaying small monsters, which are without a doubt the dull aspects of the game. But this is key to understanding what weapon to main for the game. A guide for what weapon is best for beginners follow this up, depending on your playstyle will greatly affect how you’ll face or have to face boss monsters. I will argue that for the opening monster, the Great Maccao is slightly unforgiving for new players with how fast it moves, since I was trained on the Great Jaggi which doesn’t make an appearance in this game. The Fate Four, the flagship monsters for the game, are distinct and diverse. But I’ll let you experience them and the rest of the boss monsters for yourself - since none of the them stand out as broken after completing it.

Remember to hunt with friends and send them on missions

First row quests down, how does the game fair from there? Pretty well surprisingly. The game unlocks Trading, Meowster Hunters and Online Hunting very quickly along with village quests that unlock hunting new monsters and weapons/armors. These are pretty important as they help alleviate the pain of gathering and grinding for consumable items necessary for hunting monsters like potions (lots and lots of potions). Online DLC with items help new players with a boost with free consumables. They can see you safely into not doing resource runs to make consumable items and rely on the trading and Meowster Hunters to let you focus on hunting boss monsters. Various other tweaks outside of hunting has made some tasks less tedious: holding the A button to gather until the resource node is gone and item sets (a god send).

Acquisition and upgrading gear is also streamlined compared to previous MH games. Featuring a material system, equipment can require generic piece of the monster to upgrade weapons and armors. It speeds up the equipment process nicely, only when your weapon is reaching a new rank/upgrade tree. Drops like Plates, Gems and specific parts are still required. But this will be around the tipping point of equipment breaking into High Rank (HR). Drop rate seems to be better in high rank from my experience, getting to two Lagiacrus plates in consecutive HR quest runs. This is key as your hunter is only as good as the gear it has with the starting armor being somewhat trash. The game does a decent job of explaining the basics and putting it into practice. Each armor will give the player perks that can help make a play style either more fun and/or effective. Minmaxing isn’t necessary to complete the Village Quests into 5* which will bring you into end game 6* Village Quests. Going off by looks is viable with after eating a meal and having the right weapon in hand.

Ah old Misty Peaks, old 3U Royal Ludroth hunting grounds

That’s pretty much the main chunk of the game covered. It’s better paced than MH3U for sure in terms of leveling up with multiple runs to get that one material. But bugbears more than issues persistent even with my generation leap of games. The first being the compulsory quests. For a game called Monster Hunter, gathering and doing fetch quests is beyond me when that’s most tedious aspect of the game. I have Palicoes at my disposal. Can I not have them to do my village quests even at a cost of the rewards? Or even have them contribute actively to my gather quest? Then there’s the online hunts. They can perform their own quests related to the guild but despite having endgame armor fail a quest for Low Rank? If there’s a method to boosting the chance of “huge success”. They don’t really explain that part all that well.

What if you want to face the boss monsters, but don’t want to focus on gathering all the time in the hopes of that one material to make that awesome Gunlance that’ll blast you to victory? That’s where the Prowler comes to play, featuring a leveling system and less restrictive armor/weapon system with its need for monster materials than parts (mostly). The only issue playing as prowler is the availability of skills and moves needed to make hunting a monster not an absolute chore.

Dashing looks, check. Let's hunt a Glavenus

This also requires facing specific monsters to unlock them similar to the Hunter Arts more or less. But compared to the Hunter Arts, this system is more friendly towards the player since the Prowler Gauge is tied to using special moves that come part and parcel with hunting as a Prowler rushing in with bombs galore or driving a freaking tank. Playing as a Prowler is a fun method playing assuming they’re leveled up decently (level 20 seems to do the trick for them being useful when playing as). Also, Prowlers don’t have to deal with environmental damage, carrying items to mine/harvest. Whilst more restrictive than playing as hunter, with the skills and moves being locked per cat, they really only help to augment a style of play. The available Online DLC only makes playing as a cat initially quite viable despite what some people will say about the cats being underpowered.

Whilst I could do a quick review of the Hunter Art and Hunter Styles, they would only bog down the review with more words that won’t really help you gauge if this game is for you. So I’ll say this: if you’re expecting radical changes to the slow but responsive gameplay then nothing has changed all that much. Does this make dramatic changes to how you play? It’s a complete game changer that makes previous MH feel more sluggish (somehow), making my final act of 100% completing MH3U feel more painful without all of the quality of life improvements they’ve made. Is this worth jumping from the previous game? That’s hard to say, so just give the demo a go and check out videos by Gaijin Hunter, with his in-depth analysis of the weapons and hunting styles. If after that you find the game un-enjoyable then that’s fine. This is a game which isn’t really made for everyone - especially with it being on the 3DS after it was experienced on the more superior Wii U for MH3U with a bigger monitor and HD graphics.