A Hunter’s Diary – Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate Review

Day 1 – I arrived earlier than the guild expected as they had not even established a base camp in the local area. The village elder advised it would be wise to introduce myself to the villagers of Moga as we would need each other in order to achieve our common goal.

Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate is a port of the Wii’s Monster Hunter Tri to HD. I personally would call it the finalized product of the beta we had on the Wii as it brought back all the cut out weapon class. Quite a few monsters were added in along with variants, which were also omitted on the Wii, however only one new monster to the franchise was introduced.

Day 15 – I’ve been keeping my eyes on a foreign felyne hanging by the docks all the time. Seems his name is Neko (means “Cat”). He keeps speaking of this “hub” were hunters gather from all around the world, Port Tanzia is the name if I recall right… Maybe I should visit, the help of a fellow hunter or two could give me valuable experience and knowledge.

With prior knowledge that the game thrives on multiplayer, they made it the most accessible in the franchise, that is, if you have both versions. The Wii U’s online feature makes it much easier to find hunters at any time of day and the online hubs also make it easier to find people wanting to hunt that same kind of monster as you or that are of the same rank as you. The 3DS is only local, unless you use the app on the Wii U which lets you bring 1 3DS online and connect to someone hosting a lobby on a Wii U, but at that point, I’d suggest just getting the Wii U version. The data transfer application keeps it easy to keep hunting with the same character instead of having to start over on each console and brings over all the DLC (free quests and bonuses) along with the save file.

Day 31 – After my first month out of the academy, I finally understood what my teachers meant about the hardships of being a hunter. It’s a never ending quest to stay ahead of those tricky monsters by getting new equipment! Luckily enough, things are calm in the village. That gave me a chance to make friends in Tanzia. We are now Rank 3 in the hunting guild and our equipment availability keeps growing as we prove we can hunter stronger wyverns!

As most games in the franchise, they start you up with a basic armor and one of every type of weapon so you can test them all. After, it’s just a matter of finding what you are comfortable using and grinding out the materials needed to make stronger armors and weapons by mining, gathering and carving the monsters and animals you slay. Various ecology brings different types of materials and the different materials allow the creation of a multitude of armors and weapons, each with different attributes, weaknesses and resistances.

Day 112 – I’ve rescued Moga, even though I had to go against direct orders from the Guild. There was no way I was passing such a hunting opportunity! The tales are that this is but one of the many mythical monsters living amongst us… Only time will tell if I’ll ever have the luck of meeting another…

The game flows similar to the other titles in the franchise, take a quest, deploy, finish quest, repeat. In this installment (Tri and 3U) however, the ability to free hunt for resources in the village was added. The game’s audio is marvelous on a surround sound setup as the world comes to life around you… too bad the voice chat takes away some of that magical feeling and that the 3DS’ speakers just don’t let the monsters’ cry as properly as it should. As far as upgraded ports go, this one did it right, adding quite a bit to the content, kept the loading times short and overall keeping it smooth. My only issue comes from the texturing in the Wii U version, most specifically weapons, which seem rushed and stretched out from a smaller size to fit HD sizes instead of being properly redone.

PS: I am sorry for the poor quality of images I have for the game, instead of using pictures I find online, I am one that would rather use pictures of my own gameplay. The quality should be better soon as I do intended on getting a video capture card for my consoles.