MonHunPokeMegaTen Rancher

I am a huge Monster Hunter fan. Since playing Freedom Unite way back in the day, I haven’t missed a mainline game. Now, to be fair, I didn’t pay attention to the first Monster Hunter Stories on the 3DS. In fact, up until I started hearing about the 2nd game, I had forgotten all about the series. Well, now that I have sunk in a good amount of time into this new entry, I have to say, this spinoff series has some great things going for it even with the few issues I had here and there.

Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin has players taking over as a new rider, rather than a hunter, riders befriend monsters and train them to be their mounts. This new rider just so happens to be the grandchild of a well-known legendary rider known as Red. After taking in some quests, the new rider is now thrust into a massive world surrounding themselves with a flightless Rathalos that could very well be the thing that kickstarts a world ending event.

Platforms: PC, Switch
MSRP: $59.99
Price I’d pay: $59.99

Unlike the mainline games, Stories 2 plays out like a traditional turn-based RPG. It’s a simple set up with a rock/paper/scissors style of advantage. Added to that are staples from the Monster Hunter universe like different weapons that have different skills, abilities, and attack types like blunt, pierce, and slash attacks. These all play into account when taking on a fight. Aiming to break the head of a monster? Switch to a blunt weapon like a Hammer or Hunting Horn. Want to cut off the tail of that pesky Pukei-Pukei? Bring out the Great Swords or Sword and Shield to cut it off. Players that are being targeted on a round of attacks can choose the right attack for the situation to give them an advantage. Power attacks beat Technical attacks, Technical beats Speed, Speed beats Power. Countering with the right move can allow for better damage or even better, a dual attack with the Monstie that the player has. This happens, of course, if the player’s Monstie attacks with the same type of move. Abilities are activated based on an ever-increasing kinship gauge that fills up during battle. A full kinship gauge allows players to ride their Monstie and perform a special ultimate attack that does a lot of damage and possibly even more status effects.

Fighting is not all that players will be doing. They can also find, raise, and train new Monsties. They can do this by entering monster dens spread throughout the land and steal eggs from nests they find. They can hatch the eggs and get themselves a new Monstie to fight with. Along with all that, they can also channel unwanted Monsties into another to help spread both new abilities as well as grow the Monstie they want to keep. It’s like a combination of Pokémon, Persona, and maybe even Monster Rancher. It works and works well, but none of it is ever necessary to keep progressing in the game. The rite of channeling is something for the min/max players out there looking for the optimal team.

Much like the mainline games, slaying monsters will grant the player with materials that they can use to craft new armor sets and weapons. It becomes a necessity about midway through since players will begin to run into monster fights that will require some level grinding as well as some optimal equipment. Luckily, getting more materials requires players to fight monsters which in turn, levels up the player. I never found myself having to grind much, but it did happen a few times.

The areas the player will explore are vast and full of things to discover. There’s new monster to take on, plants and endemic life to collect, and tons of dens to check out. It looks fantastic with bright colors and a simplistic art design. While it all may look great, the performance in some areas is not so great. On the Switch version, I ran into a ton of framerate issues throughout the world and even in some big fights. It was enough to make me cringe in some spots and it usually only happened when playing in docked mode.

While the turn-based combat was fun and had some intricate aspects to it, the overall flow got stale after about 10 hours. Even when the game offers a 3x speed option for the battles and even lower level battles and be auto-completed, I would many times end up just running from fights because that was starting to get a bit tedious. That’s when my level grinding problems would begin to crop up. I guess you have to take the good with the bad.

The pacing seemed fine for the first parts of the game, but after seeing the same “go here, slay this, go back and report.” About seven times, I started to wonder if that was going to be all of the flow of the game. Luckily, it’s not, but it is a major part of the game even in the story missions. The good thing is, with this setup, the player and Monstie progression is handled pretty well, and players looking to raise their Monsties’ level even faster can have them go out on quests on their own to level them up while you play – kind of like the meowcenaries in MonHun Rise.

Along with the massive story mode, players can also team up with other players to take on quests via the expedition quests and partner up with either an online player or an AI controlled rider. It’s a nice way to get some extra materials as well as new eggs to bring back in the story mode.

Overall, Monster Hunter Stories 2 is a fine game. It does nothing offensive while still having some great mechanics thrown in. The story is decent, the combat is fun, but can get a little long in the tooth and the overall progression system was fine albeit a bit one note after a while. Monster Hunter fans can have a fun time with it while old school RPG fans will get more out of the mechanics of the combat mixed with the rite of channeling that can really get the maximum stat boosts going. It has it’s pacing issues here and there with the combat and the quest progression, but overall, these are minor compared to the sheer amount of things you can do while still raising the best team of Monsties you can make.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.