Monster Hunter Tri Log
I find it funny how this blog was first started more than 5 years ago with the purpose of writing entries about Monster Hunter (and FFXI). Fast forward to present time and I'm still writing about it lol. I guess some things never change as sad as it may be, but MH is a game you either love (slaying huge-ass dragons with 3 other people >>> the slew of generic MMOs out there) or hate (recycled trash that is just another money cow for Capcom) to which I unfortunately belong to the former D;
Been haijin-ing MH3 recently and felt like doing a series of entries about it so here it is mainly for those who can't be bothered to play it but are still interested in the latest of MHs. Obviously there will be blood spoilers, meaning pics and videos of monsters, equipment and 'plot'-related stuff. Apologies in advance since it's possible that I might go off on a tangent or throw walls of text since I'm writing during intermittent loading screens and whatnot :x
Anyway for those who don't know about the MH series, it's pretty much similar to Phantasy Star Universe whereby the game revolves more around the player farming monsters / bosses for materials to make stronger equipment so as to be able to defeat even stronger bosses. As dry as that may sound, the fact aht you get to work as a team with three other friends is what makes it fun >:D
As shin pointed out MH3 is very much similar to MH1 in terms of monster variety and game length. This is because they did a complete overhaul on the list of monsters (only 3 or 4 of previous bosses remained in this version), not to mention the new maps, music, weapons and town that the game is situated in. Will try not to go into too much detail on the changes, pros and cons of it but I'm glad there's more plot which the player is more engaged in this time. Oh well all will be explained in due time.
Here's the funky OP of the game:
It sucks they did not make the final scene to be the classic scene of 4 hunters drawing their weapons against an inbound dragon but I guess that's part of the revamp (perhaps a change of staff / concepts). On the bonus DVD that comes with the LE edition one of the score writers mentioned that the direction they wanted to take for MH3 was to give the impression of it being more full of life than previous versions. E.g. bosses may run out of stamina, start drooling and move to an area where there's prey they would eat.
There's definitely more ongoing processes also - like there's this new ant-like insect that would seek out plants and eat their nectar consequently causing their abdomens to expand and change color depending on what they ate. While that's happening a boss could have scattered a bunch of explosive rocks which, well, explode as it sends a shock wave through the ground. Meanwhile another boss in the same area body slams a pillar of molten rock and destroys it, the coat of lava it has around its body cools and turns from bright yellow to orange and then to black. All this could happen while mining points are respawning in a corner of the area and everyone is getting owned :x
It's kind of a nice addon that they implemented destructible objects and harvesting points that disappear and respawn again over time. Just one of the many changes they did :3 What didn't change though is that there's still both an offline and online mode. Decided to start with offline first since its kind of embarassing to come off as a gimp naked leech D;
Anyway it was a pleasant surprise that there was an intro CG movie this time round when first starting offline mode:
Was both amused and wtfing at what the men were wearing lol As you can tell, in conjunction with the newly implemented underwater system, now the plot involves a small fishing town called Moga Village. To be honest I didn't really bother reading the npc text since most of it is just nonsense imo but that's the general gist of it. The game is basically situated on a continent separate from previous games (or perhaps the whole world was flooded, which explains the abundance of water in several areas).
Either ways unlike previous games this time round you can access the 'begginer's' area without accepting any quests (usually you'd have to accept quests to leave town) plus you can spend an infinite amount of time in the field harvesting or farming monsters. It's main purpose however is to collect 'resource points' which is used in a variety of manners, such as using it to expand the farm, exchanging it for various items or sending fishing boats out to collect various items. Basically points are earned by killing monsters / bosses in that area only (or by trading in certain items). This is done via the village elder's son, who also shows a 3 day report on what bosses would appear in that area. Another reason to farm them is so that you can get special trading items that's used for unlocking costumes / items / weapons.
Here's a short intro clip of said area:
That's all I'll cover for now about the offline mode; trying to find my video recorder thingy stiil, hence the yoinking of other people's videos.
Next up is online mode, and I was even more surprised that they included an intro CG video for it too!
No doubt more effort was put into the game this round despite its shortness (it's possible to haijin till endgame before the 20 day free trial period was up D;). This time it's a desert town (ロックラック / Rock Luck!? :s) situated around an oasis which has a huge ass tusk sticking out from its centre.
I'm glad they did not retain the complicated mess that was the online town of MH2, it's much simpler and easier to navigate this time plus there are npc guides in each area. Still miss the lobby system in MH1 though which uses a chat room lobby for people to gather people first before entering a room to do the quest in. The lobby system in MH3 however is similar to MH2, so you have to search for rooms that have 募集文s (recruitment comments) and targets which matches your search criteria which isn't very effective imo.
Why? There's several reasons least of which is that the 募集文s are set and you can only choose one target boss at a time which is terrible when during endgame there are quests that have 2 different bosses. It also sucks since there are multiple servers with their own mini-lobbies and rooms are spread out across various lobbies, which may be so full that only those in the lobby already can enter the room. Uh, i can rant on forever of the fallacies of the online lobby system so I'm just gonna leave it at that D;/ Nevertheless it wasn't too much trouble to reach endgame quickly despite the stupid typhoon and various server congestions :D
Well, will end the entry here and focus more on bosses in future entries. Well done if you succeeded in reading everything XD
Been haijin-ing MH3 recently and felt like doing a series of entries about it so here it is mainly for those who can't be bothered to play it but are still interested in the latest of MHs. Obviously there will be blood spoilers, meaning pics and videos of monsters, equipment and 'plot'-related stuff. Apologies in advance since it's possible that I might go off on a tangent or throw walls of text since I'm writing during intermittent loading screens and whatnot :x
Anyway for those who don't know about the MH series, it's pretty much similar to Phantasy Star Universe whereby the game revolves more around the player farming monsters / bosses for materials to make stronger equipment so as to be able to defeat even stronger bosses. As dry as that may sound, the fact aht you get to work as a team with three other friends is what makes it fun >:D
As shin pointed out MH3 is very much similar to MH1 in terms of monster variety and game length. This is because they did a complete overhaul on the list of monsters (only 3 or 4 of previous bosses remained in this version), not to mention the new maps, music, weapons and town that the game is situated in. Will try not to go into too much detail on the changes, pros and cons of it but I'm glad there's more plot which the player is more engaged in this time. Oh well all will be explained in due time.
Here's the funky OP of the game:
Click to viewIt sucks they did not make the final scene to be the classic scene of 4 hunters drawing their weapons against an inbound dragon but I guess that's part of the revamp (perhaps a change of staff / concepts). On the bonus DVD that comes with the LE edition one of the score writers mentioned that the direction they wanted to take for MH3 was to give the impression of it being more full of life than previous versions. E.g. bosses may run out of stamina, start drooling and move to an area where there's prey they would eat.
There's definitely more ongoing processes also - like there's this new ant-like insect that would seek out plants and eat their nectar consequently causing their abdomens to expand and change color depending on what they ate. While that's happening a boss could have scattered a bunch of explosive rocks which, well, explode as it sends a shock wave through the ground. Meanwhile another boss in the same area body slams a pillar of molten rock and destroys it, the coat of lava it has around its body cools and turns from bright yellow to orange and then to black. All this could happen while mining points are respawning in a corner of the area and everyone is getting owned :x
It's kind of a nice addon that they implemented destructible objects and harvesting points that disappear and respawn again over time. Just one of the many changes they did :3 What didn't change though is that there's still both an offline and online mode. Decided to start with offline first since its kind of embarassing to come off as a gimp naked leech D;
Anyway it was a pleasant surprise that there was an intro CG movie this time round when first starting offline mode:
Was both amused and wtfing at what the men were wearing lol As you can tell, in conjunction with the newly implemented underwater system, now the plot involves a small fishing town called Moga Village. To be honest I didn't really bother reading the npc text since most of it is just nonsense imo but that's the general gist of it. The game is basically situated on a continent separate from previous games (or perhaps the whole world was flooded, which explains the abundance of water in several areas).
Either ways unlike previous games this time round you can access the 'begginer's' area without accepting any quests (usually you'd have to accept quests to leave town) plus you can spend an infinite amount of time in the field harvesting or farming monsters. It's main purpose however is to collect 'resource points' which is used in a variety of manners, such as using it to expand the farm, exchanging it for various items or sending fishing boats out to collect various items. Basically points are earned by killing monsters / bosses in that area only (or by trading in certain items). This is done via the village elder's son, who also shows a 3 day report on what bosses would appear in that area. Another reason to farm them is so that you can get special trading items that's used for unlocking costumes / items / weapons.
Here's a short intro clip of said area:
That's all I'll cover for now about the offline mode; trying to find my video recorder thingy stiil, hence the yoinking of other people's videos.
Next up is online mode, and I was even more surprised that they included an intro CG video for it too!
No doubt more effort was put into the game this round despite its shortness (it's possible to haijin till endgame before the 20 day free trial period was up D;). This time it's a desert town (ロックラック / Rock Luck!? :s) situated around an oasis which has a huge ass tusk sticking out from its centre.
I'm glad they did not retain the complicated mess that was the online town of MH2, it's much simpler and easier to navigate this time plus there are npc guides in each area. Still miss the lobby system in MH1 though which uses a chat room lobby for people to gather people first before entering a room to do the quest in. The lobby system in MH3 however is similar to MH2, so you have to search for rooms that have 募集文s (recruitment comments) and targets which matches your search criteria which isn't very effective imo.
Why? There's several reasons least of which is that the 募集文s are set and you can only choose one target boss at a time which is terrible when during endgame there are quests that have 2 different bosses. It also sucks since there are multiple servers with their own mini-lobbies and rooms are spread out across various lobbies, which may be so full that only those in the lobby already can enter the room. Uh, i can rant on forever of the fallacies of the online lobby system so I'm just gonna leave it at that D;/ Nevertheless it wasn't too much trouble to reach endgame quickly despite the stupid typhoon and various server congestions :D
Well, will end the entry here and focus more on bosses in future entries. Well done if you succeeded in reading everything XD