Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate Review

The Monster Hunter series is one I’ve always admired from afar. For the longest time, I understood that it was a huge game in Japan, as well as relatively popular in the West and this was for a good reason I just hadn’t discovered yet. The first Monster Hunter I ever dipped my toes into was Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate on the Wii U and for a time I found it to be an immensely satisfying game but also one whose mechanics I found difficult to truly understand. It felt fantastic to emerge victorious from a hunt, but the game assumed a lot of prior knowledge and so I never quite penetrated the depths of hunting technique and shortly lost interest. Along came Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate on the 3DS which I suspected would suffer the same fate, but which instead has identified some of the shortcomings of past games and improved the experience for new players remarkably. I finally feel like I completely understand why Monster Hunter’s fans are so enthused about the franchise.

Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate (MH4U) begins with a short and engaging tutorial mission on the sea, headed to the game’s first hub destination. Rather than give players long winded explanations of controls and tactics, this first gameplay moment teaches players the absolute basics of monster hunting by pitting them against a towering beast. This is just the beginning of what I feel is MH4U’s biggest improvement over past entries. In past games there wasn’t much in the way of direction. You would have a set of quests, a set of basic weapons and you pretty much had to work it out from there. In MH4U, this changes. While the game is far from holding your hand, there is some subtle direction given as to which missions to undertake, and what to do with the spoils of a successful hunt. You’ll be encouraged to explore equipment purchasing and upgrade systems, and missions are often given by characters in the area. There’s even a rudimentary story of sorts. It all makes MH4U much more friendly to first time players, and people playing alone. While it will still certainly help to have a mentor to help you through and explain things, the game does a much better job of doing this for you than previous entries.

The first mission gives you an idea of how the game will look as well. I’ll admit that I gasped when I first saw the sea monster attacking in the initial mission, and realised that it was being rendered in real-time on the 3DS. As always has been with Monster Hunter, the monsters are the stars of the show and they look incredible. Intricately designed and realised, they’re a testament to the power of the 3DS hardware.

The ways of hunting have been expanded over past Monster Hunter games. There are two new weapons, the Insect Glaive and Charge Blade, and both of them are fantastically fun to use in a hunt. Each weapon has had new combo attacks added to its repertoire, as well as an aerial attack. These aerial attacks are part of one of the most exciting changes to hunting, monster mounting. Performing a precisely aimed aerial attack on a large monster can sometimes knock them down.

The hunter can then mount the downed beast and enter into an intense tug-of-war, desperately trying to keep hold on a monster flailing wildly to throw you off. While you’re on the monster’s back, you can deal huge amounts of damage and this acts as an incredible reward for your monster hunting performance.

Environments have changed to enable these new mounting and aerial attack mechanics too. Each environment has a new feeling of verticality rarely seen in the worlds of previous Monster Hunters. You can climb walls to gain an advantageous vantage point from which to leap into an aerial attack on a monster, or simply climb to escape the reach of an attack when you’re desperately close to fainting. Having a friend distract the monster and lure it to a cliff face from which you leap to relentlessly attack the monster in its moment of vulnerability. It’s all very exciting and most of all, rewards players for smart tactics and skilful weapon use.

Monster Hunter’s core gameplay hook has always been taking the spoils of a successful hunt and crafting new equipment from them. After every hunt you’ll either find a new armor or weapon piece you can now craft with parts of the monster you’ve defeated, or be one step closer to an enticing piece of equipment that just needs one more hunt to get pieces to forge. There are seemingly endless monsters to hunt, environments to explore and pieces of equipment to forge, and once the game has its hooks in you, you’ll want to just keep on playing. Your weapons and armor are fashioned from the remains of the monsters you hunt, a visual reminder of past victories for yourself and for the people who you hunt with.

Speaking of multiplayer hunting, as with previous Monster Hunter games there are extensive local and online multiplayer options for hunting with friends. While singleplayer is still immensely enjoyable, multiplayer is truly where it’s at, as they say. Many weapons like Bowguns truly come into their own when you’re not the only target for monsters on the field. Though there are some weapons that are better suited to solo play, every weapon feels like it is able to support players using different weapons, combining to a monster hunting force greater than the sum of it’s parts. During local and online play I never experienced any noticeable lag, though of course your mileage may vary. Voice chat during online play was noticeably absent. A game like Monster Hunter benefits hugely from discussion of tactics and camaraderie, so I’d recommend being near a Skype capable device while playing online.

With my admittedly limited experience of the long running Monster Hunter series I might not be the most qualified person to say this, but Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate is the best Monster Hunter title to date. At least, it’s the one Monster Hunter that has truly captured me, given me just enough guidance to discover the rewarding game loop that makes gameplay in Monster Hunter so enticing, and keeps dedicated players coming back for more each and every release.