Monster Hunter Tri Review - Wii

6.5

Gameplay: 6
Graphics: 8
Audio: 5
Multiplayer: 8
Innovation: 7

Roleplaying games are few and far between on the Wii, so when we heard Monster Hunter Tri was being made exclusively for it, our ears went up like a cat’s ears when you scratch something. The Monster Hunter series has a decent fan base, and a successful group of games ranging across most consoles, but originally Playstation 2 and PSP. With the new iteration on Wii (though promised on the other consoles later on), we had high hopes for a solid adventure game with unique enemies and interesting combat. What we got was slightly different.

Gameplay

Monster Hunter Tri starts off as a typical RPG, create your own character with very basic features, then set off into a world where monsters roam free. For those that haven’t played the Monster Hunter series before, you basically accept one quest from a town, and then set off to complete that quest in a certain amount of time. On return, you’re rewarded with money and items, and usually you pick up a fair bit of loot along the way. As you complete quests, harder ones unlock, and once you reach certain milestones the main story gradually expands. As you can imagine, there are a lot of weird and wonderful (but mostly weird) creatures in Monster Hunter Tri, and the boss monsters are usually the most amazing.

The game has a lot of text to get through, and a lot of complicated and unrewarding menus to sift through. Given the game is heavily reliant on items, you are constantly going through your bags to see what you can make, and seeing what is worthwhile keeping and what is simply junk. The short solution is to just sell everything and buy premade items direct from the vendors, but fans will tell you that’s not how its played. As you go around the Monster Hunter Tri world you’re required to gather items through various means. Plants will have herbs of all sorts, mineral veins will give you various ores, bee hives offer you honey and wax, mushrooms give you… yep, you guessed it, and white butterflies hover around giving you an opportunity to net a bug or two.

The combat is very simple, yet the controls seem overly complicated. One button takes your weapon out, while another button is required to use it. There’s also another button for using items, but it’s also for crouching. Holding one of the three attack buttons down puts you in a defensive stance, whereas mashing it will cause you to attack, and you have one other button for a weaker attack, but can combine the two for good combos. Even the Start (+) button is used as an attack button. There’s no lock-on function, and often you’ll find yourself slightly missing the target, or jumping past it as you do a leaping attack. This is a problem particularly with the monsters that move around quickly.

There are a few different types of weapons, swords, knives, hammers and guns, and each monster has its weakness. Unfortunately ...

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