Monster Hunter 4 [3DS] - possible spoilers!! review

[fishbowlhead]

So have you guys indefinitely moved on to this now or is anyone still playing 3? Just got a 2ds and would be up for some action when if I can get a cheap 3ultimate copy.

[kryss]

This is the thread for 4, not 3U. Online we're pretty much only playing the WiiU version anyway. Do you have a WiiU to play via the packet relay program?

In other news, j0e and I will be online later today if Jim or anyone wants to jump on [4]

[jimtendo]

I'll be on and off with MH4 this afternoon/ evening. If you guys have a room up I'll pop along.

[J0e Musashi]

I haven't played for about three weeks now, so you two are probably way ahead of me. I'm about 2/3 the way through HR2. I'll be on about 16:30.

[kryss]

Room up already. I'm still hr3 BTW.

[KusoGaki]

Just in case you guys didn't notice, they added a new Jump quest today.
You can make a charge axe or armour/weapon for your cat with the part you receive.
The charge axe is pretty crappy tbh, but the cat armour is pretty decent.

The monster for the quest is a mini gravimos, it hits pretty hard. Even with mid 400 defense it can still do about half bar damage with it's beam.

Also I tried getting the Mario quest last Friday but still can't figure out how the hell 7spot works. If you wanna do it the easiest way is to look for rooms with babakonga （ババコンガ）, and Event Quest (イベントsomething or other).

[J0e Musashi]

I really need to get some playtime in. It cost me a fortune to get set up for it, and I've only played for about 20 so far.

[VR46]

Been translated for a Korean release, surely just a matter of time before US/PAL release is announced hopefully.

http://www.siliconera.com/2013/11/12/nintendo-will-release-monster-hunter-4-korea-december

[kryss]

That would be sweet. I'll admit it's been a little neglected since school got busy.

[J0e Musashi]

A little too much for my liking Steven. Jaja.

[QualityChimp]

A little too much for my liking Steven. Jaja.

I bet you can't wait to get back on and start playing GotY again!

*looks at sales thread*

Oh...

[jimtendo]

Right.
Time to take a little break from my 'real life' hiatus and post some thoughts on what has been consuming my soul on a day to day basis.
So, Monster Hunter the IVth is good right? of course, but not without a few bones of contention. But I'll get to that later.

The main thing, even with the new changes to the environment and riding mechanic, is that it is still Monster Hunter through and through. Going back to 3 Ultimate feels so flat (pun intended) compared to the undulating locales of MH4. I never cared for climbing in previous Monster Hunters, as it was tedious. But in MH4 not once did I feel bogged down with it being a chore. It's still fun now, climbing on walls/ columns/ vines and just jumping off to land jumping attacks.

Onto the new weapons.
First off, the Insect Staff, which is more or less the win button since it does pretty much everything.
Cut Tails? yup
Initiate monster riding without jumping off ledges? yup
give yourself an attack/ small earplugs/ movement and attack speed increase? fo sho
I've used it quite exclusively along with the Charge Axe, and definitely it's too much fun. Only downsides of course is the very small selection of staffs you're given (this applies to the Charge Axe as well) and that at end game there is really two staffs worth using: Dara Amade yura and Fatalis.

With the Charge Axe, it's quite slow compared to the Hollywood glitz and glamour of showboating with the staff, but it has its charm. Charge Axe has only two phials (KO explosion & element) compared to Switch Axes three (Power, Element and Exhaust) and comboing from sword to axe to make full use of phial charges can mean you miss your intended swings, due to the nature of the weapon transition.
However, as demonstrated in this video (against a lvl. 100 Rajang) it can be quite handy:



As with the selection of endgame Axes, the Ceadeus one is pretty much it, in terms of power. Though good luck getting those G tickets needed, which are from the harder versions of Dara Amade yura/ double Rajang/ double Deviljho at HR8 and above.

Now, for the not so pleasant features.
Levelling up guild quests is tedious, no doubt about it. Plus since the 'Sea of Unknown Trees' location is quite featureless and flat (making Insect Staff abusing imperative) since there are not a lot of ledges to make use of the riding mechanic. Also the fact that only certain monsters can be fought in guild quests, so you won't get the likes of Gravios/ Dark Gravios/ Deviljho and so forth.
Tru armour spheres are only attained through levelled up High Rank guild quests, which can be a pain when upgrading armours.

Excavated weapons (also attained by guild quests) are by nature quite powerful, when fully upgraded. Therefore beating most regular crafted weapons quite easily for raw power. But the amount of resource points needed to upgrade fully is insane. Although they usually have very little white sharpness, or they are infused with combination skills that you don't want. Pretty much the only preset skill you want for blademaster is 'Edge Master' since you can't forge gems from the blacksmith, and it only comes natural on excavated armours/ Dara Amade yura and EX Ingot armour - which the DLC has not been released as of yet.

Another annoyance is that materials for gunning is quite bothersome to farm now.
Sleepfish and Scatterfish (for sleep shots lvl. 2 and G-bomb respectively) is done from the Beach village/ cat island - and farming for that is slow and painful, as you have x3 attempts (before you have to do a quest to reset the tries) and at least x1 attempt is wasted by you having to fish Plesioth.

Onto charms/ talismans.
A decent charm can make or break an armour with required skillsets. Most of the forged (not factoring mixed armoursets) are quite mediocre in terms of skills - though will suffice. In 3 Ultimate, the big fuss was made about charm tables and being locked onto a particular table. If memory serves me, there are 17 in total, with five of them being 'cursed'. Each charm table has specific charms that only that table had, though most shared common ones. It's just the god charms that really matter are specific to each table. With cursed tables, you had significantly less charms and couldn't even get ancient shards in some cases to make the Ancient/ Atea armour.

With Monster Hunter 4 all that is changed and charm tables are ditched in favour of charm creation (done later in the game) where you can throw in a maximum of nine charms, along with infected crystals you've picked up and hope for the best.
Although like 'charm sniping' (in 3 Ultimate) there is a way to snipe for certain charms.
Though I wont go into too much detail as it's quite boring and technical. Basically revolves around abusing the games random number generator. Yeah, I knew that would put you to sleep. It still requires a lot of hours, patience and most of all luck.
Though I still spent roughly 4-6 hours a day rolling for perfect charms... but that's another story.

[kryss]

Thanks for the updates there Jim.

I've not given up on the game, but my time for gaming is down to very little due to work and school. And Battlefield 4 of course.

[JU!]

Yes thanks Jim I like reading and watching Monster Hunter so interesting to hear impressions etc. Everyone keep them coming I used to dabble in MH PSP and some people I know we're really high levels. Seems MH is still massive in Japan too some 8-4 play podcast people so some noce impressions too.

[Square]

Having a little trouble getting the update from 2nd May that upgrades the trader's items (I.e. selling meat, honey etc). Can anyone help me out here? I have no problem d/l event quests, otomos etc., but can't seem to get the new items from the trader.