Monster Hunter Freedom

"Let the hunt begin!"

Monster Hunter Freedom PSP Review

*Pros*: Challenging gameplay, the best graphics I've seen so far for the PSP (clearly bests Daxter IMHO), awesome array of armours and weapons that you can make or buy, very lengthy even before considering multi-player.

*Cons*: Challenging gameplay and difficult control scheme will turn off most of the young spoiled gamers, camera placement needs some improvement, some components for weapons and armour can be a chore to gather.

Hunter, hunted...

I have to admit, I don't hunt, nor do I see myself hunting in the distant future. I just can't see hunting defenseless animals as fun. Monster Hunting on the other hand, has its appeal though. Here your fighting huge not so defenseless things! It being virtual helps a lot as well. You have to agree with me, nothing is more visceral than chopping a monster two stories high with a sword that is just as big as him! This game, like its predecessors, gives you such a game.

The premise of this game is simple. You find yourself in a hunter village in a fictional past time-line. You find yourself hunting big (and I mean BIG) game ranging from boars, to herbivorous dinosaurs, to velociraptors, to dragons. You then gather miscellaneous components from these creatures and use them for food, medicine, weapons and armour which in turn improves your survivability helping you fight even bigger monsters.

Now while the game has all the trappings of your standard RPG, this most definitely is not one of those. It lacks the central component of all RPGs, and that is an epic storyline. You don't save the world, you don't find yourself, etc. You just hunt!

I can't see!!!

Now let's start with the bad. This game has a lousy camera. Yes you can recenter the camera, and yes you can manually move the camera. This is good when you're lazily walking around looking for that next herbivore to massacre or that that shop to buy tools from, but when you're facing a massive wyvern which fills up the entire screen and then get into any sort of camera trouble, you'll know what I mean. The developers could have improved on this a bit, in my opinion, though I don't think this is game breaking in any way.

The control scheme needs a bit of getting used to as well. First and foremost, there is no lock-on, so kids spoiled by games like Kingdom Hearts and Grand Theft Auto, would find themselves hard pressed hitting the faster monsters. This gives a more realistic tone to the game though since in reality, you don't have auto aim right?

One other gripe is the difficulty in using potions or rations or your different "grenades". While in other games, a quick press of the button will instantly allow you to quaff a potion, in this game, you need to sheath your sword, take out the potion, drink it and then unsheath your sword again to continue fighting. This can be rather frustrating but again, this gives the game a more realistic tone and ups the sense of danger considerably. Besides, its not like that potion is automatically injected into your bloodstream at a press of the button right?

All in all, this is the most realistic game I've played (minus the fact that you are fighting non existent breeds of animals) and nothing beats the adrenaline rush you feel when you start fighting your first dragons.

Now I can see

Graphically, this game is a powerhouse. Nothing bests it in my opinion, on the PSP. Actually, it bests many PS2 games as well in my opinion. Most levels are open landscapes and everything looks nice. Most importantly, there are no graphical hitches whatsoever. The framerate is constant all through out.

Sounds are nothing to scoff about as well. The music lends to the setting so well, except for those quirky mini game sounds. They don't get irritating though which is nice.

If you are looking for a game to show off your PSPs graphical capabilities, you can't go wrong with this game. While its cool to look at nice looking soccer or racing games, its even cooler to watch dragon slaying!

Swords, Lances, Hammers, Guns

Now the best thing about this game is the weapons and armour. Armour and Weapon creation is a game on its own. You have tons of options with the weakest of swords having maybe 3 to 6 possible end upgrades, with multiple branching upgrade paths. Each of these options will have you collecting components from fish, to rocks/ore, to monster hides and bones. Each weapon has its distinct look from the classic sword look to the more exotic ones that look somewhat like dinosaur and snake heads!

These weapons have different levels of physical and elemental damage, with others having special effects such as stunning.

All this comes in six major classes: Sword and Shield, Great Sword, Hammers, Lances, Dual Swords, and Guns. Each of these have their advantages with Swords and Shields being fast and defensive, Great Swords having much greater damage and range but with extremely slow speed, Hammers sporting extreme damage at the expense of range and speed, Lances with next to no horizontal range but with extreme defense, Dual Swords with extreme speed, and Guns with extreme range.Each has its advantages but in the end, they even out to be somewhat the same (though many players would say that their choice is the best).

Armour as well is very versatile. You have choices for head gear, gloves, boots, pants, and upper armour. Each of these adds skill points to specific skills. When a specific skill gets 10 skill points, that skill is unlocked for use. These skills range from automatic blocking, increased health, ignore stun and knockdown effects, etc. Mixing and matching different armour unlocks different combinations of skills and is a surprisingly deep system, not to mention looks cool!!!

Note that gathering components not much of a chore once you upgrade the Kokoto farm. This allows you to harvest ore, fish, bugs, plants, and mushrooms in between missions. Gunners in particular will welcome the ability to GROW your own ammo components.

Lone wolf or not

The single player is pretty long, with a number of un-lockable (repeatable) quests. Quests can be as simple as gathering meat, or can be as hard as stealing dragon eggs, or hunting/capturing dragons. There are training missions as well which gives you the ability to use other weapon types aside from the one you chose to focus on (if you did choose to focus on one).

The actual hunting missions have a bit of depth as well since killing things isn't just as simple as getting close and hacking it to death. You can use traps and grenades to your advantage as well. Sniping from a far is a good option as well.

Once your done with Single Player, you can meet up with a bunch of your friends and take up team missions which are essentially the same but now, you can hack these monsters as a group. While the hackers are keeping a dragon busy for example, a gunner could be pelting it from a far, shooting medicinal darts to the hackers when they get injured.

This is a lot of fun which leads me to my other gripe about this game. I wish they'd included infrastructure mode in the game as finding other players with like interest can be difficult.

Conclusion

All, in all, this has got to be the best game I played on the system thus far. While most reviews I've seen has kicked this game on its proverbial backside, I do believe that most don't do this game enough justice. Yes, there are some moderate gripes about the game (the camera and no real on-line play being the worst of these) and for some, this might be the most difficult game they've played. In the end though, it is one of the best experiences I've had in the system and I wished I'd played this game on PS2...

Expect a FAQ in the next couple of weeks.

Summary
Graphics: 9.50 / 10.00
Sound: 8.50 / 10.00
Gameplay: 8.00 / 10.00
Longevity: 9.00 / 10.00

Overall: 8.75 / 10.00

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 07/14/06, Updated 07/21/06