It has never been a better time to be a fan of monster collection RPGs than right now. Pokemon is promising a resurgence with its upcoming games, Digimon just put out arguably its best game in years with Time Stranger, and multiple indie and niche entries in the genre covering the whole gamut of monster collection come out at a steady cadence every month now, while existing ones continue to iterate to do right by their community.
It’s hardly a surprise, that Monster Hunter Stories, is back for another outing. Now on its third installment (as the name gives away), Monster Hunter Stories 3 is the most ambitious, highest budget entry in the sub-series yet, and arguably the clearest realization of the gameplay loop and stylings these games are clearly going for. Boasting a stronger emphasis on narrative, and a raft of improvements across the board, those who are fans of the MH Stories games will find this one to be the best, most compelling title yet.
“Almost equally as immediate of an improvement is to the game’s storytelling.”
On the other hand, however, if you weren’t already sold on Monster Hunter Stories, then this game may not necessarily convince you. In fact, depending on WHY you weren’t on board with the previous games, this one may put you off even more.
Monster Hunter Stories 3 is a mixed bag of good and bad. To be clear, this isn’t an AMAZING looking game, at least on Switch 2 — there are some issues that undermine the game’s graphical prowess that are hard to ignore, and which we’ll get to shortly — but it still looks good, much better, denser, lusher, and overall more vibrant than not just past MH Stories games, but arguably also most, if not all, other games in this specific sub genre of RPG.
Almost equally as immediate of an improvement is to the game’s storytelling. The Monster Hunter games have never been particularly concerned with anything beyond the vaguest suggestion of narrative framing, and the Stories games, while ostensibly more story focused than the mainline ones, have still been very sparse.
The stories in past Stories games have largely been simplistic coming of age affairs, following the main character on a journey across the land as they search far and wide and get stronger over time. There have always been some major narrative hooks that come into play – but to say they take the backseat would still be overstating their prominence to the overall proceedings.
Stories 3 is a far more narrative focused game. It eschews the simplistic framing of past games, and instead goes for a far richer and more textured setup, involving warring kingdoms, the machinations of royalty and their ministers and staff, ecological disaster, the weight of history, and the fate of destiny. It’s not particularly breaking any new ground, especially for a RPG, but it doesn’t have to. What is here is very good, and, in particular because of the increased and stellar artistic values, is conveyed convincingly enough that, for the first time in probably any Monster Hunter game ever, the story can legitimately be your primary compulsion for continuing to play the game.
While it eventually recedes into the background, it’s always a strong hook and frame for your adventure, and it NEVER gives up on strong writing for the many characters you befriend along the way, and several of whom will engage you in elaborate quest lines of their own, which may have you learn more not just about them, but also the larger world.
“Actually engaging with this world is also a lot more pleasant and a lot less tedious than it has been in past games.”
That larger world is another strong point of this game. The RE Engine has struggled with open world games in the past, and MH Stories 3 smartly keeps that in mind as it delivers to players vast, open areas that are nonetheless instanced and separated by loads, to keep things manageable. From the various, lush, and often striking biomes you find yourself in (along with all their flora and fauna) to the varied and dense cities, MH Stories 3 makes its world itself a central part of its appeal in a way that I can’t remember a monster catching RPG having done this side of Pokemon Sun and Moon — and that was ten were ago now.
Actually engaging with this world is also a lot more pleasant and a lot less tedious than it has been in past games. And this brings me to what has been one of my primary complaints with Monster Hunter Stories games in the past, which is the core tedium inherent to them. Some of it is intrinsic to the design choices the developers make, and we’ll get back to that shortly. But a lot was seemingly more a matter of execution than concept, since it appears to have been addressed and mitigated greatly this time around.
Traversal, for instance, is one of the easiest and most obvious ways this is apparent — this game still has you use the various abilities of your Monsters (er, Monsties. This may be a more “mature” story than before, but apparently we’re still calling them Monsties) to traverse obstacles an hazards in the environment, but it feels a lot slicker and more seamless this time around, thanks to improvements like a radial UI which lets you quickly change monsters on the fly without delay. All of which results in me, as the player, feeling a lot less disincentivized to explore, since it doesn’t feel as annoyingly start-stop as it has in the past.
Generally, there have been similar attempts to mitigate the tedium across the board — but to varying degrees of success, which brings us to discussing what this game doesn’t necessarily do as well. Take the equivalent of “catching” a new monster.
If you’ve played any of the past games, you know that the process in the Stories games involves beating a monster, that then may spawn a den that it retreats into, following it into that den, and retrieving its egg from it. This process is inherently repetitive and tiring — these dens can be fairly elaborate mini dungeons, that reuse their aesthetic and layouts, and it can feel like too much effort just to get a new monster to add to your roster.
Stories 3 simplifies this greatly — you’re still raiding monster dens to nab yourself their eggs, but the dens themselves are a lot smaller and more compact now, and they’re a lot more forgiving with the RNG in you picking out the egg you want.
The process is greatly sped up here — I’m not saying it’s sped up enough to completely address the issue (it did eventually start to wear on me, especially once the repetition in layouts became apparent, and it happened a lot quicker than I would have wanted it to), but it’s at the very least the best take we’ve had on the concept yet.
Unfortunately this isn’t the only part of the game where the tedium hasn’t been fully addressed — there’s also the combat system.
“Like I said at the outset of this review, depending on what you thought of previous MH Stories games, this one could be your favorite.”
The combat system in MH Stories has always been controversial. It is the way it is because of the developers’ (understandable and admirable) insistence on trying to keep the Stories games based in the mechanics and systems of the mainline games. In this case, the developers faced the notion of translating the rather unique and iconic combat of the mainline games to a turn based style.
The results have varied over the course of the series — the original game was praised for its charm, but the battle system got quickly tedious and dragged the package down. The second game attempted to address those complaints by trying to make battles more dynamic, which was good, but simultaneously also served to make the battles feel even more protracted.
And Stories 3… well, first let’s talk about how battles work before we talk about how I feel about them. Much like either previous game in the series, battles are designed around the concept of playing out like turn based interpretations of the fights with monsters in mainline Monster Hunter. At their core, you, your monsters deployed in battle, and your companions all select a TYPE of attack (technical, power, or speed) that you think will top the type of attack the opponent will make (it’s a basic rock paper scissors style triangle).
You’re encouraged this way to learn more about your own monsters, but also the monsters you’re fighting, so you know their behavior, patterns, and tells, and know how to react accordingly. That’s the basic setup – you also want to keep elemental advantages, special attacks you and your monsters can perform in junction when you’re all synched up, Ultimate all out attacks, targeting specific parts to break them off, which monster and character is targeting whom, and mini head to head confrontations all on top.
Does that sound like a lot to keep track of? It is. It’s a lot, and even a standard “trash mob” fight can take MINUTES to get through. Now consider how many fights the average RPG has you engage in, and the problem starts to become clear. It’s just a lot of cognitive load, with even the parts that should traditionally be downtime asking a lot out of the player. That’s to say nothing about how slow each fight feels.
There’s a built in speed up option, but even with that, I got to a point where I was actively dreading fights. That should never be the case in a game about fighting monsters – but it was here. And unfortunately, the concessions made to streamlining here only served to infuriate me further, with, for example, your current ally acting on their own, which can lead to moments of frustration when they do the opposite of what you were counting on.
The other big fumble with the game I want to talk about is also rather central, and in this case directly ties into what should otherwise be a strength — the graphics. On the Switch 2, specifically, this is not a particularly well optimized game.
The resolution seems to be generally low, leading to a soft image quality, the framerate is unlocked and varies anywhere from 30-50fps, only going up to 60FPS in very small and contained interiors, monsters, people, and objects just a few feet away have severely noticeable decimated framerate animations, and the pop in is immense, with things fading into existence just a few feet ahead of the player. All of this is fairly unfortunate, since it has the side effect of the game seeming unpolished and janky (which it is not), and also undermines the story and storytelling.
It’s confusing why this game is as unoptimized on the Switch 2 as it is — pretty much every other game on the system, from Street Fighter 6 to Resident Evil Requiem, has been exquisite in its technical implementation. Presumably the poor optimization here comes from the game’s semi open nature, which RE Engine has historically struggled with. Equally presumably, it looks and runs a lot better on more capable hardware. But to be perfectly honest, it should look and run a lot better on Switch 2, and it’s a real bummer that the developer hasn’t seen it fit to address these issues that must have very obviously come up in QA and testing yet.
Like I said at the outset of this review, depending on what you thought of previous MH Stories games, this one could be your favorite. If you liked what you had before and wanted a more refined and polished take on it, you’ll love this. If you were intrigued by the past games, but wanted something more narratively or technically ambitious, this is the game that’ll finally get through to you. But if the tedium and repetition of the past few games gave you pause, well, things could go either way with Stories 3.
While it does make several attempts to mitigate the repetition, the jury is out on whether or not they’re enough; certainly this is something that will vary person to person, and where I still found many aspects of the game tiresome, you don’t necessarily have to. The game has a free demo on all platforms, so I do encourage you to see for yourself what you think if the tediousness has been a sticking point for you in the past, and you’re not convinced Stories 3 has done enough to address it.
This game was reviewed on Nintendo Switch 2.
