Monster Hunter Stories 3: A Spectacular Journey (Review)

A game centered on fighting alongside tamed monsters might seem like an odd inclusion in a franchise focused on turning beasts into hats and hammers…and yet!

The Monster Hunter Stories series has been going for a decade now, and the latest instalment, Monster Hunter Stories 3, carried it into the current gen with not just stronger tech, but also interesting new ideas and a renewed flair for the dramatic.

Let’s get into the review, because I’ve been playing it since launch and I’ve been itching to talk about my impressions.

Waiter, there are stories in my Monster Hunter!

Jury’s still out on whether it was a good idea to put so much cinematic story in Wilds (I liked that decision, for the record), but Stories has that right there in the title, and the new one really took it to heart.

The main course

The plot has three general threads interwoven to form a very entertaining tapestry.

One thread are the growing tensions between the still prosperous kingdom of Azuria (blue) and their neighbour, Vermeil (red-orange, or, some would say: vermillion), plagued by an ecosystem-destroying crystallization. The color coding and their design language are helpful shorthands, but, thankfully, things are a bit more complicated than just Good vs. Evil, as neither Vermeil is needlessly evil, nor Azuria purely good.

The second thread follows the customizable player character — an Heir to the throne of Azuria and a Ranger Captain —on an adventure to find the source of the crystalline Encroachment. The Captain is joined by their crew of fellow Rangers, a war-opposed princess of Vermeil, and a young Palico* Rudy. The crew is a very active presence in both story and gameplay, as you can swap who accompanies you at almost any time.

The third thread involves the protagonist’s mother, Queen Amara, who, at the story’s start, is known as the turncoat queen. Figuring out what happened isn’t as big a feature as the other two, but it is important, and comes to a conclusion much more interesting than I expected from this kind of tale.

The side

There are also many small, or even tiny stories involved.

Your companions: the other four rangers and Eleanor, the Vermeil princess, all get their own side-stories player in four chunks across the chapters, and they are, generally, very fun and do a good job giving some extra dimension and interest to your team.

All five companions’ side stories tend to begin with some mundane thing happening and then it turns out they are saying something about the way the character sees their position in the world and their relationships with others, with more than a few shards of backstory provided. It’s very effective.

The appetizers

Even the background NPCs with roles rather than names have their own small stories happening, if you care to pay attention to their ambient dialogue bubbles or talk to them to check what they have to tell you. Admittedly, I often forgot to check in on every background extra with every main story quest cleared, but that’s because there are so many of them.

The dialogue interface also gives me a sentence or two at a time even when there’s no animation, no dramatic staging happening, and I’ve never liked this format, unfortunately. I’m too used to being able to read a chunk of dialogue at once in other RPGs. But that’s a minor gripe.

Comparison to Stories 2

I was also delighted by two things, relative to the previous instalment.

One is that the protagonist is a full person: the Ranger Captain has personality, motivations, a drive to do something, and a voice to speak for themselves. We see a competent young adult with friendships, history, doubts, and a winning, honest personality. Good stuff, great protagonist for this kind of story.

The other is ditching Navirou.

I recognize that this subseries started as a fairly chibi-like, cutesy art style on a Nintendo 3DS, aimed at young teens/children. That’s fine. I’m sure Navirou made sense in that context. When I played the much less chibi MHS2, the cat was a noisy nuisance who constantly spoke for the mute protagonist. I think I was already a decade or two too old to like that when I played Stories 2.

Stories 3 replaces Navi with Rudy, and it’s like night and day. Rudy shares some of Navirou’s chibi designand he starts rather high-strung and focused on being prim and proper, but these are things which make sense for who he is and how he feels about his position as our character’s royal aide. The evolving relationship between him and the Ranger Captain is very nice to see, and it isn’t rushed, either. The story is quite happy to let some some plotpoints take a breather in general.

Good vibes

All of that blends into a really satisfying meal. Over the hundred-or-so hours I’ve spent in the game at the time of writing (most of it just on exploration and maxing our ecosystems), I’ve grown to really enjoy interacting with the characters, and the story has the sense of wonder and adventure that would make for a really good movie or a miniseries.

Of course, it’s not some hugely hefty tale to be analyzed for decades, but I do enjoy a good adventure story with strong character concepts. At a few points I realized I’ve been underestimating the game, because it brought depth I wasn’t expecting, or even successfully bamboozled me regarding one character. I apologise, Stories 3, I wasn’t aware of your game.

The voice acting and character designs and animations are also well-done, although both have the kind of exaggeration you’d expect from a game that keeps its anime-esque aesthetic, it just switched to a slightly older target audience than before.

You can also usually clock what the character’s like and what they’re about from the designs. Each character in the main cast is visually distinct, with unique silhouette, animation style, and color scheme, and at one point the character design was used as a plotpoint. However, I was very wrong in my initial assumptions about Kora, who turned out to be a much warmer, friendlier character than I expected. It’s the good kind of being proven wrong.

I like anime, so all of it doesn’t bother me, but it won’t be everybody’s cup of tea. And now, since we’re talking about designs, let’s talk appearances!

Visually stunning

There were so many moments in the game where I said out loud “#$@!, this game looks so GOOD!”.

I am a defender of Monster Hunter Rise’s looks, because despite (or maybe thanks to?) having to work on portable hardware (Switch 1), it found its visual appeal in strong designs and vibrant palettes. I have likewise been of an opinion that many monsters look their best in Stories 2, thanks to the exaggerated, bold, unabashedly cartoonish color values.

Stories 3 is somehow both of these games, except with better technical guts that make space for extra detail.

Humans (and Wyverians) still look very anime-derived, but with better, more animated models. They can easily handle being put in fully animated cutscenes, handling all the action and emotion one would expect. It’s not Pixar-style animation, but there are many ways to slice a delicious apple.

Monster models also got an upgrade. Rich, high-value colors and contrasts are one half of the equation, because I love having a rich red Rathalos or a vibrant blue Lagiacrus. Every monster leaves little doubt as to what its colors are supposed to be.

The other half are the models which are now more detailed and given their mainline proportions at all times, so they look less Pokémon-ified and more in line with the rest of the series without losing the vibrance. Great work.

Location, location, location

I don’t love the gameplay of every region, but I do love the looks of every region. The locales are where Stories 3 really claimed my heart visually.

From the verdant hills and mountains of verdant Azuria to the frosty reaches of Serathis hiding secrets in the ice, each region has a clear identity and bits of visual interest.

Since crystals are such a big theme here, Capcom also made sure lighting and reflections are top-notch to make all the shinies look appropriately shiny. As a result, Stories 3’s subtitle is lying: the reflection isn’t twisted at all.

A moon shining off the Mirror Lake or through the treetops is simply enchanting in a way a screenshot can’t quite convey and I am very glad I have a monitor with pretty good contrasts and colours even without engaging HDR. When we get to Glacial Caps and its mix of matte and smooth ice, or any area consumed by crystallization.. majestic.

I made about 400 screenshots both in gameplay and in in cutscenes, because things just keep looking amazing to the very end.

Let’s pick some nits

Were I to find problems, I’d pick two:

1. If you’re seeking realism or something down-to-earth, it’s not here. Everything looks coherent, but it’s all stylized and exaggerated. It’s here to support a fantastical, rather family-friendly adventure, not take gritty tales of woe.
2. I’m not sure if it’s just my hardware or settings (played on High setting generally), but I’m not a huge fan of shadows. Something about them often felt jagged and jittery, particularly on some of the more complicated monster geometries. Your mileage may vary.

Gameplay, or “how is Stories 3 in action?”

Combat – violent ro-sham-bo

The combat is built on simple foundations, and you can get pretty much the full experience from the free demo.

You can always make free basic attacks typed as Powerful, Technical, or Fast, and whenever possible, you generally want to counter the monster with an attack type that wins the rock-paper-scissors. Sometimes the monster uses an ability that can’t be countered and you need to prepare to deal with these in some other way.

Weapons comes in three physical damage types, six elemental damage types, and dedicated mechanics, like Greatsword’s Charge or gunlance’s ammo. Gear comes with baked in skills granting you passive and active abilities, and there are slots for additional skill gems gained from exploration, quests, and gear upgrades. Of course, you also have your team of six monsties with their own abilities, elements, and preferred attack types.

Monsters you fight go through phases which change what attack type they use, occasionally even their resistances, as well, so you need to pay attention and swap monsties and weapons accordingly, decide when to deploy powerful Kinship attacks or slam the final damage to break a body part and stun the beast. There’s a lot going on here, lot to have fun with.

Thankfully, when you outlevel a given monster species you can also finish battles with a quick button press, or even avoid battle at all if you melee-attack it during exploration. Makes farming materials way easier in late game.

Exploration

Three out of four maps are large, but not overwhelmingly so, and you’ll spent a lot of time going from den to den or quest objective to quest objective.

They are also full of obstacles and opportunities you can only exploit when riding your monsties. Destructible or climbable walls, air currents increasing flight distance, flooded sections for a swimming monstie, etc. There’s a task for every beast, although I found very little need to have monster with Stealth of Ground Diving skills always on my team, they were very situational.

Switching between monsties is convenient and instant, so you can have your Canyne jump off a lookout point and switch to Rathalos to soar majestically without missing a beat. What happens to the very much not flight-capable Canyne? Don’t worry about it.

Since there’s no free flight unlike in Stories 2, and some places are almost platform-y, there’s very little just absent-minded travel involved. If you want to skip travel you need to do it the old-fashioned way, by fast travelling to a camp or a Catavan Stand, or which there are many.

There is, however, one place I loathe.

Frosty reception

In the final region, there is a part of the map that’s all tall icebergs and ice floes with water in-between. And I hate it, because there are few good ways to get from the water up to the ice surface where all the stuff is.

You miss a jump and you’re back in the water. You miss a glide distance, you’re in the water. And there isn’t interesting in the water. You can’t dive, and the leviathans roaming the place I’ve already fought and hatched elsewhere.

At least in Tarkuan’s Rococo Rocks zone if you fall off a spire there’s a bunch of air current to get back up, and there are still plenty of dens and roaming monsters on the ground to keep you occupied in a fun way.

I like the rest of the map, but the ice floes are bad and I haven’t found anything that would make getting around the place any easier. In some places there are smashable rocks that reveal air currents. Haven’t spotted any. Nor are there any climbable walls, it’s all smooth ice as far as I can identify.

It’s the one place in the game I really wished there was free flight.

Other foibles

I’ve been gushing a fair bit, but it’s not like there is nothing but nice things to say. Some of my gripes are more lighthearted than others.

My biggest (other than Glacial Caps) is probably the fact that there is no way to check a zone’s ecosystem status and roaming monsters from the normal map. It features a lot of handy travel and gathering info, but if you want to double-check if your Aknosoms in Mt. Canalta are already S-tier you must return to one of the camps. It needlessly complicates engaging with a core subsystem.

On similar note, I can’t fathom why we can’t access Habitat Restoration from a regional bases even after establishing a camp, even though all the other menus are available. The map asset really is just for show, huh?

Crafting woes

Another QoL thing I want to point at is related to our gear.

To craft a piece of gear, say: a weapon based on Monster A, you need, for example, 12 points worth of parts of monster A. It’s fine, I like this system, makes it less stressful to farm, keep bullying monsters and you get enough points. To upgrade an item you can’t just whack more Monsters A. You also need to whack a Monster B, occasionally also a Monster C and get THEIR points as well.

The problem is that there’s no wishlist functionality that would keep track of this for you. Conservatively, you’re probably going to want to max out every armor and at least three weapon lists, because unlocking Level 3 upgrades gives you new and upgraded skill gems. So we’re talking about dozens and dozens of items, each with a unique combo of required monster points. And no tracker.

I made a spreadsheet by hand to figure out what monsters I need to bully and how many points I need from each, but that gets us to the second problem.

We can check the materials we already have in our inventory, the game even tells us how many points from each monster we can get. That’s nice.

What isn’t, is that to my knowledge there is no rhyme nor reason to the order. It’s not alphabetical, for sure. And it’s not by species rank, either. Kulu-Ya-Ku parts are listed between Pukei Pukei and Tobi-Kadachi materials. There’s no pattern I can identify.

Weapons and armor you can filter by element and weapon type. Materials would be easy to filter by monster type (e.g. Brute Wyvern or Leviathan) and monster rank, but they are just a chaotic list you can only scroll hoping to randomly find what you need.

This lack of filtering and sorting also applies to the Monster encyclopedia. It can be a fairly long scroll to find what you need from it.

Too much knowledge can hurt

Finally a very silly issue that only exists because for some reason I can accept hatching dogs from eggs, but not a silly, gameplay-friendly break from Monster Hunter lore. To put it shortly: the game treat every kind of monster as a separate, hatchable species even when in broader lore they are just

• an example of sexual dimorphism: like Rathian being just a female Rath, while Rathalos is the male
• a unique individual circumstance: like Bloodbath Diablos, a deviation normally caused by Diablos losing a horn at young age).

Let’s bring it home

Despite my vivid loathing for the Glacial Caps and a lot of wishes for a better UX of many things, I still had an absolutely delightful time with Monster Hunter Stories 3, and what issues I raise, are nothing more than slight blemishes on an otherwise excellent experience.

I loved exploring the maps searching for eggs to steal and ecology lore. I loved combat for the mechanics and cool animations. I loved the stories, big and small, and the generally optimistic, energetic adventure they weave. I loved restoring endangered species and boosting ecosystems, even if it’s all in service of having cooler/stronger not-Pokémon in your party and crafting better gear.

It’s a great game, and I hope that much like other Monster Hunter games it will receive some title updates. At the time or writing there’s already been a small update announced, but nothing on the scale of the usual TUs. An advanced endgame would certainly be welcome, since right now we just return to the world-state before the final boss.

Now excuse me, I still have some medals to earn, some late-game side quests to complete, and some genetic meddling to do.

Happy hunting!