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Now, i'm actually playing with only the lock-on for camera control, but if you want more than that, there's three good varieties of free-look. Two are the second stick offered by both the N3DS and the Circle Pad Pro being supported, in addition to the third of being able to swap out one of the touchscreen tiles with a virtual d-pad for another avenue of camera control. (The physical d-pad is also bound to camera control, but... Yeah, you don't want to do the Monster Hunter claw.) Beyond that though, in what context are you fighting the Great Jaggi, and what are you trying to do with the weapons you've used? Unless you're looking at a gain in the area of 70+ defense, the extra durability won't really feel like much. Elemental defenses are more important, and even more than that, skills and gem slots are the most important. The built-in skills should primarily be the things that determine why and when you use a set of armor. (While you still definitely want to be mindful of your elemental defenses, you can modify those with meals.) If you want a good early set that gives you some pretty reasonable tankiness to rely on while you figure out other mechanics, the tetsucabra armor is pretty decent for a large chunk of the early game. (It's good starter armor since what it offers, lots of durability and health, is largely free from weapon-specific considerations.)

First off, are you sure it's not just a dirty lens? That's usually the most common cause of disc read errors, and it's usually a relatively easy fix. Edit: Yes, what Zeus says is one solution, there are others too. All in all, fairly easy fixes.

I wish i had something meaningful to add to this conversation because i love this game, but i haven't played it since it came out and i remember so, so little about it. I definitely played far more of Monolith's AvP2. Is AvP 2000 worth going back to?

So i've kind of been experiencing Bloodborne vicariously through youtube let's plays to get a PS4-less Bloodborne fix, and i'm seriously surprised to see how much From stripped down the character stats, it is so streamlined from Dark Souls 2's dozens and dozens of core and derived stats. (Which i will argue were actually an incredibly well balanced and well thought-out set of systems, but i know a lot of people found them extremely confusing.) Also, the soundtrack in Bloodborne is seriously good.

The localization is really pretty funny, i've laughed out loud a few times. Apparently it was those 8-4 guys on it again?

I have almost exactly the same amount of time clocked on the game, heh. I'm fortunate to be playing with a group of people who are all going through the game at more or less a similar pace, makes for a great time. Ninja's a bit wrong on some of his details. How it works is that there's normally a handful of unmarked "key quests" for each caravan or gathering hall level that will unlock progress to the next level in each, and they are usually not things like gathering or egg-carrying missions, they're usually the big hunts. That said, early in the caravan progression, I think you have to do expeditions a couple times to progress further in the story, and that's probably where you're at. (Gathering quests, by the way, exist solely so you can have safe environments to gather general supplies in.) Expeditions are randomized zones with a bunch of unique monsters and drops. (As well as a bunch of other weird shit like rewarding you with guild quests and gear drops that have completely randomized stats, which aren't things you should necessarily concern yourself with early on.) Expeditions have no hard time limit, but once you start a fight with a monster, if will eventually flee completely if you take too long, acting as a different kind of time limit. Also, the map will seem a bit confusing, but if you have it on the touchscreen, you can tap it to move between seeing the specific area and an overview of the connections between all of the so-far explored areas. Doing this, you can still do paintball tracking as normal, because monsters will still move between areas as normal. (Unless they "escape" because you took too long.) So you can just repeat the mission, even once it's checked off. Farming items, though... So here's the most obtuse part of the game, probably. Luckily, it's the part of the game where there are some pretty great fan resources to help out. Without those, you'll probably never have a clear sense of why or when things drop, and it would just be a colossal, aimless grind. So you want jaggi armor, right? Jaggi armor isn't great, but it's usually the first armor everybody builds. Now, with that armor, you'll likely get everything you need just by fighting the great jaggi repeatedly, very simple easy drops. You'll run into big problems if you expect that to hold up over the long run though, there are tons of conditional drops where you need to, say, break a monster's tusks to get a drop chance for its fangs, or capture it instead of killing it for a chance at something else. Or you could even be aiming for something that has a greater chance of appearing as a quest reward during specific missions, or only appears from high-rank or g-rank versions of the monsters. Trying to brute force the game for drops without that special outside knowledge will just make you miserable and make you hate the game. Even normal resources from gathering points might only appear in certain areas and in certain ranks. This place is awesome, it's what i've been using. Figure out what you want, set goals for yourself, and have at it. Also: Don't get too caught up in armor early on though, build yourself a few nice sets with good skils and upgrade them a handful of times, but once you're into high rank and g rank, know that you'll most likely be discarding them for sets with more slots and skills. (Though, oddly enough, if you keep pumping armor gems into low-rank armors, they can stay relatively competitive in terms of defense, but skills and slots are more important.) It's the weapons that will be your long-term invesments, with their big branching upgrade trees carrying through into the end-game.

In game, there's the Guildmarm's caravan 1 tutorials, and under hunter info on your start menu, you can access more specific movelists. Both of those are seriously incomplete though, and while that information might get you through low rank, without better information you'll probably feel hopelessly outclassed by the time you get to high rank. The thing is though, given that Monster Hunter has just never taken off in the west the way a game like Dark Souls kind of exploded, the more detailed community-provided information that is out there can be fairly sparse, but i've been finding some good resources. For weapon guides, i learned a lot from Gaijin Hunter's tutorial videos on youtube. For drops, enemy resistances, and gear info, i highly recommend this place, which has yet to lead me astray. (Some drops i simply would have never been able to find without it.) Those two might sound like you'd have your bases covered, but there's a ton of underlying systems that are poorly understood by the english-speaking fanbase, with different resources presenting different information. Even those youtube weapon guides, looking back on them, i think there's some erroneous details in them, but they're a terrific starting point. Beyond those, there wasn't anything better i could find, so i ended up figuring a lot of stuff out purely through experimentation. It's crazy how much arcane bullshit is in this game, there's a lot of things i'm still trying to figure out, but i feel like i have a fairly solid grasp of things at this point. Many things, however, there's just not really any good way to figure out, like the very many opaquely presented damage types and the distinct damage zones and resistances on monsters. I've presented in this thread a lot of these things as i have been led by various sources to understand them, and i'm sure i've gotten lots of things wrong, but it's probably better than nothing. You know, but also don't expect to understand it all right away. These games are absolutely vast, and built to be played over a long time. (Hell, Capcom has like a year's worth of free DLC's planned for the game.) If you find yourself feeling driven to keep trying to figure it out though, and are able to set goals for yourself inside of this sandbox you're presented with, you'll probably have a pretty good time with it.

The lances let you move while the shield is up, but they're definitely not the weapons you want if you want to stay highly mobile. If you want to get some impact damage, which would definitely be valuable, into your rotation while using a weapon that encourages a great deal of mobility, i'd recommend trying out the hammers. (General advice: Your level 3 neutral-input charge is the strongest attack, and you can use the level 1 charge to link normal combos.) I haven't used the bug staff myself much at all, but i'm told that active red essences modify and improve its moveset in addition to giving it more damage, so basically you always want to get those red essences up. (I assume it's probably similar to the effect a full meter has on the dual blade's normal stance.) There's also the sort of brokenly overpowered pole vault, where when you're holding R, you hit B. Then hit X in the air and you've got an airborne mounting attack without launching from any environmental features, and it's way easier to set up than the lance's own anywhere-jump. (The only other weapon that can do something similar.) The general thing about the dual blades is that you use the right trigger stance, which has its own moves and combos, to build meter. When you fill that meter, it modifies the normal stance with better attacks and a few additional moves, such as X&A when executed mid-combo. (In addition to letting you use the flashstep evade outside of the right trigger stance.) The dual blades are also just about the best weapons in the game for inflicting statuses and elemental damage since elements and statuses are not subject to individual move scaling and deal flat values against the enemy's resistances. So more hits in a shorter time = better. For the longsword, you can modify the X&A fadeslash with a direction input to turn it into a sidestep attack, but only after another attack. (You can fadeslash out of almost any attack.) From that sidestep fadeslash, you can do your spirit combo or an A attack. (With X-X-A being something that can repeat into itself. Also, you can't do the A attack from a normal backstep fadeslash.) From this, you have incredible freedom to build combos any way you want while simultaneously being highly evasive. (Also, it's the last hit on the spirit combo that upgrades your Long Sword's damage, and starting the spirit combo from a fadeslash makes it complete in fewer, faster moves.)

I would completely forgive its relative linearity if i could just skip the damn dialogue scenes, because it's otherwise a really solid platformer with some terrific bossfights.

Once you've made some decent progress through the caravan quests, you'll progressively open up more and more options with the trader and that will be the avenue by which you gather the large majority of your general item supplies. (I haven't had to go actively gather honey, for example, in probably a hundred hours.) Up until that point, make sure to hit some valuable resource nodes while out on hunts, gather just a bit each mission and it'll usually keep you going with only the occasional gathering mission on top of that. (Also, don't waste crafting resources on things available in the shops.) Recommending a weapon is hard to do since it ends up being an odd combination of preference and situation. Do the weapon tutorials with the guildmarm and see what clicks with you, but keep going through them so you can have one or two more on top of that. (I eventually settled on the Long Sword as my main, with some occasional Lance/Hammer/HBG play, all making up a rotation of about a dozen weapons with different elements and statuses.) My impressions of the weapons, though: - The Insect Glaive has a very appealing and powerful moveset, but it's built up on some fiddly and odd mechanics, and so it requires some setup to unlock its potential. If you find that bothersome, you shouldn't use that weapon. - The Dual Blades are generally thought of as one of the more powerful weapons in the game and have pretty incredible evasion when the meter is filled, but the short range will be very limiting and you'll get heavy into building many different dual blades to represent each element and status to get the most out of them. - The latter is also true of the Sword and Shield, though as a weapon it serves a very different and less direct role in fights, and comes with a shield and the ability to use items from a guarded state. (SNS users tend to get pigeonholed into a support role.) - The Long Sword feels awkward at first, but has a fast and flowing moveset with tons of mobility and range. Defensive, cautious play will tend to limit what you can achieve with it though. You're always racing against the clock with its damage buff mechanic. - The Great Sword is probably the best weapon in the game for pure physical damage, and you can use its broad-side to block too. It's an exceedingly simple moveset with a lot of emphasis on predicting moves to set up for powerful charge attacks. Though powerful by way of normal attacks as well, it's still mostly played for decisive single-hit damage. - The Hammer is really only limited by its unexpectedly short range, but it's one of the best sources of KO damage in the game, so you're often pushed to be striking for the head at a dangerously close range. It can attack with surprising quickness if you get a handle on its combos, and it also has a handful of extremely powerful charge attacks that, unlike the GS, do not require that you stay planted in place. - The Hunting Horn is a hammer that is a horn. Your different attacks make different notes, and when you create certain combinations, you cast buffs on yourself and your team. Everybody loves having the hunting horn on the team, almost nobody plays the hunting horn. - The Lance provides the tankiest moveset in the game by way of a powerful shield and a very effective counter. It's also a moveset that works well with every element and status, and is a source of consistent, considerable DPS. It's surprisingly mobile through a variety of sidesteps and dash attacks, but it doesn't provide much in the way of useful evasion. It's a hard moveset to learn, but one of the most dependable for consistent damage. - The Gun Lance is, despite initial impressions, a very different moveset from the lance. In general, it doesn't have as much DPS, flexibility, or mobility, but provides very impressive damage in bursts and has pretty tremendous striking range. It's also uniquely adept at hitting particularly tall or otherwise airborne monsters. Compared to the Lance, it's generally a little easier to use and provides a lot of explosive aoe impact damage, but... Eh... It's alright. - The Charge Blade is easily the most complex moveset in the game and i don't even really know where to begin with it, there's so much going on there, and it can fill almost any role in my experience. If you enjoy juggling multiple complex stances and dumb meter gimmicks, even multiple meter gimmicks with further weird interactions, and then want that all in one weapon, here you go. - The Switch Axe tends to fill a similar role to the longsword, with a little less emphasis on the mobility and evasion and more on the dps. Like the LS, you'll sort of be the guy in the front drawing all the aggro, but you're doing it with an awesome transforming axe, so who cares. - Heavy Bowgun is the DPS gun, Light Bowgun is the support and status gun, and the Bow is for weirdos who like weird bullshit... And no, you're not cheating by using ranged weapons, it's no picnic running a ranged weapon in Monster Hunter. Regarding MP: I made a match-making thread in the multiplayer forum, but it doesn't seem like it's been getting much love. Also, If you join a game via the in-game browser or a randomly generated room code, you can also add people to your friend's list once in a lobby with them.

The two usual arguments against it are that the intended progression through its world has a lot of clunky back-tracking, and that it's also the hardest of the Prime trilogy, but not always in a well balanced and intended way. (Some of the big offenders here were rebalanced for the Wii remake.) I really like echoes, but i tend with agree with it being the least great of the three. Just wait until it...

The first Monster Hunter game i ever played was Freedom, which i believe was the second game? I dug out my PSP and loaded that game up, remembering absolutely despising the game and being curious to see if i would "get it" now. Long story short, i still think it's a bad game. In many ways, the series has barely changed, but stripping out the refinements that have been made over the years leaves that game feeling hollow and i completely understand why i would have hated it at the time. It's probably similar to how it would feel to go back to the original release version of Street Fighter 2 after playing Super Turbo or something like that. (To clarify on that statement, much of what works about Street Fighter 2 was kind of accidental, and isn't really codified or consciously exploited in the original game.) One of the things i'm finding just tremendously engaging about MH4U is the sprawling, surprising complexity of the weapon movesets, which are still gradually revealing themselves to me. The longsword is a good example of this, because it initially appears to be an incredibly basic triumvirate of a vertical chain, a horizontal chain, and a backstep attack, all of which have no obvious overlap with eachother. Then you realize you can use the fadeslash as a sidestep after another attack, and that you can combo out of the sidestep fadeslash in more ways than the backstep fadeslash, and suddenly things start growing from there. By exploiting the various move cancels available, you could theoretically move between every single move available to the longsword without ever dropping a combo. With careful use of those sidestep fadeslashes to simultaneously position yourself out of harm's way while continuing your combo, you can put up such an incredibly aggressive and unrelenting front. Instead of the game feeling stilted, it becomes so fluid and so fast that it's almost difficult to keep up with. (The spirit combo doesn't even have to end a combo, it often shouldn't end a combo. Counter-intuitively spending meter to exploit those attacks in the middle of a chain of normal attacks without going for the all-important finisher can be incredibly powerful and useful.) I love this goddamned game, it kind of bums me to see so many people flaming out in the low ranks.

Nintendo is still definitely a recognized brand, but for the current youngest generation of kids growing up right now, it's almost shockingly irrelevant. It seems like it happened almost overnight, but i saw young people in my family and elsewhere kind of all simutaneously migrate from Wii games to iOS games, and the brands there are like... MineCraft, AngryBirds, etc. I hate playing games on smartphones, i hate the marketplace, i hate the controls, and i hate the design ethos in that space, so i'm not personally happy about seeing Nintendo make this move, but i think this move was probably kind of essential to Nintendo's survival as a company that tries to reach such a broad range of player ages and backgrounds. The way things were going over the last few years, hemorrhaging casual fans and becoming more and more reliant on the core fan group that grew up with their games originally, was not really a long-term survival plan.

Kojima has seemed like a man trapped in a prison of his own design for quite a while now. He certainly must have a lot of love for the Metal Gear series to have kept it going for this long, but over the course of the last few years there's definitely been a number of Kojima-led side-projects that ended up going nowhere. He kept trying to branch out, and Konami kept shoving him back in his most successful role as the head of Metal Gear. (I am still particularly disappointed that ZoE3 ended up not happening, i thought the teased details sounded awesome.)

Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate's features some pretty great music, but these i enjoy these two in particular: , serving as the triumphant theme for one of the game's major setpiece fights, is also pretty rousing and great.

Well, it's not just a camera game, the camera stuff actually ends up being a fairly small part of it. What it's actually doing is trying very hard to be a real Chibi-Robo game, but it clearly just didn't have the budget or time to achieve that goal. All of the pieces are there, but not necessarily the breadth of content to support it. The areas are too small for the game to really emphasize exploration like the original, so you're instead expected to grind out self-contained tasks over and over, and the mechanics that's built around just aren't engaging enough to prop up that kind of repetition. It just kinda sucks.

It is proving to be just agonizing hearing people gush about this game, but i simply cannot justify a PS4 over one exclusive that i really, really want to play. Holy shit though, i really want to play it. Nnngh.

For quite a few years now, Konami has just been a bizarre display in how it strains and struggles against itself. There seems to be an extreme risk-averseness at the highest levels that is gradually eroding their product line-up as they focus in more and more heavily on a tiny slate of major AAA games. With so much on the table every time they ship a game, I honestly can't imagine they have a very stable or healthy future ahead of them, not unless things drastically change. Kojima leaving, however, is not the kind of change they need. It kind of cuts the heart out of the only thing Konami has left itself with.

Every weapon you have is probably going to bounce on the Basarios because of its armor, though the super pound on the hammer at least ignores deflection, but will still do reduced damage if attacking through armor. (I know what you're thinking, but because of the armor, the hammer isn't going to be especially effective for part breaking.) Personally, i find the fight fairly easy to do with a lance, you don't have to contend with huge attack arcs bouncing off of armor before finding the weakspot. (It's the upper part of either leg that you're looking to attack.) ^ Precise, direct attacks are a big advantage the lance has, because you will run into lots of monsters where you have to contend with things like... A monster's back might be armored, so overhead swings on other weapons will be deflected, forcing players modify their combos, while the lance player can just keep doing what he's been doing all along. Bombs will definitely speed the fight along though, especially if you can set them off as wake-up damage on a sleep status, since the Basarios actually has a relatively tiny amount of health to contend with beneath all of its armor. As for mounting, there's no real timing to mounting, it's more an issue with the status of the monster. I might be incorrect, i haven't actually gone and dug up the specific mechanics, but i think it can only trigger when the monster is below a certain stamina threshold, since it usually happens most reliably after the monster has done a string of aggressive attacks or is explicitly exhausted. (Although... Does the air attack get deflected by the armor? I'm assuming it ignores deflection and goes through to a mount as expected, i've seen people mount heavily armored monsters likes the Gravios with relative ease, but I don't think i actually ever tried mounting the Basarios, to be completely honest.) Edit: I've been told that it's apparently a purely chance-based proc off of an air attack, variable from monster to monster, and a chance that decreases incrementally for each successful mount. (Somewhat similar to status/blast/knockout effects, which instead take longer and longer to build with each successful proc.) Pro-tip: When you get the Basarios into a topple state, either from damage or a mounting attack, you can actually mine its back with a pickaxe for rare drops. (A similar thing can be done with the Zinogre and bug nets.)

I have some low-rank gathering hall quests to finish up, and a bunch of high-rank quests to do, so i might do something like this. (There's also always arena quests to attempt, and guild quests/guild cards/palicoes to trade.) I could put up a passworded gathering hall and post the information here, but around what times would people be looking for games?

That's quite a bother. I'd really like to play TxK, but i am never going to own a Vita.

Done.

With the charge blade, are you aware of the fact that, after loading the phials from your sword's charge, you can infuse them back into your shield during a super? (For a temporary buff of something like 20% extra damage in axe mode, or extra properties on the mid-combo X&A shieldbash in sword mode.) Then you can also charge up your sword again and fill more phials, and spend everything, the shield buff and the phials, for an even more powerful super? (Which is apparently the strongest single attack in the game.) Just throwing that out there, because it's a convoluted path to setting up for it, and it's easy to miss because the in-game guides for the Charge Blade are terribly translated and extremely vague. Really though, all of those mechanics on top of some seriously elaborate combo chains for both modes, but especially for the sword, and you get definitely the most complex weapon in the game. It's pretty bonkers. Also, i'm sure it's self-evident, but only the impact CB's do impact any impact damage off of their phial attacks, and i've generally seen it said that the element CB's vastly outpace those in DPS. As for the hammer, I always had the impression that the hammer was an extremely basic weapon, but playing around with it more in 4U, it's become clear that there's some fairly elaborate combo potential using the level 1 charge attack as a link. A well-excuted combo generally seems like it ends up doing greater DPS than just constantly trying to bait for the level 3 super ground pound. There's also a lot of fun to be had in using the level 2 charge attack to launch friendly players towards the monster so they can attempt to mount it. Definitely a very simple weapon overall, but there's some fun tech happening there. Regarding multiplayer, it's probably not going to happen unless there's an effort to organize a time. I mean, and If it's people in low rank that want to play, it's easy to throw on some low rank gear and not upset the balance, so there's no reason for anybody to feel like they can't participate. Also, getting a voice chat thing going would be valuable, the game benefits from communication a great deal, and the in-game options for that are somewhat lacking.

I feel like i can't really make a proper judgement about this news at this point in time. Just speaking personally, i really don't like playing games on smartphones or tablet devices, so i would hope this doesn't mean that the only way - to run with your example - to play the next Advance Wars is to play it on iOS. That said, i don't think it will, it would seem hugely self-destructive to their established business and largely antithetical to the way Nintendo has been talking about mobile games for the last couple years. I think you'll see a lot of smaller games through this venture, a move to get their IP out in front of a wider audience, with the aim of hopefully providing a gateway back to Nintendo's own platforms. (That said, i detect echoes of Nintendo talking about the DS as a third pillar, and how the Gameboy line would definitely persist.) Also, Nintendo apparently farming the management of their already shakey online infrastructure out to an unfamiliar third party is surprising and sounds like a prime recipe for a disaster, that is the part of this that has me the most uneasy. (At the very least, given the nature of this relationship, I expect obnoxious smartphone hooks. Just imagine! Grinding bad f2p mobile games to unlock stuff in "real" Mario games. It will happen, just you wait.)

If i'm remembering correctly, it was quite some time ago that Nintendo announced their intent to create mobile games as sort of a gateway, try to keep their IP in front of eyeballs and upsell people on the way more awesome experience they could be having on real Nintendo systems. Granted, then what happens if the gateway games don't gateway anybody, and are instead just themselves hugely, phenomenally successful. I guess we'll see.