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Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate

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Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate is finally out! The main improvement, amoungst a lot of things, is that there's supported online multiplayer on the 3DS this time, instead of the WiiU exclusivity of 3.

 

Some people mentioned that we should get some MP going for this forum, we totally should! I still need to do some single player before I delve into the MP though.

 

Why should you play MonHun? Because it's an experience like nothing else, I think. Hunting monsters is a thrill, and observing the monsters to know their tells as to when they are weakened and close to defeat is satisfying, as there is no monster health bar to tell you otherwise.

 

For those of you who are interested in MonHun, 4 is probably the best starting point. Much like FF and Persona, the numbered titles are in no ways connected to each other, so you can jump in now and not feel lost.

 

There's a demo on the Nintendo eStore that's a really good indication of whether this game is for you or not. The tutorial is better in the full game, but I feel the demo does a nice job of getting you out there and doing the most satisfying thing, namely hunting interesting monsters.

 

So who's got this game? And who wants to take down some Duranboros together?

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I just bought a copy, although I'm pretty slow to play, and I heard you need to play 10-12 hours before you can be trusted in a multiplayer setting. 

 

There's so much to learn! But it's exciting! The game is gorgeous, and plays really well on the New 3DS. I think that right now I need to figure out what type of primary weapon I'd like to use. I kind of want to use the Insect Glaive, even if it has some weirdness with the little insect/"essence" stuff. Right now I just need to figure out the rhythm of how the game works, and the relative value of various items. 

 

(Side note that might be worth writing into the podcast about - in games with consumables, it's really tough to figure out whether or not something is valuable, and worth saving, or not. For instance, one of the key aspects of high-level Spelunky play is being able to understand the value of a rope versus a bomb versus a machete, etc etc. In MH4U, I'm already overwhelmed with things like whetstones and mini-whetstones and bug nets and pickaxes. Which are consumable? How much of everything should I take out on a quest?)

 

I guess I just have a lot of questions that I assume the game will attempt to answer. How does one go about increasing their characters stamina and health bars permanently? Do things spoil, like meat? When I'm on a quest, should I just murder everything and plunder their corpses? Is it better to be a trapper or a killer? 

 

I am coming at this series completely, completely green, and I'm excited to potentially learn enough to go hunting with some veterans here on the boards! 

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I've used the Insect Glaive exclusively so far, so I figure I can post a simple writeup about it:

 

The Insect Glaive effectively introduces the idea of two phases to any fight: A ranged, buff-up phase, and a melee murder-everything-you-can phase.

 

  • In the ranged phase, you can use the R button to aim where you want to shoot a little pod at a monster to tell your Kinsect where to go when you deploy it(with R+X). The color of the cloud that comes off of the spot where you shoot it, changes what 'essence' the Kinsect will find when it gets there- Red for Damage, Orange for Defense, and White for Movement/Stamina. On small monsters, you only have access to one of these colors per monster, but on big ones, different parts of their body grant each color- Red comes from the head, white from the legs, and orange from the body. Once your Kinsect has collected one, you can recall it with R+A.

    Thing is, you can even deploy your Kinsect multiple times. This lets you get the effects of multiple essences- but also, it lets you extend the duration and double the power of Red/Orange essences when you combine them with a White Essence. If you manage to get all 3, it'll even grant 50% more on top of each effect, and this can completely change how you stack up against a monster.

    I highly recommend always having at least a Red+White combo going. If it falls off, bring it back. The damage difference is huge- 20%(Red+White)-25%(Red+White+Orange), and upgrades your strikes, to make them hit more times per swing- so much more, that you effectively are doubling your damage output with Red+White alone.
  • In melee phase, you hit the damn thing. Without Red+White, it's got speed and power comparable to a Longsword at level 1(ie, pretty okay). With it, it has the power of a Longsword at Level 3, with speed just below that of double daggers. It's brutal.

    Your unsheath-attack is effectively your moving A attack, or your moving 'heavy' attack. This can effectively be doubled up by simply hitting it again(this works for all versions of moving A attack).

    Your X attack combo starts with a forward thrust, but after that is basically a hit-everything-around-you combo.

    The ultra-special feature of the Insect Glaive, is the vault- by holding R and hitting B with the weapon unsheathed, you'll vault yourself up into the air, so you can mount, air-strike(X), or shoot the top of your foe(A). It's pretty wicked.

 

Overall, I love the weapon. Apparently it's pretty OP- I wouldn't know, I haven't tried anything else and it's been over a year since I played Monster Hunter 3. But it feels good, varied, and like you can be pretty powerful with it in the right hands.

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I just bought a copy, although I'm pretty slow to play, and I heard you need to play 10-12 hours before you can be trusted in a multiplayer setting. 

 

This sounds about right, your first ten hours or so of the game are going to be spent gathering supplies and learning the mechanics. It's a pretty deep dive.

 

There's so much to learn! But it's exciting! The game is gorgeous, and plays really well on the New 3DS. I think that right now I need to figure out what type of primary weapon I'd like to use. I kind of want to use the Insect Glaive, even if it has some weirdness with the little insect/"essence" stuff. Right now I just need to figure out the rhythm of how the game works, and the relative value of various items. 

 

The bug staff is definitely one of the more complex weapons to take on, pepyri did a good job running through the details though. Additionally, make sure you're familiar with the normal attacks. While there's nothing too complex for the bug staff or really any other weapon, if you know the strings well, you will learn that you can link x and a strings into eachother, back and forth and with no significant recovery to deal with.

 

If you're new to the series, definitely run through the weapon tutorials, and also take a look at the move lists under the hunter notes section of the start menu. (There's some things the game kind of glosses over though, like being able to cancel out of recovery into a quick sidestep dodge after most attacks by simply hitting left or right of your character and dodge. There's also a quick draw which is very important for weapon types with an option for blocking. To do that, you just hold R when you hit X if at a standstill, or hit both X & A while sprinting with R held.)

 

I'd recommend running at least a couple weapons as mains, so you can have fallbacks for variable situations and progression gaps where resources are tight on one of the weapon's upgrade paths. When you start upgrading weapons significantly, make sure you have a clear picture of whether or not you like it, and if it suits your play style, because it can be hard to shift course once you've spent your resources on something.

 

(Side note that might be worth writing into the podcast about - in games with consumables, it's really tough to figure out whether or not something is valuable, and worth saving, or not. For instance, one of the key aspects of high-level Spelunky play is being able to understand the value of a rope versus a bomb versus a machete, etc etc. In MH4U, I'm already overwhelmed with things like whetstones and mini-whetstones and bug nets and pickaxes. Which are consumable? How much of everything should I take out on a quest?)

 

Rule of thumb: Everything is important, sell nothing. Assume that everything will eventually have some value until it's absolutely clear, dozens and dozens of hours into your save, that it's used for something completely irrelevant to your build. Additionally, once you have a lot of stuff in your box, go through your combo list and experiment with combinations, one of each thing, so you know what will be available to you and what is needed to create which things. (Keeping in mind that the combination process can randomly fail and produce "garbage".)

 

Basic equipment set for a mission will be some mega potions, well-done steaks, whetstones, pickaxes, bug nets, paintballs, and probably a bbq spit. Fishing supplies are a little more situational, and you can fish for basic catches without them. Bombs and traps of the various kinds will be essential in proper monster hunts, but again tend to be a little situational. (You should always have paintballs to mark and track large monsters on your map though.)

 

I guess I just have a lot of questions that I assume the game will attempt to answer. How does one go about increasing their characters stamina and health bars permanently? Do things spoil, like meat? When I'm on a quest, should I just murder everything and plunder their corpses? Is it better to be a trapper or a killer? 

 

Your character has no core stats, everything is based on the gear. Some of the skill bonuses you can gain from gear will increase your health though. (Each piece of armor contributes a certain number of points in a certain skill, and across your set you need to hit a certain threshold for that skill to become active, usually starting at ten and with further thresholds past that for increasingly powerful skill buffs.)

Meat does not spoil, no.

If you're on a monster hunt, it's best to avoid spending much time gathering supplies, since if you lose, you are reverted to your pre-quest state. If you want to specifically go grind for supplies, choose your missions carefully.

 

Trapping gives you better rewards, but is a significantly larger expenditure of resources that are, especially early on, quite difficult to find in large quantities. It's best, early on, to save those traps for missions that require you to capture a monster alive.

 

I am coming at this series completely, completely green, and I'm excited to potentially learn enough to go hunting with some veterans here on the boards! 

 

You're so lucky to be coming in on Monster Hunter 4, the game is so much better about making itself approachable and accessible, even though it does it without giving up any of its complexity. It has also made big strides in additionally presenting enjoyable singleplayer content on the side, so you can figure the game out on your own without bringing down other people.

I came in blind to the series way back with Monster Hunter Freedom, and the game was obtuse in ways that Dark Souls wouldn't dare to be, and without any air of mystery to coax you into continuing to dig. It was also pretty exclusively multiplayer centric, but with only local connectivity. I hated it of course, i didn't understand it at all and i didn't have access to other people who were playing it. So it wasn't until i was coerced into trying the series again with Tri, which had the online multiplayer it desperately required, that it clicked with me.

I've kind of come to feel that Monster Hunter is a thing friends inflict on eachother, that you need a good group of people around you to push you to figure out this labyrinthine and bizarre game.

 

Also, speaking of Dark Souls, i've also come to feel that game has sort of ended up being a weird gateway for Monster Hunter, as i've seen a fair number of people be way more open to Monster Hunter's idiosyncracies after being exposed to Dark Souls. (Which almost certainly must draw some influence from Monster Hunter, given the simarities in the combat mechanics and the way equipment is emphasized over character progression.)

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Oh man, Sno, Pepyri, this is great. Thank you, and hopefully you'll be able to answer the inevitable future questions that I'm going to have. In the demo, I had some fun with the dual swords, but that's because I'm one of those "don't have the patience for blocking" type of people. I think that I'll try to fumble around with multiple weapon types. 

 

Also, there are all kinds of guides to monster hunter out there, but I don't know how valuable they'd be with this updated version of the game. Do you recommend something like this? Or has so much changed that it'd be a hassle to try to sort out what is new and what's not?

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Honestly I don't think a guide will be that useful. From the looks of things, that's a guide from tri, the wii game, which is 2 generations old by now. Whilst general things are going to be the same, it's nothing that you couldn't ask us and we couldn't answer.

 

I also started off on the twin blades on 3, but swapped to the switch axe as I didn't like the small damage yet high DPS, and prefered to smack them hard, yet the sword mode on the axe also gave me that speedy attack feeling.

 

Currently I'm using the Charge Blade, just because it's new and I want to try something new, but I don't know if i'll stick with it. I really didn't like the Insect Glaive when I tried it in the demo, but that didn't have the added benefit of the c-nub that came with my new 3DS, so I might give it another crack.

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Monster Hunter is a very iterative series, and so while you could broadly infer things about Monster Hunter 4U from older guides, you will just as likely end up really thrown off track by details that are only just accurate enough to sound correct.

Move lists will have changed, monsters will have changed, mechanics will have changed. You're better off waiting for 4U-specific guides, or just asking questions.

 

With regards to weapons, in Tri, I mainly played a Lance, which was very difficult to learn, but very fun. Hurling yourself at a monster with the lance's dash attack, and then tanking up hard when you get there, is kind of thrilling. (Apparently now you can leap out of the dash attack into a mounting attack, which would make the lance, along with the bug staff, one of the only weapons in 4U that can do that anywhere on a map regardless of terrain.)

 

In 4U though, i'm presently using the Long Sword, which is pretty great. It's very deliberate and methodical, and quite easy to get a handle on.

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Ok, not going to spend money on the guide, got it.

 

I'm really interested in hearing about your experiences with the different weapons. I've been having an ok time with the glaive, but it's pretty complicated to use, and I'm only so-so understanding how to turn the (well-written) how-to's both in-game and here into actuality. I guess it's just practice.

 

QUESTIONS, THOUGH:

- It seems like I could spend a long time just getting resources, given that these easy quests are like, 50 minutes long. It also seems like I could just burden myself with a huge amount of stuff early in the game. How much should I just be getting into the quests and completing them, and how much should I be going for ore, and herbs, and mushrooms? 

- Should I be upgrading my current weapon with the items I have, or just hording them and hoping to forge a better version of the weapon? Or should I just not upgrade this weapon until I've kind of learned the ropes? 

- In one of the quests I was on, I think that I encountered a group of rogue Palicoes. The game hinted that you could recruit them to be part of your little band of helper cats. All these guys wanted to do was meow angrily and steal from me. Is there something I'm missing? Are these just assholes?

- I'm assuming that better weapons, later in the game, don't require sharpening as often. Is this true? 

 

(thanks for walking me through this, like I am an idiot)

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While you probably need 10 hours to be ready to jump in with randoms, I'm sure you could jump in with any of us earlier than that and we could walk you through bits of it in person. Really, a lot of the early multiplayer quests can be solo'd by a vet who knows what he's doing, so having an extra person along isn't likely to cost the victory or anything.

 

To answer your specific questions:

You can always revisit old quests, so you don't necessarily have to worry about collecting a lot of things right off the bat. In general, I stop by gathering spots that are on the way, but I don't grind items until I know exactly what it is I want. Really, you can get pretty far with just Mega Potions and supply items. (Mega Potion = Regular Potion + Honey)

The best weapons are generally available through upgrading. The ones you can forge with just cash are usually a bit older than what you're using at the time, but are there so you can buy them and try a different branch of the upgrade tree. There isn't any harm in upgrading the first couple of times, but eventually you will get to the point where you need some fairly rare mats, so upgrading one weapon might mean not upgrading another.

Though this is a new mechanic, I'm pretty sure those guys are just assholes. I think the ones you can recruit will be a bit more obvious, or from Street Passing.

No, sharpening is a way of life. 

 

Edit: Dual Swords, Sword and Shield, and Long Sword are fairly easy to learn weapons, but with a little work you can get used to them all.

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None of the weapons are super tough to learn, but the long sword and the hammer both probably have the most straight forward movesets, and the long sword is a ton of fun to use. (It has a cool, layered attack buff mechanic that encourages committing to big flashy chains.)

 

QUESTIONS, THOUGH:

- It seems like I could spend a long time just getting resources, given that these easy quests are like, 50 minutes long. It also seems like I could just burden myself with a huge amount of stuff early in the game. How much should I just be getting into the quests and completing them, and how much should I be going for ore, and herbs, and mushrooms? 

- Should I be upgrading my current weapon with the items I have, or just hording them and hoping to forge a better version of the weapon? Or should I just not upgrade this weapon until I've kind of learned the ropes? 

- In one of the quests I was on, I think that I encountered a group of rogue Palicoes. The game hinted that you could recruit them to be part of your little band of helper cats. All these guys wanted to do was meow angrily and steal from me. Is there something I'm missing? Are these just assholes?

- I'm assuming that better weapons, later in the game, don't require sharpening as often. Is this true? 

 

(thanks for walking me through this, like I am an idiot)

 

With regards to gathering resources, more is always better. You're eventually get a sense for what you need though, but generally, early on at least, make sure you're collecting lots of herbs and honey and stuff so you can keep making restore potions. Later on, you'll want to keep an eye out for the materials necessary to create buffing potions and bombs/traps. Those are probably the biggest things in the opening hours. Also, be sure to carve up any monsters you down, especially major monsters. Be quick about it too, downed monsters disappear after only a short delay. Their materials, while often not presenting an immediately evident value, can end up being a thing where five hours down the road, you realize you're very happy you've already been collecting that stuff. (Protip: Hit b at a standstill to crouch for stealth movement. Carving monsters when in that stealth mode is faster, you'll be less likely to lose stuff to the fade-out. Also, yes, there's totally a stealth system.) That all said, don't go into a mission setting out to completely harvest an ecosystem, you don't need to grind that much, definitely not.

 

With regards to weapon upgrades, upgrading your weapons is generally the path to better weapons. There are enormous upgrade trees with dozens of branching choices, so it might be valuable to dig up a Monster Hunter wiki for information, so you can make informed choices based on what's further down the trees. With regards to armor, don't bother upgrading armor until you have a set that confers skills you think you really need. When your concern is primarily just getting more defense, just create new armor instead of upgrading your existing stuff.

 

With regards to the rogue felynes, no. They're just dicks. They steal your stuff. Kick their ass. Palico recruiting, despite being revealed to the player very early in the game, apparently doesn't show up until far into the single-player progression. I don't even have it yet. (Also: Guild house = Multiplayer, Outside = Singleplayer. Guild house missions are way, way harder, just in case that division isn't totally clear on its own. You're totally free to tackle multiplayer missions on your own, doing those repeatable resource gathering quests is certainly quite harmless, but do be cautious of the big monsters.)

 

Later weapons in the game, in addition to requiring less sharpening, will also have greater maximum sharpness and be able to strike at tougher and tougher hides without being deflected. Also note that different moves available to your weapon will lose effectiveness at different rates, relative to your weapon's sharpness. You may find yourself in a situation where you have to adapt a combo because one of its moves is being deflected, if in a situation where you don't have time to sharpen your weapon. (Not quite related, and I'm still warming back up myself, but i seem to recall that there were even hidden pierce/slash/bash damage types that vary across individual moves, and that different parts of each monster would have different resistances to those damage types. This is, of course, in addition to variable status effects you can build your weapons to inflict.)

 

Also - Always eat before a mission.

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Oh man, this is all so good. 

 

I think that eating before a mission is probably more important when you get harder guild quests. I'm in the fetch quest stage - collect this many things, kill this many things, bring them back, learn how to put things together. The problem with upgrading weapons is that I only sort of understand the relative value of the items, so I don't know if I should be upgrading something, or saving the items for later use. I suppose it doesn't hurt to just throw caution to the wind. 

 

I'd like to hunt with people here, but I need to maybe get myself to a point where I'm not completely useless. 

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Eating before the easy missions is still worth it for the Stamina boost, which means more running, and quicker completions. 

 

I disagree on the hammer being straight forward, simply because it can be really tough to get used to the lack of mobility. You've really got to plant in one place for a long time to get a good hammer combo off.

 

I didn't know about the stealth mode actually doing anything. Especially valuable to know that it speeds up gathering.

 

Edit: I would say that once you've downed a couple of bosses (which are available fairly quickly in the single player) you'll have a basic understanding of the combat loop and will be ready to jump in with friends.

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I'm picking this up tonight, if my local game store has it in stock (why wouldn't they I guess).

 

Never played one of these before. Barely played the demo. Every post about it on every forum is, like, a small essay. I feel like I'm jumping into the deep end here, but I'm excited.

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It seems as if the "combat loop," as I see it now, requires:

 

a) finding the monster, painting the monster, observing the monster's attack patterns

B) setting yourself up to be the most productive hunter (collecting essences with the glaive, etc)

c) attacking the monster, evading the monster when it attacks (or becomes frenzied)

d) chasing the monster as it escapes to other areas on the map

e) repeat ©, (d) until the monster shows visible signs of damage (limping, nesting)

f) chase until the monster dies.

 

This is presumably a very, very rough summary, especially given how important (a) is. Like, I feel as if, especially with the harder monsters, paying attention to the attack patterns, and behavior of the monsters is crucial. 

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Yeah, that's pretty much the combat loop, with an option to capture the monster later instead of killing it.

 

For the harder monsters, the most important part is often the "preparation loop" which involves figuring out the monster's weakness and then obtaining the parts to make a weapon/consumable that exploits that weakness. Often it's the things you do before you even start the mission that end up really saving or dooming you. For the start though, just beating the crap out of them and having some mega potions for emergencies will do.

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Few things:

 

- I'm not sure being crouched speeds up gathering as a whole, but it noticeably speeds up carving. It's a good way to ensure you get all the available drops out of a large monster corpse, especially if you're still being harassed by minor monsters. Just make sure you come to a complete stop before trying to crouch, otherwise you'll dodge, have to reposition, and just end up wasting time instead of saving it.

 

- Keep in mind that focusing attacks on specific areas of the monster can actually wound the monster in different ways, altering its behavior and even causing additional drops on the ground. Also, the monster also has a stamina bar of its own, so when it starts berserking, usually at the mid-point of the fight, start playing more cautiously and move to capitalize on the moment it exhausts itself.

 

- Into the mid and late game hunts, especially on the vastly more difficult multiplayer hunts, bombs and traps are essential for giving your party openings to attack. They are required parts of your battle plans, items are always important. Also, paintballs wear off after a while, try to hit the monster with a new one every few minutes or so. If it limps off to go try and restore its own health and you waste a few minutes trying to find it, the fight will be dragged out for significantly longer.

 

I'd like to hunt with people here, but I need to maybe get myself to a point where I'm not completely useless. 

 

I'd wager that, through asking the questions you've been asking, you're probably already better prepared to play online than most people would be.

Still, couple things from my own multiplayer experiences:

1. Don't try to be a hero. If you take damage, go heal. (Safest way is to step out into another area briefly.) Make sure you have lots of healing items going in to facilitate this. If you don't, you can heal by using the bed back at the spawn point, but be extremely mindful and communicative about those absences. The central issue behind all of this is that each mission will have a set number of respawn tickets - i believe you can see how many remain on the quest info screen - and when they're gone, the mission is failed. (Even if people are landing the final hits on a crippled monster scrambling to flee to its nest.)

 

2. Be considerate and mindful with your attack arcs. You don't exactly inflict friendly damage, but you can knock allies around. Worst case scenario, you could put them directly in harms way, potentially getting them killed by the monster. More likely, you'll just interfere with their carefully orchestrated attacks. (Messing up a long sword user's combo, for example, can be a super shitty thing to do.)

^ To go with this, everybody seems to love playing blademasters, but things can turn chaotic when everybody is dog-piling to attack the monster. Having one or two people play gunners neatly avoids these problems. Keeping some gunner armor and a bow/bowgun around as a situational alternative is a very valuable build to keep in your back pocket.

 

Also, new in 4 and 4U, is that when somebody mounts the monster, if you keep attacking it, you can end up knocking them off. So hang back and give them a chance to successfully stagger it.

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I think you mean:

Also - Always pet your poogle before a mission.

 

On a seperate note, talk to your Housekeeper feyline in your tent, go to DLC > gifts and download the starter pack for free. gives you a bunch of stuff like Mega Potions, but more importantly, shock traps to capture monsters with. Capturing monsters gives you better drops in general, as well as increasing your chance of a rare drop. Also the items they give you aren't game-breaking, just makes life a bit easier, which is nice.

 

I couldn't help but notice the Gifts part of the DLC section had prices on. I wonder what they're planning to get you to pay for. I know there's planned Feyline costumes, but I thought they would be free. :/

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The next time your poogie follows you outside because he's content and happy, or if you carry him outside yourself, choose the rodeo option in his menu.

Do it. Do it. Do it.

 

With regards to DLC, i'm a little wary of how Capcom will end up handling that. Monster Hunter is a framework that could certainly allow for some pretty exploitative DLC practices. If they have any plans like that though, i will say that - thus far at least - the base product doesn't appear to have suffered for it. Monster Hunter 4U is pretty damn terrific.

Of course, who can know? Maybe they'll start selling super rare end-game drops and kind of ruin the whole experience.

That starter pack is definitely pretty harmless though, it just gives you the stuff you otherwise spend the first couple hours grinding out resources for. (You could argue that it delays new players learning which resources they need to value and be aware of, i suppose.)

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Oh hey there's a thread on this.

 

Anyone playing without a cirlce pad or New 3DS stick? How tolerable is it? I tried the demo but I couldn't figure out how to use the on-screen camera control properly and there's no way in hell I'm doing the claw. I'll probably order a CPP eventually but is it worth picking this up in the mean time if I'm used to playing Tri with a pro controller?

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I'm playing with a New 3DS stick. It's pretty good! I found with 3 that when you've found the monster, tapping L helped a lot in focusing the camera on the monster (which is generally what I wanted to look at). If you started on Tri with a pro controller then I'd probably say yes, it is worth picking up. At least there's no swimming like there was in 3U. That was insanely difficult with the on-screen D-Pad.

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I've been playing mostly using a circle pad pro, but i've also gone without and found both fairly playable.

 

Without it, the lock-on is serviceable shorthand, and the game lets you customize the touchscreen tiles to a fairly significant degree. There's loads of options there, including changing the size and shape of the hotspot for touchscreen camera control. (Beyond just being able to move around its tile in the touchscreen grid, to be clear.)

With a circle pad pro? Then it's just right stick camera control, it's completely fine. I mean, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate was why that peripheral exists in the first place. (Also frees up some slots on the touchscreen for more inventory or map stuff.)

 

Also, If anybody's confused - as i certainly was - by the game dumping the palico system on you right up front and then doing literally nothing with it for the next ten to twenty hours, it's when you have access to the game's fourth city that it finally starts letting you recruit new palicoes and start crafting and upgrading their gear and everything.

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So, if I didn't get into Monster Hunter 3 on 3ds (even after buying a CPP for it) is there any chance I'd like 4? The idea of the game makes it sound like it's my thing. That I'd love it, but in practice I get tired of the grinding really fast. 

 

I've tried other "hunting" style games, I thought Soul Sacrifice was bad, and I really liked Freedom Wars (right up until the end when the difficulty gets to a ridiculous point that you need to upgrade all your shit, but the upgrades are low percent chance random fucking drops).

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What put you off getting into MonHun 3? the games are very similar, so it's hard to know what you didn't like about it.

 

After googling Freedom wars, it does look incredibly similar to MonHun, so logically you'll like MonHun too.

 

Low % drops are present in end-game MonHun too, but I never felt that I had to upgrade all my shit to do the SP portion of the game, and I never got to the very end of the MP side, or that I needed the upgrade in order to defeat the monsters.

 

Edit: Again, I'd advise you to check out the demo on the eShop to make sure you like it before putting money into it (although it sounds like you already have XD)

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Having only played 4's demo, I'm gonna say probably nah. You have to really be into the Core Gameplay Loop™ to get anything substantive out of MH, because it's just going to be that spread out over (maybe) hundreds of hours, and 4's seems largely identical to 3's. The metagame stuff might be cooler and more expansive, but ultimately that stuff isn't The Game, and it either clicks with you or it doesn't.

 

That said, it's one of those games I'd normally advise people to put some decent time into before making up their mind on it, if they think there's any glimmer of hope that it'll be their thing. So it depends on how much of a chance you gave 3 I guess?

 

Without it, the lock-on is serviceable shorthand, and the game lets you customize the touchscreen tiles to a fairly significant degree. There's loads of options there, including changing the size and shape of the hotspot for touchscreen camera control. (Beyond just being able to move around its tile in the touchscreen grid, to be clear.)

 

Thanks for this, my main problem with the on-screen camera was how far I had to reach over with my thumb to turn left. If I can just move it right and make it smaller that'd make it a ton more usable.

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