As you probably know, the Monster Hunter 3: Ultimate demo came out on the Wii U eShop yesterday. I’ve gone through it, and have detailed my experience in the following video:
I must admit, I don’t have much experience with games in the Monster Hunter series, so this impression comes from someone who you may consider a bit of a noob.
The demo has a wide variety of weapon styles to choose from, all of which feel unique based on their range and speed. Since you can’t do much customizing in the demo, the player can see the wide variety of play styles supported. The graphics are decent, but they fall short of other games of this generation. With that said, I was surprised to see a wide variety of environments and enemies in the one demo level I played.
The standard monsters roaming around don’t provide much challenge, as most die with one or two hits. Once you find the boss monster you are hunting, things change. I played the Hard Mode Hunt, and the boss was incredibly difficult. I had to choose all of my attacks and item uses wisely to succeed. Even when I was at my best, the battle almost lasted for the entire time allotted for the mission. Players will definitely feel accomplished when bringing these monsters down.
I felt the timer intruded on the experience as since it almost takes the full amount of time to fight the boss. You are encouraged to bypass all the other areas and enemies in the level to head straight for the boss. Also, even though these games don’t typically hold your hand, I felt the lack of instruction made it difficult to know what to do. Since this is a demo, more of a tutorial would have been helpful.
While the game may not be graphically impressive, and there may be a few gameplay elements such as the timer that I’m not a big fan of, I feel that the boss battles themselves will be worth the price of admission. Couple that with the fact that you can tackle these behemoths with your friends in coop mode, and I think this game is bound to be a good time.
Have you played the demo? What did you think of it?
