Game details Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

Platform: Nintendo 3DS

Release Date: July 15, 2016

ESRB Rating: T for Teen

Price: $40 / £35

Links: Official website | Nintendo eshop | Nintendo UK Capcom: Capcom: Nintendo 3DSJuly 15, 2016T for Teen: $40 / £35

Pick up your charge blades, insect glaives, and cheese fondue—there’s monsters what need hunting. The aptly named Monster Hunter series has returned, this time without a number following the name. This time, it’s just Monster Hunter Generations, and the name refers to more than the time it takes to learn these games (assuming you’re in what seems like the majority of Western players that are rightly intimidated by Capcom’s Japanese moneymaker).

As with every Monster Hunter since the first, what you're learning is how to strike down massive, and not-so-massive, creatures of the wild. Think of each major monster as a boss fight—one that can take nearly an hour to complete as you track and hack away at prey over wide, repeatedly visited zones.

Doing so successfully means chopping them up for parts and turning the material into better equipment. Break it all up with some grinding, gathering, and fetch quests and you've got the thousand-hour-plus loop the series has been known for over multiple "generations" of hardware.

It's a legacy this latest entry is particularly aware of. “Generations” refers to the fact that this Monster Hunter is pulling from past entries. It’s like a greatest-hits album for the franchise, if you will. Familiar hunting grounds return from Monster Hunter Freedom 2, the Japan exclusive Portable 3rd, and even the debut game in the franchise. Each locale has been ever-so-gently modified to make available elements from Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. That means there are more ledges on beasts’ backs for you to grab on to as you ride them down to the ground.

New Styles, new Arts

In place of new zones to conquer in Generations, there is a wide array of new combat styles: Guild Style, Striker Style, Adept Style, and Aerial Style. These combat styles are equipped like weaponry and determine how strikes from your actual weapon get strung together. So, equipping a great sword gives you the same slow, heavy swings it always has. With Aerial Style equipped, that same sword will get more and better hits when jumping (an ability that is only granted when you have that style equipped), but leaves your options pretty limited while on the ground.

As someone who only seriously entered the Monster Hunter franchise with last year’s 4 Ultimate, I found it nice to see that Guild Style basically recreates the feel of that game across all weapons. Adept Style, meanwhile, presents extremely tricky dodge moves that can be used to counterattack, perfect for the lunatics that spend hundreds of hours learning every attack animation and how to time each one.























While I lean toward Aerial Style, myself, the most interesting of the stances from a design perspective might be Striker. It’s pretty much the “easy mode” for most of the game’s weapons.

The combos it creates are pretty basic, but the form also allows players to carry in the most “Hunter Arts” of any style in the game. These Arts are, in effect, super moves, not unlike the kind of finishers you’d see in Capcom’s other long-running, hyper-technical franchise, Street Fighter. Those Arts are also yet another major addition to the way Generations plays—no mean feat for a series that embraces change the way the Grand Canyon embraces erosion.

Cutting, shooting, beating, and tooting (for those that use the Hunter’s Horn) your way through fights fills up gauges that let you activate these Hunter Arts, providing powerful abilities from stronger beatdowns to unlimited sprinting in and out of combat. They are not, however, so powerful that they’ll fell a Tetsucabra in a single blow.

Instead, the new feature functions more like a reward for pent-up aggression on bosses—a way to break up the monotony between your average strings of heavily considered and deftly executed combos. If you’re a diehard Monster Hunter purist who’s afraid that Hunter Arts would make the game too arcade-like, you can find something else to keep you up at night.

Hunter Arts are one of a veritable nest of quality-of-life improvements Generations brings to the Monster Hunter formula. Mounting monsters is now less infuriating when playing with friends, since those monsters no longer buck the rider when attacked from the ground. And once you completely clean a monster’s clock, you can just hold the action button to carve the important crafting materials off its corpse rather than mashing the A button repeatedly. It’s a small change, but one that my thumb tendons appreciated.

Still hunting those monsters

The cooperative experience that’s so key to enjoying Monster Hunter remains largely unchanged. You can still team up with as many as three friends or strangers to tackle titans while your otherwise stalwart AI companions (called Palicoes), take a catnap. On the single-player side of things, you actually have to take command of these cat-like compatriots manually in certain missions, an addition that feels more like padding than an important new feature.

The draw of Monster Hunter is, for me, going through the slow, reliable grind of tightly executed battles to get rewards in the form of new gear. Palicoes do get their own equipment, but not to the same degree as human hunters. Thus, increasing their arms and armor doesn’t feel like the “real” progression of the game the way that turning giant frog hide into new boots does.

A much more welcome addition is the new Fateful Four—a quartet of savage creatures tied to the threadbare “story” of Generations. While most Monster Hunter games have just one giant monster to pull the single-player missions along, each of Generations’ four equally important villages each has its own corresponding villain for you to conquer. Sure, this is already a game entirely built around killing giant dinosaurs, apes, insects, and otherwise, but the added gravitas (and design work) put into these unique beasts is a fine draw.

The extra “bosses” will give novices something to look forward to fighting, while the early access to different areas will appeal to longtime fans who don’t need their hands held through linear progression from area to area. Somehow, Generations manages to simultaneously be the deepest and also the most accessible Monster Hunter yet. I’m no expert, but based on my dabbling with these games over the years I’m even inclined to call it the best of the bunch so far.

My only major gripe with the game is that it’s stuck on the 3DS. I’d love to have a pair of true analog sticks and an HDTV to really spotlight Monster Hunter’s stellar combat and creature design. Surely that’s coming, either on Nintendo’s NeXt platform or another console. In the meantime, Generations feels a bit like an attempt to turn the wheel one more time before leaping to new tech, all while squeezing in a few experiments to refine in the next, numbered game.

It has been just over a year since the last game made its way to the 3DS in North America. That’s not much for a series where 50 hours played is a warm-up. Generations makes some smart, interesting changes in ways the series doesn’t normally—sacrificing new real estate for a mechanical overhaul. Yet it still looks, feels, and plays mostly like the last game on this generation of handheld hardware.

For newcomers that’s pretty much a non-issue. You’re getting the best jumping on point the series has had since… well, the last game. For diehard fans, it likely doesn’t matter. If you want to see the new stuff, you’ll make the jump and with you so will whichever of your friends who are in it for the multiplayer. Those new monsters aren’t going to hunt themselves.

The good

The deepest, yet perhaps most accessible Monster Hunter to date.

Hunter Arts and Styles make for more experimentation than normal.

Quality-of-life updates make playing Monster Hunter an overall more pleasant experience.

It still has the signature monster design and tactical combat of Monster Hunter.

The bad

Longtime fans might not appreciate the recycled hunting grounds.

This is, without question, still an absurdly tough series to penetrate.

Palico hunts are largely superfluous.

3DS controls aren’t the best fit for this franchise.

The ugly

Getting left alone against a monster five times your size when your friend’s Internet connection craps out mid-hunt.

Verdict

Generations is a last, wonderful gasp of life for this aging Monster Hunter engine. If you’ve been on the fence, now is the perfect time to hop aboard.