Video game review number one hundred and ninety in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "Monster Hunter Tri".
I never played the first two Monster Hunters. I only got interested in this game when I saw a great commercial for it on TV. Hunting awesome dinosaurs, dragons...winged creatures? It looked..interesting. And it would be....were it not an RPG.
I've opened up several games during this challenge having absolutely no idea what they were about. Some have pleasantly surprised me....and others....well, this is why I should really read a little before I start playing.
This game starts with some interesting cinematics showcasing some good old fashioned monster hunting. There are dinosaurs, and then dragons eat them, and then something bigger eats the dragon. It's the stuff great game commercials are made of. You really want to hunt these monsters.
After the movies, but before the game begins, you're given the option to create your character. I chose a redhead in a bikini, and gave her a "Great Sword". From this point....it pretty much went downhill.
The game opens in a village. There' a LOT of text. The computer characters all spoke to me in gender-neutral pronouns (calling me "hero" and stuff, instead of by my character's name). Is this an RPG I wondered? The 5 minutes of dialog that followed gave me my answer. I started rapid pressing A, like a little kid, just waiting for the game to start...but it never did. You hike a few feet, there's a loading screen, more text...then you hike a few more feet and repeat.
Eventually, I saw some monsters and it was time to hunt them. It's a Wii game, I was rocking the nunchuck, so I was pretty sure that I was going to be doing some motion control stuff. Sure enough, in no time...I was swinging the Wiimote around, hacking at a dinosaur. This was actually a game where swinging the controller sort of made sense. It wasn't so bad, and I actually thought this part of the game was fun.
After the hunt, there was more walking, and more text. Then more walking...and (you guessed it)..more text.
There is a reason that there haven't been many RPGs in this challenge. I'm skipping them on purpose, because generally...I hate them. I was very aware when Final Fantasy 13 came out earlier this year. It was a huge release, and if there was a high quality RPG to try, that might have been it. I knew it probably wouldn't be my bag...and that it required a huge time investment, so I didn't even go down that road. Sure, I'm expanding my horizons with this challenge, but even my horizons have limits.
There was Resonance of Fate and at least two or three other RPGs, but I skipped those as well. I've played a few RPG crossovers and they've turned out to be great....but when it's a plain old text based RPG, I skip it. On purpose.
I should have skipped this one. Had I known what kind of game it was going to be, I would have ignored it....and saved myself the time. Other sites are rating this game with eights and above...but I am assuming they have RPG fans on the staff. I do not.
Overall Score? 1/10. Awful, horrible, boring, lame. If you like Japanese role playing games, your mileage will certainly vary....but I am not able to be unbiased in my review on this. Not a bit. The action sequences in this game are sprinkled between long walks and even longer conversations, where all you do is read text and press A. This is the stuff dreams are made of....in that you'll probably fall asleep while you're playing it.
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