Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin

烈度我草拟吗

I am finally ready to do my review of the game after 200 hours and getting the platinum trophy, and boy is it going to be a long one. I'm going to do this review a little bit differently than the rest because of the grade I'm giving it so let's get started. This game is going to start off with the good stuff, then the annoying stuff, then PSA's for new players because there's a lot the game doesn't tell you, and then finally some notes for the next game for the developers to make the game better in my opinion (I know the next game has already had a release date, but I hope these things are in MHS3 coming out in March). Firstly, my rating for this game is a 4.7 out of 5 and was so so close to giving this game 5* it is by far the closest game in recent memory that I was going to rate as highly. I want to give a massive shout out to the audio and visual fx team, and the animators for this game. What a gorgeous game, from the battle animations, to the howl of the wind through the caves. When I had my headphones on this game made me feel like I was in the area that I was meant to be in, and narratively, they did an incredible job with the look of the game. There are also many many improvements over the first game such as the day/night cycles having different items, there's no more delay when exiting a fight to fight the next enemy, or the egg battles. I love the buddy system, having another person in the party makes it feel like a party, and the removal of the battle pouch was pretty nice. I love that as you go further into the game the environments get smaller, if you're like me and you like to explore everything before moving on, it's nice to do it all up front and then have the environments get smaller as you go along. And finally the addition of the new monsties, making all the eggs a different monstie, the boss battles, all of it was amazing. Overall such an incredible game, and so close to getting 5* from me. I want to briefly discuss the reason I can't go completely 5* on this and it has the same problem as the first game which is that the story makes no sense, and being that I'm a big narrative guy, it still feels like the story has more questions than answers, why did Red come to these places? Why are we doing random fetch quests like getting a little girl's necklace to go to the next area, why is Ena even travelling with us if she's not part of the party? As cool as it is to see the people from the first game, why are they randomly showing up in these places and have no reason to be there, etc. It's just the lack of cohesive storytelling that makes me can't give this a full 5* and the other thing is that the main character doesn't speak, but the good reasons I listed above do far outshadow this small issue. Now some PSA's for new players on things to know the game doesn't tell you. First, I recommend playing MHS1. The game is significantly harder than this one, but only took me half the time and taught me all about the items so I wasn't a novice when I played this game. Higher rarity eggs are typically better than the eggs being rainbow or shiny. Adding Genes to a monster should benefit the attacks that the monster has, so if it has a poison attack, find a monstie to transfer that has the right gene for the build you're trying to go for. In addition, there is a secret system called gene upgrading in the rite of channeling. If you have two identical genes on two different monsties, you can overlap the same gene on the new monstie and make it even more powerful and gain stars to make a gene even stronger, so don't release monsties until you know if there's a gene you can transfer. You can use the "X" key while you're in the quest log to mark the location of monsties on your map if there's a side quest you can't find the location of. If you deal enough damage to a monster and it starts drooping down and drooling it gets the "Tired" status. It is a good time to use a paintball because there is a higher liklihood the monster is going to retreat (If it's retreatable) . Riding your monstie when you're afflicted with a status effect like blastblight, poison or electrified gets rid of the status condition completely without using an item, and switching monsties in battle can make your buddy use a different attack if he's going to lose the Head to Head. Kinship skills can also break monsters out of their final attack, or even ground dive. You can accept a quest at the job board multiple times by clicking enter when you go to the job board if there are quest rewards that you need multiples of. Reverto is not a rider, he's a hunter, so he deals non-elemental (raw) damage regardless of the enemies weakness. He is by far the strongest battle buddy, and you're best off supporting yourself and letting him go crazy with damage. Hunting Horns are extremely strong, and are going to be necessary in the late game. Find one with the skill called Evasion Riff it blocks all damage for each member of your party for one attack and they are vital for upgrading in the late game Also upgrading your weapon actually deals more damage to parts on the monster. It makes them easier to break. Upgrading weapons in the early game has almost no effect because you're going to be switching weapons in the early game so often that it's pointless to upgrade until you beat the story. Finally, Keep your old weapons. In the endgame if you upgrade them enough, they turn into higher rarity weapons so don't sell them for money because they upgrade easier than buying the rare ones already. Finally I just want to give a couple notes to the developer that would make this game 5* from me. Firstly, I think you should make the house customizable. Allow basic furniture, or trophy displaying from certain kills in the game, I think it would be a way to get people more involved in designing their houses and make them play the game more. Next, I think that you should make the game one riding action per zone. The fact that I have to put every single riding action in my party in case I go to a zone where I need to ivy climb, and jump, and rock smash, etc means I can't customize my party the way I want to, I'm confined to have to use all the riding actions if I want all the items. Finally, have a multi-character progression system. Basically, have things you can transfer to another character. It would increase replayability in the game and allow for things like a new game + mode, instead of just making the monsters harder, this would be sort of an ultimate challenge with a sliding difficulty. There's not really much point to me starting another character beyond the first one, and this would give me a reason to play another character. Thanks for listening, and it is well worth the money, buy it!