Finally the states are going to get their hands on Japan’s current biggest handheld game Monster Hunter Ultimate 3 for the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. Now typically the majority of MH titled games were featured almost exclusively on Sony’s PSP. Capcom decided to release this iteration of the MH series exclusively on the 3DS and Wii U because of the current capabilities each product has.
I was given the opportunity to play MHU3 primarily on the 3DS because that is the ideal market and product that franchise is directed towards but I also toyed around with Wii U’s version of it. The current build Capcom had at NYCC 2012 was basic demo set up featuring all the current available classes in the MH universe. The class I used to play the demo was the long sword class since this class specifically is a new player friendly class. I was given about 20 minutes to kill Brachydios which was the most difficult monster to kill out of the 3 available choices on the demo.
Capcom decided to move forward with the standard controls they featured on their PSP line of MH games. The analog pad to move, d-pad to control the camera angles, L and R to switch through items and do special attacks, and Y,X,B,A for basic attacks and item usage. At first I had some issues during combat since on the 3DS the d-pad is directly under the analog pad. But Capcom added a cool feature which will help ease the pain of players who do not own the Circle Pad Pro for the 3DS.
Players can easily click a monster targeting tab on the lower screen of the 3DS which will mark said monster with a cross hair.Whenever a players camera is out of adjustment just simply tap the L button and the camera will automatically readjust itself directly on the monster as long as the tab is in use. Since combat can get really cluttered and it is very easy to lose sight of your target while attacking this is a welcomed addition on the 3DS version of MHU3
Another feature I found extremely helpful is the item bag tab also featured on the lower screen of the 3Ds. This allows players to easily manage and view the items they’re holding. In previous monster hunter games you had to open a menu and scroll through it to view and manage your items. This adds basic convince to MH especially when you need decide quickly what items you don’t want to carry.
All in all the overall feel of MHU3 was definitely a pleasurable one. The game felt very smooth and polished compared to Monster Hunter Portable 3rd. I also noticed that the difficulty for higher tier monsters such as Brachydios has been increased compared to other monsters in previous titles. When MHU3 releases it will certainty be interesting to see how people deal with a game that is considerably hard but extremely rewarding.
Monster Hunter Ultimate 3 is set to release sometime around March