"I’ve been blogging since February of 2001. When I started blogging, it was a dinosaur blog. It was me and a handful of tyrannosaurs. We’d be writing blog entries like, ‘The tyrannosaurus is getting grumpy.'”
-Neil Gaiman

Walking into a Gamestop (which is as much of a joke as it sounds), I remember being asked if I needed help looking for anything. Like, excuse me. Do you not see that I’m rocking thick black-framed glasses and a black shirt with an 8-bit Bowser from Super Mario Bros. 3 on the front? I don’t need your help. But I asked him if he could recommend a good, long RPG. It was one of those weeks.

I had a PlayStation One, 2, and 3, Xbox 360, and Wii at the time and I was surprised to hear him recommend a great, long RPG for the Wii. It was Monster Hunter (3/-Tri?). I hadn’t played any game in the Monster Hunter series at that point but I’m very glad I took him at his word. The game is an amazing Wii exclusive by CapcomThere isn’t much of a story and you’ll be skipping the corny oddly-modern dialogue anyway, so here’s it in brief. Tri begins when your character (fully customizeable) arrives at a primitive community of hunter-gatherers. Their village has been suffering earthquakes lately which has the residents spooked. The village chief of Moga Village addresses you as a bounty hunter, essentially. You will even gain access to the Guild and their hunting missions. As it turns out, Moga Village survives off of the nearby island woodland and hills, but there’s a fearsome sea monster named the Lagiacrus that the chief would like you to exterminate.There’s your mark, but it’s not as easy as just rushing out and fighting a boss. Your unarmed and unarmored hunter would be less than an after-dinner mint for Lagiacrus. To prep for the fight, you’ll have to hone your hunter-gatherer skills by going out and harvesting resources from land and sea. Tri introduces underwater fighting and exploring to the franchise. In fact some of the monsters can only be encountered underwater.

The first missions familiarize you more so with foraging, whether that’s collecting mushrooms or cutting raw meat from downed dinosaur herbivores. You’ll also need to refit the base camp outside of the village which the earthquakes damaged. The base camp is where your hunter will respawn if you run out of health while hunting. A map in the corner of the screen helps you to navigate the large natural environment surrounding the village.When you do return to Moga Village after quests, the village chief’s son will give you a run down of the commodities you’ve earned and you can choose whether to keep them or sell them off for cold, hard cash. Yes. Farming.

Since your hunter has no innate stats, the only way to increase your combat capabilities, skills, offense and defense is to get new equipment. Collecting resources from carnivorous monster hunting is the only way to get better equipment, which in turn will allow you to confront stronger monsters, getting you better equipment, allowing you to face stronger monsters, etc, etc, etc. You can then open up new areas and explore, and find tons of new resources. The game just keeps unfolding, like a giant violent prehistoric flower.

Click here for the full review... https://thewellredmage.wordpress.com/2016/11/24/mo...