AFK Killing Monsters

hunting ft. monsters

I didn't post yesterday - I didn't even turn on my computer - because I was binging on MH4U. It just came out for 3DS a few days ago in the US.

Monster Hunter is a game where you fight... monsters. After the first few quests, which are just simple introductory fluff, you fight increasingly tougher monsters as you progress through the storyline.

MH is also known for its online grouping, where you team up with up to four people to fight monsters together. Fighting monsters together is basically the staple of any online community.
While playing online, or solo but just doing the same quests, you can raise your hunter rank and fight more and stronger monsters.

Obviously, being an online community, people will judge you based on your hunter rank and other people will whine because they're being judged by their hunter rank. Personally, I like playing through the storyline. Not only is it incredibly advantageous to go through the storyline, since only single player mode unlocks all the cool stuff, but the story telling is good.

There are just a slight few mild spoilers up ahead, so go away if you plan on playing the game and want to be surprised by what kinds of things you unlock during the single player storyline.

One of my personal favorite parts of the MH world are these little cat creatures. They are Lynians, which include Melynxes and Felynes and some other races. They can live in the wild or in human towns and are most often cooks - and Felynes can communicate with people. For preordering MH4U (like a day before it came out), I got this little pin!

In MH4U you get to make your own little Palico, a cat who follows you around and helps you fight monsters. You recruit more later and can have an additional Palico come with you later on in the game.

and you get to dress them up in adorable outfits

You can recruit them on your missions and there's an entire little island full of them where you can use them to catch large amounts of fish or go on quests to get parts to make the adorable armor for them. While the armor made for your own character is usually pretty hardcore and metal, a lot of the armor for the palicos is unbearably cute.

You craft your own armor and weapons out of parts that you harvest from monsters, which are sometimes kind of random and often result in farming the same dang monster over and over just to complete a set of armor or make a certain weapon.

It is notoriously a kind of difficult game, specifically because the majority of weapons require a considerable level of skill and timing to use properly. With the exception of some weapons, like sword and shield, dual blades, bow, and light bow guns (and maybe others, I haven't actually used them all yet!), most of the weapons attack pretty slowly. They hit hard when they hit, but you have to, you know, do it right.

big ol' swords are kinda heavy

You also can't cancel some attacks to dodge out of the way or block, and some weapons don't even give you the ability to block attacks at all. They all have their advantages and disadvantages, and they all have combos and tricks you can use to get the most out of them. There are tons of weapon tutorials online, though a lot of the information for MH4U right now is in Japanese, since the game's been out in Japan for quite awhile.

I was late to the party and the oldest MH game I've played was MH3U, the one right before this one, but it's a game that I'd highly recommend if you are into fighting monsters and would like a bit of a challenge.