Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate

Description

Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate saw Capcom bring their famously demanding action-RPG franchise to Nintendo’s new high-definition hardware, serving as an expanded port of the Japanese 3DS title Monster Hunter 3G (which itself was a massive expansion of 2010’s Monster Hunter Tri on the standard Wii). Capcom heavily marketed the game’s companion features, allowing dedicated players to physically transfer their save data back and forth between the Wii U and the Nintendo 3DS. This meant hunters could grind for materials on the morning commute using the handheld, and then seamlessly transfer that progress to the console for big-screen online multiplayer in the evening.

The gameplay experience is built entirely around the franchise’s legendary, uncompromising loop: track down massive, formidable wyverns, learn their intricate attack patterns, defeat them, and use their carved scales and bones to craft increasingly powerful weapons and armour. Ultimate dramatically expanded the roster of the original Wii release, reintroducing classic monsters, adding challenging new sub-species, and introducing the explosive, slime-inflicting flagship monster Brachydios. It also brought back the controversial underwater combat system from Tri, requiring players to manage oxygen and navigate full 3D space against aquatic leviathans. A major benefit of the Wii U version was the GamePad; players could move the entire HUD, health bars, and map down to the touchscreen, leaving the television completely free of visual clutter to focus entirely on the cinematic monster fights.

Upon release, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate received highly positive critical reception and quickly became a staple of the Wii U library. Magazine reviewers lauded the staggering amount of content, specifically the punishing “G-Rank” endgame quests, the crisp high-definition visual upgrade, and the incredibly stable, free online matchmaking via the Nintendo Network. However, some critics noted that the core engine still heavily showed its standard-definition Wii roots, and the underwater combat remained as polarising and clunky as ever. It is a time-sink masterpiece for the console, that popularised the franchise in the West just before Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate and World exploded in mainstream popularity.