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Monster Hunter Freedom Review
Written by Brian Shields on Monday, June 26, 2006
Lots of side activities. Looks great.
Controls like crap, mostly.
If you're trying to find a copy of Monster Hunter Freedom by Capcom, I wish you the best of luck. It has become quite the rare game these days. Probably the only rare game for the PSP. I've seen it go for up to $80 on eBay. You would think that if a game that is this new is commanding those prices on eBay, it would have to be terrific. In fact, many fans out there on the internet are calling this the best game for the PSP. I would definitely beg to differ. I honestly cannot see why the game is so popular. It is fun, but Monster Hunter Freedom (Monster Hunter F or MNF) is definitely not the best PSP title available. Unfortunately, I am the only person around here I know with a copy of the game, so I'll only be reviewing the single player portion of the title, which is really only half of Monster Hunter's appeal.
Graphically, MNF is preatty darned strong - among the best on the PSP. The backgrounds are static, but still very nice, and a lot of attention to detail is present. The water has waves that look very nice, while the rocks and trees look good. The only issue I have with the graphics is that things can be stiff at times. Some of the larger monsters look a little wooden. It isn't horrible, but it can be distracting.
Audio-philes take note - Capcom made very good use of the Dolby Pro Logic headphone tracks. It isn't perfect, but I am still quite satisfied with their efforts. The best use of the Dolby Pro Logic headphone tracks have been on the UMD movies for Total Recall and Terminator 2. Now that I think about it, those are both Ah-nuld movies. Maybe if Capcom had hired "The Governator" to work on the sound for MNF, it would have managed to go the extra mile. Here's to hoping for Ah-nuld to make an appearance in Monster Hunter Freedom 2. OK, maybe not. Regardless, everything sounds great. The trickle of the streams, the grunts of the animals, the singing of the birds, most everything sounds fantastic.
The music isn't quite as up to snuff, however. It will get on your nerves very fast. For the first few hours you will be happy but it gets very old, very fast. When you visit the same zone time and time again, you will quickly begin to tire of the same tracks. Regardless of which zone you are located, if it is the same zone style (swampland, grassland, caves, etc.), it will all sound the same. You could be in the first grassland zone and it will sound the same as another grassland zone ten zones away. The music isn't bad, but after a while, you'll start paying more attention to the ambient noises of nature in the game.
Of the two things that bring down MNF's score, the controls are the biggest downer for me. The controls, overall, are much worse than those in the original Monster Hunter for the PS2. Gone are the good days of lock-on targeting. Instead, we get to target the monsters manually! How fun is that!!! Not very fun at all, it turns out. If you're playing a ranged weapon character, I pray for you. Trying to hit a flying creature while manually targeting it is a pain in the butt, that's for sure. Even with a melee character, manual targeting is a pain. You continually need to push the L shoulder button to adjust the view. You also need to pray that while you're starting a combo, the monster doesn't move much. I can't count the number of times I've started a combo only to have the monster move a little bit and brush aside most of my hits. It would have been nice that if the first few hits of your combo landed, the rest of the hits would automatically land as well.
The other thing that brings down the score is the overall trial and error at the beginning of the game. The manual is a gigantic turd when it comes to telling you how to do things. The manual has a lot of information, but has no useful information. It tells you the different types of quests, but doesn't tell you how to search the monster for anything useful that you'll need for a certain quest. It doesn't tell you how to search for seeds and herbs. The manual tells you that you can fish, but it doesn't tell you how to fish, or what you'll need to fish. If you've never played the game, and read the manual, you'll still have a heckuva time starting the game if you don't do the beginner's quests for the Village Chief. The quests for the Chief are the only way you're told how to do things in the game. Without the Chief's quests, you could go into the Gathering Hall to start a single player quest and not know what to do. I was going to give this game a much worse rating because it took me forever to figure out how to do things. Then I realized I needed to do the Village Chief's quests first to understand how to play the game. The manual could have at least mentioned that little tidbit.
Still, Monster Hunter Freedom remains fun. When creating a character, you have the ability to change a lot of your player's features. There are hundreds of ways to style your character at the beginning. When you get deeper into the game, you can cook food, fish, mine, and other fun stuff. There are tons of items you can create, weapons you can improve, and armor you can create to enhance the game's longevity.
Monster Hunter Freedom could have been a great game if Capcom had improved on the downfalls of the original PS2 game, instead of making them worse. I would suggest that anybody looking for a general action game, or those fans of tiny little side activities like cooking and fishing should definitely check it out. You should try to rent it first, though. This way you'll see if the controls are a big enough downer for you, or if you're able to get past them. Also, renting the game is probably the only way you'll play MNF until Capcom orders another print run.
posted March 20, 2007