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Monster Hunter Freedom 2 Review
Written by Robert Falcon on Tuesday, September 4, 2007
User Score
Gorgeous graphics and great-looking monster; customization options galore and lots of items to collect; fun AdHoc play with friends.
No online play, even though there are downloadable quests; gameplay gets tedious, despite the multiple weapons.
Sometimes people are hard to figure out. Take the Japanese gaming market, for instance. While stellar Xbox 360 games gasp for air trying to sell at least enough copies to make up reasonable capital, games such as Monster Hunter Freedom 2 sell an assload of copies. (Well, assload may not be the best technical term to describe it -- but a million plus definitely seems like an assload.) Months later, Capcom's monster-hunting fest has hit the US, offering the same kind of action that fans of the original PS2 and PSP games should know and love. And yet, by not really doing anything too different, it runs the risk of not really attracting anyone new to the fold or converting the folks who didn't find it that interesting.
Like the first game, there's a variety of quests to be completed in MHF 2. Some require the defeat of local thugs and others are annoying "fetch" quests where you have to obtain certain objects in order to proceed. The real fun comes with the monster hunting itself, taking on unpredictable beasts of various natures after tracking them down. The fights can be fun, but the gameplay doesn't really reach out for anything new. There's a few hack-n-slash attacks, distant attacks and focus attacks, but it just doesn't expand -- not even with the introduction of a weapon-creating system. They may have different effects but they all come off about the same way.
Too bad, because the game has some of the best graphics to ever be seen on the PSP. The rich environment detail really stands out, and the pre-loading feature means that you don't have to wait to see it all. The game improves substantially on the loading time over the first, a real treat considering that all the stop-and-starts got on my nerves. Kudos to the character design as well, particularly the cats who know how to run a mean kitchen. And you thought those rats in Disney's Ratatouille movie were talented...feh. There's some soothing music to be found here as well, although more sound effects and voice samples would've been excellent.
MHF 2 supports four-player AdHoc play, so three other people can join in your hunting party, provided they each own a copy of the game. Additional quests can also be accessed via download, but it seems a little perplexing that general Infrastructure-supported online play wasn't an option here. You're stuck with local cooperative play and can't take the game online past that, seeking out monster hunters across the US. This is a real let-down -- such a feature had great potential for a game such as this. Outside of that, the game has hours of gameplay to offer, with hundreds of items to find and multiple things to customize your hunter with. But it really comes down to whether you can stand the gameplay or not. It really does get a little stale over time.
If you loved the first Monster Hunter Freedom game or its PS2 counterpart, you're going to love this. In fact, chances are you've already purchased this, regardless of criticisms. However, if you're a newcomer, you may find this Freedom a little straining to get into, unless you have a real acceptance for the material. It's not bad, it just doesn't excel like a sequel is supposed to.
