Monster Hunter Tri (WII) Review

With many features hardcore gamers will enjoy, Monster Hunter Tri is a game that will be welcome in any Wii owners library.

Released in North America, Europe and Australia almost 9 months after its release in Japan, this game has been widely hyped by Capcom, who developed and published the game. While the game was originally slated as a PS3 exclusive release, Capcom decided to release Monster Hunter Tri on the Nintendo Wii due to lower development costs. This is highly apparent in the games graphical structure. The game is also one that does not hold your hand, and can be very unforgiving.

Monster Hunter Tri's offline mode's story revolves around a quaint little town that is being terrorized by a giant sea monster known as the Lagiacrus. You are tasked, as a hunter in the town, to complete quests for 'The Guild' and ultimately save the town from the Lagiacrus. The story is very loose though, and is not very prominent in the game. Your main focus for most of the game is to complete as many missions and quests as possible for The Guild.

Originally planned for a PS3 release by Capcom, Monster Hunter Tri was eventually switched to the Wii to be an exclusive title for the console. This game pushes the Wii's graphical abilities more than any third party title I have seen. The game comes across with stunning environments and monsters for your viewing pleasure.

Capcom did a great job on the environments in Tri, pushing the Wii to give some of its greatest results yet.

The game has 35 unique monsters for your hunter to fight. While this may seem to be a small number of enemies compared to past Monster Hunter games, this is not really the case. Past games in the Monster Hunter series took monsters and recoloured them, giving them new attributes. In Tri, every monster is unique, and this gives the defeat of each new creature you encounter a higher lever of satisfaction.

These are some of the many interesting monster designs that Capcom has created for Tri.

But Tri isn't all pretty scenery and cool monsters. No, Tri was created to be a hardcore Wii game. The game is really easy to pick up and play, but the difficulty increases as you progress through the game, and does not hold your hand as you find more and more powerful monsters to hunt. The gameplay is very easy to get used to, but the lack of a target system makes the game a little more difficult. Gameplay in Tri is divided into two types: One using the Wii remote and Nunchuk attachment, and one using the Wii Classic Controller or Classic Controller Pro (The Classic Controller Pro, in black, is bundled with the game for an added 10 dollars. This is cheaper than purchasing the game and the controller separate, which will add another 15 dollars to your tab.). The kind of control orientation you decide to use is based on your personal preference. While the game feels very fluent with both set ups, I've found that at some moments in the game, the hit detection seems to be slightly off, which can hurt you greatly in fights against some of your larger prey.

Improper hit detection could mean death against the huge boss monsters in Tri.

The Audio in Monster Hunter Tri is superb, with each monster having their own unique cries, and the landscapes having scores to match their mood. The one problem with the music in the landscapes is that the music does not play during your whole time there, with most area themes playing for 30 seconds or so, and then fading in the sound of footsteps as your hunter moves and environmental noises, such as running water, rustling grass, and monster cry's.

Aside from the robust offline mode, the game also includes offline split-screen and online multiplayer modes. In Offline multiplayer mode, you take your characters that you have made in-game, and use them in arenas to fight against monsters. The online multiplayer, however, is a lot fuller than that. While the offline singleplayer mode takes place in a sea-side town, the online multiplayer takes place in the desert city of Loc Lac. While online, you can play with up to 4 people to complete quests and unlock new armors and weapons that may be more difficult to obtain, or imposable to obtain in single player mode. The general gameplay is the same, with there being shops and the like set up for you to purchase equipment from and the guild to take quests from.

Just like the offline, Tri's online looks stunning.

In the online mode, Tri utilizes an on screen keyboard, pre-created dialect to choose from and the Wii Speak for communication. The Wii Speak integration is a feature that was absent in the Japanese version of the game, and was added to the localized versions of Tri. The online is free to use for all players, and does not require you to register friend codes to play with people. They do require you, however, to register friends in order to use the Wii Speak, because of security reasons. The service is very fast, and there is little to no lag in any of the town areas or quest areas.

Monster Hunter Tri is a very robust game, with a story kind of thrown in to hold it together. This does not take away from the experience though. With near no bugs, aside from minor hit detection problems at times, excellent audio and visuals, and superb gameplay mechanics, Tri does very well making the jump from the previous generation of hardware to the current generation. The game is easy to pick up and play, but difficult to master.

- Paul S.