Monster Hunter Stories (NS) - Review

With the closure of the 3DS eShop in March 2023, and with 3DS cartridges long out of print, it has become a lot harder to secure the best games on Nintendo's eighth gen handheld. Luckily, ports, remasters, and remakes are all the rage, so there's always a chance that left-behind title will get a second chance to shine. Enter Monster Hunter Stories, which launched last month on Switch, PlayStation 4, and PC, after roughly eight years as a 3DS exclusive. A remastered version with refined graphics, new voiceover work, and several other improvements, it keeps the Monster Hunter Stories sub-series alive and kicking.

Monster Hunter Stories begins in Hakum village, a tiny hamlet tucked away from the rest of the world. The village is home to Riders, humans who forge emotional bonds with monsters instead of hunting them. The game's prologue features three young riders-in-training, who stumble upon a rare Rathalos egg and raise it as their own. Soon after, without warning, a blighted beast attacks Hakum, kills several villagers, and sends the juveline Rathalos, nicknamed Ratha by the kids, into the abyss. One year later, after completing the rider initiation rites, one of those grown-up kids decides to break tradition and leave the village — in part to see the world and in part to investigate the growing, dangerous black blight.

Story is a weak point in Monster Hunter Stories, just as it was with the sequel. The game's characters are likable and its setting immersive, but its plot never really goes anywhere interesting. The protagonist, which you name and design yourself, and their feisty feline sidekick Navirou sort of bounce around the continent, sometimes performing odd jobs, sometimes looking into the black blight. The adventure lacks a strong antagonist and a sense of urgency to drive things forward. As a result, it tends to spin its wheels a lot.

Ironically, for a game with "stories" in its name, Monster Hunter Stories is much more interested in role-playing mechanics than it is in narrative. Luckily, that investment pays off in several areas. Let's start with the combat framework, which relies on a simple but satisfying rock-papers-scissors setup. You'll bring with you into battle up to six different Monsties — domesticated, friendly versions of monsters. Each Monstie has one of three predominant attack styles: power, technical, and speed. Power beats technical which beats speed which, in turn, beats power.

Because of this dynamic, you must carry a diverse party of allied monsters and deploy them tactically in battle to gain the upper hand. If you read your enemy's patterns correctly and use the right attack at the right time, you'll win a "head to head" match-up, which does extra damage and fills your kinship gauge. Once the gauge is full, you can mount your Monstie and perform a devastating kinship attack. Overall, the battle system isn't the most deep or nuanced out there, but it's easy to understand and intensely rewarding when used successfully.

While battles are understandable and approachable, they can, at rare moments, prove overly punishing. Throughout the adventure, you will run afoul of a few difficulty spikes that will push you to your limit and test your patience. This is particularly true of the wave of fights that take place just before the final, climactic duel.

There's more to Monster Hunter Stories than just battling, of course. The other major component is the hatching, raising, and upgrading process for Monsties. Scattered throughout the land are monster nests, where eggs of all types reside. By braving these nests, and sometimes defeating the powerful monsters that lurk within, you can collect an egg that will hatch into a loyal Monstie. A big part of the game's appeal revolves around this process. You'll never get tired of hatching an egg, and then watching the mystery monster within evolve into a formidable warrior. And there are dozens of potential partners, including birds, apes, dragons, raptors, bears, rabbits, sea monsters — you name it.

What's more, you can channel genes from one monster to another, giving them new skills and upgraded stats. And if you line up three genes of the same type or color, you can awaken dormant abilities.

As a result of these systems, there's a lot of room for exploration and experimentation. There's also just a lot of content overall. Outside of the battling and egg-hatching processes, you can gather plants, go fishing, mine for ore, hunt for lost Poogies, commission and upgrade equipment, and take on dozens of side quests. Not all the quests and missions are interesting — many involve collecting materials or slaying a particular monster type — but they will absolutely keep you busy. I completed the campaign in just over 40 hours, with a good chunk of secondary content completed. If you hope to complete every sub-quest, hatch every monster, and explore fully all the post-game adventures, you should set aside at least 80 hours.

A big chunk of the post-game content involves the Tower of Illusion, a multi-floor gauntlet where you must survive against high-rank monsters. Previously locked to the Japanese version of the 3DS game, the Tower is one of many perks specific to this remaster. Also localized for the first time are several monsters —Teostra, Kushala Daora, and Rajang — and multiple character customization parts. 

The remaster also arrives with new Japanese and English voice tracks, a Museum Mode with over 200 previously-unreleased pieces of design artwork, and, of course, refined graphics. While none of the assets have been remade, they all look incredibly sharp, especially compared to the fuzzy graphics on 3DS. A few unsightly models and some simple geometry betray the game's handheld origins, but overall this remaster represents a huge visual upgrade over the original. As for performance, the game seems to operate at a variable framerate that hovers around 40 frames per second. 

Despite a handful of unsightly assets, an underwhelming story, and a few difficulty spikes, the remaster of Monster Hunter Stories makes for an easy recommendation, for Monster Hunter fans or simply for anyone interested in approachable turn-based role-playing games who missed the original on 3DS. Its battle system is engaging and accessible, its monster-collecting gameplay addictive, and its world packed with dozens of hours of rewarding content. It's not quite as good as its 2021 sequel, but in the words of the Old El Paso advertisement: "why don't we have both?"