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CNET editors' rating:
3.0 stars
Good
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Product summary
By neglecting to address the fundamental problems of the original and slicing out the online play, Monster Hunter Freedom negates the few improvements it makes to its PlayStation 2 predecessor.
Specifications: ESRB: Teen; Genre: Role-Playing; Number of players: 1-4 Players See full specs
Price range: $9.75 - $14.79
Gamespot editors' review
- Reviewed on: 05/23/2006
- Released on: 05/23/2006
Monster Hunter Freedom for the PlayStation Portable is virtually a straight port of Monster Hunter G, which itself was a slightly beefed up, Japan-only version of Capcom's original Land of the Lost-meets-anime dungeon crawler for the PlayStation 2. In its translation onto the PSP, Freedom has been stripped of Internet play, which was deeply flawed in the original Monster Hunter but still a rather critical component of the experience. The series' passionate following should be thrilled that some form of Monster Hunter G is getting a proper US release, but by gutting the online component and failing to address the original Monster Hunter's problematic camera and clumsy combat, Capcom has released a game that is both promising and simultaneously difficult to recommend.
Monster Hunter Freedom takes place in a pseudo-prehistoric time and place--our best guess is somewhere around 20XX BC--in which small tribes of humans with a fair amount of technological savvy live mostly in peace. Except, of course, for all the monsters. Though many of the monstrosities you'll encounter are pretty much just dinosaurs, you'll also encounter massive fire-breathing wyverns, oversized flying insects, bands of thieving cat people, and other strange enemies. The game expends zero energy on developing backstory, but the setting is well-defined enough, and your basic desire to hunt monsters serves as solid motivation.
Before you enter this wonderful world of hunting monsters, though, you'll need to create a character using the game's fairly boilerplate creation system. You choose your character's gender, each of which has its own set of prefab faces and hairstyles to select from. You also get to choose from a selection of different "hip!" and "huah!" sounds for your character to shout in the heat of battle. The number of variables you can tweak are few, but the number of options you're given within each variable helps make up for a lot. Either way, your character will soon be buried under layers of armor and loaded with massive weapons.
With your sweet new hairstyle and skimpy caveman duds, the game throws you into a small village, which effectively serves as the hub for all your non-monster-hunting-related activities. It's here that you get all your quest assignments; buy and sell goods, weapons, and armor; and rest up. Also, you can take materials you've collected out in the field to a shop in the village and use them to upgrade weapons or create weapons and armor from scratch. The game encourages you to use the crafting system, rather than just buying all your gear, by making it cheaper to craft than to buy. Once you talk to the chief in the village, who will present you with a list of quests that you can undertake, you'll head out into the wilds.
There are two main types of quests you can take on in Monster Hunter Freedom: hunting quests and gathering quests. The primary, and arguably most fun, quests are the hunting quests, which charge you with scouring forests, swamps, jungles, and desert environments for specific monsters to slay. Sometimes just taking down your target is enough, though you'll regularly have to break out the skinning knife to bring back trophies of your kill. You start off the game with a single blade weapon, though you can also switch over to the slow-moving but extremely powerful great swords, hammers, and lances; the faster-moving dual swords; or the ranged bowgun. There's definitely a distinct feel to each of the weapon types, but none of them ever feel responsive enough, and the sensation that you're fighting against the controls is a fairly constant one. What's more, there's no real-time weapon switching, so if the weapon you equipped your character with isn't dealing the massive damage that you'd like, you'll have to travel all the way back to your house to change your gear.
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Where to buy
Monster Hunter Freedom (PSP):
$9.75 - $14.79
| store | price | in stock? | rating |
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$14.79 | Yes |
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Amazon.com Marketplace
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$9.75 | Yes |
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