As you may or may not know, I am a HUGE fan of Monster Hunter. And when I heard there was a demo for the upcoming game Monster Hunter Tri I knew I had to try it out. The only problem was that I did not have a Wii…Well long story short this was the first $270 free demo I’ve ever gotten, and hopefully it will be my last. Was it worth it?

Short answer is yes.

Long answer is yes, yes it was. Sorta.

The main problem I have with this demo is that it commits one of the most horrendous crimes against Guild rules: giving you things you haven’t earned. Now this is to be expected of a demo, but it does kinda ruin one of the points of the main game. Returning players will know that this was necessary for the demo to be anything worth-while. If it had stuck to the original game it would be very boring as the beginning of any Monster Hunter is pretty basic. However I fear new players to the series, like many of you, will come to expect this out of the real game. Well I’m here to say that you must EARN your stuff. We (a fellow hunter and I) once made the mistake of introducing a friend to the game and helped him via multiplayer to progress through the game. This ruined the whole experience for him, he learned nothing on how to actually fight, and by the time he was on his own he didn’t have the training to do anything, so he got discouraged and gave up. Don’t let the demo do this to you. The demo is merely inciting you to enter the Monster Hunter world, the demo is NOT the real game. But that’s not to say I won’t abandon newcomers. In fact I welcome you with open arms. I will happily guide any of you in our forums on any aspect of the game(s), just no that if you want to actually play with me as a general guideline of skill there are certain monsters that must be killed alone first to show you can fend for yourself. The multiplayer is a way to share in the experience rather than just as a piggy back to get past the “tutorial-like” beginnings. Anyway, I kinda got off topic, where was I going with that….

Well back on the demo. You have the choice of 10 *cringe* preset characters which are all the same except for their weapons and armor, but all the armor has been stripped of skills and Defense, and replaced with the same defense and no skills. Again this is NOT like the real game where every piece of armor is unique and sets have radically different skills and therefore play-styles. So the armor serves as little more than aesthetics. Which is just fine because you are really only picking the weapon type you want in the demo. The demo offers one of ever weapon type in Tri (and two Switch (I hate calling it Switch, it used to be called Slash) Axe for some reason). Anyway you can choose from the beginner friendly Sword and Shield, the powerful but slow Great Sword, the defensive Lance, the reckless Hammer, the ever popular Long Sword (Katana), the I’m-about-six-weapons-in-one Switch Axe, and the long range Light/Medium/Heavy Bowguns. In the demo I recommend you try them all out, just to see which fits your style, but keep in mind that the Wiimote controls SUCK…like hardcore suck. But you have the option to play on the new classic controller and I recommend you do, but not for the demo, get the bundle. In the real game you will usually use one weapon exclusively…that is until you become a better hunter. You’ll start to realize  that a Hammer might be more effective on a monster with hard skin, or that sometimes it’s just best to Bowgun it. A good hunter is situational. When I was on top of my game, I played through Xlink Kai and every mission would be different so every mission I used a different weapon. Sometimes I just changed element type others I changed all of my gear. Adaptation, it’s the key to this game.

I only have a few problems with the game. For me it was a little dark…I’m not sure what caused it and I hope it’s just the demo. The Long Sword…ugh…I don’t know why but it seems they made this the “I win” weapon. In the previous games it had a Spirit Meter which was charged by attacking the monster. Once full it  gave an attack boost and allowed you to unleash a powerful combo attack. When you used this attack the meter went down, but not completely gone. In Monster Hunter Tri the meter NEVER EVER DECREASES….This means you can have a permanent attack boost as well as only needing to hit one button the entire game to unleash the combo…so this allows an already popular weapon to be played almost exclusively…eh…some say it’s still balanced and what not but I think it’s now broken.

So that’s pretty much all I can say about the demo. It’s not the real game and it only make me hungry for the real one to come out….only 39 days left!