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Monster Hunter Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin

Azure Sage

March onward forever...
Staff member
ZD Legend
Comm. Coordinator
Demo dropped very late last night, so I got to try it out this morning. Spent 8 and a half hours on it today. :sweating: And I finished the whole demo during that time. Was roughly the same amount of content as the demo for the first game.

Overall, my impression was very positive. The visuals are gorgeous and the the visual effects are really impressive and exciting, especially during battles. The gameplay has improved a lot since the first game. The weapon change mechanic alone really brought a lot to the table. Can't just main one single weapon type anymore. There's a lot more depth to the combat with that now, and with skills in general. It's a lot of fun for turn-based gameplay, which I generally loathe. And most importantly, I got to make an oc of mine look good in the character creator. :cool:

Some disappointments would be the fact that the Monster Hunter in-universe language is not an option for voiced dialogue. I do not understand why. Even World had this option, for crying out loud. The first game was fully voiced in the MH language, and it's a big part of what made the game so charming. It's also directly responsible for why I love listening to it so much. I'm really upset that they didn't include it as an option in the second game to continue this trend.

Another thing that's kind of a bummer is that, for as nice as the characters look, the character creator is still pretty limited. It hardly got any expansions from the first game, and it's missing a lot of important privileges like moving or mirroring face paint and gender-neutral hairstyles. A full sequel like this on hardware like the Switch shouldn't still have a 3DS-era character creator. The best thing about it was now having two color options for hair on every hairstyle.

I also feel its worth mentioning that the pacing for the demo was exactly the same as in the first game just now with a different flavor. I hope the full game will mix things up quite a bit. If those trailers are any indication, it should be really promising. I've done everything possible to do in the demo and am satisfied to wait for the 9th to pick up the full game.

Just one last thing....

....don't forget to stan Navirou. best boy. love him so much.
 

Azure Sage

March onward forever...
Staff member
ZD Legend
Comm. Coordinator
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Tomorrow will leave us with one week left until release. I'm very excited, and I'm looking forward to this final presentation quite a bit.
 

Azure Sage

March onward forever...
Staff member
ZD Legend
Comm. Coordinator
Very interesting presentation. We got a new trailer which didn't really show off anything new, but we also got a lot of information on the title updates and what to expect from postgame. Here's the roadmap.

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This roadmap is unironically a lot more hype than Rise's, lmao. Kulve Taroth was totally unexpected for me. I never got to fight her properly in World, so I'm looking forward to that here. Lots of deviants and rare variants in the monstie updates, and a surprise monster in October which...

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... is almost certainly either Fatalis of Safijiiva.

We also got a look at some of the postgame monsters we can fight and raise.

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Pretty excited about these picks. Velkhana and Bloodbath Diablos are the most hype for me. Postgame as it is seems like it's gonna have plenty to do, and then they said all the title updates except the Palamute are gonna be postgame as well. Stories 1's postgame was really impressive, and it seems like this is gonna match. Looking forward to all of this.

They also did some gameplay and introduced what co-op quests will be like. Hard to say what it will feel like to actually play them, but it seems like they put in the work to make them pretty smooth.

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The fact that you both have various opportunities to gather eggs and you have the choice to engage in your partner's battles or not is pretty nice. I was wondering if an encounter for one person forced the other person to stop what they were doing and fight together, but I'm glad that's not the case.

Finally, at the end they talked about some development stuff, like mentioning how the idea for the Stories games came about, and also talking about how they went about designing both the new and old characters. They also confirmed that the in-game timeskip is four years. It's nice to know they had a specific time frame in mind for that while still managing to keep new players engaged and not lost on the plot.

One week to go... I can't wait to pick it up and dive in where I left off at in the demo. :)
 

Quin

Disaster Master
Joined
Dec 26, 2017
Location
Netherlands
Picking it up on steam today. Its sad to trash the 10 hours I put in the switch demo but the variable frame rate is REALLY bad, and I really don't want to spend more time into that. The area after the demo especially highlights how bad it can get.
Otherwise its great, like it much more over stories 1 already
 

Azure Sage

March onward forever...
Staff member
ZD Legend
Comm. Coordinator
Beat the game last night at about 70 hours. Was quite a beefy adventure. The postgame seems like its gonna be a grindfest but there's plenty to do. The gameplay was really polished compared to the first game. Very enjoyable.

The story ranged from standard to great and back and forth. They did some things that were pretty intense and interesting, and they did some things that were just so basic-JRPG that it was hard to take seriously. Was still about even with the first game's story. The characters were just as excellent as in the first game, too. Watching how each of them changed over the course of the game, and comparing how the returning characters had grown in the 4 years since we'd last seen them, was really splendid. They did a fantastic job on them.

I will say that I don't think it's entirely fair for the devs to say you don't need to play the first game before this. This game will basically spoil you on the character arcs from the first game, with how many references to them it makes and how involved the returning characters are. Plus, a lot of the moments you share with those returning characters seem designed to be built off prior context, and not having that context would make them fall kind of flat. Like, yeah, the plot of 1 has little to do with the plot of 2, but the characters are just as important as the plot. They go hand-in-hand. I would personally recommend playing 1 first with that in mind.
 

Quin

Disaster Master
Joined
Dec 26, 2017
Location
Netherlands
Honestly, this is a game you play because of the gameplay, not the story. They did really well with the turn based combat in this one. It really feels like its the best they could do to change the MH gameplay to a turn based game.
Not an MH first but the story is really bad. I think I even prefer the one in stories 1 more, and that one was already hardly serviceable.
But I guess its fine seeing as its targeting younger folk, but yeah, you can easily skip out on 1, because this one improves in almost every way.

I'm deep into post game already and still enjoying it a lot. Just like regular MH, the real game starts after the credits.
pleasantly surprised with the game all in all. I have about 100+ hours into it now and probably one of my favorite monster collecting games I've played. Blows any pokemon game right out of the water, thats for sure.
Current team I'm using is
Teostra, Stygian Zinogre, Lagiacruz, yian garuga, legiana and Zamtrios, with Reverto being my main buddy
Basically just my favorite monsters. Still mad I can't ride agnaktor.

There are still some major issues I have with it, and the biggest one are the generated dungeons. Not only are there not enough layouts, they also just use the same system for the static dungeons in the game. I was already sick of them when I beat the game but you got way more of them to deal with in post game, and the multiplayer is basically also only doing them.
 

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