With the re-release of Monster Hunter Stories now here and available on most modern platforms, it felt like the best time to sit down and go back to what made this title such an iconic first entry in what is slowly growing into its own charming series. In the process of playing through Monster Hunter Stories again, I started to feel a rumbling and understanding. I love this series dearly, think it’s fantastic while still holding up today, but the most impressive thing of all is just how substantially impressive the sequel was at perfecting nearly every single mechanic. Not every sequel can pull this off so cleanly, especially with turn-based RPGs, so I want to dive into what Monster Hunter Stories brought to the table and howWings of Ruinperfected it.
The first thing we need to get out of the way are the visuals themselves. This, of course, is mostly a no-brainer. The original Monster Hunter Stories launched for the Nintendo 3DS, later seeing a mobile port, and the sequel has seen release on Switch, PC and now PlayStation. While the visual upgrade is a sight to behold, that’s not the thing that’s most impressive, but instead the aesthetic choice of the characters and monsters themselves. In the first title, the humans were much more chibi-esque and small, but so were the monstie companions we ride around with. In Wings of Ruin, we saw them in a much larger size and while they were still smaller than their wild counterparts, it helped make them feel stronger just by being a little bit bigger. That small change makes all the difference in making everything feel that much more dynamic.
Combat shines as importantly as ever in Wings of Ruin
Combat in Monster Hunter Stories uses a rock-paper-scissors mechanic that challenges players to learn monsters in order to counter their attacks. The first entry has a level of randomness that never makes it feel like a hit is guaranteed, but does keep the rider on their toes. Any good sequel would do its best to improve upon this and Wings of Ruin is no exception. While the first entry could feel somewhat random at times with attacks, Wings of Ruins has a much more strategic level of combat. Monsters have more precise attack patterns that feel easier to actually learn, while still offering a stiff challenge along the way. It makes paying attention to monsters feel all the more rewarding while erasing some of the randomness the original had that could sometimes feel unbalanced.
The other big change to combat is the weapons themselves, which saw a massive overhaul. The original entry had four main weapons whose differences were all preference for combo and a slight play style change. Wings of Ruin not only added two more weapons, but also saw fit to completely revamp how weapons worked. Instead of simply equipping one weapon, three can be equipped and switched in combat, similar to monsties. Switching is extremely important as all enemy monsters have weaknesses and strengths on their various body parts to the main trio of weapon types. The weaknesses aren’t apparent until attacking, but a helpful marker will show which are better to use in each fight. This is a huge improvement over the first title where weapons made no real difference while fighting enemies and heavily encourages trying out the six different play styles each weapon has to offer.
Reworked weapons were a key to making combat feel fresh
The general combo system has also seen an overhaul in combat, with combos no longer being based around using select attacks to do extra damage, but instead encouraging a variety of methods depending on the weapon. Hammer likes to win head to heads, Bow has a new charging mechanic, Gunlance builds up ammunition to fire off and the others offer stronger attacks by using up the kinship gauge for specials. This variety of styles also play well into perhaps the largest new change to combat Wings of Ruin made, which is the inclusion of combat partners.
Review: Monster Hunter Stories
This year we got the announcement that the original Monster Hunter Stories was making a comeback and are thrilled to dive into all it has to offer.
Where the first title was an entirely solo fighting experience, the sequel saw fit to add an ally throughout the various major story beats and post-game content. Some of these companions come with their own monsties, while others are hunters who simply fight with powerful weapons. This creates an extra level of strategy for combat, as relying on an ally allows for different approaches to each key fight based on their selected weapon. The downside is that their weapons aren’t necessarily effective for every fight, but their strength or support typically makes up for any lacking strategic advantage given they’re able to heal and aid using unlimited items in combat.
Cooperative multiplayer helped build an even stronger community
This companion combat is not just exclusive to the single-player story either, as players can hop online and head out with a friend to do online missions together. The first title only had one on one competitive combat, but now riders can work together to conquer challenges and earn special items or rare monster eggs. This is a brilliant way to handle online and is a delight to experience, as players strategize using their skills and abilities most effectively to take down some of the most challenging fights that Wings of Ruin has to offer. The regular competitive mode was also converted to a doubles-styled combat which makes for a fun way to challenge players around the world and see who can pull off the best strategies as a team.
While armor and weapons are important for the rider to decide how to go into combat, genes for a monster play a major role in creating a tough fighter. Genes in the first title were tied to collecting eggs, getting valuable skills from monsties and transferring them around. The main catch is genes could only be transferred to the same exact spot they were originally located on the original monstie, making it feel a lot more grindy or luck based to create ideal movesets. Gone is the pain of this and in comes the ability to put genes in any available slot regardless of their original position. Genes have also been widely broadened and created ample opportunity for widely-unique monsties. The only thing that was lost between titles is monsties no longer change appearance if their elemental type is overridden, but it’s a small sacrifice for a much better experience crafting monstie overall.
Managing monsties was made easier but also more fun
A smaller change that I’d personally consider a positive is the appearance of eggs. In the first Monster Hunter Stories title nearly every monster had four different patterns their eggs could be found with. The changes were just color based, but it created a rather confusing time trying to remember all the different colors for every monster. Wings of Ruin does away with this and creates one distinct egg and color combination for each monster, making finding the exact egg wanted a lot less of a guessing game and simply focusing on the hunt of finding the vast variety of monsties available.
Monster Hunter Stories 100 Lost Poogies Location Guide
Looking for one of the 100 lost poogies in Monster Hunter Stories? We got you covered on where to find every single one!
The overall scope in Wings of Ruin start to finish is so much larger than anyone could have ever anticipated and this is most prevalent in the story it goes out to tell. While the first entry has a fairly by-the-book story about friends, adventuring, a new world and stopping a great evil, the sequel adds so many unexpected layers it comes across surprisingly deep. It deals with self-doubt and trying to live up to one’s ancestors, the anxiety of not being able to do enough and wondering about what strength is and how to stop something that seems inevitably written into fate.
Even though it still follows a silent protagonist who does manage to speak volumes through their physical and visual actions, it’s impressive how much the story manages to capture an evergreen emotional experience alongside its wide variety of supporting characters. Monster Hunter is not a franchise known for its stories, but Wings of Ruin really pushed to deliver something that would put feelings into one of the most enjoyable adventures they’ve ever made.
The fact that this spin-off series got a sequel almost felt like sheer luck
The final thing I feel we need to touch on is the clear elephant in the room, which is Monster Hunter Rides. This mobile spin-off came out nearly half a year before we got the announcement of Wings of Ruin, acting as the only sort of continuation we had ever gotten at the time of release. It was only released in Japan, but offered a typical gacha story-driven experience that the genre typically falls into while only being ever made available in Japan. The most heartbreaking thing about this at the time was how interesting the characters, lore and artwork for this mobile title were.
The story, for all that was fan translated, offered a surprisingly in-depth world building and characters that created an engaging experience for those that had to play it before it reached end of service. It’s a shame this entry was locked behind a gacha that ultimately failed, but given the success of Wings of Ruin, I’d love to see this cast of characters returned to at some point in their own fully-fledged game that can give them time to shine once more. It’s hard to say what, if anything, this mobile title inspired a sequel that was already in development, but I like to think given both got attention for their stories and fantastic art direction, this was always the way the franchise wanted to move.
It’s easy to say that Monster Hunter Stories is one of the best spin-offs that Capcom has ever produced. It’s all the more impressive that from the first entry to the second it managed to see a multitude of improvements and quality changes that created an overwhelming, amazing experience off the back of an already outstanding original title. I’m not just excited to see where this series will hopefully go next, but know for a fact that it’s likely to only ever go up from here. The groundwork is in place for what may only continue to be bigger and grander adventures with wonderful worlds using the monsters that players either know and love or come to befriend and find eternal companions with.
