When I had a PSP, I heard of Monster Hunter. I heard of how great it was, addicting, tedious, etc etc. I was still on Dissidia at the time, but when you've beaten the crap out of Chaos and every villain about ten trillion times and grinded out your favorite characters' levels to the max as well as their best equipment, it gets boring and tiresome. So I decided to get Monster Hunter Freedom Unite to see what all the fuss was about. I popped it into the PSP and began playing it... for several nights straight.
Lunchtime!
Needless to say, I was hooked. I quit after a while because Monster Hunter began kicking my rear to the curb, but I was addicted to the genre. I did some research and found two more games that fit the genre. They were considered copycats to Monster Hunter, and while I can see why, they're unique enough to be their own games, and to consider them ripoffs or copycats is too harsh. They are Gods Eater Burst and Lord of Arcana.
Down, kitty! DOWN!
Now then, as I said, all of these games have their own merits, and can each be qualified as their own game. However, that really begs the question: Which of these games is really better? I decided for the sake of this blog and to satisfy my own curiosity to compare and contrast for myself. I'm going to use six criteria for this judging: Gameplay, Graphics, Sound, Story, Equipment, and Monsters. I know this seems a bit much, but honestly, since the equipment and monsters are so different from game to game, yet play so prominent a role, there's no choice. I'll also be using a tally system. For each category, which ever game scores first gets two points, second place one, and third place gets nada. And I believe I should mention this: THIS IS STRICTLY OPINION. DON'T TAKE WHAT I SAY HERE SERIOUSLY. So, without further ado, let's get started.
Oh, SHI-
Gameplay
Gameplay! It's definitely THE most integral part of any game! So how do these three games hold up? Let's look at each of them individually.
To start off with, Monster Hunter. It's hard. It's nails-to-the-balls, tear-your-hair-out-crying-in-frustration hard. Monster Hunter can and will punish you for even the slightest mistake. This is especially prominent with solo gameplay. One has to learn the terrain of the battle, memorize and know how to dodge enemy moves, as well as read them so you know it's coming. This is because you are a puny human. They are faster, stronger, more powerful than you are, even with your shiny equipment. To make things difficult, there is no lock-on, so you'll have to struggle with the camera controls to keep the beastie in your line of sight. You CANNOT just charge in, whaling your weapon and expect to win. Do this and you will die faster than you can say 'TIGREX!'.
This is a VERY accurate depiction, actually.
Monster Hunter was made with co-op in mind: You're able to form a party of four with your friends and go on missions to take down monsters. With a full party of well-equipped members, the co-op aspect makes any, and I repeat, ANY mission trivial. Unfortunately, Monster Hunter Freedom Unite only had ad-hoc, so unless you guys can figure out how to hook up Xlink Kai or find some friends who also like to play Monster Hunter, you'll be doing this solo. And you shall weep. Hard.
However, it's not all about hunting. In between missions, you will be grinding out materials for new weapons and gear. This is because there's no leveling up - your strength is determined only by your skill and your equipment. Sometimes, the material comes from monsters, but a lot of the time, the materials necessary are minerals mined from cracks, bugs you catch from bushes, and even fishes and certain herbs. You're even given a farm that you can invest in to make your grinding a bit easier! And believe me, because some of the materials you'll need can be rare, you'll be grinding. A LOT.
I can't believe I have to do chores in a video game...
Gods Eater Burst cuts down a LOT of the grinding I mentioned earlier. In Monster Hunter, you practically needed to bring a toolkit to grind out materials. Here, it's much simpler - the weapons and gear use materials come from monsters or just literally laying around at specific spawn points on your map. You even get material rewards for the mission as well, which is extremely handy. Still, there's some grinding, especially when you're trying to get a particularly rare drop from a monster.
GIVE. ME. YOUR. FAAAANGS!
The combat and gameplay itself is MUCH faster than Monster Hunter. You're allowed to switch weapons and block on the fly, you can jump high and dash around, and your attacks come off very fast. However, because of this increase in speed for you, that means that the creatures on Gods Eater Burst will also be faster to compensate. Thankfully, if you don't have friends to play with you - or at least, no one that your ad-hoc can reach - you can bring in rather competent AI partners in to help fight. Thanks to this, the gameplay is easily a fraction of Monster Hunter's difficulty. While Monster Hunter feels like an actual hunter stalking its quarry, waiting for the decisive time to strike, Gods Eater Burst feels more like a high-flying action fight that feels more at home in an anime or manga.
Lord of Arcana, developed my Square Enix, is certainly different, and it honestly feels more akin to a Devil May Cry game than either Monster Hunter or Gods Eater Burst. What happens is this: When you encounter an enemy, you are instantly transported into a closed 'zone' to take out your enemy. But because on the 'overworld' map they are represented by one creature, you have only a slight clue who you're fighting or how many until it starts. Said closed zones are always completely flat, so there's no bother trying to use the terrain to your advantage.
I dare you to tell me this isn't a design from Devil May Cry. I DARE YOU.
Grinding is particularly tricky here because not only do you have to collect materials, you also have to collect monster cores for particularly powerful/rare equipment. You can only get these from either boss creatures or when the specific region they're located starts flashing red on the minimap, and whether you get these cores or not is completely luck-based. Sure, you can get equipment to sway the odds more in your favor, but honestly, the core system to me is very frustrating. I can't tell you how many times I wanted to throw my PSP across the room when I saw my attempt at a core ended up in an explosion of bloody giblets.
As for the combat and gameplay itself, the pacing is somewhere between Monster Hunter and Gods Eater Burst - certainly faster than the former but slower than the latter. However, sometimes, you have to deal with multiple strong mooks at once, and they REALLY love to blindside you, interrupting any combos and stunlocking you so you can't take advantage of any openings. Griffins are particularly guilty.
This motherf***er here is responsible for more than half my deaths in this game!!
For boss enemies, though, you get a quicktime event once you've damaged them enough, and we all know how we as gamers love THOSE. These quicktime events allow your character to pull off moves that Dante himself would be proud of. There's two for each boss - an optional one in the middle which deals extra damage and you can fail if you so wish without any damage, and a mandatory one to pull off as an insane finisher. While such things are fun to watch, I honestly failed a few times because... well... quicktime events. Not my kind of fun, but they're awesome to watch when you do it right.
So, finally, in conclusion... I'm not a fan of either quicktime events or crazy-hard difficulty or being blind-sighted and I like fast-paced action fun, so I'm giving Gods Eater Burst 2 points, Monster Hunter 1 point, and Lord of Arcana gets nothing because of their griffins.
Current tally:
Monster Hunter - 1
Gods Eater Burst - 2
Lord of Arcana - 0
Graphics
I'll admit it, all three games have used the PSP graphics engine well, but which one used the graphics engine the best? Well, again, that's what I'm here to find out.
The environments of Monster Hunter are very lush and expansive, truly feeling like places these untamed beasts would live in. The terrain has been lovingly detailed as well, up to the bushes and trees in the rainforest and forest locations which realistically (albeit frustratingly) obscures your enemy's position, making tracking them down a bit more difficult. And it truly does feel like they're the actual environments it describes - or at least, it tries very hard to. It still has its flaws, though. It suffers from a few graphical hiccups here and there, and sometimes the expansive areas to fight monsters in feels more like giant empty rooms than anything. Still, the environments are quite immersive.
Nothing like fighting monsters in a giant bog.
The environments in Gods Eater Burst are where it suffers the most. Sure, it feels very apocalyptic and grim and the places are well-detailed.... there's only seven or so environments. When you see it the first couple times, you can feel the effects of the apocalypse, but after seeing it a couple hundred times when they're not that big, you really stop giving a damn. It gets very tiresome just fighting in the same places over and over and OVER AGAIN. It doesn't help that all the maps are extremely small, especially compared to Monster Hunter or Lord of Arcana. The lighting's pretty nice, though.
Like this place? Great - get ready to see it a couple thousand times.
The environments in Lord of Arcana are... relatively cramped. Packed with a lot of monsters, it's hard to maneuver around them. The Scarlet Tower is rather big and it definitely feels RPG-esque, but other than that, the environments are very plain and lacking in detail. The environments in the end are really nothing memorable - they're almost just palette swaps. Besides, the combat 'zones' are all just flat land palette swaps anyway, so that loses quite a few points.
Final Fantasy, anyone? Anyone?
So in conclusion, Monster Hunter gets 2, Gods Eater Burst gets 1, and Lord of Arcana once again comes in with a big fat goose egg.
Current tally:
Monster Hunter - 3
Gods Eater Burst - 3
Lord of Arcana - 0
To be continued in Part 2.
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