Monster Hunter Tri is not a game for everyone. It's challenging, unforgiving and time consuming. It's as close to an MMORPG as the Wii will ever get, which means the focus of the game is grind, grind and grind some more. But for those who enjoy this kind of experience, there's no better game.

 

The premise is as simple as it can get: you're a hunter, go hunt something! In other words, you choose a quest, complete it, get materials to upgrade your gear and do more quests. It's a simple, but effective system. If you're playing offline on the single player mode, there's a story going on too, but nothing too intriguing.

 

So how does hunting work? After you choose a quest, which may or may not have optional subquests (that earn you extra rewards), you're teleported to the "base camp". There you'll find a box to deliver objectives (say, for example, some monster eggs), a box to get temporary supplies, and a bed where you can sleep to recover health or to end the quest by only completing the subquests (doing it this way will not count the quest as done).

 

There's a time limit to do the quest (usually 50 minutes), but most of the time, it's more than enough to gather some resources from mining spots, small monsters, etc, and do the quest.

 

 

You navigate through various connected areas while questing, and changing areas means a loading screen. Now, don't panic, as the loading screens are so short they won't bother you, and they even give you a look at the map with your position, the position of your friends and even the controller's battery.

 

Once back from your quest, you can use the resources gathered to forge/upgrade your weapon/armor in order to become stronger (there isn't a levelling system in MHT) and take tougher quests. Repeat this ad infinitum and you got Monster Hunter in a nutshell. But Monster Hunter is more than a mere nutshell.