• Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate Digital Key Control
• Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate Digital Keys

The fresh arts and styles help mask the musty taste of recycled material, but Generations is still a new recipe with old ingredients.

Jan 28, 2018 Monster Hunter: World (PS4, Xbox One, PC TBA) is the latest monster-slaying RPG - this time fully on consoles. What's the deal? Subscribe for mor.

1. Featuring the largest cast of monsters for any game in the series, from returning fan favourites to mysterious never-before-seen monsters! You can join up to three other players for co-op multiplayer action, either online or in person using local wireless. Join the hunt in Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate for Nintendo Switch!
2. Monster Hunter Generations introduces new gameplay mechanics including Styles and Hunter Arts that can further refine a very personalized playstyle. Mount monsters from mid-air using the Aerial style or make the most out of the advantageous Hunter Arts abilities with the Striker style.
3. Aug 28, 2018 Objectively speaking, Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate is a better version of Generations. For starters, it has all the content, hunter styles and hunting arts from its predecessor and then some.
4. Jul 15, 2016  Monster Hunter Generations introduces all new gameplay mechanics including Hunting Styles and Hunter Arts that allow you to fully customize your playstyle. Take to the skies and attack monsters from mid-air using the Aerial style or perform deadly counter attacks using the Adept style.

Being a long-time fan and a three-time reviewer of Monster Hunter, I feel like I've seen it all. I must have sunk somewhere between 500 and 750 hours of finger-cramping killing and crafting into Capcom's series, and, although I'm not exactly a god-tier G-Rank player, I know my way around a Kut-Ku's cojones. Nonetheless, each iteration of the series manages to do just enough with its new lick of paint to keep me coming back for more - gilding that wonderful lily of the central gameplay loop with near-perfect filigree.

For me, Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate was the apex of the series so far, recovering perfectly from the misstep of Tri's clumsy underwater combat by adding dry-land verticality and the frenzied rodeo of monster mounting. Refreshing the mechanics without disturbing the series' perfect balance of difficulty, charm and achievement, MH4U's tinkering left me wondering whether there was anywhere left for the developers to go.

So I approached Generations with some caution. The changes here are considerable, with deep ramifications for combat, and I feared that this might have been one facelift too many. Thankfully, Monster Hunter is more Clooney than Wilderstein, and the new features add another charming wrinkle to its sparkling smile.

It's worth mentioning here that I'm going to assume a rough working knowledge of the game before I go on - but if you need to know the basics, take a look at the sidebar below for the key concepts.

Monster Hunter: The basics

For the benefit of anyone who's never played a Monster Hunter game before, here's how it goes down. It's essentially an action-RPG. You kit up your hunter with potions, food, whetstones - any number of dozens of gewgaws, tchotchkes and baubles. Then, you (usually) try to kill something. Once you've successfully murdered or restrained something, you cut bits off it and make them into stuff. Then you equip that stuff and go back to kill something else, or sometimes the same sort of thing again.

It's a lot more complicated than that. There are literally thousands of materials and craftables, status effects and elemental varieties, four styles, dozens of arts, fourteen weapon classes - each with God knows how many individual examples - wildly diverging armour trees, convoluted stat-buffing and obfuscated skill systems, plus a whole other game's worth of systems for your cat companions. It's vast and complex and difficult and intimidating and brilliant - if you've got the patience.

The marquee innovation in Generations is the addition of styles and arts: essentially, stances and special moves. Now, for every one of the game's 14 different weapons, there are four different broad styles to choose from, and dozens of specials. That means 56 basic approaches with thousands of potential configurations. Almost impossibly, Monster Hunter just got a lot more complicated.

You'll probably ease yourself in with the Guild Style, which keeps each weapon's moveset from 4U and allows you to pick a couple of arts. Guild style is made for veterans, but it's also probably the easiest route into the game, too, balancing the introduction of the new options with a familiar combat routine. Slightly more advanced is the Striker style, which restricts your weapon's moves slightly, swapping some flexibility in exchange for an extra art slot to allow for bigger impacts. Aerial style is an acrobatic regime which lets hunters pounce and spring into the air from anywhere, massively increasing the chances of mounting a monster whilst restricting them to a single art. Finally, there's the pro-end adept style - a stance reliant on perfect countering and split-second timing which metes out punishing damage as a reward for risk-taking.

The arts themselves are pretty varied, but essentially fall into two categories: attacks and buffs. Each must be charged, either by attacking, gathering or the cheerleading of your Palicos, and unleashed with a tap of the touchscreen. Some are weapon-specific, some available to all, ranging from all-out aggression to defensive-counter postures and the deployment of healing stations.

As a salty old dog, afraid of new tricks, I spent too long in the comfortable embraces of the familiar Guild style and my go-to weaponry, and, because it uses the villages and maps of previous games, for some time Generations felt like a fugue rather than a greatest hits - a cynical recycling of old material. To some extent that is true: what's on offer here are new solutions to old problems, but they're new solutions which have me finding new fun in encounters I must have fought a hundred times before.

Take the combination of the aerial style and dual blades, for example. I've never been one for the series' double daggers - all whirling dervish and flashy pirouettes - instead opting for the staid and sturdy long sword, great sword or charge blade instead. But paired with the agility of the aerial style, Dual Blades come alive - turning your hunter into an angry tomcat, flung into the face of your adversary. On the other hand, take a long sword out as an aerial hunter and you'll find the combination a little jarring and restrictive; the wide, leaping slashes and sweeps are no real substitute for the ground-based spirit blade combo which the aerial style precludes.

But if there weren't a few dud combos in the mix, there'd be no point. Much of the joy here comes from switching up weapons, styles and arts in between hunts to find something which clicks for you - and whatever's next on your kill list. Up against a headlong charger? Chance your arm with a great sword and the Adept style for a slick, hard-hitting loadout - but one which will see you flattened like a chump if your timing is any less than perfect. If you're taking on one of the perpetually-in-motion apes like the Blangonga, you might want to combine the mobility of a sword and shield with the versatility of the striker style, to keep your options open. Still, there's not much more satisfying than combining an aerial stance with the lance, turning yourself into a divebombing Final Fantasy dragoon as you nail Rathians to the deck like a boss.

Arts and styles aren't the only new tools in the arsenal. The series has finally given in to the fan-service of giving you direct control of Palicoes with the new 'prowler missions'. In these, you can pick any of your stable of Felyne companions to be your lead hunter, accompanied by up to two others, and run free amongst the hills and harpies as a furry death squad. Not only do you get access to a completely new moveset (albeit one which can't be shifted with styles or arts), Prowlers have infinite stamina and don't need tools to gather, making them perfect for gathering missions.

Felynes get another boost with the introduction of customisable, transferable skills, too, letting you pick and choose both combat moves and support skills to fine-tune your back-up crew. And don't forget that you can dress them up as adorable idiots, too, with a whole new wardrobe of skins with which to humiliate your brave companions. Alongside the Palico Dojo, the other auxiliary systems which keep you occupied between hunts also get a do-over, with new mechanisms to deal with the automated Felyne gathering (Meownster Hunters and Felyne traders) as well as other training methods and enthusiasm recovery options. All kitchens are still run by Felynes, too, albeit now with a slightly uncomfortable hybrid of the ingredient-based systems of the past few games.

These little shifts are everywhere, and are clear evidence of a team which knows what makes this series tick, but can't resist the odd bit of embroidery. Mostly, they're successful, if still a little fiddly in places, but I have found it difficult to adapt to the changes which Capcom has made to the weapons upgrading system - arguably the key factor in the work/reward cycle which is the beating heart of the whole experience.

Armour upgrading remains largely the same - kill stuff, skin it, sew it together to make a suit, make it a better suit by adding armour spheres. Do that a couple of times, however, and you'll be presented with a different request - find materials to up the armour stats, much like weapons. Now, though, these are no longer specific materials - you'll instead be asked to meet a points total from a broad material type, such as ores or bones. Chuck enough earth crystals or iron ore into the mix and you should get by, but rarer materials will have higher point values. It makes sense, and isn't overused, and I'll be intrigued to see how it pans out in the end game.

Weapons don't fare so well. Whilst you can still craft them from scratch if you have the right materials, and weapon trees are very much still a core feature, you'll now need to upgrade the level of your weaponry to unlock the evolutions. For example, whereas a sword may have previously only evolved into one or two different weapons, which then had further development options, you can now skip some steps by levelling it up and directly transforming it into something much more advanced, if you have the monster bits to do so.

It's an odd system. In some ways, it's more transparent, letting you know that there are more options if you don't have the things you need to get to the next immediate step. On the other hand, it leads to you stockpiling a ridiculous amount of weaponry because you don't want to turn an eager cleaver into a devil slicer until you can level it up enough to find out what you get for leapfrogging that stage. Basically, it manages to make the whole process more confusing and unwieldy than ever before - quite the achievement when you're already dealing with a system containing hundreds of different stabby things.

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Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate Digital Key Control

What really grates, particularly for those who have been loyal for some time, is the vast amount of filler content. Your quest lists are going to contain more mushroom-picking, ore-gathering and god damn egg collection than ever, and it dilutes the good stuff to an almost unacceptable degree. I feel like I've traipsed around enough maps lugging bloody meteor fragments, spent enough time grubbing about in damp holes for fungi and endured enough virtual chain-ganging for minerals. I want the big stuff, the glory battles, the crowd pleasers; I want to be able to pass up the schlepping and concentrate on the actual Monster Hunting, and Generations has an annoying habit of hiding the good stuff behind a wall of fluff.

But it's not enough to drag the game down. The good stuff is in there, and in spades. Partly because of that quest bloat, Generations feels like the biggest Monster Hunter there's ever been. There are some bad decisions in evidence here - such as the disappointing backward steps in the early stages of the game, which returns to the fetch-quest heavy start which 4U had done such a good job of dispelling - but, generally, the changes are improvements.

If you're a veteran, bear in mind that you're going to have seen a lot of this before - there are precious few new enemies and no new maps at all (at least, 40 hours in there weren't), but be prepared to get outside your comfort zone by experimenting with new weapons and styles, and much of it will seem fresh again. Newcomers are undoubtedly going to find a lot of it bewildering, as always, and some of the very welcome good work in that regard has been undone - but it almost feels like the series has given up on acquiring new players for now, instead opting to give the ailing 3DS one last hurrah for existing fans before the inevitable debut on the forthcoming NX console. I suspect that when that happens, we'll see a rather more drastic makeover than we have with Generations. So, if you're looking for a 'best of', then this is the game for you.

Ten times. That’s how many times I’ve bought and re-bought games in the Monster Hunter Generations series, including Japanese versions Monster Hunter X and XX.

That doesn’t even include all the times I’ve bought multiple versions of other entries in the overall series since Monster Hunter Freedom Unite. Heck, I remember arriving in Japan for vacation several years ago and asking my ex-girlfriend to take me to a video game store so I can buy the newly released Monster Hunter 4. Correction, buy two copies of MH4.

Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate Digital Keys

They say the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again. If that’s the case, then I’m clearly insane about the Monster Hunter series. Unlike crazy people who do the same thing over and over, though, I wasn’t really expecting a different result each time like insane people supposedly do. Nope, I usually buy multiple copies of the game so I could spread the word and share the love by playing it with other people in my family. I mean, if they ever make an embassy for Monster Hunter, they could name me its ambassador for sure.

All that being said, Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate comes at a bit of a strange time. First off, I’ve played this game twice now — first when it came out on the Nintendo 3DS in Japan in March of last year and then a second time when it was released in Japan on the Switch last August. Technically, you can even say that I played it four times when you include my time with MHX and Generations. On top of that, Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate arrives AFTER I’ve plunked in 600 hours on the newer Monster Hunter World, which I gave a 10 out of 10, by the way (only the second time I’ve given a game such a high score since I started doing reviews). At the time, I called World arguably the best Monster Hunter game ever released, thanks to its improved presentation and visuals, fine-tuned mechanics and large number of quality-of-life improvements. Some might find it blasphemous to call World the best in the series but it’s something I continue to stand by. Yes, it doesn’t have as many monsters but neither did Tri when it first came out, and that game pretty much kickstarted the last generation before World. Basically, World is the Tri of the new Monster Hunter generation and serves as an excellent foundation for upcoming games in the series.

Needless to say, there are a bunch of factors that definitely impact how I view Generations Ultimate now. Let’s just say that my review probably would be a bit different if I wrote it back in early 2017 when MHXX first came out. To be fair, I felt that MHXX at the time was already starting to feel a bit old — and that’s even before I knew World existed. It’s strange, too, given that I rated Monster Hunter Generations a 9.5 out of 10. Even Monster Hunter fans might consider that an overly generous score, which I understand. In my case, I gave it that score primarily due to one key reason: hunting styles. Hunting styles, along with the ability to play as a Palico, are pretty much the biggest change in the base mechanics of the series in a long, long time. Prior to that, the only big notable changes I remember to the core gameplay of Monster Hunter are underwater combat in Tri and mounting in MH4. Otherwise, Monster Hunter really hasn’t had any groundbreaking changes in its base experience outside of the improved hitboxes that Tri thankfully brought about.

Objectively speaking, Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate is a better version of Generations. For starters, it has all the content, hunter styles and hunting arts from its predecessor and then some. It also brings in G-rank quests and the tougher monsters that come with them. While it has more content, however, it does not feel as fresh as Generations did when I first played it. That’s because it simply builds on its predecessor as opposed to drastically changing the formula like Generations did. It’s an interesting conundrum for a reviewer such as myself who tries to consider a wide range of factors and viewpoints in my reviews. This includes factoring in the experience and expectations of gamers who never played Generations, those who played it but never played MHXX, and those who count Monster Hunter World as their first ever game in the franchise. A review, by definition, is subjective but I still try to bring in as many objective elements as I can while accounting for the various viewpoints and needs of gamers who might read my articles. What might feel like old hat to me could be totally fresh for others.

Given all that, I will try my best to factor in all those varying experiences as I dissect MHGU for this review. Sims 2 key code generator. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve always scored Monster Hunter games higher than the norm. I remember giving MH3U the equivalent of a score of 90 way back in the day when we still used our old website. That’s eight points higher than its Metacritic average. Although more reviewers were starting to warm up to the series at the time, many still considered the mechanics clunky and unwieldy. In contrast, Monster Hunter veterans such as myself saw a more deliberate system that typically encouraged discipline and purpose as opposed to mindless hacking. I just historically enjoy this series more than the average person.

The good news is that despite having played Monster Hunter X, Generations and XX to death — as well as getting used to the mechanics introduced by World — Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate’s weapon mechanics still feel great. In fact, I was surprised at just how much I enjoyed playing it even after getting used to the changes brought about by World. The base mechanics for combat, for example, remained spot-on and I was able to adjust in no time with the timing and combos for the weapons, especially those I was most familiar with.

I started with the last weapon I had equipped in my old Generations save file, the Sword and Shield, which I’ve rarely used in 3U, 4, 4U and Generations. See, I normally main Bowguns and the Insect Glaive but I didn’t have a good status-based Light or Heavy Bowgun to test with my Level 10 Dreadqueen Rathian Gunner nor a good paralysis Glaive to use with my Level 10 Dreadqueen Rathian Blademaster set. So I decided to test the status-based armor with a Viper Bite 4 paralysis SnS instead. Despite now being more used to World and its more forgiving Spiral Slash mechanic for Sword and Shield, the SnS combat with MHGU actually still felt great and I found myself quickly adjusting to it in no time. I especially loved the weapon’s synergy with Striker Style, which allows you to use three hunting arts at the expense of losing your backhop, which is a minor sacrifice. I ended up having a blast using Chaos Oil to buff my attacks with exhaust, stun, affinity, partbreaker and Mind’s Eye to prevent weapon bounce, then weaving in Sword Dance into my attacks and eventually knocking out monsters with Shoryugeki.

Admittedly, there are a few nuances with some weapons where I do miss the changes brought about by World. I now find Kinsect control and essence gathering, for example, a lot easier in World than MHGU. Marking a body part on a monster with your Insect Glaive in World, for example, pretty much guarantees your bug will extract that part’s color. That’s not the case in MHGU where your bug can get the wrong color if the monster moves, which it almost always does. I also find aiming and hitting ideal spots with the Light and Heavy Bowguns easier in World thanks to the latter’s more intuitive controls and added mobility. For Sword and Shield, I miss World’s Spiral Slash, which allowed you to readjust the direction of your attacks on the fly and made SnS combat feel much more fluid.

Such niggles shouldn’t be as big of a deal for veterans of the classic Monster Hunter games, who have invested countless hours using the old mechanics and can reacquire them the same way one can always ride a bicycle once he or she learns how to, even after not using a bike for a long time. If Monster Hunter World was your first game, however, even minor changes to the combat mechanics can feel annoying. This is especially true when you factor in older mechanics like flexing your arms while being rooted on the spot when drinking a potion or having to deal with pickaxes that break when mining. If The fact that online Urgent Quests — missions you need to finish successfully in order to unlock the next batch of quests — can only be cleared by the person who posts it can make tougher missions such as Lao-Shan Lung a giant pain, literally. This is especially true if you help folks clear their Urgent, only for them to bail and leave you when your turn comes around. Unlike World, MHGU does not scale down its online quests for solo players, making team play practically a necessity for the game's harder monsters (it would be akin to soloing Kulve Taroth and Behemoth). Ultimately, if you’re used to the quality-of-life changes from World, the mechanics for MHGU can feel disjointed and archaic, perhaps even trollish. In fact, I can actually see some folks quitting because they find it too cumbersome.

Then again, that would be a shame because players who decide not to stick with Generations Ultimate will be missing out on the biggest advantage that the game has over World: hunting styles. I know I already mentioned them but I can’t say enough how much of a game changer these are, especially given how the franchise has stuck to the tried-and-true “Guild-style” mechanics pretty much throughout its whole life.

As much as I love the fine-tuned Heavy Bowgun mechanics used by World, it still has no replacement for the airborne spread shot shenanigans of the Aerial Style introduced in MHG, which can make short work of a Zinogre’s horns. Neither does it have an alternative that replicates MHGU’s new Valor Style ability that lets you literally do a power run with your HBG drawn out, then slide into a special Siege Mode that shoots bullets at an ever-increasing rate of speed. For folks who enjoyed the crazy dodge counters of Adept Style, the closest thing you’ll get to experiencing that in World is seeing the special dodge animation when using the Temporal Mantle.

When you multiply the six hunting styles with the 14 weapons, that’s a lot of combinations to choose from. That doesn’t even factor in the so-called “15th weapon,” the Palicoes, which come with various weapon subtypes of their own. You can hunt as a cat that specializes in boomerangs, bombs, healing or one that even turns into a miniature Wolverine-style beast. It’s literally something I miss in World and wish would be added in the future, especially given how nice cats look in the new game.

Another advantage for MHGU is its insane monster count, which makes World’s number of creatures piddly in comparison. Granted, it’s not really a fair comparison as MHGU is the culmination of a generation that technically started way back in Tri, so it has the advantage of being able to build on assets that have been amassed over several years. Nevertheless, the monster count remains a clear-cut advantage for MHGU over World. Add the ability to play it on the go and you’ve got the true spiritual successor to the portable Monster Hunter experience that thrived on the PSP and 3DS.

Having said all that, MHGU is admittedly showing its age even for this Monster Hunter fan. While World magnifies the advantages of Generations Ultimate, it also makes its warts more obvious. It’s not even the graphics as MHGU, while not as visually impressive as World, looks surprisingly good on the Switch for an older game. Instead, it’s the quality-of-life changes that make dealing with some of the game’s older mechanics and limits a bit more difficult than before.

It’s almost ironic how a newer Monster Hunter game ultimately ends us showing what MHGU can do better. It’s still a great game that boasts, in my opinion, the cooler mascot (I mean, Nergigante looks cool but Valstrax is a freaking jet-powered dragon). At the same time, it also appears to serve as a fitting bookend to the end of an era, even for a fan who would love to see Capcom continue the old series, at least on portable systems.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate is like my old 300ZX from years past. It’s not as comfortable or as fast as newer sports cars. But boy did I have fun driving that thing. Let’s just hope that Monster Hunter World or its successor incorporates the fun parts from MHGU, whether it be stuff like hunting styles or being able to play as a cat. Like its flagship monster, if this is the last hurrah for the previous monster hunter generation, it’s certainly going out with a jet-powered bang.

• Rating: 8.5 out of 10
• Cost: $59.99, Switch
• Official site

Technobubble covers games, gadgets, technology and all things geek. Follow Technobubble poobah Jason Hidalgo’s shenanigans on Twitter @jasonhidalgo or his Tabiasobi Youtube channel.