HHAAaaaaa I need to rant about a game. SO BADLY.
So in 2021, I bought Monster Hunter Stories 2 on a whim. I like Monster Hunter (as my nearly 500 hours in World will attest), and reviews for Stories 2 were quite positive, so I was like, let's try it! And after playing it, that game impressed the hell out of me. It's a pokemon-like-ish, with turn based battles and collecting monsties. However, it mixes it up with a rock-paper-scissors gameplay mechanic of technical-power-speed. To fight monsters well, you not only need a good monstie, but you also need to learn monster patterns and out maneuver them. It's great! Combine that with a really good story and some genuine challenge, and Monster Hunter Stories 2 was a fantastic game! One of my favourite games of 2021 in fact! I adored it.
So when Monster Hunter Stories 1 came to PC a few weeks ago, it was a must-play for me. I knew it would be worse, especially in the story department. After all, for Stories 2 Capcom were so impressed by their story department that they hired an outside developer to write a story for them instead. I knew that was a comment on Stories 1's story. But I was hopeful it would at least be good. It was not. As much as Stories 2 delightfully surprised me, Stories 1 has utterly disappointed me.
Ok so, the good rock-paper-scissors gameplay is there, it's not as good or fleshed out, but the fundamentals are there. However, the story of Monster Hunter Stories 1 is hot garbage. Like, calling it garbage is an insult to garbage. The story of Monster Hunter Stories 1 is the absolute worst I have EVER seen in a video game. That's not an exaggeration. Pokemon Colosseum, which is so bizzare and jank it's notorious? Better story. Tomb Raider Underground, which was SO BAD I barely finished it? Better story. SONIC 06? Better story. Way better even, it's no contest. You can compare Stories 1's story to anything and it's worse. I'm not joking. It's TERRIBLE. Like, if someone would to make a list of mistakes you could make in storytelling, Stories 1 would check every. single. one.
I'll give you some examples.
So Stories 1 starts the game by having the player bond with a Rathalos earlier than they are supposed to. This is a big deal™ because riders aren't supposed to be able to bond with monsters before getting their kinship stone. It's the talk of the town, a huge historical precedent! Then the town gets attacked by a blighted monster and the baby rathalos falls off a cliff and the game forgets that rathalos exists until the middle of the game. And when it returns... it just... appears. Completely at random. No circumstance, no story arc, just... there it is. A quick glow of the kinship stone later and off to more adventures. This rathalos, who is (spoiler I guess) the deus ex machina that is the crux of the story's ending is gone for half of the story and then just shows up. The only way the game could have made that reunion worse would be for it to literally teleport into your stables (pokemon box) at random without telling you. And of course, once the extremely important rathalos is a part of your party, they are just another monstie like any other until the plot calls for them to take center stage.. This companion who's dedication to the player is literally the crux of the end game has not a single moment to allow the player to get attached to them or see the rathalos get attached to the player. They are just there. UUUGGGHHH.
But it only gets worse from here. At the start of the game it sets up the main arc, the scary blight that could destroy the world! In fact it starts with a blighted monster attacking the village and even killing someone! The horror! Then the game completely forgets the blight exists for the rest of the game. Serious. Once the blighted monster is chased away, it's time to go off on adventure! Not pursue the world-ending blight, not even the saturday morning shounen anime-level story of going to various villages and beating up a blighted monster and saving the day once a week. Oh no. The blight is just gone until the very end of the game.
So if the main plot is just no where to be found, what is in its place? A comedy villain. A villain that is a _literal_ joke, who was specifically _made to be a joke_, in both design and actions. You know how shounen anime aimed at children will have a random joke villain show up for an episode, who's design is built to look stupid and actions are equally ridiculous and the heroes knock them down and chase them off without even breaking a sweat, and then that villain is forgotten and never spoken of again? Ok, now imagine someone REALLY liked that character and wrote a fan fiction of them, where the heroes spend hours and hours dealing with them. Also imagine that the fan fiction writer is 4 years old, and nothing makes any damn sense. THAT IS THE MAJORITY OF THE STORY IN MONSTER HUNTER STORIES 1.
Stories 1 spends FIFTEEN GODS DAMN HOURS on this character. In a thirty hour game.
It would at least be redeemed a little bit if the jokes it is spending all of its time on were good. They're not. They're terrible.
Anyway I just described the whole game to you. Yea. There's a little bit of blight at the start, five-ish hours of random adventuring, hours and hours and hours of this joke villain arc, a couple more hours of random adventuring, and then the main arc comes back for the end. Except they don't know how to tell a story so of course the joke villain comes and dominates the ending too. Because world-ending evil energy that makes monsters super powerful and crazy enough to destroy entire civilizations and literally murder people on screen is not worth focusing on and dealing with, gotta go back to the ineffectual joke villain.
![[Image: QBrASMn.gif]](https://i.imgur.com/QBrASMn.gif)
Anyway, Monster Hunter Stories 2 is great. It's weird that the franchise starts with 2, you'd think there would be something before it, but no, the first game is Stories 2. Maybe the 2 is like an allegory? Like, "Monster Hunter, but with a story 2!" Kind of deal. I guess we'll never know.
So in 2021, I bought Monster Hunter Stories 2 on a whim. I like Monster Hunter (as my nearly 500 hours in World will attest), and reviews for Stories 2 were quite positive, so I was like, let's try it! And after playing it, that game impressed the hell out of me. It's a pokemon-like-ish, with turn based battles and collecting monsties. However, it mixes it up with a rock-paper-scissors gameplay mechanic of technical-power-speed. To fight monsters well, you not only need a good monstie, but you also need to learn monster patterns and out maneuver them. It's great! Combine that with a really good story and some genuine challenge, and Monster Hunter Stories 2 was a fantastic game! One of my favourite games of 2021 in fact! I adored it.
So when Monster Hunter Stories 1 came to PC a few weeks ago, it was a must-play for me. I knew it would be worse, especially in the story department. After all, for Stories 2 Capcom were so impressed by their story department that they hired an outside developer to write a story for them instead. I knew that was a comment on Stories 1's story. But I was hopeful it would at least be good. It was not. As much as Stories 2 delightfully surprised me, Stories 1 has utterly disappointed me.
Ok so, the good rock-paper-scissors gameplay is there, it's not as good or fleshed out, but the fundamentals are there. However, the story of Monster Hunter Stories 1 is hot garbage. Like, calling it garbage is an insult to garbage. The story of Monster Hunter Stories 1 is the absolute worst I have EVER seen in a video game. That's not an exaggeration. Pokemon Colosseum, which is so bizzare and jank it's notorious? Better story. Tomb Raider Underground, which was SO BAD I barely finished it? Better story. SONIC 06? Better story. Way better even, it's no contest. You can compare Stories 1's story to anything and it's worse. I'm not joking. It's TERRIBLE. Like, if someone would to make a list of mistakes you could make in storytelling, Stories 1 would check every. single. one.
I'll give you some examples.
So Stories 1 starts the game by having the player bond with a Rathalos earlier than they are supposed to. This is a big deal™ because riders aren't supposed to be able to bond with monsters before getting their kinship stone. It's the talk of the town, a huge historical precedent! Then the town gets attacked by a blighted monster and the baby rathalos falls off a cliff and the game forgets that rathalos exists until the middle of the game. And when it returns... it just... appears. Completely at random. No circumstance, no story arc, just... there it is. A quick glow of the kinship stone later and off to more adventures. This rathalos, who is (spoiler I guess) the deus ex machina that is the crux of the story's ending is gone for half of the story and then just shows up. The only way the game could have made that reunion worse would be for it to literally teleport into your stables (pokemon box) at random without telling you. And of course, once the extremely important rathalos is a part of your party, they are just another monstie like any other until the plot calls for them to take center stage.. This companion who's dedication to the player is literally the crux of the end game has not a single moment to allow the player to get attached to them or see the rathalos get attached to the player. They are just there. UUUGGGHHH.
But it only gets worse from here. At the start of the game it sets up the main arc, the scary blight that could destroy the world! In fact it starts with a blighted monster attacking the village and even killing someone! The horror! Then the game completely forgets the blight exists for the rest of the game. Serious. Once the blighted monster is chased away, it's time to go off on adventure! Not pursue the world-ending blight, not even the saturday morning shounen anime-level story of going to various villages and beating up a blighted monster and saving the day once a week. Oh no. The blight is just gone until the very end of the game.
So if the main plot is just no where to be found, what is in its place? A comedy villain. A villain that is a _literal_ joke, who was specifically _made to be a joke_, in both design and actions. You know how shounen anime aimed at children will have a random joke villain show up for an episode, who's design is built to look stupid and actions are equally ridiculous and the heroes knock them down and chase them off without even breaking a sweat, and then that villain is forgotten and never spoken of again? Ok, now imagine someone REALLY liked that character and wrote a fan fiction of them, where the heroes spend hours and hours dealing with them. Also imagine that the fan fiction writer is 4 years old, and nothing makes any damn sense. THAT IS THE MAJORITY OF THE STORY IN MONSTER HUNTER STORIES 1.
Stories 1 spends FIFTEEN GODS DAMN HOURS on this character. In a thirty hour game.
It would at least be redeemed a little bit if the jokes it is spending all of its time on were good. They're not. They're terrible.
Anyway I just described the whole game to you. Yea. There's a little bit of blight at the start, five-ish hours of random adventuring, hours and hours and hours of this joke villain arc, a couple more hours of random adventuring, and then the main arc comes back for the end. Except they don't know how to tell a story so of course the joke villain comes and dominates the ending too. Because world-ending evil energy that makes monsters super powerful and crazy enough to destroy entire civilizations and literally murder people on screen is not worth focusing on and dealing with, gotta go back to the ineffectual joke villain.
![[Image: QBrASMn.gif]](https://i.imgur.com/QBrASMn.gif)
Anyway, Monster Hunter Stories 2 is great. It's weird that the franchise starts with 2, you'd think there would be something before it, but no, the first game is Stories 2. Maybe the 2 is like an allegory? Like, "Monster Hunter, but with a story 2!" Kind of deal. I guess we'll never know.
![[Image: RPvlSEt.png]](https://i.imgur.com/RPvlSEt.png)
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