REVIEW: ‘Monster Hunter Stories’ is a Clumsy Port of a Charming Title (PC)

Monster Hunter Stories, developed by Capcom and Marvelous Inc, was originally released in 2016 for the Nintendo 3DS. The title dipped into the wide stable of iconic monsters from Capcom’s own Monster Hunter series and built a Pokémon-clone around them. Rather then hunting monsters players became riders that fought alongside their favorite “monsties.” After being ported to mobile, it has now been rereleased on a number of platforms as a remaster.

The tonal differences between Stories and standard Monster Hunter are obvious immediately upon seeing it. A slick cartoony art style depicts the world of Monster Hunter in a new light, with vestiges of the main series maintaining a thorough line for fans. Buildings and outfits still have tribal motifs. Dinosaur-inspired monsters are still around but with more exaggerated features and big cute heads. The player still wields massive weapons but their proportions are now even more ridiculous when next to their cute chibi rider. It all has an endearing quality to it that feels appropriate for the series’ more cooperative tone without leaving the soul of the series behind.

That tone is established and carried throughout the game’s main storyline as well. The story kicks off with the player’s character taking up the mantle of a rider, a special member of their community that hatches monster eggs to befriend monsties that help them venture out into the wider world. From there, the player gets wrapped up investigating a strange black smoke that is driving monsters to extreme levels of aggression across the country. It is a simple story that serves its purpose to provide a loose structure to keep the player moving, but it isn’t enough to be a motivating reason to keep playing. It’s just sort of there in the background.

Investigating the black smoke adopts a structure similar to a mainline Monster Hunter game. The player ventures out into open regions that each have their own biome, monsters to fight, and resources to gather. Players venture out into the regions to gather resources to craft items and new gear, train their monsties, complete side quests, and fight fully grown monsters. The newest addition comes in monster dens, where players can find eggs to take back to town and hatch.

Hatching eggs is the vector through which players unlock new monsties to fight alongside them. Full eggs can be nabbed from monster dens found throughout each region, but players looking for the rarest of monsties will want to spend time grinding egg fragments. These fragments can then be combined by matching properties like monstie type, color, and pattern to hatch bigger and worse monsters to fight alongside the player. The system is an interesting alternative to catching them in the wild, but does require a significant time investment to get the most out of it.

While different monsties have abilities to help the player traverse regions like jumping over gaps or climbing over vines, their biggest roles come up in combat. Combat in Stories is handled in turn-based encounters where players fight with one of four weapons alongside one of their monsties. Players control their own character during fights, but their monsties act independently, choosing their own attacks, abilities, and targets the majority of the time.

Monsties and the player select from the same three types of attacks. Technical defeats speed, speed defeats power, and power defeats technical. However, the attack types only come into play when two combatants both target one another. In those situations, the combatant with the superior attack type avoids the attack of the other. This makes learning the behaviors and attack preferences of every foe you face pivotal in victory.

During combat players also build up kinship with their monstie which can be used to activate abilities for both the player and their monstie. Once 100 kinship has been built up the player also has the option to mount their monstie, controlling both at once. While mounted players also have the option to perform a unique ultimate ability that deals high amounts of damage, complete with a unique animation, but removes the player from their monstie’s back. The kinship system adds a strategic resource-management element to the fights that keeps them engaging when they start taking more time.

Unfortunately, I can’t recommend picking up Monster Hunter Stories on PC if any of the other platforms are a viable option. While the remaster runs fine on the platform, it has numerous clumsy issues that quickly get irritating. Menus use different keys for the same functionality, the camera still moves around in the background when moving the mouse to navigate pop-ups, and menu options have to be clicked one twice to name a few. The biggest oddity is found in moving to battles from exploring regions.

Exploration requires players to move with standard WASD controls and the mouse to control the camera, but when entering the battle menu, players are better off switching to using the WASD keys to navigate the menus and pressing enter to select options. This is because the player cannot select the submenu to select what type of attack they do with the mouse. It makes navigating the battle menu feel much more awkward than it should, and as battling is the main activity in Stories, it unfortunately has a big impact on the experience.

If it weren’t for the prevalence of strange control issues, Monster Hunter Stories on PC would be an easy recommendation for fans of Pokémon or other creature-based RPGs. Without those issues, it is a charming and smart RPG with some fun, unique ideas and smart design. It is cute and charming enough to be approachable for younger players and enjoyable for older players. The control issues, however, are a constant distraction from the game’s positives on PC, making it undoubtedly better to play any other version.

Monster Hunter Stories is available now on PC, PlayStation 4, and Switch.