Killing giant monsters and making big weapons never felt so good
It all starts in a little fishing village that has earthquake and monster problems. Your ultimate goal as a newborn hunter is to hunt them all, but in the main story the Lagiacrus is your nemesis, though it is not the strongest monster by far. Even after killing it there are many more other challenges waiting for you to surpass. The story is far from being great but it gets the job done just not go in expecting an epic one.
The beginning of the game can be a little slow, because they explain to you the many aspects of the game. Inside the village you can find anything you need, theres a shop for potions and items to collect materials, another one for forging your equipment and the like. You also have your house to save and organize all your items and a farm used to cultivate herbs and stuff in order to have them near you instead of going out to find them.
Now the gameplay itself is pretty basic, you move with the nunchuk, run with Z , attack with A or swinging the wiimote, you dodge with the B button and use items with the 1 button. You will get used to it though the camera can take some more time to get used to cuz you move it with the d-pad. It all adds up and works perfectly fine but the Pro controller can a little bit better but still both are functional. Now the real trick about fighting lies in the monsters patterns. Every monster in the game move and attack in many different ways and its your job to attack and dodge when its needed, but even with knowing that it takes some serious skill cuz this is one hard game. Many of the monsters in the game will kick your ass if you dont take precautions. Still dont be scared off the the difficulty because the rewards are great, when you kill one of those enormous beasts you will feel good and it will give you the materials you need to make even better weapons and armor.
Also theres no leveling or exp systems, only a very extensive weapons and armor systems. In order to make better equipment you need to go out to collect materials to create your weapong and armor of choice and also the monsters you slain give you materials to create even better equips so all in all theres plenty of depth to be found.
Graphics wise I can only say that this is one of the prettiest games on the wii that i have ever seen. Open ended environments with lots of detail and variety will take your breath, though the world could be a little bit bigger. Loading times when you go one area after the other are small as 2 sec you wont even feel them, but when you go in and out of the village, those you will feel but they dont ruin the experience in any way.
On the sound department theres not much to say, theres not much VO if any and theres only music in the village and in some other parts of the game which is ok but nothing really great. On the other hand monsters do make different sounds that do sound good.
Replay value in this game is huge as only the single player can easily take you 40+ hours to complete, theres also the online portion of the game that adds more quests, which means more monster killing and getting even better equipment. I am pleased to say the you dont need friend codes to play with people online, you go hunting with other 3 buddies and it includes wii speak support, and even without it theres plenty of options to communicate to your other party members. You will probably need to have a decent internet connection to play it as smooth as it can possibly be, I have a good one so no worries but I cant say the same for people who dont have it.
In the end this is one of wiis best games that every hardcore gamer should have and even people that are not will have a blast playing as long as they dont mind too much the difficulty and slow pace but with great rewards.