Once you've slain your first gigantic monster, like a dose of meth, you will be hooked!
Lets start with the basics. Monster Hunter Tri is a superbly designed game, which allows you to take out some magnificent dragons on land or some enormous leviathans in water. No, you're not gonna go to the sky for battle. There are just enough areas to make you feel like you're not being ripped off in places to explore. They have a deserted island, which is like the beginners playground, a Flooded Forest, which is much like a swamp you would think Yoda would live at, a Sandy Plains, an icy Tundra and a Volcano. Now right off the bat, Monster Hunter Tri will introduce you to the battle system. For beginners, like myself, it would naturally be difficult. It throws you into an un-challenging battle with a giant dinosaur-like herbivore and no lock-on feature. At first, especially when fighting small Kelbi, which are similar to deer, or Bnahabra, airborne giant flies the size of your head, you're gonna feel that no lock-on feature is taxing, but in a few hours of gameplay, you'll welcome this lack of lock-on and realize its to your advantage, because when you're fighting your first great jaggi, which is the gateway monster to real monster hunting, you will most likely die once or twice but once you succeed, you'll be greeted with that awesome feeling you get when you slay a monster that should have been able to devour you shortly after you took that first swing. In Monster Hunter, your main reliance in battle is blocking and dodging. Reaching for a potion every five seconds is not an option. Now once you've gotten the hang of things, you will be given more quests. These come in rating. 1*(star) to 6*(star). The increase in *'s means the increase in difficulty. And the more quests you do, the more gold and materials you will recieve, and also you will unlock more quests, which is the main way to progress in offline story mode.
Monster Hunter Tri, for a Wii title, looks great. Detailed characters and monsters with cool to quirky looking equipment and very appealing battle surroundings. If you are a Wii owner who knows what to expect from a Wii game, the graphics should not be a turn off for you. And even though the visuals are so high-end when considering what console you're dealing with, it rarely takes away from the game. Offline, Monster Hunter Tri will run smooth as soft serve ice cream from Baskin Robins, but online when you're facing a couple giant monsters at once with three allies alongside you, you're definitelly gonna notice a slow down in the CPU processing. Though its not enough to affect your gameplay, it certainly will be a bit annoying.
Now the concept of Monster Hunter Tri is to kill really big monsters. Then once they're dead, start carving them up. By doing this, you can get their claws, hide, pelt, horns, bones, and anything that would prove useful in creating new equipment. Once you've attained the correct materials, head over to the blacksmith to make even better equipment. Then you should be ready to fight some bigger, stronger monsters. This may sound like a short road to take, but there are 18 giant monsters, with fiery breath and poisonous talons that are ready to kill you upon first sight, and they will kill you on first sight, and the only way to collect their materials(carves) to create their equipment set is to kill or capture them, which undoubtedly will take you a few times before you can learn their moves and how to dodge them. But even if you've killed them once, it may take another few tries in order to successfully obtain all the carves you need in order to forge their equipment set.
Monster Hunter Tri is a very long game. The object of the game, being upgrading your equipment in order to be more efficient in battle, takes a very long time to move up in the ranks. This is better done offline until you've finished story mode. Once you've created the best equipment possible, you won't have anything else to do but to head online where new challenges and equipment, and hopefully friends will await you.
Online Multiplayer is the sole flame for this game. Its the glue to the craft, or the butter to the bread. Here you can meet up with up to three friends, or strangers, to co-operate in taking down large creatures by logging onto one of four servers. Open, which is designed for players of any skill, Beginner, which is for new hunters, Expert, which is for veterans of the game with high rankkings, and Recruiting which is used for specific quests or activities, or for just meeting up with certain friends. Online, you have a ranking called HR(Hunting Rank), which will for the most part determine which server you will log onto.. For every quest you complete, you will recieve HP(Hunting Points) which once accumulated enough will raise your HR. This will unlock more quests. Now online, questing is done a bit differently. There are two types of quests. Low Rank and High Rank. Low Rank quests are 1*(star) to 3*(star). Once you've reached HR18, all low rank quests will be unlocked. High Rank, 4*(star) to 6*(star), gives you the same quests with stronger monsters. You must be HR31 or higher to join these quests. These stronger monsters are labelled "high rank" which means they also have better materials for carving, even if they are the same monster you are fighting. These better materials are essential for forging high rank equipment. In other words, you were just looped. You are about to play the whole game over again, except with difficulty set to high. Yes, there are few new quests that you could not undergo in low rank quests, but not enough to make you feel like you're exploring new parts of the game. Though the equipment forging will feel new, slaying the some monsters, but stronger, will feel used but still appreciated.
So overall, with Monster Hunter Tri, you've got a lot to play around with, from offline single player, to online multiplayer where you can tackle monsters with some allies. With that said, there are some iffy parts of the game. A hard to access menu system, which battle never pauses, making Monster Hunter Tri more real time than ever, realistic movements which most would welcome, including me, but to some is a turn off because it doesn't allow them to swing that enormous great sword as fast as they wanted to, and last of all, the worst online communication system there is, unless you have a USB Keyboard or you, and everyone you're playing with, has a Microphone attached to their Wii.
In the end, Monster Hunter Tri is worth it. You got a long storyline, even though the story isn't the greatest, you got amazing multiplayer which will last you hours on top of your already high gameplay time, if you managed to finish offline mode, and you have some of the best graphics you will ever see on the Wii. That isn't saying much, but for Monster Hunter Tri, it works and looks great. Buy it.