Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (MH3U) - Episode 1: Getting Our Feet Wet

Описание: In today's episode of the "MH3U" playthrough, we learn the basic controls and mechanics before hunting a Great Jaggi.

When it comes to the "Monster Hunter" series, the start of Village Mode's pretty mild and slow-paced as the game teaches you the basic controls and mechanics. So with that in mind, other than us defeating a Great Jaggi, which is more or less a bulkier version of a standard Jaggi that serves as this game's tutorial monster, there really isn't much to talk about.
On a different subject, as this playthrough progresses, I'll note general, non-generation-specific differences between this game and more modern titles (Gen 5 and follows) for those who have gotten into the series with "World", "Rise", "Wilds", or any game after that as they come up.

First and foremost, in games prior to Gen 5, instead of a seemless open world, locations were divided into individual rooms that were connected through traditional transition screens. Now while this may have made locations more cumbersome to travel around- especially since the closest thing to fast travel that you had was a farcaster- you could use it to your advantage in a fight. You see, if you needed a moment to catch your breath and heal and/or sharpen your weapon, you could just rush into the next area over and then just return to the fight when you're ready. Sure, a monster could potentially follow you into that area if they decide to move, but for the most part, they'll be chilling where you left them.

Speaking of Monster movement, unlike in Gen 5 onwards, in which a monster's location can be visible on the map at all times with enough encounters, in older games, there were only four ways to know where a monster was: memorizing its movement patterns in that area, throwing a paintball at it after finding it, using a psychoserum, and having Psychic as an armor skill. Thankfully, for most monsters, once you find them, you can track them by following them to the area that they're walking to or, in the case of flying monsters, follow their shadow.

As for armor skills, in the older titles, if you wanted a skill to be active, you needed to have ten points of it across your entire armor set (with that total being even higher for skills with multiple tiers like Attack Up and Defense Up), unlike in modern games, where you just need a single point of a skill for it to become active. Not to mention, unlike nowadays, where slots are given out like candy, back in the older games, armor pieces would have, at most, three slots. So as you can imagine, mixed sets were even more important back then, both in terms of maximizing your skill points and slots, as well as negating negative skills.

On a different subject, one of my favorite things that was added to modern "Monster Hunter" games is the Hunter's pouch because back in the pre-Gen 5 days, your entire inventory was your pouch. So if you wanted to harvest items/materials during a quest, you'd need to leave some space in your inventory, which means fewer items that you can bring with you. As a result, every inventory space mattered.