Monster Hunter Tri

Monster Hunter Tri is the title that first properly established the series about hunting giant beasts outside Japan, and at the same time one of the most extensive games on the entire console. The player arrives in the fishing village of Moga, threatened by something big beneath the surface, and gradually works their way up from hunting small game to duels with dragons the size of houses. There is no experience point system here; all progress is based on equipment the player crafts from parts of hunted monsters.

Combat is slow, heavy, and utterly uncompromising. Every weapon has its own set of moves, its own speed, and its own way of returning from an attack to defense, so switching a sword for a hammer means learning the game almost from scratch. A hunt takes tens of minutes, the monster has its own behavior, gets tired, limps, flees to another area, and must be tracked by its traces. This installment's new feature is underwater combat, which adds a third dimension and is also the most frequently cited flaw, because orientation beneath the surface isn't always pleasant. Cooperation is absolutely essential: the game could be played online with other hunters, and it's precisely the shared hunt that's the reason people spent hundreds of hours on it.

Technically it was top-notch work on Wii, mainly thanks to the monster designs, their animations, and surprisingly expansive areas. The music is orchestral and switches to themes fans of the series recognize instantly when a large monster arrives. Reviews were very positive and the game became one of the few titles on Wii that also appealed to players seeking depth and difficulty. The official servers no longer function, which has closed off some content, but the game still offers a full-fledged single-player campaign. Its influence on the genre was enormous and many later monster-hunting games trace back precisely to it. The start is quite steep and the game explains very little, so the first few hours usually decide whether a player finds their way into it. But once they understand that every hunt is essentially a boss fight lasting tens of minutes, it's hard to find anything comparable. An expanded version later appeared on Nintendo's following consoles.