Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection Review – Same Hunts, Different Steps

Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection Review

Monster Hunter games are a pretty serious undertaking, at least for someone with my stunted attention span. The hunts are rather intense affairs, so every new piece of armor is hard fought for. You’ve got a lot of labor ahead of you. Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection looks to streamline some of that labor, add a more robust narrative, and change the formula a little. While the hunts do feel more approachable, the game is still a downright massive one.

I’ve got neither the patience nor the talent to get through many traditional monster hunts. But a series of turn-based battles? That I can absolutely do. You’ve got time to carefully consider your next move, plus you have your options laid out through a nested series of menus. Much more my speed. But these are still monster hunts, it turns out. Every monster is a unique challenge you have to master. You’ve got weaknesses to learn, moves to counter, and strategies to whip up. Once you figure all that out, these battles can be a breeze. But getting there is sort of a trial.

The Hunt Never Ends

In fact, Twisted Reflection is something of a nasty grind. It takes a lot of hunts to get the ingredients for any given armor set, and there’s a whole host of sets to unlock. You’ve also got an equally massive arsenal of weapons to acquire. Unlike the main series of games, mastering weapons is really more about memorization and strategy than anything else. On the other hand, you’ve also got a massive roster of monsters to choose from. So you’re trading one kind of complexity for another.

I haven’t played the previous two Stories games. So I can’t speak to their visuals in any meaningful way. But oh man, the character designs in Twisted Reflection are gorgeous. Your whole crew is full of unique and fascinating designs. Everybody is beautiful, their clothes are on point, and the colors are perfectly crisp. All of your armor sets look amazing, and the weapons you can craft are downright lovely. The monsters also look great, but this is a Monster Hunter game. It would honestly be unheard of for the monster designs to be bad. For me, it’s the armor sets that have me hooked. I’ll happily put in countless extra hours just to make sure I’ve fully upgraded every single one.

At first, I was thrilled with the combat system. Turn-based battles are much more my speed. Trying to juggle all the weapon choices, weaknesses, and monster strategies during a real-time action scenario felt pretty daunting. But it turns out the devs have successfully transplanted that stress and excitement onto a totally different game genre. You have all the time in the world to make your choices, sure. But that full load of strategic complexity is still very present here. Once you cross a certain narrative threshold, every fight starts feeling a lot more intense. Suddenly, any strategic tools you ignored or failed to employ are mission-critical.

Thrilling Encounters at Every Turn

To that end, every fight feels impactful, important, and tense. At least until you’ve mastered the aforementioned systems, it always feels like you’re succeeding by a slim margin. Which is great for keeping things interesting. I’m less in love with this design philosophy when I’m grinding for materials, but this is the price of entry. I’d rather have complex battles than boring ones, even if it makes grinding into something much more labor-intensive. Although you can run battles at 2X speed. So there’s at least one concession in place for anyone daunted by the material hunt.

Like any massive RPG, I’m intentionally glossing over the plot. For spoiler safety reasons, I won’t go into any concrete detail, but this is a pretty decent story. I started with the English dub and kept it set that way the whole time, which is unusual for me. The broad narrative strokes are good, but it’s the minor character details that really sold me. These people feel fleshed out, or at least the bones of everyone’s backstories are solid enough that I didn’t mind digging deeper every time. Even the protagonist feels like something of a real person, which is always a lovely surprise.

I’m impressed with the gameplay loop, at least from a distance. Every fight feels important in some way, there aren’t any extraneous encounters. Even the tiny monsters are useful sources for crafting materials. Every item you pick up is funneled towards the same useful ends. The whole in-game economy is bent towards making more armor and weapons. While you can level grind, it’s really your gear that represents growth. Until you get that latest set finished, you haven’t properly leveled up. The whole story is centered on these creatures, plus you can spend all your time raising and collecting them. It’s an admirable level of design focus.

Monsters All The Way Down

But this same focus means that the core audience for Twisted Redemption is the same as it’s always been. Outsiders like myself are unlikely to be converted to the cause. If you don’t have the patience and persistence needed to endlessly run that core loop, you won’t find your way into this game. I’m impressed by the design of the loop in question. Everything is focused neatly on monsters and their place in the larger world. But I still had a hard time latching on. The fights were still strenuous affairs, even in this more palatable turn-based format. The grind is well-crafted, but it never managed to properly hook me. But for fans of the main series looking for something different? Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection will be an incredible adventure.

***A PS5 code was provided by the publisher***