successfully recreates the high of a gacha without the guilt or predation. i've never played a monster hunter game properly - i've dipped my toes in world and watched several hours of friends playing rise - so i can't attest to the true nature of the series. a lot of moments in the game are pretty funny having not played any of the mainline games - it's very showy when a new monster is introduced as if i'm supposed to be flummoxed that a anjanath showed up all aggressive and ready to eat me and my shitty cat friend, which is really kinda funny. i imagine a lot of people would feel this way watching a pokemon movie or playing kingdom hearts 3 having never engaged with any other property from those franchises before.

the story is definitely the weakest part of this game, even though i think it's mostly passable. imagine a zelda story centered entirely around dinosaurs; that's basically what you're dealing with here, complete with a cute zelda expy at the helm. the game has a really robust and fun character creator, maybe the best cartoon-y creator i've ever encountered, and the sheer amount of outfits and weapons in the game give a sense of attachment and customization that really bolstered my personal involvement in the game.

the performance on switch is pretty shoddy. you can expect frame slowdowns any time you do a flashy move (which is quite literally every move in the game). i was still thoroughly charmed by the experience! the game has an addictive quality. if this came out when i was like, 16, the gene channeling mechanic would have completely ruined my life. i don't think it's enough to get me interested in the mother series, but as a big fan of monster collectors it really made up for what i disliked in sword and shield. it's kind of everything gamefreak promised with sw/sh plus more but manages to have its own unique identity within a pretty monopolized genre.

would totally recommend to someone like me who oooooh'd and aaaah'd watching other people around you play world & rise but were immediately overwhelmed upon trying the rise demo & thought you were just too dopey to ever experience this universe on your own

wings of ruin gives you all of the colour, wonder & goofy charm that monster hunter typically has on offer with a turn-based style that's much more my speed and i truly think this was the perfect entry point into the series for me

beat the story recently with the homies Drusilla, Ratha, BIG PURP, Diamond, lil nazir and Blaster and i hope to see them again in mhs3

You wouldn't think it, but there are a surprising number of conventions and tropes in the Monster Hunter franchise that fit well in a turn-based RPG, especially when you include monster catching/training. While I mostly enjoyed my time with Stories 2, the game often felt like it was having an identity crisis and was doing things that it felt like it had to do because that's how Monster Hunter does it, even when it did not make a modicum of sense.

To start off with, the plot is solid (especially for one rooted in the MH universe). You journey across several different major areas with your newly hatched Rathalos (who may never leave the party, this is Capcom's Charizard after all) in hopes of learning more about the prophecy that ruin will be brought to the land. Each new zone you journey to partners you up with a new buddy character, and you hear their Stories as you progress that arc in the plot with them. It gets a little formulaic, but all of the buddy characters are lovely and have compelling motivations. There is but one truly poor character in the game, and unfortunately it is Navirou; the Palico-turned-Funko-Pop who serves as the silent protagonist's mouthpiece for the duration of the story. He is genuinely grating and I don't even think I would mind so much if his design wasn't so out of place (just have him look like a normal palico!).

The combat system however, is quite good. You sort of have a layered RPS system where different monsters will either be focused on Power, Speed, or Technical attacks and you'll want to align both yours and your monster partner to use the attacks that beat it. You'll also want to pick the right type of weapon (Slash, Pierce, or Strike) that is strong against the part of the Monster you want to break. Each of the 6 available weapon types have their own quirks, and as you win more head-to-heads and occasional QTE sequences, you will build up your kinship gauge allowing you to get on your monster and unleash flashy, powerful attacks. While monster parts you've hit in the past will display their weaknesses in battle, the type of attacks the enemy monster has an affinity for will not. This turns it into purely a game of memory, especially when monsters enrage and switch up their tactics. It reminded me a lot of Fate/Extra in this way and is maybe one of my favourite parts about playing the game. There's a surprising amount of depth and nuance if you really want to dig into it.

Sadly, exploring the open world is sadly what drives me up the wall the most about the game. In the main Monster Hunter series, you set off on missions that are usually anywhere from 8 minutes to 40 minutes. All is quiet as you track your target, and when the battle begins is when the music flares up and really enhances the whole experience. For some insane reason, Capcom has decided that the open world in Stories 2 must also be silent at all times outside of battle. It is especially baffling when most of the music in the game is fantastic, but you just don't get to hear any of it for more than 50% of your time in the main story. There are lots of little caves and paths to explore and retrieve eggs to hatch into new Monsties to join you, but it is all silent during this time unless you get in a fight.

There's a pretty large selection of monsters in the game locking in at a little over 120, most of which are hatchable and can join your party, although they are spread out rather strangely and many of them are bizarrely absent for most of the game when there was plenty of room to introduce them sooner. As you might expect from a Monster Hunter title, this is because the game has a pretty sizable and in-depth High Rank post-game, but after 60 hours to get through the main story I really do not feel all that motivated to re-fight and catch all those Monsties again just to see a handful of new ones.

Despite all my gripes, I did genuinely enjoy much of my time with Stories 2. You can really see the potential for this series as a companion to the mainline action games, and I think if they made a Stories 3 after Wilds comes out, they could really have a banger. But for now Stories 2 is awkward, if not earnest, in its attempt to blend the popular action series with a turn-based RPG.

This would have been my favorite game ever if it came out 10 years ago at the height of both my Pokemon and Monster Hunter obsessions. Today, it is a really good game that suffers from a lack of narrative design ambitions and a resulting super repetitive main gameplay loop that is enhanced by a general slowness of combat, even at 3x speed due to the dedication to transition animations for literally everything.

The monstie system with all that it entails, from hatching eggs to transfering DNA blows Pokemon out of the water and is super addictive to pursue, offering lots of rewards if you decide to put the time in.

The whole presentation and animations are absolutely wonderful and add so much to the experience, same with the expanded combat system that kept me engaged this time around where the first game failed and made me actively feel like the game is supposed to be baby's first JRPG not intended for adults to enjoy. This game feels much more mature and balanced for all audiences, which convinced me to invest my time and see it through, which I don't regret at all, the final boss fight was pretty impressive and if I didn't already take almost two months to finish the story, making me completely burn out on the game, I would happily jump into the post-game stuff which features all the best monsters of course but as it is, I will leave it at that .

7/10
55 horas para zerar a campanha dessa sequência.
Olha eu sou um grande apreciador (fã) de Monster hunter, joguei o stories 1 e curti, apesar de seus defeitos sordidos, mas vi potencial e cá estamos nós na sequência que prometeu.
É tipo pkm só que melhor.
Se você jogou o mh stories 1 e curtiu vai nesse que é mais do mesmo só que maior e mais refinado, se tu jogou e odiou ou não curtiu fica longe desse.
Me diverti bastante jogando o 2, mais que o 1, ele tem uma história mais cinemática, mas clichê pkrl, embora eu ache a história do stories 1 clichê, mas pra mim possuía alma, tinha uma intenção genuína ali, aqui é estranho e forçado, parece o 1 só que sem todo o carisma do antecessor.
O ritmo é bem mais pedante que o antecessor, isso é um problema se você não tiver paciência.

Quanto ao combate, é igual ao 1 só que mais refinado e tem umas adições bacanas, é literalmente pedra, papel e tesoura o sistema, é enjoativo não tem pra aonde fugir, mas as animações dao um charme. Obs: tem botão pra acelerar a luta e terminar uma logo dps de certo nível, bem que pkm podia ter isso né!
No fim do dia, me senti um tanto gratificado ao zerar o game, mas o potencial dele não chegou ainda e isso me decepcionou por todo o game, é esperar um stories 3 e torcer pra Capcom espremer todo o verdadeiro potencial.

This game was really fun, as someone who played Monster Hunter Stories on 3DS, I feel this game opened up the world much more and refined the combat quite well, it pretty much took everything from the first game and improved it without taking much out from what I noticed.

I spend a good amount of my time doing nearly every side quest and hatching nearly every monster, and making sure I made every equipment I could, I did limit myself on my run by only using the Hunting horn as my weapon, so if any other weapon falls short in combat I won't be aware of it.

The world feels rich and open, the story is actually really good despite it repeating some of the story structures here and there but it's a RPG and that happens, monster collecting is fun, and plenty of customization options available.

If you love the first game definitely get this, if you like games like Pokemon, Digimon, or Shin Megami Tensei I can't see a reason you wouldn't enjoy this, and if you love Monster Hunter this is definitely a traditional RPG love letter to the main series.

Wow! Monster hunter has spent over a decade creating some of coolest monsters, now you can pet them, ride them, and explore a Saturday morning cartoon world together. The gameplay is great too, perfectly adapting the planned chaos of monster hunter to a turn based system.

Unfortunately it runs like unmitigated garbage on the switch which is always unacceptable.

If you like monster tamers this is a must buy…on pc.

Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin is essentially Monster Hunter: Shounen Anime Edition. The story is a very heartfelt and emotional tale about coexistence and the bonds of friendship between humans and monsters. You could say it is trope laden and cliche, but it is also still very wholesome and touching regardless. There's also a cast of charming human characters that the protagonist learns to work alongside besides their monster friends as well. I think the narrative and the characters are the strongest, most enjoyable part of the game.

The actual gameplay leaves a lot to be desired though, I don't think Monster Hunter translates well into a turn based game, at least not the way it was done here. A lot of core Monster Hunter mechanics are here like fighting monsters, getting materials to create and upgrade weapons and armor and even breaking monster parts, but I am not a fan of the rock/paper/scissors style turn based battle mechanics, though I will say the animations are flashy and cool and there is even the option to speed them up to make battles go by faster however the battles still go on for too long and get too repetitive and the worst thing of all is not being able to control your partner because the AI constantly uses the wrong attack types. I also often found hunting for eggs a chore thanks to very bland dungeon designs that mostly look the same and give little incentive to explore thanks to minimal secrets to discover and what rewards you do find in chests not being worth going out of the way for.

All in all while Monster Hunter Stories 2 has a cute story with charming characters it is held back by simplistic, repetitive gameplay mechanics, uninteresting dungeon design and poor AI and for that reason I would honestly only recommend it to the most hardcore Monster Hunter players or J-RPG fans.

After the first couple hours, I thought I was going to thoroughly enjoy this. It felt like a Pokemon game, but actually well designed. After about 15 hours or so, I had to drop it because it just wasn't keeping me interested. The story is incredibly bland and repetitive, which usually isn't a deal breaker for me. It certainly doesn't help, though. The battle mechanics ended up being way too literally rock-paper-scissors for me. At first I thought it was going to expand and become much more complex, but it never really did. The monsters themselves are cool, as they are in normal MH games. I didn't find the act of "catching" them and raising them very engaging, though. For all the things it does right, it feels like the ways it strays from the Pokemon formula hurt the game. The presentation of it all is miles ahead of Pokemon in terms of the cut scenes, the battle animations, etc. but it's not enough. The roaming around, battling, and the narrative all feel a bit repetitive and simple after a while. I enjoyed my time with it for about 10 hours - after that, it fell off.

I do think there is a lot here that Pokemon games should be taking note of (they won't) to improve their own games. Primarily the presentational aspects I mentioned a moment ago. Outside of its flashy (and quick) battles, it doesn't do much to stand out in the genre.

I always had an itch to play this but the price always seemed to steep for me so thanks to user Detchibe for gifting this for me for my birthday. I can now say with full affirmation and disappointment that this is one of the most dulling games I've played in a good long while.

It's almost as if every single component of this game was to be just "good enough," like the developer mission here was to merge half baked percentages of ideas to make a 100% "complete" game. It's a game with "tax writeoff" levels of care and effort.

It's not that Monster Hunter could never work in JRPG format, or that the presentation is too kiddie. It's that MHS2 brings absolutely nothing to the table so it masquerades as kiddie shit to deflect criticism, probably unintentionally but is unfortunately what happens. A half-baked, boring rock-paper-scissors battle system doesn't mean it's an "easy" battle system for children; it means it's half-baked. It's simple in the worst way; it's simply unengaging. Battling the same overworld monsters becomes so repetitive and uninteresting that the "S" rank you'll gain after from peerless play after each battle will mean nothing every time. There's a distinct lack of challenge and real strategy even though the game will always tell you about the "unpredictable" monsters, unpredictable in the sense that they only spam Rock but glow when they're about to use Scissors so watch out!

An annoying companion and a "power of friendship" plot aren't child-friendly ideas to tell a story, they're stale bread JRPG story tropes that dominate a story with nothing of substance to tell. I played about 7 hours of this 50+ hour game and I took it upon myself to see how the rest of the story goes through synopsis reading and cutscene watching and it has absolutely nothing more to show. It's a low stakes morality story that never once feels like it gets its feet on the ground. Everything is not just horribly cliché, but horribly anime cliché, like a stab wound but the already boring anime art style is like a little bit of lemon juice on the tip of the blade to make it hurt just a little bit more. If I can be real I found better "Stories" in the past 4 mainline entries of the series where it served as nothing but a standard backdrop of context to the gameplay.

I see too many reviews writing this off like "but it's for kids so," and I ask why so many people leave it at that. Since when has children's media been barred from such criticism? Especially since so many other JRPGs for children exist like Ni no Kuni, early Tales of, Yo-Kai Watch, Paper Mario, hell even Pokémon. Maybe I was saved of having to spend $60 on this but are we all just trying to justify a purchase here? So many middling reviews but I've never seen so many excuses. A game doesn't have to be "kiddie shit" to be boring and vice versa. MHS2 was obviously a spinoff made with skimpish resources as it shows with the repetitive overworld design and over-reuse of assets, but was never intended to be made with enough love and care to make something fulfilling out of. There's no heart, there's no soul, it feels like a product of a JRPG lab. If you want your kids to get into Monster Hunter just make your youngest play Freedom Unite and watch his ass get kicked by Nargacuga instead of trying to play Rock Paper Scissors with it.

For the first hour or so of gameplay, I was really charmed by this game and was ready to give it the "10/10 Game Freak better take some notes, Capcom is running laps around you" rating, but then the honeymoon period started to wear off and I was left with a JRPG that does some things better than Pokemon while doing other things worse than Pokemon. This is less of a "this is Legends Arceus but good" situation and more of a "this is a 7/10 but hey at least the graphics look nice" thing.

This game does do a lot of good things! The catching gameplay loop is really satisfying and I loved hunting for eggs like it was Easter Sunday just so I could hatch and finagle several overpowered dragons using the Rite of Channeling system. Unlike Legends Arceus, the graphics don't look like shit and there's a lot of varied locations to run around in. The battle system has a lot of little things and mechanics that make it feel like you're playing a turn-based Monster Hunter game rather than a Pokemon ROM hack with Monster Hunter characters awkwardly placed in there, with each random encounter feeling like a boss battle as you're gradually wearing these monsters down. Equipment progression is always fun and requires a lot of monster part harvesting and satisfies the portion of my brain that likes swinging giant swords at things and material crafting more giant swords out of the things I swung my giant sword at.

Alas, all is not well in Monstie paradise. Once you endure the frankly terrible English voice acting for long enough before finally relenting and switching to the Japanese track, that's when you start to notice that, in handheld mode, this game is devouring your battery faster than Breath of the Wild, so check "not very optimized for the system it's on" off the list.

You're like "yeah, okay I can live with that" but as the hours wear on, you start to notice that all of the level layouts are starting to blend into each other and you're starting to memorize the layouts of all the so-called randomized monster dens. You want to hunt for more eggs and genes, but then you're starting to blaze through these dens as fast as you can, because not only are the dungeon layouts monotonous, but the random encounters are too.

Ah yes, the battle system. Fighting monsters in this game is equal parts a breath of fresh air for someone who's well acquainted with the Pokemon game mechanics and, miraculously, also very tedious. While there is an elemental attack system in place (one that will screw you over when you get to the snow level and your assigned partner has an Ice-type monster doing piss-poor damage against other Ice-types thanks for nothing Anivia), the main focus is the Rock-Paper-Scissors format where you try to gauge how your opponent will attack and try to choose the stronger attack pattern for the best parries and counterattacks. Here's hoping you have a good memory or a helpful guide open because the game will penalize you if you forget which monsters use what and they'll often change what types of attacks they use based on certain battle conditions.

On top of all of this, your average random encounter takes about 20 turns to beat (it IS a Monster Hunter game after all) with each monster feeling like a damage sponge as they just wait for you to make one little mistake in type input. I do like that they tried something new and it does feel unique, but there were also quite a few moments where I was spamming a Monstie with Roar because I just did not want to be bothered with the random spawns in front of me. I didn't hate the battle system but I had to be in the mood for it, y'know?

As for the story, it's neither here nor there. You are a blank slate protagonist that sometimes changes facial expressions while your bootleg Jibanyan is narrating everything and as you make your way through the world completely mute save for screaming battle grunts, you befriend a bunch of battle companions who range from Fun to Kyle. Soon you hatch and bond with a cursed/blessed/blursed Rathalos and, even if you barely use this guy in battle, the game will treat him as your Toothless in every cutscene as you protect him from persecution just because he sometimes goes Hulk Mode and nearly kills people a couple times.

At first you think the game's core messages are "don't kill a newborn monster just because an ancient tablet says that they're the harbringer of destruction and they're born with powerful energies that they have to learn to control when they're creatures with thoughts and feelings like you" and "don't go seeking revenge on a creature that was just acting like an animal even if they killed one of your loved ones" as you hang out with your bro Ratha and a character that went through this arc in the first Stories game, but then this lesson gets kinda thrown out the window when the final boss is also a newborn monster that an ancient tablet says is a harbringer of destruction and one that was responsible for the death of a loved one. Whoops?

There's also a plot twist and an apocalypse death cult, but they're barely in the game and are just there to have a stoic guy go all anime crazy eyed and start screaming about forging a new world while a monster starts turning the landscape into the pages of The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

It's all worth it in the end - silly writing and the destruction of plot themes aside - because the final boss battle in this game is spectacular. It's brutal, it took me a couple of tries to beat, and requires constant vigilance of what your entire party is doing at all times and it rules. Everything in this game got payoff in this one moment and made the whole journey worth it, even if after the credits rolled, I was like "yeah I really don't like Kyle".

Ah well, once you get past the lukewarm story, the lukewarm cast, the lukewarm battle system, and the lukewarm dungeon designs, this game still satisfied that itch to catch them all in a game that doesn't have the Pokemon mechanics. Even if this game's core mechanic also has the shittiest little mascot saying "Mmm, pretty stinky don't you thinky?" after he sniffs something that was recently under a dragon's ass.

This game is essentially a 60 hour essay on why the power of friendship trope is the greatest thing ever, and honestly it's absolutely right.

Playing through this has been such a blast. I don't think it stands out in any particular way - but the full package is just so damn fun.

Contrary to it's name, the story's honestly not much to write home about - but it does exactly what it sets out to do, and honestly that's all it needs to do. It's cheesy - like really, really cheesy - and that's definitely not everyone's cup of tea, but sometimes it's so enjoyable to witness a story unfold that's the cheesiest thing ever all while being incredibly aware of that fact and just rolling with it.

The characters are pretty good! It definitely feels like it's aimed at a younger audience, so they're not particularly deep - but they're great fun nonetheless.
Ena, Reverto and Avinia were definitely my favorites.
Even though I never got far enough into the first game to properly get to know Reverto and Avinia, the role they had in this game worked well for them and made them really enjoyable even without that knowledge.

The gameplay's pretty interesting! At it's core, it's a pretty simple Rock/Paper/Scissors game with Power/Speed/Technique attacks - but it's figuring out what every monster uses for each of their patterns that keeps you on your toes.
You can also use Kinship skills for your Monstie to choose what they'll target for that turn, and if you both end up guessing correctly while aiming for the same target, you'll hit em with a Double Attack that boosts up the Kinship bar by a ton - it's incredibly satisfying. It's a simple enough concept that keeps expanding, and that's honestly the best way to go about a turn-based combat system.

If there's one complaint I have - it's that I feel like it stays a bit too faithful to the main series for it's own good.
In a regular Monster Hunter game, having the main character being solely a stand-in for the player works perfectly because that's all they need to be.
In a story-based RPG.. not so much. Navirou and Ena make up for it for talking where the MC does not, but that just makes the problem all the more glaring. I honestly think it would've been way better off with a concrete main character, but it doesn't bother me too much ultimately.
Ena's still great, and Navirou's.. well, he's the mascot character. You know how those are. He's not too bad though, and the game knows to not take him seriously when it's not necessary, so he's honestly allright.

But that aside, it's been a blast to play through.
Once you know what to expect, it's just a 60 hour ride full of childlike joy.
And considering a certain other monster collecting series is more focused on being a brand than releasing genuinely finished games, it makes me so glad this game's got so much detail and passion in it.
It instantly reminded me why I love this genre of games so much.