I've always personally considered getting the G rank crown special permit from beating [spoilers] the point at which you've "beaten the game", so even though I've played this one a lot over the many years its been out and in my hands, I don't think I've ever really "finished" the game until today, hence why I'm logging and reviewing the game now.
Of course there's still a couple tougher monsters I'll one day have to take care of, and I'm not even at the point of being able to try Lv140 GQ monsters, so overall there's still a LOT left for me to do in the game. Tutorial complete I guess.

I've been feeling pretty sentimental the past month, because I picked up the game again and have been hunting online again with some friends. This game came out during a bit of a rough part in my life that I'm still feeling the aftereffects of to this day, and it was my first Monster Hunter game. The online shutting down really feels like the end of an era. If I've ever been having a rough time this was one of my go-to's and I knew that even if friends weren't around to hunt together, there was always something I could chip away at on my own, or there was probably at least one person still playing the game that I could get to know for a couple rounds of hunting.

Looking at it now, MH4U is probably one of my favourite games period. Playing off and on over these 8-9 years, I feel like there's always been a new challenge around the corner. G rank in the older MH games really does not fuck around and being totally honest, it took me many years of chipping away at this game's, and also jumping between other MH games before I got to a level where I really felt like I could contend with the monsters at their quickest and smartest. Even then I still get caught out by shit all the time and it still feels like I have more to learn and improve on. I think the same can easily be said for most monster hunter games but it's just something that really jumped out at me coming back to this one.

Overall, it's a fantastic game. The loss of the online functionality is a tragedy and I really hope a project like pretendo network will be able to get the servers up and running again. Maybe one day Capcom will port some of the older MH games with some upscaling for larger displays, and a better-constructed online mode that won't have to inevitably shut down one day. I still plan to do as much online hunting as I can in these last few days, but for now I'll just say it's been real, you legends.

Never before have I cared about a puzzle game, but Void Stranger had that special something to make it click for me. The story that unfolds over the first two "routes" is truly affecting, a beautiful tale of devotion spanning worlds that accomplishes so very much with so very little. You are only shown fragments, brief snippets of moments both pivotal and mundane, left to mull them over as you descend ever further into The Void, solving sokoban screen after sokoban screen. And somehow I cannot imagine a more effective means of conveying the story; sparse as the text may be, every word counts, and these routes achieve lofty emotional heights.

The subsequent routes are less inspired, veering into more well-trodden ground, but they too have moments of brilliance. Despite generally negative experience with the puzzle genre in the past, I found myself enraptured enough with Void Stranger to explore its every crevice and see all that it had to offer. That I found myself so engrossed with a game of a genre I previously had not cared for says to me that there is something noteworthy about Void Stranger, that it transcends the limits of its world. Any reservations I might have about it are surely trifling in the face of that understanding.

As an aside, many elements of Void Stranger's narrative are quite similar to Labyrinth of Galleria; I can recommend VS to fans of Galleria, and vice versa.