This is my second time completing the game, only this time it’s meant to be played in co-op and with a mage instead of a warrior class. My first time playing this solo was more positive. The main reason is the game’s balance feeling terrible with 2 players. The enemies are far more challenging with more health and the hits are more deadly. It feels like the game is balanced for 4 players when you play online. It was so bad, that we beat certain bosses in solo in order to advance. This includes beating the last boss. The lag makes things worse. The game also has certain bugs/glitches regardless of the mode you play. Especially the last area. Don’t get the game if you bought it for online play. If you’re planning on playing solo just to get a Diablo game on the vita, then it might be worth it if you keep your expectations low. You can add a star more in that case.

I haven’t played many kart racing games except for the Mario Kart ones and Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing. This game holds up really well when compared to them and this should tell you something about the quality of CTR. It has all the ingredients of being fantastic. The gameplay is good with some decent depth to get you engaged, the challenge is just right for the most part, the graphics are great for the time and and I love the adventure mode. It has good collectibles and varied races. If I compare it directly to Mario Kart 8 (one of my favourite games), then Mario Kart 8 is more polished (controls), the characters are more recognisable (though this is very subjective) and the quality is higher (graphics) but CTR has a better thought out single player mode and while the other points are less, they’re still very good. If there is one flaw, then perhaps an auto save would have been welcome. Or at least being asked to save instead of driving to the save tv every time you need it. Either way, you can’t go wrong with it. If you enjoy kart racing games, then this is definitely worth playing.

I clocked over 700 hours in this on my 3DS. It's very very good and packed full of things to do, with tasteful nods to older games in the series like the inclusion of Dundorma/Dondruma from MH2, all the while still having it's own thing going on. Gore Magala might be one of my most favorite monsters in the franchise, alongside other great fights like Molten Tigrex, and several other things that appear later in the game that I do not intend to spoil. The weird randomly generated quest system that they added alongside all of this is a bit hit or miss, but I liked being able to get differently designed armor pieces with good skills like Honed Blade+3 on them permitting me to make some pretty cool looking sets even back then when most people ran around in clown suits. For me, I always enjoyed trying to push the most useful skills onto my gear while still retaining a sort of cohesion to it visually, and this may be the last game in the series where this feels somewhat doable without just outright slapping "layered armor" on (which doesn't yet exist in this game), although I am unsure as I did not get as much mileage out of generations.

The biggest issue I think is that the game is on a handheld. I personally always preferred console Monster Hunter due to the larger screen better reflecting the scale of the monsters, and the nice audio design in the older titles like MH1-3. I was also not a huge fan of mounting, but it is up to you how much you want to use it. The new verticality 4th gen introduced is pretty great, otherwise! Additionally, the control scheme on this one is kind of unfortunate unless you happen to have either a New 3DS or a Circle Pad Pro, the latter of which I used for this game and would highly recommend. I've always insisted on manual camera control in these games regardless of how awkward my hand had to be positioned to do so, but the analog stick being ontop of the dpad on the 3ds just made it outright impossible for me without the use of the circle pad. The game also lagged a bit for me when playing with more than 2 players on the original 3DS hardware, so I generally stuck to playing with just one friend at a time, or alone. The village content in this game is actually pretty good for solo play, providing a method of playing some high rank or G rank content alone before venturing into the gathering hall to do the rest, although you could obviously also just do that as with practically any monster hunter game.

I had a great time playing this for 15 hours. I went out of my way to unlock everything in every mode and get all the collectibles (in game achievements). Even though you can clear the main mode quickly, it kept me interested enough to keep playing a little bit every day. I haven’t played the other monkey ball games yet though, so I come from a fresh perspective.

The 3D is good, I like the soundtrack, the variety in modes and the challenge that gradually goes up. The kart racing mode especially surprised me because it felt very challenging. The controls felt bad at the beginning, but mastering it felt very satisfying.