Nearly 7 years later, the Monster Hunter Stories remaster fulfills a forgotten promise
Mar. 2, 2024Opinion | Content that never made it to western shores is en route, and that’s exciting
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I love when great games get modern day remasters, but it’s rarely major news these days. At first glance, the recent announcement for Monster Hunter Stories coming to PS4, Nintendo Switch and PC was no different. Yet, for longtime fans, there’s a reason to get excited that risks being overshadowed.
Monster Hunter Stories promises to change that. And now, I’m excited.
Monster hunted
If you like Palworld and Pokemon games, I’m once again asking you to try Monster Hunter Stories as the slept-on creature taming RPG gets a well-deserved remaster
Part of the reason 1.2 and 1.3’s content didn’t make the jump stems from the nature of these updates. They added new Monsters to tame – such as Teostra, Kushala Daora and Rajang – and a ton of the other additions centered around the Monster Hunter Stories: Ride On! Anime series, where licensing might have been a concern. This included equipment and boss fights against characters from the anime, some of which were the central focus of a new endgame activity as part of the Tower of Illusions, wherein multiple 50 Floor challenges were added.
Some of these changes included some fairly major quality-of-life features. You could hold double the number of Monsters, for example, and the character creator was greatly enhanced – with the ability to completely redesign your character, including their gender – instead of the restricted options from the original release. Even for Monsters that did see a release in the west, some were locked behind specific DLC Quests, which were given easier ways of obtaining them with later updates, which also had the knock-on effect of making it far easier to grind for specific equipment for your character.
“As someone who has been a fan of the series since the PSP, I’ve been one of those players that was left out in the cold – until now”
Notably, Capcom doesn’t even make a big deal about this being the first time that this content is available in the west either. It did correctly mention this fact in its press release shortly after the game’s segment during the recentNintendo DirectPartner Showcase - but despite a significant amount of content finally being accessible for many players for the very first time, I can’t help but feel that Capcom has buried the lede here.
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As someone who has been a fan of the series since the PSP, and who played Monster Hunter: Stories when it landed on western shores, I’ve been one of those players that was left out in the cold – until now. Put another way: it would be like if we had only ever received Pokemon Gold and Silver back in the day, and it wasn’t until HeartGold and SoulSilver that the west had finally received the content that was originally exclusive to Pokemon Crystal.
Maybe Capcom doesn’t see it that way, or maybe it understands that with the series’ potential audience being so much larger outside of Japan now that they didn’t think most players would see this as a selling point. It’s probably right about that. Yet, that doesn’t change the fact that Monster Hunter Stories isn’t just poised to be a simple remaster, it’s finally offering those of us who were there at the beginning the chance to play a version of the game that we’d never been afforded the opportunity. That’s the sort of happy ending that should never be taken for granted.
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