104 Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings Of Ruin

PC, Switch

Could there be anything more guiltily satisfying than carving an animal apart with a weapon made from its own brethren? Pacifying a monster that was just going about its business in its natural habitat and stripping it down for parts before kitbashing your spoils into something more powerful and doing it all again has been at the core of the Monster Hunter series since its inception. Though it’s masked with cartoon skin and more accessible systems, Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings Of Ruin brings the foolproof formula back for another outing.

Capcom would be foolish to discard it. The incremental approach to powering yourself up, and the laser-focused specificity of the maths that determines drop rates for materials, is catnip. But where Monster Hunter traditionally pairs this loop with action and bombast, the Stories games take it slow and steady. This sequel is happy to hit the same notes as the original: turn-based battles, interlocking rock-paper-scissors mechanics, and a greater focus on exploration. The star of the show is, unsurprisingly, the bestiary: ticking off the titular monsters one by one until you’ve collapsed an entire Palaeolithic ecosystem is the real force pushing you forward here, not the nebulous and unconvincing story stapled onto that familiar template.

Realised with an anime-inspired aesthetic reminiscent of Akira Toriyama’s expressive Dragon Quest art, Monster Hunter Stories 2 is a tonal whirlpool. The story – which casts you as a juvenile Rider; rival of the Hunters – is saturated in high-fantasy shonen anime tropes: you’re a silent hero, your grandfather was a man of legend, you’ve inherited his moxie, and fate has chosen you to save the world. Mix in a couple of rivalries, some troubled mentors and force-fed lessons about personal growth and responsibility, and you’ve got the picture. An obnoxious talking Felyne acts as your introduction to this world; your youthful naïvety combined with the cat’s unending reservoirs of unsolicited advice enlighten you about Mahala, its hyperactive ecosystem, and its apparent doom.

Contrasting with this lightweight setup is the overarching story and those titular Wings. A rare Rathalos has been prophesised to bring about an extinction-level event if something isn’t done immediately. (At least that bleaker part of the game aligns better with the indiscriminate monster murder.) And so, with that onerous task resting on your shoulders, you’re kitted up and booted out into the world. Within minutes, you’re in your first battle – and soon, you’re introduced to the most compelling thing about Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings Of Ruin: its two interlocking rock-paper-scissors systems.

There are three damage types: piercing, blunt and slashing. You need to arm yourself with a weapon that

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The art style is gorgeous – seeing special attacks in action is exhilarating, watching monsters rush at one another in head-to-head rage is similarly invigorating, and catching characters side-eyeing each other as your Felyne colleague mouths off is funny. But some in-world assets – scavengable materials, rock faces, water and those trees – are surprisingly ugly. Perhaps it’s because the cartoon character models and monsters are so well realised that these other assets look so offensive. Being introduced to magnificent, sprawling landscapes worthy of bigbudget helicopter shots across the Sahara is all well and good when it works, but when rocks pop in on a whim and dopey cow-things clip into each other with no collision, it makes you feel like you’re playing a midtier RPG, not living the dream as a roaming, heroic hunter. will deal damage to a monster’s weakness and then choose whether you want to attack technically, powerfully or speedily. Your attack type and damage type can be overridden by a monster’s defences and its own attack; quickly hitting a rock-backed dragon with a sword if it’s coming at you with a technical attack will negate your turn. As the game goes on, a few more threads are woven into this tapestry, but that’s the crux of it. And it will sink its claws into you, because it flirts with that perennial Monster Hunter formula.

Finishing off a monster in fewer turns, preventing it from attacking with your own predictions and techniques, and being on the same wavelength as your Monstie (the twee title given to the tame creatures with which you’ve bonded) all help rack up points. Gain an S Rank, and the potential for rarer spoils increases. Get your hands on rarer spoils, and you can make better gear. Get better gear, and you can demolish monsters with ease. And so we settle into that Monster Hunter rhythm, returning to the hub, upgrading our kit and then heading back out on an expedition. Pity, then, that the story gets in the way. Having some NPC trot out a few lines of dialogue about finding some lost kids is trite, and the quest is busywork at best, but needs must.

As you progress, you get the option to hatch more Monsties. Each has a type (power, technical, speed) and, like Pokémon’s HMs, a power it can use in the field (swimming, climbing ivy, smashing boulders), so it’s best to arm yourself with a diverse party before heading out. Rounding out your Monstie collection by sneaking into monster dens and pilfering their eggs is a welcome distraction at first, but once you realise the dens are all largely the same and there’s no real challenge involved, the appeal dissipates. Luckily you’ll be given an egg or two by NPCs from time to time to keep your Monsties and their powers relevant to impending barriers.

The creature-collecting aspect isn’t particularly rewarding in and of itself, either – several monsters have the same skeletons and animations, and once you’re a few hours in you can largely stick to your personal favourites. A late-coming mechanic that allows you to sacrifice monsters to bulk up others’ stats gives the egg stealing a renaissance, but by this stage any new Monsties are best used to empower your veteran crew.

Performance issues, some ugly world assets and the story’s pacing issues undermine the entertaining combat. And without urgency and direction, Wings Of Ruin’s turn-based battling and creature-collecting mechanics run out of steam well before the endgame. Even the engaging, iterative heart that beats within Monster Hunter’s chest cannot offset the brainless quests that pad out your hero’s journey. The series’ rich world is ideally suited to the RPG structure of Stories; we can only hope Capcom takes some choice parts from this effort and crafts them into something better.

Ticking off the titular monsters one by one is the real force pushing you forward here