Toukiden: Kiwami

After playing Generations for a sizable about of time, I think the Monster Hunter series peaked somewhere between 3 and 4, in a game we never actually got in this universe. MHGen is the result of a series packing far too much depth into an aspect of the game that nobody actually wants to spend a majority of their time doing. Thankfully, like all things bigger than Jesus, there are plenty of derivatives, and in the case of Monster Hunter at least two of them make a case for being better than their Spirit Dad: Toukiden and God Eater.

The Monster Hunter "genre", for lack of a better term, is based around 2 halves, the hunt and the prep. Though calling them "halves" seems generous to the prep side, since it exists as a way of enhancing the hunt rather than as an entity of it's own. You could take the prep half of any of these games out solo and it would still hold up somewhat, it's designed to be engaging in it's own right. But remove the hunts and the entire driving force behind the stat, material, weapon and armour management goes with it. Well, aside from fashion, but that can only keep you engaged for so long. Point being, no matter how much you enjoy the prep side, you only enjoy it because of the hunt side.

Which is why I feel that Monster Hunter Generations' approach to progressing the franchise misses the point somewhat. Following from groundwork set in 4, MHGen seems to trying to make the prep side of things more of a fleshed out experience in it's own right. It's had an effect on everything in some form, from increased material costs to more villager requests, but is mostly exemplified in the palicos. Because of the aforementioned increased material costs, palico expeditions are a necessity between missions, and therefore so is managing their enthusiasm, and if you want companions that can actually pull their weight then you'll need to manage their skills and equipment(actually equipment is pretty cool and simple, but it IS still another thing to manage), and if you want to duplicate your items then you'll now need to assign a palico to the trade mission too for the best results. All that certainly makes the prep half much meatier and more of an experience in it's own right, but when both are weighted as strongly as they are in Generations, then both sides feel like stopgaps in the progress of the other. Prep feels like busywork, hunts feel like excruciatingly long "End Turn" buttons.

But enough about Monster Hunter, and on to Toukiden, which trims a shitload of fat that the Monster Hunter series has accumulated over the years, keeping it's prep systems firmly tied to the core hunting and offering a more arcadey take on the genre.

Toukiden steals the basics in their entirety from MH, which is a pretty solid foundation to go on, so fair enough. But Toukiden is more about straight-up combat than all the stalking, chasing, trapping and tactical dismemberment you'd expect. Monsters will never leave an area once you're engaged in combat, and while you can cut off a lot of parts of your enemies, it's immediately replaced by a phantom limb which functions the same. I can't even tell if it makes a combat difference, I kind of had better things to worry about in the heat of battle than measuring how much damage I took during different monster states.

Crafting is simpler too, with weapons levelling up with use and rarely upgraded into entirely new weapons, unless they're completely out classed ages later. A lot less keeping hold of 3 of one weapon you don't use so you can eventually make them all into their 3 derivatives. Pre-hunt buffing a-la food is done by taking a bath and getting a random buff based on who you end up sharing the hot springs with(note that you can only bathe with characters of your own gender for most of the game, and there's some VERY strong homosexual subtext in a lot of the dialogue. Saucy stuff), and making small offerings at a shrine. And best of all: None of that palico management for scrounging materials, just send off spare characters not in your hunting party to do past missions for monster materials, or send off your adorable little fox spirit to search for stuff lying around in the various hunting grounds.

As far as it's own original stuff goes, it basically drops the item system completely in favour of a skill system based on "Mitama", ghosts of famous Japanese people from history (at least, SOME of them are famous. Oda Nobunaga makes yet another anime appearance) that are slotted into your weapons. Different classes of Mitama will give you a different palette of 3 skills to take into battle, plus a healing skill.

All this comes together to make a much more focused monster hunting game, tied together with it's own original setting and story. And there is an actual story here, moreso than even MH4, though it's hardly anything revolutionary. There's a good simple setup, an alternate timeline where Oni turned up during a major period of Japanese history and they are a Problem. But there's very little in the way of a plot going on, with major developments spread very far apart between a lot of treading water. Which isn't to say it's unenjoyable, as the main story thread clearly isn't the main focus here. No, that would be the characters, who basically take turns to step up to the spotlight for a while and undergo their entire character arcs at once.

It's a somewhat simplistic structure, but I actually quite like it. It keeps each of these little stories moving at a strong pace, rather than having them all running at once and slowing them ALL down. It's a common mistake in a lot of stories in long games, having so many character arc running at once that they all end up moving at an incredibly slow pace. This method isn't an elegant solution (that would be staggering the appearance of characters and the beginnings of their arc better across the game), but it works. It lets everyone shine enough for you to take a liking to them. It is, however, still hindered by the lack of an engaging core story, to bridge the gaps and generally flesh out the world.

But it's more than enough to keep you entertained alongside fighting monsters and wearing parts of their corpses as armour. The core of Toukiden is a fantastic alternative to Monster Hunter if you feel the management half is weighing a bit too hard on you. It also makes for a great entry point to the genre, with simplified versions of a lot of what you'd expect from other games and a lot of transferable skills. Just make sure you get the console version, yeah? PC one tends to crash a lot, is all.

So yeah, Toukiden: Kiwami. Good stuff, well worth a look. Especially if you're looking to get into some Monster Hunter but think it's a bit too daunting. Also of note: the sequel is aparantly streying a bit more from the path of Spirit Dad and going full open world, which I'm down for.

Next week: God Eater. Both of them, probably. They're pretty similar. I've also been playing some Duelyst, but I'm not exactly an expert on either of it's genres, so I'll probably not write about that. Instead, watch the excellent Cool Ghosts video on the thing.