Monster Hunter Stories Preview: Exploring the PS4 Remaster

Monster Hunter Stories has had an interesting journey over the years. Having begun its life as a Nintendo 3DS title and later smartphone platforms, Stories marked a shift in priorities for the series by going all in on a more traditional JRPG aesthetic.  Whilst other entries focused more on action such as the fairly recent Monster Hunter Rise, Stories instead settles back on a turn-based battle system and monster collecting.

Now eight years later, Capcom is keen on reviving Monster Hunter Stories for some more modern platforms – specifically, PC, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 4. We had a chance to check out the HD port in an early preview and go hands-on with some early parts of the game.

Monster Hunter Stories opens up as one might expect from any RPG – a fancy cutscene sets the mood, there’s some character and monster introduction, and a glimpse of the colorful world to eventually explore. There’s then a shift to the real-time graphics and my first impression is that everything is very colorful and eye-catching.

For a remaster, Capcom has done well to keep everything bright and cheery, despite the obvious limitations brought about by 3DS game design. This is immediately evident upon controlling a character – areas aren’t very big and tend to guide you down a linear path toward a marked objective. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – in fact I did appreciate that the game was telling me where to go.

After a short introduction, your character meets up with two characters known as Cheval and Lilia, who are searching for an egg. From here, you’re tasked with customizing your player avatar of sorts, and that includes selecting their gender as well as a limited number of hair, eye, skin color, and even voice options. You can even name them, if you’d like, or select a generated name to continue along the story.

The egg the group finds turns out to be a young Rathalos – named Ratha of course – who decides your character is their parent. Things seem well and good until you go back to the village of Hakum and a tragedy takes place killing others, including your new monster friend.

There’s a time skip and it’s from here that Monster Hunter Stories really gets going. With the threat of a sickness known as the Black Blight still around, you’ll be taking up a Kinship rite and a crystal in order to collect monsters and become what is known as a Rider.

With the monster hunting and capturing element now in play and a key element of the game, the player character leaves the village, encounters new characters, and ventures further into the mystery of the Blight corrupting the land.

While the narrative is front and center, Monster Hunter Stories does eventually get you to the battle and other systems after some lengthy exposition. Hoisting up the traditional JRPG mantle means the main system is turn-based, or each party member and enemy take turns attacking after abilities are selected from a menu without a time limit.

Your created character has a bit of flexibility when it comes to their turn as attacks are divided into three types: Power, Technical, and Speed. Each of these types of attacks comes with their own strengths and weaknesses. For example, use a Speed attack if an enemy is striking at you with a Power ability.

A cut-in scene known as a Head-to-Head when the enemy is targeting the attacking character. The attack type that is stronger in these situations will win out, or if they’re the same, you will end the turn in a draw. The other examples of attack strengths include Power being stronger than Technical, and Technical over Speed. It’s important to keep these elements of sorts in mind during battle so you can chase those bonuses.

Battles can also be mixed up with a number of weapon types such as a great sword, or a hammer. There are also different skills and, of course, the monster collecting aspect to consider in customization.

Beyond the single-player aspect, Monster Hunter Stories lets you play around in multiplayer matches online, so there’s a lot to play around with here for anyone looking to get their turn-based itch.

Circling back around to the visual side of things, it’s important to remember that yes, Monster Hunter Stories is a remaster of a game that was originally developed for a handheld system. It’s because of that that the models are rather simplistic, even for an anime cel-shaded style.

There’s also not a lot of environmental detail or animations going on. Most of the dialogue scenes are in a sort of visual novel side-by-side style, although there are some traditional cutscenes and multiple CG cutscenes included. All of these have been upconverted from their original resolution to fit an HD output, although the CG scenes haven't been redone to compensate for more pixels.

Otherwise, Monster Hunter Stories is voiced in both English and Japanese, or if you want you can choose the original version’s voice track. I was even surprised the player character does have some canned lines and isn’t completely a silent protagonist. Despite other limitations, this does add a lot to the overall presentation.

Despite its origins on Nintendo 3DS, Monster Hunter Stories does at least deserve its time in the sun. With its sequel out now on Nintendo Switch and PC, this remaster release looks to provide fans or even newcomers with a chance to experience the Stories series all on the same platforms. And for PS4 players, it’s just the beginning with the sequel dropping simultaneously on June 14, 2024.

TechRaptor was invited to preview Monster Hunter Stories by the publisher.