Should You Play Monster Hunter Stories 3 on Nintendo Switch 2?

0:00Here's a shift worth noting. Better health care is care that meets patients where they are. United Health Group is bringing it directly to living rooms. This is a win for patients managing chronic conditions. And here's the interesting thing. By closing those care gaps, administering in-home exams and identifying risks earlier, more diseases can be prevented and patient outcomes can improve. In 2025 alone, United Health Group patients received over 19 million home visits. Learn more at unitedhealthgroup.com slash commitment. Few things are as uplifting as the greatest moments in sports. And nothing brings us together quite like team USA at the Olympic Winter Games. From NBC Universal's iconic storytelling to the innovative technology across Xfinity and Peacock, Comcast brings the Olympic Games home to America, sharing every moment with millions. When team USA steps onto the world stage, we're not just watching. We're cheering together. This winter, we're all on the same team. Comcast, proud partner of Team USA. Well, we have been playing Monster Hunter Stories 3, The Wisdom Refillation.

1:05I'm jumbled up. The Wisdom. But we have me, me. Exactly. And I'm going to talk about it. I'm going to tell you how I feel about it. I've been playing on Switch 2 and I was really excited about this game. So I finally got a chance to dig into it and I want to talk about it. Yeah, since you have been playing and I have not, I am very curious about this game. I'm going to ask you some questions and just going to see what's going on here. Yeah, it's asking anything. So let's start with the basic. How much have you played? Because people I think today are seeing reviews of the game. Yeah, yeah. You have not played enough to do any sort of proper review. There is no review, but we don't need reviews. These are impressions. These are my early impressions. I would say, I'm probably about four and a half. All right. Five hours. That's enough to get a taste. Yes, definitely enough to get a taste. Already very hooked. So it didn't take long for me to already be very infested. So it's not a slow start or anything? I think not, even though these types of games, these kinds of RPGs have a slow burn in the beginning.

2:07There's a lot to learn. Obviously, we'll get into that in a little bit. But in terms of how the game has captured my attention, I think that first, the opening of it is very strong. OK. And it basically gives you a taste of all the things that you want to do in this game right away. Like immediately, you're writing, you're writing, you're writing, you're, oh, your month deep, which is very exciting. Yeah. What would you say is kind of the basic premise of the story of this game? Yeah. So this is a game that when we saw revealed in that partner showcase, a year-ish, almost a year ago, whatever. Who can keep track? Who can keep track? We were both pretty hyped about it because as big monster hunter fans, this is a little bit of a different experience than like the core monster hunter games that you might be more used to seeing, like monster hunter wilds. This is like a side spin-off of the monster hunter universe. This one is definitely more focused on story and more of that like RPG experience.

3:13So I think, you know, this is really like very much like story driven, character driven. You are doing a lot of things that are kind of in the realm of monster. You still hunt them. You still take down the big monsters, but this time, you're like kind of partnered up with your own monster. And you also do a lot of like collecting monsters. You're like looking for monster eggs and then hatching them. There's some Pokemon type of thing happening, right? There's some Pokemon aspects in there. You can't have a party of six monsters. There's a lot of Pokemon. And you can train them up and they have different sort of, you know, skill sets. So it's kind of a mix between like a very story driven RPG and sort of this like monster-collecting monster, the monster hunter side of it. Right. Now this is Monster Hunter Stories 3. There have been two more of these previously, and those were on handhelds.

4:13That's right. First, they did eventually come to the Switch. Those are great games, by the way. How does this game compare to those earlier, too? I really do feel like, and this is something that when we saw the game revealed, and then we had played a tiny bit of it before, before this, it really does feel like they're trying to make this series feel bigger than it was on a handheld. It was a fine experience on a handheld, but when you think about a handheld RPG experience, it's going to be smaller in scope. It's going to feel smaller. This one definitely feels like a pretty big step up in terms of the scope of it. Like, it feels like a much bigger world that you're exploring. It feels like a more robust cast of characters. The gameplay is very layered. There's still the core gameplay mechanics you're doing in a Monster Hunter Stories, which is like partnering up to your monster and doing all these attacks and things like that,

5:17but there's a lot to the collecting part, and there's this other layer where you're releasing the monsters into the wild to repopulate the environment. There's more layers to the gameplay mechanics, which is pretty interesting, a little complicated, but pretty interesting. But overall, I just feel like the scope of it feels a lot bigger, and it feels like it's no longer just like this little handheld game. It truly feels like a JRPG console experience, which is really cool for the series. I know it's been a bit more niche, but I think it feels like a proper big JRPG. So you'd say it's properly progressed enough from its handheld roots that it feels like it's trying to stack up to a final fantasy or a drag quest for other big console-oriented JRPG. Oh, for sure. I think it can stand shoulder to shoulder with other console JRPGs, for sure, in terms of the amount of content, the vastness of the world that you're experiencing,

6:20all of the different characters, the storyline is very interesting, but it just feels just like bigger overall, which I was really happy to see. What is the difference between a monster and a monster, and what are you doing with them? Well, a monster is basically like you've tamed it. Yes, it's a friendly one. Now it's your little partner. Okay. It's your partner monster, and again, you can have six monsties in your party, and what's really cool about it is you can switch between them pretty freely in the overworld, so if you need it to do something, some monsties can climb and some can, for example. So if you need to climb a rock or something, you can switch to it and climb up the rock. So there's a lot of environmental things that... What are some of the other environmental abilities? There's not proper, you can't just fly away, but there is gliding and flying, so obviously then you'll need a monster or a monster with wings to do that,

7:23and there's these air gusts that you can ride these gusts. And again, that was a very cool opening moment, because you're getting the story done a little bit, you're kind of figuring out like, what is this mystery, that mysterious thing that's happening, I was already very drawn in by that, and then it kind of does a little flash forward to present day, and you're grown up, your characters are grown up now, and the thing you want to do right away is you want to get on that monster. Like that's literally... Give me a game with a bunch of dragon monsters in it, I want to ride it. Get me on that monster right now. And seriously, the first thing you do is you have this really dramatic cutscene where you're running towards this cliff, and you dive off the cliff, and you whistle for your monster, and you swoops up under you, and you're just gliding towards the castle, whatever. And that was a real cool moment, it set up the game really well.

8:24But that's the cool thing about it, is all the monsters you can use them in the environment. So you can ride it throughout the entire environment, you can use it to traverse the environment, obviously you're using it when you battle. It has all these things, too, that you can do without getting into a proper fight, so you can spit fire, if one of your monsters can do that, is a fire breathing monster, and then you can do this monster roar that can scare away smaller, less powerful monsters, so you can just run past them. So there's environmental things that this monster can do with you, which is pretty cool. Now, something I remember when we played the game a few months ago, the preview version, that you were in these dungeons, which were pretty linear, but then there were some more open parts of the map, too. What is the balance of the two of those, and how open are we talking about in those parts? It does kind of feel like the structure of the world

9:27is very similar to most traditional monster hunter games, where it's like areas that are open that you can explore, and then you can go through a doorway into another area. So it's not like a connected open world, you know what I mean? But the areas that you're in that you're exploring freely are pretty big, and you can do lots of things in those areas. You can like explore and find different locations to get monster eggs. You can set up camp and do a bunch of stuff. You can gather, and as in every monster hunter game, there's literally like a million and one things for you to gather, so you can do all of that gathering and make your potions and your, you know, antidotes and all that stuff. Are you doing a lot of crafting? You can craft, yep. Like armor and weapons, too? Yep. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Using what, though, these monsters are your friends. You're not cutting them into pieces. There are monsters that are not your friends.

10:28Some monsters get cut up. They're all messed up. They're like, they're like disease monsters. Yeah, okay. There's something's wrong with them. You're doing everybody a favor, but we don't know what's going on. They're like, there's a crystals growing off these monsters for some reason. There's something bad happening. Is that the twisted reflection? They're real. That's what they call it. What does that mean, twisted reflection? Well, this happens at the very, very beginning of the story, but if you don't want to hear this part, like skip this 30 seconds. So basically, the very beginning is your mother, the queen of your kingdom finds this egg, and you bring it back to the cat. The mom brings it back to the castle, and it hatches twins. Twins, uh, rathlos. And apparently in this world, twins, having twins is a really bad moment. Oh, okay. So they're like, well, I got to kill one of these. Which, it's very bad. So. Do they? No, they do not. They do not. They do not, because that's awful. So what happens? I can't tell you.

11:28I don't know. I don't want to know. You tell me later. I'll tell you later. Yeah. So that's sort of the setup. Yeah. And the mom is involved in all of this drama, kingdom drama. And so, so, so one of those rathlos becomes your monstie. Like your main monstie is that rathlos. And the other one, I don't know. The other one, I don't know. So that's kind of the setup of it, which was really interesting. I think the twisted reflection is like, there's two of them. Yeah, okay. And their fates are interesting. All right, that's good, because I was wondering, like, what does this subtitle mean? Yeah, it's really interesting. I'll let you get that they let you know. And there's a dramatic cutscene where I was like, oh, no, it was really scary. I thought something really bad was going to happen. It was okay. It was okay. Combat, I remember, it was, it's kind of complicated. It is. And there's a lot of like rock paper scissors stuff on different levels happening. How quickly did you acclimate to this? I still have not.

12:30I'm getting better, but it's one of those things. There's very nuanced and layered. And there's a lot of different kind of things. There's a lot of different details that you're supposed to be paying attention to to give me the best success rate. But I'm like, am I missing those? They're like, watch the monster closely to see what the best attack would be. I'm like, I'm watching. I don't know, I'm just guessing. But it's true, it has sort of like, it's almost like the Fire Emblem weapons triangle. So you have three different attacks. You have a technical attack, a speed attack, and a power attack. Depending on the monster, one of them is going to overpower them and one of them they're going to overpower you. So you have to basically watch the monster's behavior. But just typical Fire Emblem games very like look at the environment. We're not going to really tell you. There's no health. You know, there is a help on this one. But they try to make it so like you're supposed to be, you know, like a hunter. You're supposed to really be looking out for these signs. I find them a little bit hard to tell. So sometimes I'm playing a game of like,

13:31let's take a guess. And then if that's the wrong one, then take, do the other attack. So beyond that, you can also control and give your monster commands in battle. So that's another layer. You can also switch weapons and do different weapon attacks and special attacks with all your different weapons. And it includes some of the weapons that are a bit more difficult. Like I have a hunting horn. So instead of like, you know, fighting like on the offense, you can also do like buffs for your party. So that's another layer. And then you can also ride the monster. So you can, if you fill up this meter, you can get on the monster, ride it and do these attacks on the monster and like a synchronized attack on the monster itself. Now you said you had six things in your party. Yes. Are they all coming into battle with you? No, one at a time. So you can switch them one at a time. Switch them in. Do you ever have other humans? You do. So it's not just you and monstice.

14:32Yeah, it's usually you, your monstice that you have out. Yeah. And then like maybe another human and their monstice. Okay. So it's quite the crowded battlefield and there's a lot going on. And then you're the palacos talking to you. Oh. So I do think this is the area where people that are new to this game might be a little confused. I'm not new to this game and I'm still confused. So it's fun. Right. Because it's always cool to watch your monster like it kicks a butt, you know. But it is also pretty complicated. And I think they do they do an okay job of walking you through it. But there's some parts of it where I'm like I know that you want me to figure this out. But I don't know what those signs are. And so I'm guessing. That's interesting. I'm guessing. Yeah. And I don't feel great about. Here's a shift worth noting. Better health care is care that meets patients where they are. United health group is bringing it directly to living rooms. This is a win for patients managing chronic conditions. And here's the interesting thing.

15:33By closing those care gaps, administering in-home exams and identifying risks earlier, more diseases can be prevented and patient outcomes can improve. In 2025 alone, United Health Group patients received over 19 million home visits. Learn more at unitedhealthgroup.com slash commitment. Few things are as uplifting as the greatest moments in sports. And nothing brings us together quite like team USA at the Olympic Winter Games. From NBC Universal's iconic storytelling to the innovative technology across Exfinity and Peacock, Comcast brings the Olympic Games home to America, sharing every moment with millions. When team USA steps onto the world stage, we're not just watching. We're cheering together. This winter, we're all on the same team. Comcast, proud partner of Team USA. That I wish I knew. Yeah. And even early in the game, there was one battle where I had to fight two monsters at the same time, Solo, with just me and my monstie. And I died like twice. Because it was, I do not know, like, what to do.

16:34And like, I finally, like, through trial and error, you know, kind of figured it out and was able to do it. But yeah, it does feel like sometimes the battling is more trial and error than strategy. Yeah, yeah. So I hope that in time, I'll get to a point where I do feel more comfortable with the battling and it does feel more strategic. Because I think that's the aim. Yeah. And maybe I'm just still new to it now. But yeah, you, so you take down these feral monsters or, or these monsters that have like, these like crystals growing out of them. They're not friendly. You do not want to try to tame them. They want to kill, they want to kill you. So you then you can, you can get like parts from those monsters. And then you do this very similar thing that you do in other monster hunter games, like craft all those like crazy looking outfits and armor and weapons and things like that. Okay. Yeah, so you can do, you can do all that. Do you upgrade your monster? Like does the monster get new moves? Or like, is there any path for them to get stronger? I know, but they level up.

17:34Okay, I haven't, maybe they get new moves as they level up. I have maybe haven't leveled mine up enough to see any new moves. But they, they, they're pretty powerful already. Like the breathless is doing some damage. Okay, okay, some stuff, you know. We're both longtime monster hunter fans or a lot of kind of the basic concepts of monster hunters. Like, yeah, we know that. But if you are new to monster hunter, is that something you can do with this game or is that going to be kind of a rough path in addition to everything else is thrown at you? Yeah, there's some, you know, like, there is a lot of monster hunter nists in this game that if you obviously, if you came from the core series, this is going to be kind of, you know, you're going to know what to expect. Yeah. You know, there are things about monster hunter that can make it feel a little overwhelming for new players. I think this, this does a better job of not making it as overwhelming as sort of the mainline monster hunter games. But it still has those trappings. Like, like I just said, the battle system can be a little bit complicated. There is all that gathering and crafting.

18:35Like, you can get overwhelmed with just the sheer amount of stuff that you find in the world. Like, how many thousands of just plants are in the world of monster hunter that you're just like, walk and bind. There's like a little pop up and you're just pressing the button to gather and you're like, what the heck am I supposed to do with this? And, you know, there are different things like buffs and making a potion and doing these armor spheres to augment your weapon. Those things will come in time. So, I guess my advice is like, don't be put off by it. You don't have to do any of that stuff is the thing. Like, it's unnecessary to progress the story. Okay. But if you are like into monster hunter, you'll know, this is a telltale sign of that game where like the inventory is just like, it's just a huge mess, you know? And you're just like, whatever. I mean, gather every herb possible. I know the heck this does. But, you know, that stuff is in there. But you certainly don't have to like learn all of it immediately. Okay. And they do. So, they have like sort of like a hub,

19:36which is the castle town. Yeah. You are the prince or the princess. You can make your own player character, which is really cool. Oh, really? Yeah. So, you can choose. And I was pretty impressed with like their character creation, actually. Oh, that's neat. Yeah. And mine looks cute. I like her. She's like, she kind of looks like, I like her. I feel like I feel connected to my character, you know? And you can put your name in there. It's like, who says Christa? Mine looks really cute. So, um, yeah. So, I mean, you can, you can slowly unlock stuff in that hub world. And when I first started, a lot of the things were not unlocked. And they do unlock it like one at a time. So, you can learn. So, they unlock like the blocksmith. And then you can go and figure out how to craft armor and weapons from the monster parts. And then you meet a character and it, it, it locks the, um, like the, the cooking part, you know, if you played other monster hunter gains before, like eating before a fight is really important to get your buff. Yeah. So, they do teach you all that stuff. Oh, really cool thing. As expected from Capcom and every monster.

20:38It looks good. Oh my god, the food. Uh-oh. Food looks even better than, and they always have like the cutest little animation of the cooking. So, it's like someone putting on an apron with a pots of pans and it's like the cute music plays. And then the food comes out and it's like, ah, and it looks so, it's like juicy, steak, you know. So, they, they do have good looking food. Um, but yeah, they kind of unlock it like one at a time for you to figure out like, okay, um, you know, learn a little bit. Okay. But it, it is deep. It, I mean, it's very layered. Sounds like it. Yeah. It's very layered. Don't get overwhelmed. Now, even though you played this game before, was there anything that surprised you now in the full game? I'm just surprised at like how big it feels. Like, you know, I, I grew up playing like the, or like I came to the series on handheld, like on a, like a DS-3S, you know. So, it is kind of cool to see it be this full like next gen console experience.

21:39I was very impressed by the sort of the art direction on the cutscenes. The art direction overall for this game is really beautiful. Like, there's something about the look of this game that I just, that really speaks to me. It has like that kind of so shaded look. The environments are absolutely beautiful. You just, it looks a little zelda-ish in places. It looks like Zelda and Fire Emblem had a baby. Yeah. And it's most 100 stories. Because all the character models look kind of like Fire Emblem style. Characters, but just the, the lighting, the, the way that, you know, you're, you're walking through these like sort of sun-dappled forests, and you're looking out vistas. Very good, very good vistas. They're sure you're on the ride in the monster. Yeah. It's very impressive. Okay. So, I was really pleasantly surprised. And again, some of these cutscenes and cinematics that are telling you this very dramatic story. It's like, I'm paying attention. And this was, this looks good.

22:39Like, this is truly like, take out these cutscenes and stitch it together and you put it on, you know, put it, put it on Netflix. It feel like an anime. Boom, there's an anime. It's true. All right. It's like, it's that good, you know, the story is that good. Right. So, you've got the learning curve with the combat. Yeah. Yeah. And we'll see where that goes as you keep playing the game. Anything that, like, just so far, you're just kind of like, I don't, I don't really like this. I feel like the combat and just like the, the little details around the different layers of things you can do is probably the main thing. But this is very typical of Monster Hunter games. Like, the other thing I was, I was telling you about earlier is they have this other mechanic that they just introduced to me. I still don't really quite grasp it yet. But like, I found this really awesome, very rare egg and I hatched it and a Raytheon came out. And I was like, that's cool. I keep that Raytheon. But she's like, no, you can't keep it. You have to release it into the wild. Why? I don't know, because the environment or something. What is that mechanic of releasing things

23:40that you mentioned that before? That's, yeah, it's like a new, I think it's new. You need to do this. And that was something that I was forced to do. It was like, this is an endangered monster. So you can't keep it. You have to repopulate the species. Certain species. By releasing it into the wild. So then there was a very complicated mechanic of like looking at this map and figuring out where on the map is best to release it and then releasing it. And then you can release other things into it. I think you can release other monsters in there to help to repopulate it, to encourage it to lay more eggs. And do you see any, when you go back out and you go to that area, do you notice anything different? I don't know. I haven't been back there yet. I don't even know where it is. Where is this place? Where is the Sun's Thought Plateau? I don't know. I haven't seen that before. All right. So, I kind of wanted to keep that. You can catch it later. It's real cute, you know.

24:42So, not that I didn't like it, but I was just kind of like, oh, this is a very interesting thing to introduce right now because I thought the whole point was collecting these monsters. Using them to my own it, it's kind of good. Sometimes it's interesting. Okay. But yeah, but yeah, you do that thing though when you look for eggs in those dens where you have to hold the eggs in front of you. You have to run it out, yeah. And then the monster's chasing you. Oh, no. Get there with the egg. And you take that risk, right? Because you basically go into this nest and you can like, you know, dig around for eggs. And it'll tell you how rare it is. And you can keep trying. But the longer you stay there, the more likely a monster's, the monster's coming back to the den to like kill you. Right. But I'm always like rooting around and looking for like the rare eggs. So, so far so good. I've only, I've only gotten caught once. And then I got, then I got caught. But it's okay. Yeah. And then you can go like, hatch them in the stable.

25:43You know, all the monster hunter things are there. Like you get your palacos, they're hanging out, they're quippy and cute and they're helping them battle and stuff like that. You get a poohy? Oh, really? Freshest poohy. What can you do with the poohy? Well, it's not yours, but it's a round. One of your, one of your characters has like a poohy farm, I think. One of your like your protege's. Yeah. And you can also rescue poohies in the world. What did you grow up on a poohy farm? You're not from the big city, are you? Cute. You grew up on a poohy farm. But they're so cute. And then like hold the poohy in a little pig head. It's just like that. Yeah. It's just cute, you know? Now, before this, we were both playing Resident Evil Rectwium on the Switch too, also from Capcom. Yes. Like one of the best technical show pieces. On the Switch too. So I think the expectations for high are high for this game on the Switch too. What do you think of that? It's beautiful. Yeah. It's absolutely gorgeous on a Switch too. Like I'm so impressed. Capcom, what is happening?

26:43You got something going here. But it looks so good. Like it's such a bright, colorful, detailed, well, again, the draw distance is a really big deal on this one because you're on the monster and you're like flying about. And you're always like jumping off a cliff or you're looking out. You know, there's a lot of like these lookouts where you're like looking out into the into the world or onto the kingdom. And you're like, this looks good. Lighting, like I mentioned before, lighting is really well done. Like a lot of like sunlight. There's a day and night, obviously. A lot of detail in that castle town. One tiny thing I noticed is the text of this is the small. Oh, no, not this again. This is the smallest detail ever. The text is not that small, but it's a little blurry. Oh, on a handheld. The text is blurry. It's like a little, like the edges look a little jaggedy. Is what I've noticed. Okay. And I'm playing on handheld. I have, I checked it out a little bit on TV mode and it looks really, really good.

27:44Obviously, on handheld it looks great. But that's the only thing I noticed in terms of like graphically. And that was only in handheld. Yeah. Okay, on a TV. Just a little blurry around the edges. It's weird. Maybe they were like, we don't care. They put the power into the other things. I don't know. Yeah. Okay, that's interesting. But just the subtitles of the text. But otherwise, beautiful game. All right, great. Beautiful colorful, you know, obviously a different type of game than Resident Evil 9. Yeah. In terms of it's not realistic. It's very like, it has a different style. But that style is hard to do as well. You know, you need a lot of beautiful lighting and colors and vibrancy to make that look nice and look really, really like kind of makes it look full and lush. And it does definitely do that good skybox. Oh. A beautiful, a beautiful, like kind of like that skybox where it kind of domes. It's weird from that Pokemon. Feel like, yeah, you should. Okay. So it sounds like you're excited to keep playing.

28:44Okay. I'm so into it. Like if you're craving a, almost like a 3D Zelda type experience, I mean, this gameplay is very different from the Zelda game, obviously, but that the sense of exploration and the feeling of this world. And again, if you love the story elements of like Fire Emblem, just, you know, if you've never played this game before, like this game has all those things. Like if you need like the court, the kingdom drama, betrayal, like all that stuff, that, you know, we usually find in Fire Emblem games, like this has that storyline with the exploration and sort of the, you know, that type of like, let me, let me see what's around the corner. Let me look into this monster den and see what egg I find. Like that, that's kind of very Zelda-esque. So if you're craving that kind of experience, I highly recommend this game. Yeah. It's really good. I do want to play this game. I got some Pocopia-ing to do first. To do, you do, you do. Yes, how excited I am. I'm excited to hear more as you get deeper. Yes.

29:44Well, there you go. This is my first early impressions of Monster Hunter Stories 3 twistage reflection. And this game comes out really soon. Very soon. So if you are craving that Zelda-esque experience with the storyline of Fire Emblem game, highly recommend this game. Let us know if you are going to be playing this on your Switch 2 and we'll talk to you later. Bye. The Toyota Tundra and Tacoma are built to keep going, blending rugged muscle with precision engineering all supported by Toyota's time-tested legacy of dependability.

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