It’s almost Canada Day, and Canada Day means two things to me: the Lac du Bonnet fireworks show, and Monster Hunter. Over the last couple years, it’s been a new part of our Canada Day traditions for me to tote my PSP down to LDB for the weekend and play Monster Hunter Freedom: Unite during the time that is not used for adventures or fireworks. Of course, the PSP’s battery life doesn’t last nearly as long as it needs to (there’s not that much to do around there), but for me those four hours are as important a part of the weekend as the journey to Pinawa to get ice cream from the Burger Boat, trying to collect enough silly things from the Bargain Shop for an article, and the fireworks show.
Summer in general is also just kind of when my Monster Hunter cycle restarts itself. For MHFU anyway. Me and the game have sort of a love/hate relationship where I’ll play it obsessively for a while, get stuck on a tough quest, and then put it aside for months. Regardless of where I am in the cycle though, an impending Canada Day always brings me back around to the Monster Hunter.
The first time I hit a brick wall was actually on Canada Day. I had just bought MHFU after spending the couple previous months completely obsessed over Monster Hunter Tri on Wii; when I discovered that the PSP game had roughly three times as much content, as well as giant crab monsters, I knew I had to get it. It wasn’t long after I dove in that I discovered what would become one of my most hated parts of Monster Hunter: piscine livers.
Piscine livers are an item dropped randomly when you defeat a monster known as Cephalos. Cephalos are strange looking monsters that are something like a cross between a hammerhead shark and a chicken. Most of their time is spend swimming through the sand, where it’s very hard to damage them. There is an item that can force them out of the sand, but the sonic bomb isn’t available to purchase, and the items you need to create them are somewhat rare. So once you waste the two sonic bombs that are supplied to you for the piscine liver quest, you’re stuck waiting for the Cephalos to jump out of the sand by their own volition. Which can take forever. And of course the piscine liver isn’t the only thing a Cephalos can drop, so if luck isn’t on your side you can very easily time out on these quests.
You’ll see, if you follow my Monster Hunter LP, how annoying these quests can be. It’s not until about a dozen episodes in (so it won’t be uploaded until quite some time after this blog post), but I think it takes like three videos for me to finish the stupid quest.
I did manage to wrangle up the necessary livers eventually, but the quest left a sour taste in my mouth. And I won’t even get into how I feel about the fishing quests. No, I hit my first stopping point when I met Cephalos’ big brother, Cephadrome. He does the same damn thing where he swims around in the sand and doesn’t come up for nobody. Even worse is the fact that you’re stuck fighting these jerks in the desert, where the intense heat will literally drain the life out of your hunter. Cool drinks can temporarily stop the drain, but even if you bring five in with you, they won’t last the duration of the quest. If Cephadrome decides he doesn’t want to play, there’s a very real chance that the heat will kill you.
So I tried the fight against Cephadrome a couple times. I think I died from heat stroke once, and my time ran out on another attempt. I may have even been killed by Cephadrome himself once. He’s not a terribly strong creature, but at the beginning of the game his body slams can be pretty deadly. Once my failures had stacked up enough, I decided that the quest was garbage and stopped playing the game altogether. Monster Hunter Tri had no such bullcrap; the challenge was fair and sensible, so I went back to that. Even though it didn’t have awesome giant crab monsters.
It probably wasn’t long before I picked MHFU back up though. It was still a fairly new game to my collection, and easily the best PSP game that I owned (still is!), even with the crappy quests. I took on Cephadrome again, and while I don’t think I managed it on my first try, I did eventually fell the beast, and everything was wonderful again for a while. That was, until I met Tigrex.
I’ve posted about my hatred for Tigrex before, and fairly recently, too. It took me forever to eke out a victory against one of those guys, and I’ve only slain one more since then. Tigrex isn’t really that strong, but he is fast. A lot of monsters have a thing where they knock you down and then trample over you or blast you with a fireball before you can get up and out of the way. It’s kind of cheap, and that’s basically all Tigrex does. Most monsters leave an opening to get a hit or two in, but Tigrex generally turns around and launches into his next attack long before you can close the gap and smack him up some. And then there’s rage mode.
The majority of large monsters have a rage mode where they hit harder, move faster, and gain new attacks. This is usually brought on by special circumstances, like if you deal out a lot of damage in a short period of time, cut/break off part of a monster’s body, or when they come out of a stun. I’d say that once you carve off roughly 20% of Tigrex’s life, he goes into rage mode every time you hit him. Or at least it seems that way. And it’s the worst, because the very last thing you need is an already too-fast monster getting a speed boost. It’s no wonder I stopped playing because of him.
My latest brick wall was the mighty Lunastra. She’s referred to as a dragon, but looks an awful lot like a big blue lion with wings. Lunastra’s not that hard, and I think I put down the game last time more due to being distracted by other games than because I couldn’t beat her. I know I lost a couple fights against her, but they were losses caused by my own inexperience and impatience.
The trick to defeating Lunastra, and indeed many other large monsters, is patience. Knowing when to strike is key, and it might take a couple rounds to really figure that out. Her attacks are easy enough to avoid, but if you aren’t paying enough attention and get caught by one, you’re in trouble. The flamethrower attack, for instance, is super easy to see coming, and even easier to dodge. But the damn thing hurts if you’re clumsy enough to get caught in it. I was killed instantly with 3/4 of my health bar once because I got hit by a rage mode flamethrower. It was a little embarrassing, but it put me in my place. Upon picking up the game again last week, I took Lunastra down on my first try, and with a fire-element sword and fire-susceptible armor to boot. I could not have been more poorly equipped for that fight, but I came out victorious because I took my time and fought smarter, not harder.
The next challenge on my list is Teostra, Lunastra’s stronger, redder, male counterpart. I don’t feel confident that I can take him out, because I’m still kitted out in that weak-to-fire armor set. But it’s got a super-strong physical defense rating compared to everything else I own! Sometimes it’s hard to know whether you should be worrying more about physical or elemental resistances. At least I don’t have a fire sword equipped anymore.
Will Teostra be my next gamebreaker? Probably not. At least, I hope not. I’ve only been playing MHFU again for about two weeks now. It’s far too soon to be rage-quitting already. Plus it’s Canada Day weekend, and I don’t know what else to do between the time the Bargain Shop closes and the fireworks start.
*NB: I stole the images for this post from the Monster Hunter Wiki*
