(continued from previous page) ...hunters do, and how to gather items. But what do you do with all these items you are getting? Why, turn them into weapons and armor of course! Players can take the majority of items they receive from carving their kills, and use them to craft armor and weapons with the help of the local smith. Items such as hides, scales, shells and heads are usually required to make armor, while weapons routinely need claws, bones, spines, poison sacs, and the like. Each time your hunter returns to the smith with a new item, any armors or weapons he can craft with the item show up in his wares. You can then look at these formulas to determine what else you need to make the equipment in question. Once you provide the smith with the materials and cash needed to make the item, you can add it to your box at home, or immediately equip it for use.

Creating weapons from your fallen foes will often grant you some of their abilities as well. For instance, if you make a sword from the parts of an Iodrome, a venomous raptor, the sword will be infused with poison. If you craft a bow using electro-sacs from the electrically charged Khezu, your shots will deal thunder damage. Armor also retains traits from the creature it is modeled after. If you are sporting an armor suit comprised primarily of Plesioth, a water wyvern, your resistance to water will be much stronger. Create a suit out of the giant boar Bulldrome, and you’ll experience a health increase as you channel its strength. This deep crafting system ensures that players are rewarded directly for their efforts, and will give players a feeling of accomplishment that cannot be scoffed at.

Each completed mission will not only garner the hunter more items to use in his personal crafting, but will also serve to further his renown and legend. Quests are rated on difficulty using a “star” system. The more stars next to a quest title, the more difficult the quest and the better the rewards. Completing all the quests of a given star level will grant access to an “urgent” quest of the next level. This quest must be completed in order to progress to the next set of missions. Missions can be completed over and over again, for the purposes of gaining experience against different monsters, getting more items, or simply getting paid. Completing certain sets of quests will also raise your “HR” or hunter rank, which allows you to use higher-level weapons and armor, as well as granting you the ability to start higher-level quests. These quests are traditionally epic in scale, and often pit the hunter against legendary dragons who are lords over their chosen element.

Multiplayer is where this game really shines. It may be my personal bias here, but out of all the games I’ve played on the PSP, Monster Hunter Freedom 2 has the best multiplayer. Period. I work in a game store, and routinely try most of the new releases that come out for Sony’s handheld, and nothing really comes close as far as multiplayer is concerned. Monster Hunter Freedom 2 allows up to 4 hunters to come together to work on a single quest. Multiplayer quests run the same gamut that single player ones do, although they are usually much tougher than their solo counterparts. Monster Hunter Freedom 2 has even improved its multiplayer experience by adding more items that are beneficial to the group, rather than the lone hunter. An example of this would be one of the new weapon types: the hunting horn. While this weapon attacks like a hammer, it can also be used to play “recitals.” Playing a recital, which is a two to four note streak, will allow the player to boost their own stats, as well as the stats of other hunters in the area. This extra emphasis on multiplayer gaming adds more depth to a game that, while simple in concept, is incredibly deep as far as gameplay is concerned.

As great a game as it is, however, Monster Hunter Freedom 2 is not without its own set of problems. The first thing most gamers notice is that this game is extremely difficult for a ... (continued on next page)