Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection review – soaring high

Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection improves on its direct predecessor in every way. It’s a grander story, elevated by sharper, more impressive visuals. The game’s main cast is filled with friendly faces, all with their own layered, punchy backstories. Terrains gleam and dazzle. There are new and bigger monsters, more pressing threats, and a much greater, more impressive sense of adventure.

This game is the best of the Monster Hunter Stories trilogy so far, and an all-around excellent experience to boot, packed with memorable moments and beautiful sights.

Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection makes the clever decision to focus on royalty

One of the most clever decisions in Twisted Reflection is to stage the game against a backdrop of pristine royal kingdoms and fantasy warfare. You begin as a plucky prince or princess, who occasionally chooses to shirk royal duty in favour of riding their companion monstie, a rare dragon-like beast known as a Rathalos.

While you spend your days flying high, and the game’s opening allows you to freewheel – wandering a vast open world, collecting monstie eggs for breeding and hatching, battling against beasts of all kinds – it isn’t long before you’re swept up in a major conspiracy, as enemy forces descend on your kingdom.

You’re swiftly sent on a journey through various magical locations, with flames dogging your footsteps along the way. You meet your Rathalos’ fabled twin counterpart, discover a rot in the heart of the world, and must steel yourself for battles upon battles that descend at speed.

Even in this snappy succession, Monster Hunter Stories 3 leaves plenty of room to explore and grow, as you work on your combat skills, strengthen your menagerie of fighting monsters, tackle personal quests, and discover all sorts of hidden secrets across forests, icy plains, mountains, and beyond.

There is impetus to forge on, as a winding plot tells of mysterious betrayals behind the closed doors of castles, but also enough room to spread your wings, and to spend time simply exploring, seeing everything this game has to offer.

A wide open world at your fingertips

Monster Hunter Stories 3 does well to position the adventure as your story, evolving at your whims. You can custom-create your own character – brought to life with plenty of style, and some rather excellent voice acting – and determine your very own crew of monsters to explore with.

Like other games in the franchise, you’ll spend time discovering (and pillaging) various monster dens, collecting eggs of all kinds. There’s monsters good at climbing, swimming, flying, and blasting, and each has their place on your team.

While really nothing alike, the Monster Hunter Stories franchise has often been compared to Pokémon, if only because you can explore a world and corral a monster crew. It’s not quite the same, but there’s a similar vibe. Being able to crack open eggs, curate your squad, and play around with monstie DNA, is entirely satisfying, particularly when you can unlock multi-ability combos for stronger critters.

You’ll want to devote plenty of time to boosting this strength, as Twisted Reflection gets tough early on, with strategy and power needed to survive skirmishes against darkness-infected monsties, and the encroaching hordes of royal armies.

Monster Hunter Stories 3 features familiar strategy combat

As with its predecessors, Monster Hunter Stories 3 benefits from a unique combat system that operates on a three-point dial. In turns, you’ll select one of three attack styles (power, speed, technical) which will clash with your opponent’s choices.

Like rock-paper-scissors, each attack style has a success, loss, and neutral outcome, determined by the forces you’re pitted against. While there is some element of luck in this system, careful analysis and watching your opponents will often reveal your ideal next move. So, combat becomes a dance.

You’re watching and waiting, figuring out which monsters prefer which moves, then applying your knowledge as the going gets tougher, and you’re forced to rely on strategy more and more.

The game gets particularly tough around major boss battles, with elements of chance playing into survival, as much as making clever decisions. Sometimes, you must figure out when it’s best to take a step back and possibly lose a life, to come back stronger in the next round.

While occasionally frustrating, this combat system and its many moving parts ensures there’s an edge to any encounter, and that you’re constantly looking for even the slightest advantage. You’ll get better because you must.

After all, the kingdom depends on you.

A cast of layered characters elevates the entire experience

When you’re not spending time flexing your Rathalos’ wings or facing off against some new and more dangerous monster, Monster Hunter Stories 3 keeps you on the hook by really making you care about everything going on in its world.

As a prince or princess, you’re constantly surrounded by people – fellow royals, advisers, apprentices, and the folks you grew up with. Each character is given time to shine throughout the story, with their own special quests and backstory tidbits revealing their inner strength, and why they persist through conflict, natural disaster, and outright terror.

You and your squad of friends are the focus of this story, and what the plot revolves around. Even through kingdom-threatening battles, and the arrival of new and frightening monsters, Monster Hunter Stories 3 maintains its human, beating heart. It’s a game about people and responsibility, and what it means to serve your community.

With a grand scope to this storytelling, and visuals to match, Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection is a dazzling experience that surrounds you with its beauty.

_{A PC code for Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection was provided by the publisher for the purposes of this review.}

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