Spin-offs tend to be hit-and-miss. I mean, the name alone evokes a chaotic firing of ideas that could careen in any direction, off a cliff, into a wall, right through someone’s beehive hairdo and into their vanity mirror. Which makes it even more impressive that the Monster Hunter Stories series has maintained a straight and true trajectory for its entire existence. Now a full ten years old, the franchise is celebrating its first double-digit birthday by releasing Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection into the wild. But is that trajectory still angled firmly upwards?
If you’ve read any of the previews, including ours, you’ll know right away that my opening paragraph is pure bait. I’m not sorry, we all know why we’re here. But the fact is that this threequel could well have floundered, given that Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin was very nearly perfect. And how do you top very nearly perfect? Like this, with a game that’s even more very, very, very nearly perfect.
Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection tells a new story with new characters in the same world. There are one or two familiar faces, which I was surprised at, and of course it plumbs the same huge, sprawling, three-feet-thick catalogue of monsters, but overall this story is all new.
It begins with a pair of Rathalos twins hatched in the throneroom of the ruthless ruler of Azuria. Separated by circumstance shortly after, one of the twins is raised by the son or daughter (your choice) of said ruler, while the prince or princess’s mother does a flit with the other one. Fast-forward a decade, and Azuria teeters on the edge of war with the neighbouring realm of Vermeil. Our protagonist is all grown up and an accomplished Monstie Rider (I’m sorry, it’s not my word, it’s Capcom’s) in their own right.
Accompanied by a group of seasoned rangers, it’s their job to patrol and protect Azuria from roaming monsters. In true Monster Hunter Stories tradition, this is a job made much harder by a mysterious corruption that had the monsters all riled up. What could be the cause of the corruption? Probably a new big uber-monster, if history is any indication.
While I’m being flippant about the set-up and deliberately avoiding spoilers, Twisted Reflection has one of the best stories of the entire Monster Hunter franchise, period. In fact, it might well be the best. Yes, the skeleton is pretty par for the hunt, but the meat and muscle is more mature, more considered, and more intriguing than ever before. Characters aren’t invincible, there’s politicking between Azuria and Vermeil, exacerbated by the Vermeil princess Eleanor handing herself over as a political ward to Azuria, and it’s all interesting and compelling.
Underneath it all, of course, is the gameplay loop we’re used to seeing from the Stories branch, but with more stuff bolted on. Quests and side-quests take place in the open world, which is divided into familiar biomes (shout out for the return of the Ancient Forest) and peppered with materials to gather, caves to plunder for monstie eggs, and of course roaming wyverns. The roster here is insane, too, with monsters pulled in from Rise and Wilds, including some of their newer entries like Goss Harag and Namielle.
If anything, I found the monster density to be a little too high at times. You can’t go ten feet without another one rocking up for a fight, and while you have a roar function that scares them off for a minute, it can be a pain to get anywhere. Once you have a good collection of monsties in your stable, you’ll be able to pick between eight at a time with a handy wheel. This is important as different monsties have different traversal tricks. Rathalos can fly and breathe fire, Somnacanth can swim, Tobi-Kadachi can scale walls. All can knock trees to drop fruit, or ram rocks to clear paths. Some can hit enemies with ranged attacks to kill small monsters before they can bother you.
You acquire new monsties by raiding their dens, which still feels incredibly cruel from a conservationist standpoint. This system is streamlined though. Most Dens are now a single cave or clearing with a nest in the middle and a few scattered resources. You’ll get in, rifle through the available eggs until you find one you want (it never tells you what the creature inside is beyond its archetype and rarity) and then leg it before mummy returns or wakes up. There are deeper, wider, and much longer cave systems around the world, but Dens themselves are super quick and easy to plunder.
Back at the hub you can access your stables to rename monsties, and early on you’ll learn how to splice the DNA from one monstie into another, giving them new abilities and modifying their stats and elemental affinities. It’s a cool system that takes some time to fully comprehend and make the most of, but once you understand what you’re doing and why, it becomes an invaluable method of progression.
Of the fourteen standard Monster Hunter weapons, six are available in Twisted Reflection: Greatsword, Longsword, Bow, Gunlance, Hammer, and Hunting Horn. You can equip three at once, allowing you to cycle through them during a battle as well as your monsties. This is important, as monsters can have multiple strengths and weaknesses, and weapons like the hammer are great for breaking body parts, while the Hunting Horn applies value buffs.
The rock, paper, scissors mechanic returns, with three attack types available: speed, technical, and strength. Each is weak to one and strong to another, and predicting what your opponent will do is key to winning head to heads. Combat in Monster Hunter Stories: Twisted Reflection can be genuinely tough at times, with monsters like Magnamalo doing massive group attacks that can easily one-shot you. Thankfully, you’ll often have an AI partner with the monstie beside you.
Teaming up for synchronised attacks, double attacks, and of course massive, over the top, super anime Kinship attacks is how you win, and the way the combat system rewards creativity reflects the mainline series while maintaining its own unique, turn-based iteration. Combat is punchy and satisfying, loud and colourful, and each fight feels like its own reward before you even start to unpack the materials you earned that let you craft and upgrade armour sets and new weapons with Monster Hunter’s familiar loot economy.
Perhaps my only complaint besides the sheer volume of roaming monsters is that there’s a fair amount of assumed knowledge, but then this is the third game in a franchise that only deviates from formula by adding more mechanics and monsters to the mix. I got stuck occasionally on tough fights with monsters that are corrupted by the new sticky stuff of death conceit, but often I succeeded on the second or third attempt by modifying my tactics, changing my weapons, or rotating different monsters into the fight. There’s so much freedom in all the systems here that a little perseverance and creativity will usually see you through.
With a story that really goes places, a massive roster of monsters, and a stack of interlaced systems that combine to give the player a huge amount of choice and agency to overcome problems, Monster Hunter Stories: Twisted Reflection is the best in a trilogy of superb titles, and a game that will appeal to fans of the main series and those who just want a deep, sprawling turn-based RPG to get stuck into. It’s big and beautiful and absolutely worth your time.
