Monster Hunter is probably the most well named game series out there. So often titles are unrelated to the gameplay (for example, Final Fantasy or Super Mario Bros.), but Capcom have stuck with a name that is simple and effective at conveying the core of the game. You are a hunter. And you hunt big monsters. They’re not quite balrogs and Grendels - they’re more like prehistoric beasts – but they’re big and vicious and your job is to take them down. Just like real hunting this requires meticulous preparation, the right equipment for the job, precision timing and a lot of patience.

Unlike previous Monster Hunter games, there is a very definite plot in the single player portion of Tri. You are a hunter who has just arrived in a place called Deserted Island, which isn’t at all deserted. A large monster called a Lagiacrus has been tormenting the village and they’ve recruited you to fight it off. You’re not nearly well enough equipped in the beginning to take on such a magnificent foe, so to start with you kill bugs (Altaroths), goats (Kelbis), brontosaurus-like Aptonoths and raptor-like Jaggis, moving swiftly onto the aquatic Epioths and Ludroths. While you’re doing this it’s important to collect supplies from your kills such as warm pelts, raw meat and monster bones, as well as from the surrounding area such as stone, ore, honey, bugs, herbs and mushrooms. Soon you start getting quests from The Guild, and these range from collecting things to killing minions to killing “boss” monsters or, toughest of all, capturing “boss” monsters. As you complete each quest you get rewards in the form of money and reward items which are usually useful for upgrading weapons and armour.

Monster Hunter Tri is not for the quick-fix gamer. It’s the sort of game where you have to plan ahead. Your first real test is to capture a Great Jaggi, a sort of Tyrannosaurus with a frill. To do this you’re going to need all sorts of equipment – a bunch of mega-potions (for health), lots of raw meat (for stamina), some good armour to help with staying alive, a somewhat upgraded weapon to weaken the Great Jaggi and fight off its minions, some paintballs to mark the beast to make tracking easier, some traps to stun your mark, and some tranq bombs to take it down alive. And that’s all before you begin the hunt.

What makes this preparation even more complicated is that all these things are not available in any shop: you pretty much have to make them all yourself. Let me explain: to make a potion you combine a herb and a blue mushroom, both of which are found in the Mogi Woods (just outside the village which serves as your base). To convert this potion into a mega-potion you need to combine it with honey (also found in the Woods). Traps and bombs are even more complex – find yourself a sap plant and a stone to make a bomb casing, then combine a sleep herb and a parashroom to make a tranquilizer, and finally combine the bomb casing and the tranquilizer to get a tranq bomb. Fortunately after a while you can start growing your own ingredients in the village’s farm so you don’t have to find as many in the wild.

Once you’ve completed all the tutorial quests (which ease you into the game systems really well, and probably a little too well for veteran Monster Hunter gamers), it’s time for the big hunt – the first of many. This is where a little (or a lot) of preparation goes a long way because you really don’t want to run out of equipment during the hunt. You’ve got 50 minutes (real-time) to capture a Great Jaggi, the leader of the Jaggis and Jaggias, and it will take the better part of that time to do it the first time. Hunting is all about being patient – going in at the right time, getting a swipe or two in and getting out of harm’s way. It’s also about watching the behavior of your mark – find out the pattern of its moves, the safe zones and the windows of opportunity.

It’s very much not a God of War or Ninja Gaiden kind of combat where combos are important, nor is it a World of Warcraft kind of combat where potions are insta-quaff. In Monster Hunter, everything takes time, from pulling out your weapon to putting it away again to drinking potions to laying traps, and all the while the beasts are swarming around you. One of the most effective tools you have is the run button. Hunting the monster is about outlasting it, chipping away at its health and its energy (while it chips away at yours) until it’s limping around on its last legs. This is your opportunity to lay a trap, coax the monster into it and throw your tranquilizers at it.

All I’ve described here only applies to the very first big monster. There are many to go, and each requires learning new things. For instance, there is hunting under water to learn. You’re going to need to learn how to take down big flying monsters. You’ll need to learn how to use the various weapons, which each have vastly different styles of play. You’ll need to plan exactly what armour and armour decorations you want to be wearing when you take on a monster.

Monster Hunter Tri is a difficult game. Not only does it require meticulous preparation and the understanding of many subsystems (such as the complex weapon upgrading trees and armour skill points system), but it also requires patience and finesse. The weapons are heavy so movements with them are slow and have long recovery times, making a mistimed swing a very dangerous thing. You need to be at full concentration for the entire duration of the hunt or your health bar will quickly drop to zero, and you need to pay close attention to what attacks are working on which part of the prey. It’s difficult, but it’s also immensely rewarding to successfully pull it all off because it can only be done by executing a plan nearly flawlessly, all the while adapting it for circumstances along the way.

All I’ve described so far applies to the single player game. Once you join up online it’s another whole level of experience. Now the hunt is dependent on you all working as a team toward a common goal. Rushing in gung-ho style isn’t going to work. Monster Hunter Tri has the most full-featured online modes seen to date on the Wii. There is voice chat support via Wii Speak, USB keyboard support, and a lobby structure (!). Stuff you collect in single player carries over into multiplayer, and vice-versa, so the absolute best experience of Monster Hunter Tri would be for you and some friends to progress in the game alongside one another – playing the single player missions and joining up for the multiplayer missions to learn and pass on hunting tips. You can also play two-player offline co-op – a new addition in Tri.

Monster Hunter Tri is a demanding game – this is a not a game you drop into every now and then for a bit of monster-bashing. If you try that you’ll be feinting in 30 seconds flat. It’s a game that requires the honing of your skills – getting to know your chosen weapon, getting to know the monsters, learning new combinations and generally becoming a better Monster Hunter. The learning curve is immense, and while Capcom have done a great job of guiding you through the first eight hours and teaching the game concepts, after that the developers demand a lot of the gamer. You’re on your own as a hunter, left to make your own way in the wild with only your wits and slowly acquired wisdom as companions, unless, of course, you can find a master to learn from. There is no character leveling – all the “leveling up” happens in the things you learn through experience. Once you’ve killed a Qurupeco once you can do it again, this time a little quicker and a little more efficiently. Yes, you upgrade your armour and weapons as you gain access to better raw materials for them, but the lessons learnt are more important. Despite the vast amount of stats and numbers in the game, there is a real sense of it being organic. Monsters don’t have hit points, but you can see through their mannerisms when they’re not doing too well. You don’t have experience points or strength stats but it’s clear that you’re getting better and stronger all the time because what once took half an hour to kill now takes ten minutes, even with the same weapon and armour.

Monster Hunter Tri is a very different gaming experience. There is no real precedent to the series. It’s part RPG, part action, part strategy, part co-operation and communication and part other. It’s a big (huge, humungous really) serious, deep, high-budget game for the Wii not made by Nintendo. It really doesn’t fit in any gaming boxes. It’s a massive smash hit in Japan, and deserves to be a hit in the West, but it’s a lot more complicated than most. The complexity is the only negative I can think of but it’s the complexity that makes it what it is. If you want a game that is more rewarding the more you play it, Monster Hunter Tri is perfect, just don’t expect it to fit any norms.

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