At precisely the Beta start time, the menus worked! I come from a Nintendo background with my Monster Hunter experience and the eShop never delivers any sort of pre order or time released preview on time. There's always some caching bug where it just doesn't work. So I was pretty happy.
I'm taking copious screenshots because, why not? For my first mission, I'm going solo. The character creation process involves picking a calico and a player preset. There's not a lot of choice here, but I assume you can customize your character and Palico in after the real release happens.
Lots of thumbnails to follow, click to enlarge.
I actually went with the last palico option, and of course an appropriate name.
There are three quests, which you can read about elsewhere, but I'm posting this screenshot because I like the interface. I picked the first quest.
Before setting out I changed the weapon to my preferred Bug Staff, except now they call it a Feathered Blade? Whatever, it's still awesome.
I chose to give the palico a bow. I generally don't pay attention to my Palico except when I've been stunned and I really want him to come smack me in the head. So I figured if it's using a bow, maybe it wont get smacked around as badly.
And the quest begins! Or is about to, anyway... It takes place in the Ancient Forest, but the layout doesn't look even a little familiar to me. And it's about this time that it becomes apparent to me that the "Monster Hunter Language" is Japanese.
The controls are very similar to the switch! Too bad I play on 3DS. I keep putting my weapon away or standing around stupidly when I try to mark a target for my insect to do an extraction.
The environment looks awesome, but a little washed out on my monitor, I'm going to have to try to adjust the color settings before I resume playing. Some of the plants have an instant effect, like this Vitality thing. Others are harvested and go into the inventory.
Those damned annoying bugs from all of the teasers and trailers aren't actually as annoying and in your face as I expected. You almost can't even see them in the screen shot.
I'm loving how the harvestable stuff is a natural part of the environment instead of sticking out like a big sore immersion breaker.
I don't know how I feel about the tracking mechanic. It's kind of cool that they have hints of where to find the quest monster. I have to admit, I wasn't paying much attention and I was a little surprised to see a Great Jagras instead of a Great Jagi.
Well, after wandering around for nearly fifteen minutes looking at the environment I only had a few minutes to slay the beast, but I guess in the interest of a wider audience they actually made it pretty easy.
I ended up not using my bug all that much, mostly because I kept putting away my weapon or standing around stupidly rather than marking the target.
And then, after carving and clicking through the various dialogs, they dropped me back at the opening scene and immeidately pop up an option for the pre-order. Thanks, but I've already got it...
And just a quick note in closing, multiplayer does require a PSN Plus Account. So, looks like I'll have one of those for a year...