Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate Review: Do your best, Doodle! (spoiler warning)

Hello WSS! It is finally time to review Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate (tm) for the Nintendo 3DS!

[Spoilers below, you have been warned]

This review has been delayed for quite some time due to the lack of time I've been able to play this game, but I've finally completed all of the single player quests and feel arguably badass enough to review this game with as much brutality and awesomeness this game has given me, so lets begin:

-Single Player-

You start your murder spree/monster hunting career as the great hunter: "Insert name here but still be called Doodle", on a boat that holds the leader of a caravan leader who will be known as the Captain/Caravaneer with a strange affection to the capital letter C that is heading towards a wondrous traveling hot spot called Val Habar, home to many travelers who make a living off the living creatures you slaughter for fashion.
On the way, however, you are rudely interrupted by Jhen- I mean Dah'ren Mohran, a massive sand riding long horned colossal, causing your ship to now wobble instead of sail smoothly on its course to your new hunter city of paradise.
Why that lousy gargantuan drill-bit! How dare he ruin your fun? Time to suit up and wrastle that mountainous behemoth and- oh wait, the boat wobble knocked off the Caravaneer's hat with his untold secrets and caused it to land on that giant rocks fin, and now it's up to you to run up and grab that hat of his in a tutorial of how to run and do things.
Now straight from the beginning I'm hit with a massive question.. Capcom does realize they are four installments in with this game, and many double that counting all G series titles as well, so they don't need a tutorial segment as pointless as this.
Arguably, the video work and cinematics worked really well together and is also a first for the series to incorporate it the way they are now, but the tutorial on how to move is just insulting to my obviously advanced brain.

Anywho, it's time to get back to the game:
After successfully returning hat back to the Captain, Val Habar finally catches wind of a giant beast approaching their location and dispatches their ships to push that monster... back to the sand. But whatever, you save the Captains hat!
Upon reaching Val Habar, the Caravaneer shows you his treasure that was in his hat while fangirl squealing about how brave you were and then asks you to become a member of his grand caravan that travels the world in search of great treasures and profitable trades with an ambition to see more of the world!
But before all of that, the Caravaneer is hungry, so you must go venture forth and hunt his dinner as well as cook it! Now that your oven mitts are now warmed up after cooking, it's time to embark on the dangerous world of COMBINING materials to create a mega potion because the boat wobbling caused the poor Captain slightly bang his foot and now he needs to be healed immediately!
Now that you can sustain yourself out in the wild, you can now hunt a wide assortment of small monsters that are the tiny morsels of the dah'ren's dinner... Okay now at this point I'm a little pissed. If they were going to teach me how to walk, they should have done it here! This game holds your hand so tightly at the beginning that it might as well be rolling you around the stroller as it passes by the mechanics of the game and things you need to gather to create potions, handing them to you because you asked for it in hopes that you don't cry and piss yourself because you can't seem to think like most people.
It's pretty difficult to get into the flow of the game when it deliberately slows you down like this. Oddly enough, it seems as if Capcom had this sick idea in their head when they looked at the community feedback of Monster Hunter Tri and 3 Ultimate when people would go out to the internet and complain that trying to find materials and how to attack was monstrous design flaw, and the only time to fix the problem was to provide this overbearing tutorial to make sure you don't whine anymore.

Okay, enough complaining! Back to the story, and 100% on track this time, I promise!:
Once you have finished assisting the people of Val Habar you now need a new boat to ride the waves and must travel to the great mineral deposit city called Harth for them to craft a boat for you, however you are greeted with depressed folk who are sad that their ore deposit is blocked by a giant frog/bull hybrid called Tetsucabra, and their lava flow is blocked by a mysterious creature that is revealed to be a giant spider of awesomeness and it is now up to you to get rid of the vile fiends and restore the town's spirit and business.
When your boat is crafted you are now ready to set sail to a felyne village called cheeko sands to find more clues to the mysterious treasure that the Captain wants to know about.
You now are free from your shackles and are now stepping up into the big leagues, as your boat is ambushed by a mysterious four-armed creature called the "Gore-Magala" who produces a virus that was important this whole time that wasn't really important to be explained until you were inflicted by it, and you narrowly escape its ferocious fangs as you are saved by a group of hunters who are called the Ace hunters.
A few moments of babbling you now realize you need to have a flying ship so you return to Harth to fly to a city that may well hold the mystery to the Captain's "treasure", but first, you must kill that Gore Magala, since the Ace hunters couldn't scratch its hairy rear, before it spreads its horrible virus across the world.
After you kill him, you now have flown to the city of Cathar where you show the village elder the mysterious treasure that he calls a great a great omen that is part of the great virus, so he asks that you examine the mountain for any signs of the infection.
Yadayadayada you hunt some stuff, and then you are informed that the Gore Magala has transformed into the legendary "Shagaru Magala", an elder dragon of death and rebirth and it is now your job to kill it before it spreads its virus across the world.... Again..
You valiantly slay this godly creature and then.... Nothing. You are rewarded for your deeds but everyone kinda goes on to do their own thing now, but there's really nothing more than the city of cathar congratulating you for your epic heroism. It seems very awkward that saving the world would have at least allowed you and your caravan posse to go around the different towns to worship the ground you walk on, but you kind of just go on doing the daily routine..

You're hunting legacy isn't finished yet, as you are soon again summoned to the gathering hall to help lead the reconstruction of a ironwall city called Dundroma that was destroyed in a conflict with a mighty wyvern.
You hunt monsters to open trade routes, some more trade routes, and even more trade routes for the builders to get their materials, and the excitement is intense at this moment, because you are now notified that the virus that the S.Magala was pouring out of its pores has now been spreading rapidly without the godly creature itself and you now investigate this problem... By continuing your regular activities opening trade routes, except now you also save a man called "Master of Defense" so he can build help build a great defense weapon for oncoming threats, then you save a woman called "Research Assistant" who helps create a research center to discover the secrets to defeating the virus, and then you are suddenly notified that a ferocious monster called the seregios has begun appearing around the land in huge numbers and now you hunt them down to figure out why them creatures is hunt'n yo monsters...
On a quick recap, your hunter is:
-Tasked with rebuilding a defense city
-Opening trade routes by killing monsters
-Saving important builders and researchers by killing monsters
-Investigating the return of the virus as well as discover possible cures
-Help figure out why Seregios are crowding everyone up to their armpits.

Then as you are hunting monsters, a member of the Ace Hunters discovers that a Seregios infected with the Magala Virus has overcome the virus and as a result become a super Seregios capable of spreading the virus itself.
The strange part is, the village has also been attacked by another breed of elder dragon known as the Kushala Daora, a nature controlling wyvern that once injured the Master of Defense in his old hunting days, at around the same time the Super Seregios anti-virus extraordinaire is around, and now the Ace hunter alerts you that you have to defeat the Seregios before the virus spreads around the world for the third time while he and his fellow hunters somehow miraculously defend the city from the attack of the fierce Kushala while you prevent the Seregios threat from getting to serious.
You defeat the Seregios, go back to the city and then kinda shoo away the Kushala with a cannon and boom you're a great hero, you rebuilt the city and saved it from multiple disasters, a godly dragon, and a virus spreading Seregios.
You are showered in glory and you feel more heroic because of it.
The Master of Defense then takes his leave and entrusts his old friend, the Ace hunter leader, his old hunting blade as a farewell present.
Happy ending, Happy ending...


-Thoughts-
This is a difficult game to review, seeing as there is a lot to go around here, but here are some positives and negatives I find about the game:

+There is a lot of content to the game.
+Items are easy to manage.
+Movement and versatility has been greatly improved in this monster hunter game, as tank controls are a thing of the past.
^These added improvements to control still hasn't changed the original monster hunter style of the game, so the gameplay is still what you know and love, but more badass.
+The speed and action of the game is more quick and intense than any other monster hunter game, and if you even compared MH4 to any other entry, you'd think you were looking at a whole different game, and this change is greatly accepted in my book, as previous MH games really threw people off at how slow the game moved.

-The tutorials at the beginning are absurd, and is arguably even worse than 3Ultimate's tutorial moments.
^You are damn near carried around until the game feels you are ready, unlike other Monster hunter games that gave you a tutorial and then let you do your thing after your first kill.
-Palico customization is brought to you pretty late into the game, considering you get your cat as soon as you get to Val Habar.
-Multiple Villages are a nice idea, but there isn't a lot to do in each one of them except for Dundroma.
^you can access all Caravan quests, Armor crafts, weapon crafts, weapon and armor shops, Kitchens, and Armor upgrades in all villages thanks to your caravan crew and each of the villages standard supply of vendors...


[Should you buy it?]
I greatly recommend that you definitely try it out.
If you've ever been curious about Monster Hunter, this game is definitely the first one you should get into.
Previous monster hunter games can't hope to achieve this games improvements to gameplay and speed.



As for me, I've successfully completed the caravaneer's challenge (hard as balls, but I did it) and can now dye my armor in a colorful rainbow.
G-rank is on the list and is really testing my metal.