I’m playing the demo for Toukiden Kiwami on PS4 and it impresses me that a company actually tried making a Monhun clone that’s like 100% derivative instead of just partially like Freedom Wars or God Eater, or just borrowing its structure like Peace Walker. Toukiden actually straight up has the same village system, mission structure, and weapon playstyles (and similarly deep controls, it seems).
Anyway, is this game cool? I’ve only played a little bit and I’m enjoying how it’s just super Japanese Monhun so far. Does it have legs? Any Toukiden fans wanna tell me about it?
I’m mostly trying it out because I hear the second game adds an open world element to the game, which is pretty great and I’m looking forward to seeing that/hope it influences the next Monhun in a direction to evolve hunting games.
It was even more like Monster Hunter in it’s first playable demo. Movement and attacks were just as slow as in MH. As KoeiTecmo is wont to do they took surveys afterwards and the pacing got some dramatic changes to what it is now.
I completed the OG Toukiden story mode and much of the “MP” quests but I never started the Kiwami side of thing (I picked up Kiwami on PC). It’s fine- the spell system is neat and I like the weapon variety. I just wish there was more monster and environment variety! Getting a huge cast of enemies is something MH managed to accrue over generations of games so it’s hard to match but I just found the relatively small number of bosses a bit of a downer. The environments also lack distinct personalities because they usually give you tons of breathing room, essentially turning into open areas rather than something that actively affects combat. Your AI partners are also very good and will make fights easy.
But I had an okay time going through it and the production values are pretty good. The story mode is lengthy and is more character based than an overarching plot about the main conflict so if you like hanging out with anime people it’s got that. Maybe it’s more difficult at the higher difficulties or in MP (which I never tried) but I mainly came away wishing it was more challenging. This is my complaint with pretty much any MH clone (and in retrospect this may be highly influenced by my only playing MH solo while all the clones allow AI partners).
After playing more of the demo, the repeating levels with constantly respawning enemies with not much variety in their attacks is really a turn off. I thought fighting that first boss would be better but it was just a punching bag with too much HP and only a handful of attacks. In the end, it just feels like a grind.
I just tried the Japanese demo for Toukiden 2 and I am super impressed!! They turned it into an open world, gave you a faster run, and on top of that give you an EVEN FASTER RUN. There’s giant cliffs to jump off of AND YOU CAN SPIDERMAN SWING FROM TREES using a Bionic Commando/Thorn from Freedom Wars arm. The item absorption thing is now on the same button as running and it works a lot faster with a bigger range by default.
I’m legit impressed at how much they’ve evolved the game in just one sequel. There’s still a lot of brainless mooks without any interesting AI and the one first boss was super boring and just kind of a damage sponge, but it’s super interesting how making it open world and giving you an awesome swinging mechanic opens up the world.
If the next Monster Hunter even attempts to do some of this in the next game, it will evolve the game like crazy.
Of course, we all don’t play Monhun just to swing around and explore - it’s about THE MONSTERS. So even if they don’t evolve the game that much, it’ll still be fun to play. BUT IT’S FUN TO SEE HOW THE GENRE COULD EVOLVE!!!
I wouldn’t buy the game, the demo was enough for me. It’s just neat to see an evolution of the genre, though the actual content itself isn’t enough to interest me to play.
I have a rather positive view on toukiden. It’s proven Omega Force can make weighty combat. I actually kind like the gimmicks they gave all the weapon styles. Longsword is all about building up bleed counters and then cashing them out, dual daggers and chain and sickle are all about playing “The floor is lava”, Gauntlets can soften parts and do just presses to trigger crits. It’s also nice having a hunter game that takes out the item management since you have spells for healing and other utility stuff. No worrying about keeping your stocks up so you can just keep slamming quests without doing any maintenance on your inventory.
The encounter design isn’t quite up there with MonHun admittedly. The monster animations are pretty straight forward and you run so fast that is isn’t that hard to flank them to get into their blind spots since you auto sheath your weapons once you start running.
Wheee, MH Generations demo early access or whatever a part of the e3 humble bundle. Also I guess it’s just active now in the EU? Also also, codes are just being sent out by nintendo too?
Charge Blade is still awesome. That Nargacuga thought it could get up after being mounted until I smashed its fucking face out the back of its skull with my ULTRA BURST.
