One of the frustrations every PlayStation fan has is the fact that they may never see a new Monster Hunter game exclusive to their platform. While Capcom has mostly made ties with Nintendo for the main entry of the Monster Hunter series, many fans who played several games on their PSP and PS2 will be disappointed as Monster Hunter 3 and 4 might never see a release on the PS Vita or PS4. While that maybe true, there are developers out there looking to bring the “monster-slaying” genre to the PlayStation platform like Soul Sacrifice and Tecmo KOEI’s Toukiden: The Age of Demons.
Fans of the much beloved Monster Hunter series will find Toukiden: The Age of Demons to be very similar to the Monster Hunter games. From the early concept of the series to the way the game works, Toukiden seems to borrow a lot of things from Capcom’s Monster Hunter game. Is that really a bad thing? Not really as the fix of having that “Monster Hunter” game on the PS Vita will be there but then, there are several new things KOEI added to Toukiden that makes it stand out.
One big difference that PS Vita will owners feel right off the bat when they play Toukiden is the story. With Monster Hunter games having no story, Toukiden will give you the somewhat of a good plot to keep you engaged. The game starts off with your character starting out to be as the “Slayer”. With the demons, also called Onis, spurting out from anywhere around the world, one settlement is seeking for Slayers to hunt down these Onis and save the world from destruction. You will start off in Utakata Village where you will meet the people who will help you out in your journey in ridding the Onis.
Utakata Village in Toukiden is like the main village you are in Monster Hunter games. In the village, you will find someone that will sell items, armors, and do all sorts of things similar to Monster Hunter. As you progress through the single-player story or do villager quests, you will unlock more things that you can do in the village such as participating in the Pool of Purity. As for missions, there will be the Command Center where you can team up with your NPC allies and do missions.
Doing missions varies from slaying monsters or collecting items. When doing them, you will be brought in a big area map where you see numbers for each part you can go to. If you have been playing Monster Hunter games, you will see a big similarity. The way the HUD works, the map is labeled, and the timer depicts big similarity to Monster Hunter games. The fact that it’s the same didn’t disappoint me, in fact it made me excited as it’s been a while since I’ve played a Monster Hunter game on the PlayStation platform. Progression in missions are similar where you will kill monsters, take their loot and get your rewards for completing. If you are to play the game for a long time at one point, expect feel the some sort of a repetitive nature of the game.
As for slaying monsters, this is where the game shines. Since Toukiden is a fantasy game, instead of seeing “monsters”, you will find the most exotic creatures that you can fight. They are big, badder, and meaner that will surely give you a challenge as the AI are good. I have one gripe though – every creature that you get too see are recycled. When fighting a boss fight, you can enable some kind of a Slayer X-Ray vision where you can see which parts you can take out. Aside from its HP that you can see, you can see how close you are in dismembering them. When a piece falls off from their body, the creature will weaken and you can get loots from it.