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In Monster Hunter Freedom 2 for the PSP, a player begins as a newly hired Monster Hunter arriving in a cold mountain town. The premise is that the player has been sent to replace the old Monster Hunter, who was killed by a beast that attacked the village. While playing this game, a player experiences several aesthetic values from it including Challenge, Self-Expression and the Epic model.

The Challenging model gives a player a specific sense of accomplishment as she works her way through the game. In Monster Hunter, a player will be sent on missions into the wild where she will constantly be challenged by enemies that are more and more difficult to bring down, but will be rewarded with money and rare loot from the corpses of the monsters she hunts. As her prey becomes stronger, she can use the items she collects from the wilderness to improve her own armor and weapons, allowing her to overcome the obstacles before her. Against each enemy she has the chance to practice techniques until she masters her weapon of choice, allowing her to defeat stronger and more agile enemies with skill and determination.

Players also get the ability to experience the Self-Expressive aesthetic, with several fighting styles to choose from in order to take down monsters, and with different types of armor and weapons they can buy or fashion. Each fighting style can change the gameplay completely, with ranged weapons dealing damage from far away and leaving players exposed with very little armor, and close-range weapons dealing massive damage in one blow or very quick bits of damage eating up an enemy’s health. An even more unique piece of equipment is the Hunting Horn, which is a support class for playing in a party, and heals or casts strength buffs on nearby allies. Each piece of armor has its own unique look and build. Players can also improve armor they own and make it stronger without having to change it for other, stronger armor. With several different body part slots to equip armor onto and many different styles and specializations to choose from, players are given the sense of satisfaction from earning their armor and the feeling of freedom that comes with being able to choose their appearance. As they complete missions and defeat more enemies, they also unlock titles for themselves, allowing players to adopt interesting customizable titles such as “Walker of Mountains” or “Racing in The Sky”. Players also get the opportunity to play cooperatively with friends over Ad-Hoc wireless connection. Up to four players can band together in a party and take on missions, allowing them to show off their stats and armor and share their abilities and experiences with each other.

A player is also presented with the Epic model when playing Monster Hunter. He will start out a lowly novice with no titles to his name, and as he completes quests will unlock titles, obtain items, expand his farm, forge more and more prestigious armor and weapons and fight monsters of increasing size and difficulty. The first beast a player will encounter is a terrifying, roaring dragon creature known as the Tigrex, which defeats a player utterly and leaves them stranded in the snow. The player must face the Tigrex again several times through the game, never being able to stand up to its power and being forced to run away, but with every loss comes more and more victories until a player is able to take the Tigrex down. Monsters even beyond the Tigrex will be greater in size, power and terrifying strength, but a player will be able to overcome them all in time, filling him with the feeling of accomplishing Epic and fantastic tasks. Monster Hunter does fall short when showing a player the result of his actions—the creatures he defeats will be alive and well if he ever returns to defeat them, and there is no visible change in the world if he chooses to help troubled people or not. However, the game can be excused in that through the fact that, regardless, a player still feels a great satisfaction from defeating and even capturing monsters, and the more he defeats those monsters, the more rare loot he will collect from their corpses—such as bones, skulls, teeth, hide and more.

Monster Hunter Freedom 2 takes many of the elements from an MMORPG and incorporates them into a unique single-player experience. Part action game, part roleplaying game, part Pokemon-collector game, Monster Hunter tries to give players a sense of challenging, epic play and allows them to express themselves by giving them a great deal of customization in both gameplay styles and visual appeal. Monster Hunter Freedom 2 was a huge success (and continues to be one) in Japan, where it not only has several released games on the PSP but has a large MMO Action-RPG game Monster Hunter Frontier. Unfortunately, in the U.S., it is very difficult to get a copy—however, there is a good chunk of fans who have gotten their hands on the game and enjoy it for its amazing blend of hardcore achievement gameplay and short, ten-to-thirty-minute causal play missions.

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