Niantic is still looking for licenses on which it could apply its augmented reality game formula. It is in this dynamic that Kei Kawai, chief product officer at Niantic, will see Capcom in 2018, determined to leave Japan with the rights to use the license monster hunter. Spoiler alert : He accomplished his mission brilliantly and Niantic starts working on what will be Monster Hunter Now. “Even though it was a right to use, they gave us a lot of room for experimentation and they trusted us to bring Monster Hunter to mobile” Kei tells us. But that doesn’t mean Niantic is just going to put a skin on. monster hunter on its mobile game formula.
Capcom and Niantic, not the same jersey but the same farming team
With only twenty minutes of handling and no possibility of walking around with the test phone (for obvious reasons), it is difficult to have a definite opinion on the subject, but what we saw was rather encouraging. It must be said that the level of expectation was close to zero and, under these conditions, we can only be pleasantly surprised. Especially since on the surface, we are in familiar territory. Niantic’s cartography was adapted for the art direction of monster hunter, but a biome system has been integrated. We are told that “We currently have three different biomes that change every 24 hours and the appearance of monsters is linked to these biomes”. Lucky that we are, our position was right on the border between plain and desert, allowing us to fight a Great Jagras and a Kulu-Ya-Ku.
Once the fight begins, we are instantly surprised by the mobility of our character. When you’re used to other very static Niantic games, having the ability to sidestep forward or backward with your character almost feels like a revolution. We dodge the attacks to land a few blows and we start again in the purest tradition of monster hunter. Unfortunately, don’t expect to chain complex combos since in terms of attack, you will just have to tap the monster continuously, until you unlock a special attack, in the purest tradition of battles. Pokemon GO.
It’s not the craziest gameplay you’ll see on mobile, but it’s arguably the most interactive Niantic game. Let’s not be too pessimistic though, because each weapon will have a different little subtlety. For example, the longsword will have a specific gauge to send an additional special attack, while the crossbow regains its reloading system and different types of ammunition. Not all of the signature weapons will be available at launch, but we’re assured that Niantic is working on original ways to make them stand out from each other.
Note that a locking system will be available to target specific parts of the monster to facilitate the farming of certain resources. Apart from fighting big monsters, we will also be able to face small creatures and collect plants, minerals and bones in nature. In short, we will have to do as in any monster hunter self-respecting: farmer stronger than a peasant from Larzac. Each fight earns materials and money that will be used to improve weapons and armor. The system we saw in our build was temporary and we were told things had already changed a lot. However, we can tell you that each object had four levels of improvements.
covid revolution
” The Covid complicated the development and we could have released it long before without that says Kei. The pandemic has been a blow to Niantic and its games, the concept of which is based on the mobility of people, so much so that the studio’s teams have been forced to review the uses of their games. For Monster Hunter Now, this translates in two ways. On the one hand, each player will have a Palico that will fetch resources around us for us, even when the application is closed on our phone. On the other hand, Monster Hunter Now adopts a mechanic to mark a monster with paint, leaving the player the option of facing it later.
Perhaps the most important with Monster Hunter Now, it is its margin of progression. With only five monsters, three biomes, and a few weapons and armor in this build, Niantic already has content in store for years to come. If we don’t worry too much about free access to all this content given the studio’s monetization strategies for its previous games, we can of course count on a cash shop which will allow you to buy items such as potions (which you can also acquire in-game, but we couldn’t see how in this version) or even double your resource gains at the end of a fight.