Releasing Pokemon into the wild is never fun. Even if you’ve become apathetic towards your little creatures, it’s a pain to catalogue and release hundreds of Pokemon for the sole purpose of freeing up Box space. Modern games, like Pokemon Legends: Z-A, make this process quicker by letting you release multiple Pokemon, but there’s no tangible gameplay benefit to sending your Pokemon back to where they came from. Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection, Capcom’s monster-taming spin-off series, puts an exciting twist on this mundane aspect of the genre. It’s called Habitat Restoration, and after playing 10 hours of Monster Hunter Stories 3, it might just be my favorite thing about it.
The Monster Hunter Stories subseries can be summed up as turn-based Monster Hunter. The crafting mechanics are streamlined, but the core Monster Hunter loop is largely intact: Kill monsters to craft equipment so you can hunt bigger monsters and craft better equipment. Where the Stories subseries sets itself apart from the mainline series, however, are the monster-taming mechanics. Iconic monsters from the franchise–or Monsties as they’re called here–fight alongside you.
New Monsties can be acquired by raiding a monster den and digging up randomized eggs from a nest. Once you have a few eggs, you can return to camp, hatch them, and throw them in your party. However, like Pokemon, no two Monsties are the same. Even ones that share the same name might have different passive abilities and movesets thanks to their genes. Alongside Monster Hunter’s classic hunt and craft gameplay loop, collecting better and better monsters is a core aspect of the game.
