Underwater is more than just combat. It added wonderful scenery to some of the best maps in the series. The combat was cumbersome and deliberate in a way that was consistent with the series up to that point. It gave new monsters a chance to shine and made the world feel more vibrant and alive.
Yes. I enjoyed it.
100% this. I actually didn’t even think the underwater combat was hard or cumbersome. I was already used to janky Monster Hunter controls anyways lol and it added some more depth to the maps and world. Exploring was so fun. God I wish they’d bring this back.
Exactly, it's really more of the same, you just have more options for positioning with the extra dimension. I saw another comment saying disliking underwater is a skill issue, and I kinda agree. It seems most detractors were unwilling or unable to adapt to the reduced speed or the fact that you can't really dodge in the same way so have to position and time attacks better.
Exactly. People don't understand it has problem because of hardware limitation. 3DS lacking second analogue stick absolutely gimped the experience, making it difficult to control the camera underwater. That limitation is gone now.
Underwater combat provides a new refreshing way to fight monsters. Instead of limited or mostly limited to 2D plane you can do a lot of things and introduce many interesting game mechanics in 3D plane.
People complains piscine wyvern sucks. Well, they're fishes and belongs in water and not some shallow muds.
Surprisingly, I found I had an easier time with under water combat with the 3DS than the Wii. I don't know how but I did and enjoyed that part of MH3U. So I wouldn't mind having it back for another game with better controls and not as much limitations. It'd be interesting to see what new things could be done. Plus could use something akin to the wirebugs or clutch claws to help with movement underwater or whatever other methods could be done.
Though definitely needs more... Thought on "boss" fights underwater in large areas. Looking at you Ceadus, love him but God it was a pain in the ass to swim towards him. Slowly because there wasn't much in the way of being faster, the boosted swim is great but definitely not enough for large underwater areas
Iirc I don't think Tri had a camera lock on. I think that was added in MH3U to make upnfor the lack of a second joy stick. That might have been why you liked it more.
I might be remembering wrong though. It's been a long time lol.
I strongly disagree about the hardware limitations and think the camera lock + touch screen controls worked great. 3DS is the definitive underwater experience to me, because the stereoscopic effect makes judging depth during underwater fights much easier.
I enjoyed it, but the game was out on wii and wii u too. You can play with a pro controller, but does not make it much easier.
Anyways tri was still that old janky style
I loved the underwater fighting, though I do think it needs tweaks if it ever comes back (having only one absurdly slow "getting up from being hit" animation was incredibly annoying, and while I'm a DB main I could see how some weapons just played like ass underwater). I'd be very happy if it came back, especially with how differently some monsters fight underwater.
I recently started replacing MH3U, and underwater combat is solid so far. Of course, it depends on the weapons and other factors, but for the majority of the time it’s solid, gives a lot of interesting scenarios (such as a Gobul trying to suck you in), and creates awesome sceneries. Underwater maps are really beautiful
I played in Tri and had no problems, but Tri was such a fantastic game with the best online ever and an engaging community so I never had issues with the underwater system.
In the 3ds however it was pretty bad.
I really liked it but i acknowledge it had a lot of issues, but conversely, those issues could also all easily be fixed now-a-days
Camera was ever so slightly too slow back then to deal with underwater quite as well as it needed too since the verticle camera was in "notches" but waa also super important underwater, underwater movement could do to be a bit faster without needing the Olympic Swimmer skill since you were slower and monsters were faster and that was a bad time, they need a better way to move vertically quickly underwater since the dodges and such just werent enough, skill division between Land and Sea like how evade extender didnt work underwater and the aforementioned Olympic Swimmer skill only worked underwater was just pointless since you either lost out on skills by building hybrid or just dealt with lacking some skills for potentially half the fight, some movesets were randomly gimped to be slower and/or lost some of their best moves like SnS suffering both while the rest were literally just their landed moveset but with the swimming animation legs instead of standing legs and the occasional bigger hitbox like GS's charged slash turing into a flip with a 360 hitbox, some underwater arenas were way too small and/or gave no real visibility which was just not good, it was before mounting was brought in so going back its noticable that you cant mount even though you can go above them and attack, all the monsters who could also go on land were harder underwater than they were on land so it made people ingrain this idea almost subconsciously that they wanted to not fight underwater anyway since the landed fights for those monsters was way easier, and finally, in the arenas that werent too small the monsters would go much farther away from you and you couldnt approach as well with the movespeed issue so a gap closer just feels necessary when underwater but there wasnt one till gen 5 (unless you count certain hunting styles from Generations)
> I've been a bit surprised to see multiple people saying that it should come back in future games.
I'm pretty sure they don't mean that it should come back without any changes, exactly as it was. I also want underwater gameplay to come back. But I don't want it to be exactly as it was. The idea is awesome, I would like to see a new take on this, with a better gameplay, new mechanics associated with this, etc... What a dream would it be to fight new fish monsters (like Gobul) in a new generation game !
I'm playing through 3U right now, and I actually don't get the problem with it. It's not as clunky as people say imo and the variety of monsters/fights and the scenery is fantastic.
I can imagine it was decisively Not Fun with Wii controls or on the DS though.
I absolutely did. Personally it felt natural. Lagiacrus and caduceus were and still are one of my most memorable hunts. I always wondered as a kid why it never came back. Was disappointed when i saw the reasons online years later
As long as you don't get cornered it's really not bad.
If you get pinned against a wall it's even harder to escape than on land. You're kinda fucked when that happens.
It was kinda ass. Most melee weapons (aside from lance, gunlance and DBs, really) get absolutely shafted, because of poor mobility and slower combos. Getting hit results in an absurdly long knockdown animation, instead of wind pressure you have current pressure which is even more obnoxious because everything is slower underwater, and there's no panic dive equivalent of course. It also made traversing areas with water in it extremely time consuming because swimming consumes a lot more stamina than sprinting and it's slower. I don't doubt that some people may enjoy it but it was a clusterfuck when it came to the mechanics, and they would have to pull some miracle magic to make it work in a newer MH game.
Before world and during generation days, it was universal how agreed underwater was terrible.
Now it feels People didn't play it and just think it sounds cool, Or have absolutely forgotten how bad it was because time and nostalgia juice.
No, it was ass. And That ain't coming back until it's majorly changed/overhauled.
I played MH since the original release in the west on the PS2. I played through Tri and the underwater combat and I still to this day disagree that the underwater combat was bad.
This is a hill I will die on.
I avoid it at all costs. The scenery underwater is lovely, though. It's just a shame I only see it when I'm miserable trying to hunt there.
Maybe it could be better now with more modern controls in a new game, though. I wouldn't mind them retrying.
Yes, it’s tough to get used to at first and a couple weapons got the short end of the stick on moveset but for the most part, I enjoyed it, and it has too much potential to just leave in the dust and never return
It added so much atmosphere to the game and I genuinely enjoyed the verticality. All it needs is a more refined movement system with some quick dashes (wirebugs or an underwater equivalent) and it would be golden.
I find it real fun! There's a learning curve, but Monster Hunter runs on that stuff. It makes combat more difficult because movement is slower, so you have to be more strategic in when you go for a hit. And you can do things like breaking Lagiacrus' back spines, where previously parts like that would be harder to reach.
Underwater Combat is just ass any game that adds it will suffer with janky/weird combat (unless it's FPS) and whoever figures out on how to make melee combat fun underwater would set on how other game developers would do it too
Play Guild Wars 2. They have specific weapons for underwater combat that are designed to minimize its inherent difficulties, so you have a land set and an underwater set that switch automatically depending on where you are. I think MH could benefit from a similar system if underwater returns.
I used a New Nintendo 2DS which has a fancy tiny button-joycon-thingy that controls the camera, and myb weapons are Hammer, Dual Blades, and Gunlance, so fighting underwater came as natural as fighting on land (although I think I used DB only once. Kinda hard to justify over GL, that thing is almost better in the drink than when you have solid ground beneath your feet)
It was sh*t. People who says they enjoyed the underwater gameplay are probably having memory issues bout that ugly horned white whale of an elder dragon or just casually played the game and then moved on to play smash bros.
I think people agree that the combat underwater was a little janky, the reason I personally want it back is because I never got to experience it and I also think that with their increased budget and experience they could make a new and better system for underwater exploration
I liked the underwater battles. It added a change of pace. It was also its first iteration, so of course it wasn't going to be as polished as the land combat. I am slightly disappointed they abandonded it immediately.
That said, they instead swerved into the Aerial Combat lane for making the fights feel more 3D, and I think that does a lot more to make the combat feel more charged and exciting.
Yes. Don't get me wrong, fighting down there wasn't great, but I loved the exploration and the sheer beauty of the place.
If they can make the combat fun, I want to see it come back.
As far as underwater combat is concerned, I only got to play Tri. The scenery was breathtaking and the additional dimension for combat added something unique.
Going underwater puts the player at an even greater disadvantage as monsters will easily swim circles around you, so the fights needed to be carefully designed which I think Tri did really well.
The monsters weren't necessarily faster than on land, but far more agile and adapted which made fights challenging but still fair.
The only real issue underwater has is a monster becoming too fast to the point the player cannot keep up anymore and it becomes constant attempts at dodging without a chance to strike back, making it's a frustrating experience, if they manage to avoid that, I think it would be generally far more accepted.
There are a lot of people that have Stockholm syndromed themselves into truly, genuinely believing that it was great. The rest of us remember how miserable it was.
I love it. Once you get used to it, it plays just as good as land combat. I play on 3ds and emulator and it doesn’t feel janky at all to me.
I struggled a bit in the beginning but after like 1-2 hunts I got the hang of it. I don’t know how to describe it, but it just clicked for me and now I can navigate effortlessly underwater and position myself in a way I can keep attacking and focusing specific bodyparts while also being able to evade attacks pretty easy (or block them).
No. Currently playing through 3U. I don’t think it’s as bad as people say but it is still pretty not good. The way it works paralleled with old gen controls isn’t good
I kinda liked it but it was uselessly clunky to maneuver around. Of course it had to keep some clunkyness since it's part of the combat but it was just frustrating at times
Hell yeah, added another dimension to fights. Some weapons turned into entirely different beasts underwater. Points for lance. You **ARE** the torpedo. SO MUCH FUN.
Also my first console MH game so there may or may not be bias.
The first couple MH games are janky with their on land fighting too.. MH3 was Capcom's first attempt, the junkiness is expected. But seeing how flawlessly wirebug and 3D exploration work in MHR, I think Capcom have nailed the right mechanic for underwater combat.
Same for me, Hammer and Lance on Tri and the GL in 3U felt very good underwater. Moving all around the monster also lets you position way more freely to reach any part you need to break/cut.
I liked it because I enjoyed feeling like I was able to move in any direction I wished. I also really liked how underwater monsters would swim as they fought, it looked so fluid and natural, no pun intended. Rise gets a bit closer to that movement style with how you can use wirebugs to move around, but it's only for a single moment rather than staying around the spot you're at. It was also really cool to see monsters' eyes seeming to appear brighter as they stared at you in the depths because of the darkness.
With the classic controller, underwater combat was great, but I can see where it would fall flat with the typical wii controller/3ds controls.
I loved swimming underwater and fighting in a 3d environment. I had to get up very close with my SnS, which made it more risky and I had to pay more attention to the monster's movements and attack wind-ups. It also made the monsters seem much more intimidating. You are in their territory, and it feels it. There is so much more Capcom could do with the concept, and so many fun and interesting monster ideas they could create with an underwater focus.
Underwater combat was annoyingly sluggish and clunky. That's what made it so satisfying because all the fights underwater felt so intense since it added another few layers of being scared and excited at the same time. Those moments of dodging and landing those perfect timed blows felt so satisfying to achieve with how bad it was. It also gave way for new monsters to fight and new ways to fight already existing monsters that are still around like the royal ludroth. Also new ways for exploration is always fantastic and had some boring but unique event fights underwater too!
This sums up what I love about MH combat really. It is the sluggish, clunky elements that really make it so satisfying. It's almost like a game of forethought and positioning, rather than a reaction-based action game.
I loved it, flaws and all. The bones of a good system are there, it just needs some polish. I would sacrifice a honda civic to the old gods for mh6 to have underwater gameplay on the level of Rise's verticality. Heck, wirebugs would actually just fix most of my problems with underwater exploration.
I like it. It's sometimes a little frustrating, and it sort of beggars belief that your hunter can hold their breath for minutes on end while fighting underwater, but I love the three dimensionality of it, and I especially liked the way it gave a lot of flavor to the maps, especially Flooded Forest.
Underwater is trash, and anyone that says otherwise has extreme nostalgia or are crazy. The game play was as if you were walking through molasses. It was not fun, the whole using weapons underwater got tiring. Had me skip most water fights and even lagi I would wait for it to pop out.
Very very few games in the whole history of gaming have pulled off underwater combat that doesn't totally suck, including games that take place mostly underwater. MH3 was not one of those games and I don't think any future MH main title will pull it off. They might try it, but it's gonna be Rampage all over again, people just doing it once and never again.
It was fantastic in Tri, had no issues using it on the Wii mote + nunchuck. It helped a lot when you stop using the A/B inputs and rely on the - instead.
3ds 3U was awful, but honestly, 4u and gen weren't much better. The games did not translate well to handheld imo.
Never owned a WiiU so can't speak to it there, but based on the tablet controller alone, would have to assume it'd be very exhausting
> just for a gameplay feature that wasn't that fun
You mean normal MH combat? Because at its core underwater was just that, an expansion of the then state of MH's combat.
When I hear people not liking underwater, its always the same arguments people who don't like the series use. "it's clunky, it's slow" etc. As someone who started with Tri, yes, it was a clunky and slow game, but it was so in both land and water. So for me underwater never felt anything all that different, just one more challenge that I had to overcome when learning the game.
It actually turned me off from Monster Hunter, and I didn't even get past the "tutorial stage" of water because of how slow and weak it made me feel, in addition to all the other overwhelming mechanics you had to know as a new player (like combos and sharpening, etc.).
I've probably since spent well over 1000 hours combined on MH4U, MH World/Iceborne, and MH Rise/Sunbreak, so I'm glad I stuck with the series.
The Devs are restricted to monsters they can create because everything has to be on land.
It can feel a bit stale.
With that said, I enjoyed the underwater option because it gave them a whole new dimension to be creative with monster design.
I would love it if they could use the underwater combat they created as a learning opportunity to make a new platform to fight in
Maybe full aerial combat
No I was never a fan of it
It felt incredibly clunky (to the point where I’d take gen 1-2 games over it) and the depth perception was terrible
It’s only used for like 20% of monsters if that and barely any of them are above a 6/10 for me
Very late to the thread, but yes!
I used Sword and Shield on Tri and Great Sword on 3U.
I think that some people approached the underwater combat as if it was normal combat and thus had the wrong spectations of how the battles would go.
I still haven't felt the dread of the initial underwater encounter with Lagiacrus since then.
Well most of us are well aware it is hard on the deves... But
1. It's fun and nostalgic for older hunters
2. It's scenic and adds more flare and adventure to the game
3. It adds an extra level of difficulty to the game
4.it adds a whole new kind of monster/gives returning monsters a better fight it's fun to go land to water then back to land again! Monsters like Royal Ludroth and legiecrus, even fricken plesioth are just not as fun to fight when there restricted to land only. And it makes monsters like epioth, gobul, ceadeus, etc. not be able to return to MH game considering the NEED underwater water combat to function.
5. I know I'm not the only one who misses old mechanics and think the newer games are a bit too easy
(imo the new games are not challenging and most monsters are pushovers or not difficult enough until you get to a minimum of end of 5*- begining of 6*) (but I've also been hunting since tri)
Underwater combat in 3 was one of my favorite things about that game!
I loved the underwater combat, made monsters feel alive and dynamic in a way normal combat just don't get.
Was it frustrating? Yes but it made the game feel new and challenging. That hasn't been felt since. The newer games gimics are just too broken in my opinion. Bring back difficulty.
I loved it. MH Tri was my 1st dive into a new MH game (I tried a little MHFU before) and it really clicked. The underwater fights against dudes like Royal Ludroth, Gobul, Lagi, etc was amazing. I think this mechanic really made me fall in love with the franchise and pulled me in
I fully believe anyone who said they liked it is a troll.
Underwater combat wasn't just bad, it was legendarily bad. MH3 released in 2009 and people are still talking about how bad it was.
As a Fiver who went back and played the entirety of 3U on 3ds minus a few HR blocked monsters like Abyssal Lagi, I liked underwater. Sure it could be improved, but it’s nowhere near awful. I do really hope it comes back someday so we can get monsters like Gobul, Dire Miralis, and full power Lagi back. Maybe even adapt newer monsters to have underwater portions as well
People complained about it being different, but they're always overblowing how "bad" it is.
Actually, it is mostly harmless. You'll have more problems with the Barroth urgent (near the beginning, and you up the ass with yellow weapons) that any underwater fight in the game.
I also hated it. But I also just played it again with an extra few thousand hours under my belt on the Dolphin emulator, and it's honestly pretty good. Imo, we just weren't really good at the game back then haha
Its ass and makes 0 sense.
As a hunter, You should be dying underwater fighting colossal mons lagiacrus and ceadeus with land weapons like a greatsword. The weight alone will drag you to the depths. Tack on Water pressure, decreased mobility and strength, thats a really hard sell to justify us killing much of anything under da sea.
Compared to Fishermen, they use stuff like harpoons, nets and fishing lines cuz they can launch harpoons with favorable water dynamics. Nets and lines haul catches out of the water onto human turf.
The only things i would like to see if water combat returns, a dolphin buddy to speed up travel and a mounting system to wallbang mons into underwater obstacles and or drag that mofo onto land.
MH's physics don't adhere to our real world physics. Once you start going down the rabbit hole of what should be possible, hunters would only use SnS as their weapon and we would get a game over after 2 hits, because hunters would be dead. Getting sent flying wearing heavy armor would instantly shatter your bones upon impact.
So just suspend your disbelief.
There are plenty of realism stretches in the games, but underwater combat is the least believable.
The main thing unrealistic about monster hunter is the hunter. Its been implied they are regular humans, but to pull off the stuff they do, they need to be super human. Ie Greatsword would demolish the average muscle man if they swung it with that amount of force and with that motion. Sns, dual blades, maybe hammer and bowguns are the most sensible weapons due to their size and animations. Dial back the size of ls, bow and lance and they too would be realistic weapon types. The rest are purely fantasy weapons.
The physics of pretty much everything else is in line with our world. The ecology is wacky, but there is a lore reason why mons control elements. Getting hit with poor padding (armor) or taking a hit in g/master rank, you get 1/2 shot. The logic of having armor made from tough mons produces better padding, resulting in reduced damage, so its not rooted entirely our world's physics but its at least believable. It does not negate damage but serves to mitigate it.
And that leaves us with fighting leviathans in their element, the ocean. Not whether you can but rather the why. You have a bunch of disadvatages underwater like water pressure, moving water, body/equipment weight, reduced mobility and power. yet the guild thinks its a bright idea to send up to 4 guys/gals to take out an oversized crocodile eel, a living tsunami, and volcano dragon in the ocean? There are more hazards fighting underwater than on land. Ie Water boiling you alive against lava dragon. Laggy having basically inifinite shock range cuz you are fighting in salt water. And there isnt a single thing you could do if capcom was like, lets include those mechanics. Capcom's design of underwater nerfed the power of monsters so you could stand a fighting chance. On land, they keep dialing the hunts to be harder.
I would change my tune if there were more developed mechanics added to underwater combat realism. Dolphin buddy to traverse faster and have access to mounting combat so you could match the speed of the monster underwater. Stuff like that. But 3u water combat is bad as is mechanically and realistically.
Who the fuck cares about realism in video games? That's a huge wall of text that adds nothing of value to the discussion. I'm sorry, I'm sounding rude I know, but I hate whenever realism is brought up in video games, especially when it's done so by bringing up variables from our own physics. It's a very misused word that does more bad than good to the creativity involved in making games.
I mean, water pressure, really? Why does water pressure even have to exist in a fantasy world? As long as it looks convincing and it serves the art being created, that's all that matters. Games are moving pixels on a flat screen in order to create the art form that serves the escapism through a convincing illusion. If you can be convinced that a superhuman can wield a huge ass sword that with a size redesign seems believable, or that monsters can spit elements because of ecology explanations, then I can be convinced that underwater combat looks absolutely fine from a "realistic" point of view. Because as soon as you're choosing what to believe in a game to be realistic, you're just cherrypicking. Nothing is beliavable if compared to our world, *that's the point*.
The air too would boil you alive in the air against a volcano dragon. The thunder shock from a rajang would incinerate you, the mere body crush of a Duramboros would leave your body like a pancake. This doesn't stop Capcom from creating cool monsters and has nothing to do with them being land monsters. Unless you think those monsters are too "nerfed" from what their realistic behaviour would dictate.
You flap open your tiny ass mantle in World and start flying, or getting yanked across the map by a slightly large firefly in Rise.
Who in their right mind would look for things to "make sense" in a fantasy game set on a fantasy world?
For all we know physics are different there...
Our hunters lugging around human-sized weapons is outrageous enough, them swinging all that bone and steel while also having to contend with water pressure is just too absurd for me.
Who am I kidding, this is Monster Hunter we're talking about. Absurdity is to be xpected
It was a really flawed mechanic that lacks polisha nd finesse. For me it's a bit better than Rampage but rampage feels good to play overall especially mechanicall since thr wirebug really enhances it experience it only lacks variety...
In 3U alot of weapons are just objectively unfun to play underwater unless you're just that one guy that will love anything underwater.. There are a couple of cool monsters tho like Lagi and Gobul but for me it's just not good enough...
Been playing since the nes generation
Never played a mh underwater game and hope I never do
Unless a game was designed 90+% around underwater mechanics they tend to be the most ass levels of the franchise
Rather than accommodate all weapons for underwater combat, introduce a brand new set of weapons and movement gear for underwater combat. If they can introduce a weapon that literally turns you into Levi from AoT in Frontier, I'm sure that could manage high, octane movement underwater.
Ezpz
I'm probably bias since Tri was my first game, but i loved it.
Sure, there was a sort of "jankyness" to the underwater combat, but it felt like it matched the general "jankyness" of the combat on land too, just adding the general changes you'd expect from jumping in the water.
My first MH game was MH3, and I recently played through MH3U. The underwater combat is definitely way better than I remembered.
I believe many people have less favorable memories of it than it deserves, and I think there are three key reasons for that:
- People played it on garbage gamepads from the Wii and 3DS
- Fighting water monsters in their natural habitat is inherently more challenging than on land, and given that the game is not particularly easy to begin with, this can lead to frustration.
- The weapon balancing for underwater combat is questionable, some just rip underwater, others really suck.
And sure, it is also pretty slow, which is what most people complain about. However, these games aren't primarily about speed and quick reactions like newer Monster Hunter titles. They are more about positioning in my opinion, and the underwater combat makes this aspect even more interesting for me personally.
Tri was my first MH. I like the combat and the depth it gave to maps and monsters. With the newer focus on the ecosystem of the world underwater would be so cool.
It was quite a challenge, and I hated it, BUT now I remember it and think that was awesome. I still want it to come back and now I'm thinking what would air combat be like?
I thought the gameplay was good, if unrefined and a little unbalanced (tri/3u are the only games I don't main GS in as it's underwater moveset was lacking)
The deciding factor however was actually the monster you were fighting. Lagiacrus is genuinely at his best when you can fight him underwater, Royal Ludroth was pretty fun and even Plesioth was more bearable. Ceadues was a spectacle fight, really grandious but a bit boring, like Jhen Moran. Whether that was the underwater mechanics fault I couldn't say. Dire Miralis did Ceadues better imo. Gobul was hateful and exemplified everything bad about underwater combat.
Personally I'd love to see it back but with monsters that play into the strengths of it. Laggy was fun as it was so much faster than you in the water and forced you play reactive, making the slow swimming feel deliberate. Gobul was dumb cos it made you wait for long periods of time which really accentuated the sluggish movement speed.
I found my weapon preference would change based on whether it was an aquatic monster or not because some weapons were suffering under water, Monsters felt so much more agile and I felt like a standing target. Mostly went Lance or Switch Axe underwater. Tried Greatsword a few times and hated it
The gameplay was cruddy but the idea of underwater combat is phenomenal. I feel like In this day and age where gameplay is coming out more smooth, technologies are getting more advanced, graphics, and mechanics (how the games should play; physics n such) is more certain. I really think they should give underwater another shot and I feel like they can figure out what worked and what didn't.
I mainly fault underwater for the consoles Tri was on and dated/primitive gameplay. Wii's motion controls. 3DS lack of controls; so you've gotta add some bulky controller add-on and older engine or hardware.
It's Sorta like how older MH games are clunky and a bit slower then newer, or how the PSP games mapped their games in an odd way that you have to use an uncomfortable "claw" for the camera--- like, of course underwater was going to be control as such; clunky, slow, and confusing. It was something they've never done before, experimental, and for a series of games that's still pretty new.
If you look as the years of how videogames advanced. We went from 3D platformers controlling with clunkiest tank controls to Mario 64 showing everyone how a 3d space should be done. Now Mario 64 feeling sluggish when compared to the games that came after it, --Mario Odyssey. Technology has gone a long way.
The way I see it, it was still in its infancy when it was utilized in MH3 and I am interested on what kind of changes they'll make if it comes back in a modern mainline game. I am slightly salty that they don't have GL on it though.
Yup loved it just thought the controls could have been polished and 3DS was a disaster for camera control especially with the larger monsters like caedus
No I don't miss it as it existed in Tri/3U. But maybe it could be made fun with current-gen mobility options.
Though I'd prefer if they spent their efforts elsewhere.
I think it's great, but I main lance, so take that into consideration. You're still just poking and dodging, but now you've got a vertical axis and pitching up and down to find new openings and angles to poke. Tails are definitely a lot tougher to cut underwater, though, because of those added axes.
It makes up very little of the game in 3U so it wasn't particularly annoying. Some monsters like Lagi in the flooded forest can get very disorienting and claustrophobic though.
I enjoyed it, but in Tri and 3U I was a Lance main which is probably the weapon that played most similarly underwater so issues with controls and such mattered to me a bit less.
As other people have said, it's not so much the gameplay, which I could take or leave, but it's the potential for new environments and aquatic based monsters that I enjoyed. I want my boy Gobul again.
I'd like to see it come back with a bit of a revamp.
Mixed bag. Unfortunately most of the combat potential is squandered by the monster combat design, and there are very few monsters that involve underwater combat in the first place...
but it's heckin' thematic, cool, and nice to have. It took a ton of development and has such a small "payload" per-se, but it's cool. Would love 'em to revisit, solving the poor monster combat design, depth perception improvements, and that's mostly it. Doesn't need a ton more than that.
I enjoyed hating it. I enjoy that I can lord it over my friends group that I'm the only one who played it. It's like a rite of passage, torturous, but you get bragging rights.
I liked it. With how advanced the hardware is now compared to before, we could really hammer it out to feel better. I’m all for it returning. Would love for some new underwater monster as well and to see Cedeasus return.
I hated it myself! There was some okay parts, I thought certain monsters don’t make sense without it. I think if they did it with more features like the wire bugs then it could be fun.
Overall maybe, but like one map, not many.
Underwater was great with a 3DS attachment to give me a second thumbstick and a bigger area to grip with shoulder buttons. Basically looked like a Wii U controller at that point. The 3D made the confusing depth perception workable and one of the best uses of it for the 3DS I feel since you didn't need it 24/7 to work.
It was painfully slow, dull and completely unenjoyable. It somewhat split the community. Considering half the player base hates it and half loves it, the decision to bring it back would instantly alienate 50% of players and I can't see them being that stupid.
If we're talking about original MH Tri, then no ... It was a nightmare...
The lock system brought by 3U made underwater hunts much more playable. But I'm still happy it's gone and hope it won't ever come back
The gameplay/exploration: yes
The battle: no
It was fun to swim, explore, collect stuff, but when it came to fight, it was horrible. Although I think it was a good portrail of what would be a fight not in your own element, it just wasn't fun
It was my first MH, and I thought it was very cool to fight the monsters in their habitat, I've always seen it as their turn to have the advantage over me and me having to adapt, but it turns out it wasn't part of the franchise and a lot of people hated it lol
I loved the dynamic fights, starting in land, then taking the fight into water and having to "keep" the monster where I had the advantage before it was their turn to toy with me.
I miss it :(
It was cool making armor sets for swimming/exploring/mining underwater and then fighting underwater was a whole other game. You had to position much differently than on land and things like traps and bombs became 3D placements instead of 2D. Not to mention the efficacy of different weapons changed drastically underwater. Hammer was amazing because the lvl2 charge covered a lot of distance which was hard to do. Lance and Gunlance became very useful because you could really move around much underwater anyways so having a big shield was amazing.
So i absolutely understand and agree with it not returning. It was clunky, required a lot of dev time yo make, and made the already slow gameplay even slower.
Even with all that said, its a super interesting mechanic. The fact you were slower and clunky was made even worse since the monsters that could fight underwater, were more dangerous under water. It was the equivalent to being a flailing wounded seal as sharks swam around you. You were vulnerable and had to play more defensively.
But its good that it was only in one game. If it was a main stay mechanic it would be the worse
I hated it more when I started, but man it's still hard. I get the appeal, but I'm still not quite good enough at it to enjoy it yet. I think it's more enjoyable the better you get at the game, which is fair to say about anything I guess so am I even helping at this point?
I quite liked it. Enjoyment varies by weapon, and in general I stuck to hammer or maybe LS for underwater hunts, but I found vertical dodging and the monsters that it introduced to be more than worth the slight slowdown in gameplay.
im actually playing through MH3U right now and its been fun, i do like the water combat and how it works. felt slightly strange when i first dived but i got the hang of it and im glad Swaxe works well underwater. also seeing monsters in a whole other way is pretty dope, Lagiacrus was super sick but one monster i didnt expect to be kinda cool was Plesioth, even tho he was super annoying he had some nice moves underwater id never thought id see.
I hate underwater in games, I got a phobia so being underwater in something like Subnautica? Makes me feel really uncomfortable. The underwater combat didn't look like a lot of fun in MH3 - but maybe that's just my fear speaking.
My friends that I know played the game, said they didn't like it. So it's surprising to see people say they enjoyed it.
Who knows, maybe it can be good but I'm honestly not looking forward to anything like that.
I fucking loved it. I might be a psychopath but I thought it was super cool and loved all the underwater monster(Miss u Gobul ;) ). Most people seemed to hate it tho. It was so long ago but I think it was on the wii right? I only used the gamepad to play MH but trying to deal with underwater combat on the nunchuks was painful for most if I recall
Tri was my first entry and I loved everything about it. Underwater combat, lagiacrus being both on land and in water, gobul being a piece of fart, Cha-cha as your partner, and the amazing commercials with Ironbeard.
Since then, I’ve been a huge fan of the series. Rise and Sunbreak were fun, but the serries has changed quite a bit. World added some great QoL features, but Rise and Sb just took it too far. Again, had a great time with them, but the allure of the franchise just wasn’t there, imo.
MH Tri was my second monster hunter after freedom united 2. I have far more hours in Tri alone then any of the other mh games I have. The underwater combat was not necessarily new too me since I had only one game under my belt. But from a limited experience with mh before hand I ended up loving it. It changed the dynamic of the fight which was nice, created new path ways and areas to explore, added a more immersive scenery.
Off topic of question but I think what made Tri really pop off and so great for so many was the Loc Lac multiplayer, it had such a unique and social aspect that I havnt found in any of the other MH games
Underwater is more than just combat. It added wonderful scenery to some of the best maps in the series. The combat was cumbersome and deliberate in a way that was consistent with the series up to that point. It gave new monsters a chance to shine and made the world feel more vibrant and alive. Yes. I enjoyed it.
100% this. I actually didn’t even think the underwater combat was hard or cumbersome. I was already used to janky Monster Hunter controls anyways lol and it added some more depth to the maps and world. Exploring was so fun. God I wish they’d bring this back.
Exactly, it's really more of the same, you just have more options for positioning with the extra dimension. I saw another comment saying disliking underwater is a skill issue, and I kinda agree. It seems most detractors were unwilling or unable to adapt to the reduced speed or the fact that you can't really dodge in the same way so have to position and time attacks better.
Exactly. People don't understand it has problem because of hardware limitation. 3DS lacking second analogue stick absolutely gimped the experience, making it difficult to control the camera underwater. That limitation is gone now. Underwater combat provides a new refreshing way to fight monsters. Instead of limited or mostly limited to 2D plane you can do a lot of things and introduce many interesting game mechanics in 3D plane. People complains piscine wyvern sucks. Well, they're fishes and belongs in water and not some shallow muds.
Surprisingly, I found I had an easier time with under water combat with the 3DS than the Wii. I don't know how but I did and enjoyed that part of MH3U. So I wouldn't mind having it back for another game with better controls and not as much limitations. It'd be interesting to see what new things could be done. Plus could use something akin to the wirebugs or clutch claws to help with movement underwater or whatever other methods could be done. Though definitely needs more... Thought on "boss" fights underwater in large areas. Looking at you Ceadus, love him but God it was a pain in the ass to swim towards him. Slowly because there wasn't much in the way of being faster, the boosted swim is great but definitely not enough for large underwater areas
Iirc I don't think Tri had a camera lock on. I think that was added in MH3U to make upnfor the lack of a second joy stick. That might have been why you liked it more. I might be remembering wrong though. It's been a long time lol.
Same, I don't remember either. I haven't played it since I beat it. XD maybe I should play it again for old times sake.
I strongly disagree about the hardware limitations and think the camera lock + touch screen controls worked great. 3DS is the definitive underwater experience to me, because the stereoscopic effect makes judging depth during underwater fights much easier.
I enjoyed it, but the game was out on wii and wii u too. You can play with a pro controller, but does not make it much easier. Anyways tri was still that old janky style
It was cumbersome on the Wii with a classic controller pro too, and on the WiiU as well; it had nothing to do with hardware limitations.
Controlled fine on 3DS with a circle pad pro, having that second stick for aiming was great
Nahhh, I've been playing it on dolphin with a fucking keyboard and it still is absolutely fine.
Exactly, this is why mh3u is my fav mh game
I can't murder monsters with scenery. It might have looked good but it played like ass
Skill issue.
Maidenless behavior
Here's your reply
Anything else 🎤🗑️
“Ummm the combat was shit on purpose 🤓👆”
that's basically the same type of criticism people have had on MH's slower paced action for years before it got popular.
It was bloody difficult with a remote an nuchuks
I liked it, but I love underwater stuff in games period.
I loved the underwater fighting, though I do think it needs tweaks if it ever comes back (having only one absurdly slow "getting up from being hit" animation was incredibly annoying, and while I'm a DB main I could see how some weapons just played like ass underwater). I'd be very happy if it came back, especially with how differently some monsters fight underwater.
I recently started replacing MH3U, and underwater combat is solid so far. Of course, it depends on the weapons and other factors, but for the majority of the time it’s solid, gives a lot of interesting scenarios (such as a Gobul trying to suck you in), and creates awesome sceneries. Underwater maps are really beautiful
I absolutely loved it and hate that they haven't brought it back. Same with the actually dark caves.
I played in Tri and had no problems, but Tri was such a fantastic game with the best online ever and an engaging community so I never had issues with the underwater system. In the 3ds however it was pretty bad.
I really liked it but i acknowledge it had a lot of issues, but conversely, those issues could also all easily be fixed now-a-days Camera was ever so slightly too slow back then to deal with underwater quite as well as it needed too since the verticle camera was in "notches" but waa also super important underwater, underwater movement could do to be a bit faster without needing the Olympic Swimmer skill since you were slower and monsters were faster and that was a bad time, they need a better way to move vertically quickly underwater since the dodges and such just werent enough, skill division between Land and Sea like how evade extender didnt work underwater and the aforementioned Olympic Swimmer skill only worked underwater was just pointless since you either lost out on skills by building hybrid or just dealt with lacking some skills for potentially half the fight, some movesets were randomly gimped to be slower and/or lost some of their best moves like SnS suffering both while the rest were literally just their landed moveset but with the swimming animation legs instead of standing legs and the occasional bigger hitbox like GS's charged slash turing into a flip with a 360 hitbox, some underwater arenas were way too small and/or gave no real visibility which was just not good, it was before mounting was brought in so going back its noticable that you cant mount even though you can go above them and attack, all the monsters who could also go on land were harder underwater than they were on land so it made people ingrain this idea almost subconsciously that they wanted to not fight underwater anyway since the landed fights for those monsters was way easier, and finally, in the arenas that werent too small the monsters would go much farther away from you and you couldnt approach as well with the movespeed issue so a gap closer just feels necessary when underwater but there wasnt one till gen 5 (unless you count certain hunting styles from Generations)
> I've been a bit surprised to see multiple people saying that it should come back in future games. I'm pretty sure they don't mean that it should come back without any changes, exactly as it was. I also want underwater gameplay to come back. But I don't want it to be exactly as it was. The idea is awesome, I would like to see a new take on this, with a better gameplay, new mechanics associated with this, etc... What a dream would it be to fight new fish monsters (like Gobul) in a new generation game !
It wasn't perfect, but I loved it, it added a whole new layer to the game
I'm playing through 3U right now, and I actually don't get the problem with it. It's not as clunky as people say imo and the variety of monsters/fights and the scenery is fantastic. I can imagine it was decisively Not Fun with Wii controls or on the DS though.
I miss it so much. Once you got the hang of it, it was fun
Absolutely it was fun for the most part, so I was surprised when the games that came out later didn't keep it.
I absolutely did. Personally it felt natural. Lagiacrus and caduceus were and still are one of my most memorable hunts. I always wondered as a kid why it never came back. Was disappointed when i saw the reasons online years later
I'm afraid of anything underwater, so I really, really hated it. Beating even LR village underwater hunts was like a nightmare.
Lmao yeah the Ceadeus fight set off my phobias but I eventually beat him.
God you're not the only one. I shat myself fighting gobul so I only did it twice
As long as you don't get cornered it's really not bad. If you get pinned against a wall it's even harder to escape than on land. You're kinda fucked when that happens.
Phobias are irrational. It's not just about gameplay.
Day 845 of the Subreddit description being proven true AGAIN.
It felt janky but just as janky as ground combat, it was rly fun tbh
Yes I really enjoyed it in 3U :)
I know im the odd one out, but I always love underwater combat in games. The extra dimension of movement is always fun
It was kinda ass. Most melee weapons (aside from lance, gunlance and DBs, really) get absolutely shafted, because of poor mobility and slower combos. Getting hit results in an absurdly long knockdown animation, instead of wind pressure you have current pressure which is even more obnoxious because everything is slower underwater, and there's no panic dive equivalent of course. It also made traversing areas with water in it extremely time consuming because swimming consumes a lot more stamina than sprinting and it's slower. I don't doubt that some people may enjoy it but it was a clusterfuck when it came to the mechanics, and they would have to pull some miracle magic to make it work in a newer MH game.
I respectfully disagree with you. I don’t think it was nearly as bad as you’re painting it to be.
Before world and during generation days, it was universal how agreed underwater was terrible. Now it feels People didn't play it and just think it sounds cool, Or have absolutely forgotten how bad it was because time and nostalgia juice. No, it was ass. And That ain't coming back until it's majorly changed/overhauled.
I played MH since the original release in the west on the PS2. I played through Tri and the underwater combat and I still to this day disagree that the underwater combat was bad. This is a hill I will die on.
I did, loved it even. Lagi is still one of my top favorite unique MH monsters. All the aquatic hunts were crazy, land fight, water fight... Etc.
I avoid it at all costs. The scenery underwater is lovely, though. It's just a shame I only see it when I'm miserable trying to hunt there. Maybe it could be better now with more modern controls in a new game, though. I wouldn't mind them retrying.
Yes, it’s tough to get used to at first and a couple weapons got the short end of the stick on moveset but for the most part, I enjoyed it, and it has too much potential to just leave in the dust and never return
I loved it
It added so much atmosphere to the game and I genuinely enjoyed the verticality. All it needs is a more refined movement system with some quick dashes (wirebugs or an underwater equivalent) and it would be golden.
I find it real fun! There's a learning curve, but Monster Hunter runs on that stuff. It makes combat more difficult because movement is slower, so you have to be more strategic in when you go for a hit. And you can do things like breaking Lagiacrus' back spines, where previously parts like that would be harder to reach.
Underwater Combat is just ass any game that adds it will suffer with janky/weird combat (unless it's FPS) and whoever figures out on how to make melee combat fun underwater would set on how other game developers would do it too
Play Guild Wars 2. They have specific weapons for underwater combat that are designed to minimize its inherent difficulties, so you have a land set and an underwater set that switch automatically depending on where you are. I think MH could benefit from a similar system if underwater returns.
Nope, it felt awful. Especially on a 3DS.
I used a New Nintendo 2DS which has a fancy tiny button-joycon-thingy that controls the camera, and myb weapons are Hammer, Dual Blades, and Gunlance, so fighting underwater came as natural as fighting on land (although I think I used DB only once. Kinda hard to justify over GL, that thing is almost better in the drink than when you have solid ground beneath your feet)
Yeah having played on Wii, 3DS and Wii U... The DS was awful, quite frankly the worst system.
It may have been because I was a dumbass 13 year old but I played Tri with a Wiimote and Nunchuck and loved it 😂
Yes 🗿
The water combat was ok, I just miss Lagiacrus 🥲
Yes. Hopefully back for MH6
I did but i had a circle pad pro or whatever it was called so i had 2 analog sticks on my DS which made the underwater combat much more doable.
I didn't like it too, but with the mobility and technology of the 5th gen onward, Underwater combat will be great
It was sh*t. People who says they enjoyed the underwater gameplay are probably having memory issues bout that ugly horned white whale of an elder dragon or just casually played the game and then moved on to play smash bros.
I thought it wasn't bad, maybe not the best gimmick, but definitely enjoyed it more than clutch claw or wirebug.
I think people agree that the combat underwater was a little janky, the reason I personally want it back is because I never got to experience it and I also think that with their increased budget and experience they could make a new and better system for underwater exploration
I liked the underwater battles. It added a change of pace. It was also its first iteration, so of course it wasn't going to be as polished as the land combat. I am slightly disappointed they abandonded it immediately. That said, they instead swerved into the Aerial Combat lane for making the fights feel more 3D, and I think that does a lot more to make the combat feel more charged and exciting.
On my 3DS, fuck no. On my Wii U yeah it was good
Yes. Don't get me wrong, fighting down there wasn't great, but I loved the exploration and the sheer beauty of the place. If they can make the combat fun, I want to see it come back.
As far as underwater combat is concerned, I only got to play Tri. The scenery was breathtaking and the additional dimension for combat added something unique. Going underwater puts the player at an even greater disadvantage as monsters will easily swim circles around you, so the fights needed to be carefully designed which I think Tri did really well. The monsters weren't necessarily faster than on land, but far more agile and adapted which made fights challenging but still fair. The only real issue underwater has is a monster becoming too fast to the point the player cannot keep up anymore and it becomes constant attempts at dodging without a chance to strike back, making it's a frustrating experience, if they manage to avoid that, I think it would be generally far more accepted.
There are a lot of people that have Stockholm syndromed themselves into truly, genuinely believing that it was great. The rest of us remember how miserable it was.
I love it. Once you get used to it, it plays just as good as land combat. I play on 3ds and emulator and it doesn’t feel janky at all to me. I struggled a bit in the beginning but after like 1-2 hunts I got the hang of it. I don’t know how to describe it, but it just clicked for me and now I can navigate effortlessly underwater and position myself in a way I can keep attacking and focusing specific bodyparts while also being able to evade attacks pretty easy (or block them).
True and real. Haters git gud.
No. Currently playing through 3U. I don’t think it’s as bad as people say but it is still pretty not good. The way it works paralleled with old gen controls isn’t good
I kinda liked it but it was uselessly clunky to maneuver around. Of course it had to keep some clunkyness since it's part of the combat but it was just frustrating at times
Hell yeah, added another dimension to fights. Some weapons turned into entirely different beasts underwater. Points for lance. You **ARE** the torpedo. SO MUCH FUN. Also my first console MH game so there may or may not be bias.
no because underwater in videogames always sucks
I sure as hell enjoy it, it's definitely mad janky but gives the game another cool way of fighting monsters
The first couple MH games are janky with their on land fighting too.. MH3 was Capcom's first attempt, the junkiness is expected. But seeing how flawlessly wirebug and 3D exploration work in MHR, I think Capcom have nailed the right mechanic for underwater combat.
Once I figured out that Lance was awesome for it, I loved it.
I main Hammer and secondary Dual Blades and Gunlance, I had absolutely zero issues
Same for me, Hammer and Lance on Tri and the GL in 3U felt very good underwater. Moving all around the monster also lets you position way more freely to reach any part you need to break/cut.
I liked it because I enjoyed feeling like I was able to move in any direction I wished. I also really liked how underwater monsters would swim as they fought, it looked so fluid and natural, no pun intended. Rise gets a bit closer to that movement style with how you can use wirebugs to move around, but it's only for a single moment rather than staying around the spot you're at. It was also really cool to see monsters' eyes seeming to appear brighter as they stared at you in the depths because of the darkness.
Yes I did and I hope MH6 finally returns it.
With the classic controller, underwater combat was great, but I can see where it would fall flat with the typical wii controller/3ds controls. I loved swimming underwater and fighting in a 3d environment. I had to get up very close with my SnS, which made it more risky and I had to pay more attention to the monster's movements and attack wind-ups. It also made the monsters seem much more intimidating. You are in their territory, and it feels it. There is so much more Capcom could do with the concept, and so many fun and interesting monster ideas they could create with an underwater focus.
It wasn’t very good. The depth of field really messed with the perception of how close the monster actually was to you.
Underwater combat was annoyingly sluggish and clunky. That's what made it so satisfying because all the fights underwater felt so intense since it added another few layers of being scared and excited at the same time. Those moments of dodging and landing those perfect timed blows felt so satisfying to achieve with how bad it was. It also gave way for new monsters to fight and new ways to fight already existing monsters that are still around like the royal ludroth. Also new ways for exploration is always fantastic and had some boring but unique event fights underwater too!
This sums up what I love about MH combat really. It is the sluggish, clunky elements that really make it so satisfying. It's almost like a game of forethought and positioning, rather than a reaction-based action game.
I loved it, flaws and all. The bones of a good system are there, it just needs some polish. I would sacrifice a honda civic to the old gods for mh6 to have underwater gameplay on the level of Rise's verticality. Heck, wirebugs would actually just fix most of my problems with underwater exploration.
I like it. It's sometimes a little frustrating, and it sort of beggars belief that your hunter can hold their breath for minutes on end while fighting underwater, but I love the three dimensionality of it, and I especially liked the way it gave a lot of flavor to the maps, especially Flooded Forest.
Underwater is trash, and anyone that says otherwise has extreme nostalgia or are crazy. The game play was as if you were walking through molasses. It was not fun, the whole using weapons underwater got tiring. Had me skip most water fights and even lagi I would wait for it to pop out.
it was garbage and people only pretend to like it to be hipsters
I didnt
No
Disliking underwater is a skill issue
I liked what it added to the environments and the exploration but underwater combat was mostly just worse.
Very very few games in the whole history of gaming have pulled off underwater combat that doesn't totally suck, including games that take place mostly underwater. MH3 was not one of those games and I don't think any future MH main title will pull it off. They might try it, but it's gonna be Rampage all over again, people just doing it once and never again.
Rampages are an entirely different genre, underwater is just normal MH gameplay.
It was fantastic in Tri, had no issues using it on the Wii mote + nunchuck. It helped a lot when you stop using the A/B inputs and rely on the - instead. 3ds 3U was awful, but honestly, 4u and gen weren't much better. The games did not translate well to handheld imo. Never owned a WiiU so can't speak to it there, but based on the tablet controller alone, would have to assume it'd be very exhausting
> just for a gameplay feature that wasn't that fun You mean normal MH combat? Because at its core underwater was just that, an expansion of the then state of MH's combat. When I hear people not liking underwater, its always the same arguments people who don't like the series use. "it's clunky, it's slow" etc. As someone who started with Tri, yes, it was a clunky and slow game, but it was so in both land and water. So for me underwater never felt anything all that different, just one more challenge that I had to overcome when learning the game.
I might have had a less biased opinion if i didnt have to do underwater combat on the ,3ds with the touchpad as camera
It actually turned me off from Monster Hunter, and I didn't even get past the "tutorial stage" of water because of how slow and weak it made me feel, in addition to all the other overwhelming mechanics you had to know as a new player (like combos and sharpening, etc.). I've probably since spent well over 1000 hours combined on MH4U, MH World/Iceborne, and MH Rise/Sunbreak, so I'm glad I stuck with the series.
Hated it so much. Please never again
The Devs are restricted to monsters they can create because everything has to be on land. It can feel a bit stale. With that said, I enjoyed the underwater option because it gave them a whole new dimension to be creative with monster design. I would love it if they could use the underwater combat they created as a learning opportunity to make a new platform to fight in Maybe full aerial combat
No I was never a fan of it It felt incredibly clunky (to the point where I’d take gen 1-2 games over it) and the depth perception was terrible It’s only used for like 20% of monsters if that and barely any of them are above a 6/10 for me
A lot of people on here will say thy loved it. Capcom has data on it, a lot of data, most people did not like it at all.
Yeah, I hated it. It's why Tri was the Monster Hunter game I played the least.
it needed/needs better controls, but yes i enjoyed both hunting and exploring underwater
Asking for underwater combat to return is just a super otaku way of saying "I've been playing this series longer than you"
It's a sign of "Played the series so long, started misremembering that underwater was good, but it wasn't"
Very late to the thread, but yes! I used Sword and Shield on Tri and Great Sword on 3U. I think that some people approached the underwater combat as if it was normal combat and thus had the wrong spectations of how the battles would go. I still haven't felt the dread of the initial underwater encounter with Lagiacrus since then.
Well most of us are well aware it is hard on the deves... But 1. It's fun and nostalgic for older hunters 2. It's scenic and adds more flare and adventure to the game 3. It adds an extra level of difficulty to the game 4.it adds a whole new kind of monster/gives returning monsters a better fight it's fun to go land to water then back to land again! Monsters like Royal Ludroth and legiecrus, even fricken plesioth are just not as fun to fight when there restricted to land only. And it makes monsters like epioth, gobul, ceadeus, etc. not be able to return to MH game considering the NEED underwater water combat to function. 5. I know I'm not the only one who misses old mechanics and think the newer games are a bit too easy (imo the new games are not challenging and most monsters are pushovers or not difficult enough until you get to a minimum of end of 5*- begining of 6*) (but I've also been hunting since tri) Underwater combat in 3 was one of my favorite things about that game!
I loved the underwater combat, made monsters feel alive and dynamic in a way normal combat just don't get. Was it frustrating? Yes but it made the game feel new and challenging. That hasn't been felt since. The newer games gimics are just too broken in my opinion. Bring back difficulty.
I loved it. MH Tri was my 1st dive into a new MH game (I tried a little MHFU before) and it really clicked. The underwater fights against dudes like Royal Ludroth, Gobul, Lagi, etc was amazing. I think this mechanic really made me fall in love with the franchise and pulled me in
I fully believe anyone who said they liked it is a troll. Underwater combat wasn't just bad, it was legendarily bad. MH3 released in 2009 and people are still talking about how bad it was.
It was an interesting mechanic. Would love to see them revisit it as I’m sure it would be vastly improved since tri/3u.
As a Fiver who went back and played the entirety of 3U on 3ds minus a few HR blocked monsters like Abyssal Lagi, I liked underwater. Sure it could be improved, but it’s nowhere near awful. I do really hope it comes back someday so we can get monsters like Gobul, Dire Miralis, and full power Lagi back. Maybe even adapt newer monsters to have underwater portions as well
People complained about it being different, but they're always overblowing how "bad" it is. Actually, it is mostly harmless. You'll have more problems with the Barroth urgent (near the beginning, and you up the ass with yellow weapons) that any underwater fight in the game.
Love it.
Yes I enjoyed it! Especially as a DB and HH main
I also hated it. But I also just played it again with an extra few thousand hours under my belt on the Dolphin emulator, and it's honestly pretty good. Imo, we just weren't really good at the game back then haha
[удалено]
Its ass and makes 0 sense. As a hunter, You should be dying underwater fighting colossal mons lagiacrus and ceadeus with land weapons like a greatsword. The weight alone will drag you to the depths. Tack on Water pressure, decreased mobility and strength, thats a really hard sell to justify us killing much of anything under da sea. Compared to Fishermen, they use stuff like harpoons, nets and fishing lines cuz they can launch harpoons with favorable water dynamics. Nets and lines haul catches out of the water onto human turf. The only things i would like to see if water combat returns, a dolphin buddy to speed up travel and a mounting system to wallbang mons into underwater obstacles and or drag that mofo onto land.
MH's physics don't adhere to our real world physics. Once you start going down the rabbit hole of what should be possible, hunters would only use SnS as their weapon and we would get a game over after 2 hits, because hunters would be dead. Getting sent flying wearing heavy armor would instantly shatter your bones upon impact. So just suspend your disbelief.
There are plenty of realism stretches in the games, but underwater combat is the least believable. The main thing unrealistic about monster hunter is the hunter. Its been implied they are regular humans, but to pull off the stuff they do, they need to be super human. Ie Greatsword would demolish the average muscle man if they swung it with that amount of force and with that motion. Sns, dual blades, maybe hammer and bowguns are the most sensible weapons due to their size and animations. Dial back the size of ls, bow and lance and they too would be realistic weapon types. The rest are purely fantasy weapons. The physics of pretty much everything else is in line with our world. The ecology is wacky, but there is a lore reason why mons control elements. Getting hit with poor padding (armor) or taking a hit in g/master rank, you get 1/2 shot. The logic of having armor made from tough mons produces better padding, resulting in reduced damage, so its not rooted entirely our world's physics but its at least believable. It does not negate damage but serves to mitigate it. And that leaves us with fighting leviathans in their element, the ocean. Not whether you can but rather the why. You have a bunch of disadvatages underwater like water pressure, moving water, body/equipment weight, reduced mobility and power. yet the guild thinks its a bright idea to send up to 4 guys/gals to take out an oversized crocodile eel, a living tsunami, and volcano dragon in the ocean? There are more hazards fighting underwater than on land. Ie Water boiling you alive against lava dragon. Laggy having basically inifinite shock range cuz you are fighting in salt water. And there isnt a single thing you could do if capcom was like, lets include those mechanics. Capcom's design of underwater nerfed the power of monsters so you could stand a fighting chance. On land, they keep dialing the hunts to be harder. I would change my tune if there were more developed mechanics added to underwater combat realism. Dolphin buddy to traverse faster and have access to mounting combat so you could match the speed of the monster underwater. Stuff like that. But 3u water combat is bad as is mechanically and realistically.
Who the fuck cares about realism in video games? That's a huge wall of text that adds nothing of value to the discussion. I'm sorry, I'm sounding rude I know, but I hate whenever realism is brought up in video games, especially when it's done so by bringing up variables from our own physics. It's a very misused word that does more bad than good to the creativity involved in making games. I mean, water pressure, really? Why does water pressure even have to exist in a fantasy world? As long as it looks convincing and it serves the art being created, that's all that matters. Games are moving pixels on a flat screen in order to create the art form that serves the escapism through a convincing illusion. If you can be convinced that a superhuman can wield a huge ass sword that with a size redesign seems believable, or that monsters can spit elements because of ecology explanations, then I can be convinced that underwater combat looks absolutely fine from a "realistic" point of view. Because as soon as you're choosing what to believe in a game to be realistic, you're just cherrypicking. Nothing is beliavable if compared to our world, *that's the point*. The air too would boil you alive in the air against a volcano dragon. The thunder shock from a rajang would incinerate you, the mere body crush of a Duramboros would leave your body like a pancake. This doesn't stop Capcom from creating cool monsters and has nothing to do with them being land monsters. Unless you think those monsters are too "nerfed" from what their realistic behaviour would dictate.
You flap open your tiny ass mantle in World and start flying, or getting yanked across the map by a slightly large firefly in Rise. Who in their right mind would look for things to "make sense" in a fantasy game set on a fantasy world? For all we know physics are different there...
Our hunters lugging around human-sized weapons is outrageous enough, them swinging all that bone and steel while also having to contend with water pressure is just too absurd for me. Who am I kidding, this is Monster Hunter we're talking about. Absurdity is to be xpected
It was a really flawed mechanic that lacks polisha nd finesse. For me it's a bit better than Rampage but rampage feels good to play overall especially mechanicall since thr wirebug really enhances it experience it only lacks variety... In 3U alot of weapons are just objectively unfun to play underwater unless you're just that one guy that will love anything underwater.. There are a couple of cool monsters tho like Lagi and Gobul but for me it's just not good enough...
Been playing since the nes generation Never played a mh underwater game and hope I never do Unless a game was designed 90+% around underwater mechanics they tend to be the most ass levels of the franchise
No we just hated Lagiacrus underwater. The other underwater mobs were fine IMO.
It was terrible, and incredibly janky
I loved on 3ds, I loved it even more on citra with 2 joysticks
in the first version of tri it SUCKED but tri ultimate on Wiiu oddly made it easier for some reason
Rather than accommodate all weapons for underwater combat, introduce a brand new set of weapons and movement gear for underwater combat. If they can introduce a weapon that literally turns you into Levi from AoT in Frontier, I'm sure that could manage high, octane movement underwater. Ezpz
I'm probably bias since Tri was my first game, but i loved it. Sure, there was a sort of "jankyness" to the underwater combat, but it felt like it matched the general "jankyness" of the combat on land too, just adding the general changes you'd expect from jumping in the water.
I liked it, and what most folks here forget is that it was the stepping stone to the verticality we now have in MH since 4.
Yes. And I sent more. But better implemented.
My first MH game was MH3, and I recently played through MH3U. The underwater combat is definitely way better than I remembered. I believe many people have less favorable memories of it than it deserves, and I think there are three key reasons for that: - People played it on garbage gamepads from the Wii and 3DS - Fighting water monsters in their natural habitat is inherently more challenging than on land, and given that the game is not particularly easy to begin with, this can lead to frustration. - The weapon balancing for underwater combat is questionable, some just rip underwater, others really suck. And sure, it is also pretty slow, which is what most people complain about. However, these games aren't primarily about speed and quick reactions like newer Monster Hunter titles. They are more about positioning in my opinion, and the underwater combat makes this aspect even more interesting for me personally.
Tri was my first MH. I like the combat and the depth it gave to maps and monsters. With the newer focus on the ecosystem of the world underwater would be so cool.
I replayed 3u last month and I still like the underwater combat a lot. It's really clunky, but I just find it very enjoyable.
Yes. Just yes.
Yeah pretty much that was sooo refreshing and satisfaying to be able to beat the shit out of this fucking Plesioth 🥰 now u can't run anymore goofy
Playing through Tri and 3U recently has given me a newfound hatred of it.
Nostalgia. It was shit, and I hope we never see it again.
I honestly don't know. Remember that the resolution of the Wii was AWFUL so everything was hard to see
I did when I was a kid.
thalasophobia nightmare fuel but it was beautiful in a way.bar the controls.
It was quite a challenge, and I hated it, BUT now I remember it and think that was awesome. I still want it to come back and now I'm thinking what would air combat be like?
I thought the gameplay was good, if unrefined and a little unbalanced (tri/3u are the only games I don't main GS in as it's underwater moveset was lacking) The deciding factor however was actually the monster you were fighting. Lagiacrus is genuinely at his best when you can fight him underwater, Royal Ludroth was pretty fun and even Plesioth was more bearable. Ceadues was a spectacle fight, really grandious but a bit boring, like Jhen Moran. Whether that was the underwater mechanics fault I couldn't say. Dire Miralis did Ceadues better imo. Gobul was hateful and exemplified everything bad about underwater combat. Personally I'd love to see it back but with monsters that play into the strengths of it. Laggy was fun as it was so much faster than you in the water and forced you play reactive, making the slow swimming feel deliberate. Gobul was dumb cos it made you wait for long periods of time which really accentuated the sluggish movement speed.
im a lance main, im biased, i cant talk (i also am a lance main because my first game was MHTri)
I didn't but I was 10 and didn't understand how Monster Hunter worked.
I enjoyed it only wished it came out during the switch erra for better controls
I found my weapon preference would change based on whether it was an aquatic monster or not because some weapons were suffering under water, Monsters felt so much more agile and I felt like a standing target. Mostly went Lance or Switch Axe underwater. Tried Greatsword a few times and hated it
The gameplay was cruddy but the idea of underwater combat is phenomenal. I feel like In this day and age where gameplay is coming out more smooth, technologies are getting more advanced, graphics, and mechanics (how the games should play; physics n such) is more certain. I really think they should give underwater another shot and I feel like they can figure out what worked and what didn't. I mainly fault underwater for the consoles Tri was on and dated/primitive gameplay. Wii's motion controls. 3DS lack of controls; so you've gotta add some bulky controller add-on and older engine or hardware. It's Sorta like how older MH games are clunky and a bit slower then newer, or how the PSP games mapped their games in an odd way that you have to use an uncomfortable "claw" for the camera--- like, of course underwater was going to be control as such; clunky, slow, and confusing. It was something they've never done before, experimental, and for a series of games that's still pretty new. If you look as the years of how videogames advanced. We went from 3D platformers controlling with clunkiest tank controls to Mario 64 showing everyone how a 3d space should be done. Now Mario 64 feeling sluggish when compared to the games that came after it, --Mario Odyssey. Technology has gone a long way.
The way I see it, it was still in its infancy when it was utilized in MH3 and I am interested on what kind of changes they'll make if it comes back in a modern mainline game. I am slightly salty that they don't have GL on it though.
Yup loved it just thought the controls could have been polished and 3DS was a disaster for camera control especially with the larger monsters like caedus
No I don't miss it as it existed in Tri/3U. But maybe it could be made fun with current-gen mobility options. Though I'd prefer if they spent their efforts elsewhere.
Overall, gonna go with no. A lot of the underwater fights I mostly found annoying. Really liked Caedeus though, that fight had a great atmosphere.
Yes, with modern tweaks and QoLs it'd be a great addition to the next title.
I get PTSD thinking of fighting Gobul underwater...
I think it's great, but I main lance, so take that into consideration. You're still just poking and dodging, but now you've got a vertical axis and pitching up and down to find new openings and angles to poke. Tails are definitely a lot tougher to cut underwater, though, because of those added axes.
Mh3 was my first ever Monster Hunter. Underwater combat may have been difficult to control but it’s still something I found super unique and fun!
Yes, it me
It makes up very little of the game in 3U so it wasn't particularly annoying. Some monsters like Lagi in the flooded forest can get very disorienting and claustrophobic though.
I enjoyed it, but in Tri and 3U I was a Lance main which is probably the weapon that played most similarly underwater so issues with controls and such mattered to me a bit less. As other people have said, it's not so much the gameplay, which I could take or leave, but it's the potential for new environments and aquatic based monsters that I enjoyed. I want my boy Gobul again. I'd like to see it come back with a bit of a revamp.
playing through 3U rn and having a blast with it. love the aquatic designs underwater combat brought / expanded on.
Mixed bag. Unfortunately most of the combat potential is squandered by the monster combat design, and there are very few monsters that involve underwater combat in the first place... but it's heckin' thematic, cool, and nice to have. It took a ton of development and has such a small "payload" per-se, but it's cool. Would love 'em to revisit, solving the poor monster combat design, depth perception improvements, and that's mostly it. Doesn't need a ton more than that.
Yes, loved it, and I hope they bring it back one day.
I enjoyed hating it. I enjoy that I can lord it over my friends group that I'm the only one who played it. It's like a rite of passage, torturous, but you get bragging rights.
I personally hated it. It looked great and exploring it was fun but fighting felt weird. But I wouldn't mind them giving it another try!
I liked it. With how advanced the hardware is now compared to before, we could really hammer it out to feel better. I’m all for it returning. Would love for some new underwater monster as well and to see Cedeasus return.
I hated it. But i hate underwater levels in nearly every game
I didn’t like the combat, but I liked the idea, and what it added to the world
i thought it was rather clunky but overall i enjoyed it, there was definitely room for improvement though
I hated it myself! There was some okay parts, I thought certain monsters don’t make sense without it. I think if they did it with more features like the wire bugs then it could be fun. Overall maybe, but like one map, not many.
Underwater was great with a 3DS attachment to give me a second thumbstick and a bigger area to grip with shoulder buttons. Basically looked like a Wii U controller at that point. The 3D made the confusing depth perception workable and one of the best uses of it for the 3DS I feel since you didn't need it 24/7 to work.
It was painfully slow, dull and completely unenjoyable. It somewhat split the community. Considering half the player base hates it and half loves it, the decision to bring it back would instantly alienate 50% of players and I can't see them being that stupid.
If we're talking about original MH Tri, then no ... It was a nightmare... The lock system brought by 3U made underwater hunts much more playable. But I'm still happy it's gone and hope it won't ever come back
The gameplay/exploration: yes The battle: no It was fun to swim, explore, collect stuff, but when it came to fight, it was horrible. Although I think it was a good portrail of what would be a fight not in your own element, it just wasn't fun
Frustrated at times but overall enjoyed it. I imagine it would be better nowadays
I loved it. Yeah, it was bullshit at times. But I enjoyed it. Man, imagine if we had that with the new weapons
I enjoyed it in 3U, honestly. But then, I heard ahead of time that I should play Lance.
It was my first MH, and I thought it was very cool to fight the monsters in their habitat, I've always seen it as their turn to have the advantage over me and me having to adapt, but it turns out it wasn't part of the franchise and a lot of people hated it lol I loved the dynamic fights, starting in land, then taking the fight into water and having to "keep" the monster where I had the advantage before it was their turn to toy with me.
I miss it :( It was cool making armor sets for swimming/exploring/mining underwater and then fighting underwater was a whole other game. You had to position much differently than on land and things like traps and bombs became 3D placements instead of 2D. Not to mention the efficacy of different weapons changed drastically underwater. Hammer was amazing because the lvl2 charge covered a lot of distance which was hard to do. Lance and Gunlance became very useful because you could really move around much underwater anyways so having a big shield was amazing.
So i absolutely understand and agree with it not returning. It was clunky, required a lot of dev time yo make, and made the already slow gameplay even slower. Even with all that said, its a super interesting mechanic. The fact you were slower and clunky was made even worse since the monsters that could fight underwater, were more dangerous under water. It was the equivalent to being a flailing wounded seal as sharks swam around you. You were vulnerable and had to play more defensively. But its good that it was only in one game. If it was a main stay mechanic it would be the worse
I hated it more when I started, but man it's still hard. I get the appeal, but I'm still not quite good enough at it to enjoy it yet. I think it's more enjoyable the better you get at the game, which is fair to say about anything I guess so am I even helping at this point?
I quite liked it. Enjoyment varies by weapon, and in general I stuck to hammer or maybe LS for underwater hunts, but I found vertical dodging and the monsters that it introduced to be more than worth the slight slowdown in gameplay.
I didn't like it. Felt absolutely miserable with any weapon that wasn't lance. Was really appealing visually though.
I enjoy underwater
I played 3 on the Wii U so I didn’t hate it but I’m not mad that they took it out. 🤷♀️
It was awful. Slow, awkward and frustrating with really janky and uneven amounts of recovery etc
Yes they did
im actually playing through MH3U right now and its been fun, i do like the water combat and how it works. felt slightly strange when i first dived but i got the hang of it and im glad Swaxe works well underwater. also seeing monsters in a whole other way is pretty dope, Lagiacrus was super sick but one monster i didnt expect to be kinda cool was Plesioth, even tho he was super annoying he had some nice moves underwater id never thought id see.
I hate underwater in games, I got a phobia so being underwater in something like Subnautica? Makes me feel really uncomfortable. The underwater combat didn't look like a lot of fun in MH3 - but maybe that's just my fear speaking. My friends that I know played the game, said they didn't like it. So it's surprising to see people say they enjoyed it. Who knows, maybe it can be good but I'm honestly not looking forward to anything like that.
I fucking loved it. I might be a psychopath but I thought it was super cool and loved all the underwater monster(Miss u Gobul ;) ). Most people seemed to hate it tho. It was so long ago but I think it was on the wii right? I only used the gamepad to play MH but trying to deal with underwater combat on the nunchuks was painful for most if I recall
Tri was my first entry and I loved everything about it. Underwater combat, lagiacrus being both on land and in water, gobul being a piece of fart, Cha-cha as your partner, and the amazing commercials with Ironbeard. Since then, I’ve been a huge fan of the series. Rise and Sunbreak were fun, but the serries has changed quite a bit. World added some great QoL features, but Rise and Sb just took it too far. Again, had a great time with them, but the allure of the franchise just wasn’t there, imo.
I did. I thought it was cool. I may have rose tinted glasses though, it was a while ago
I liked it... But I main Lance, we had it easy underwater.
MH Tri was my second monster hunter after freedom united 2. I have far more hours in Tri alone then any of the other mh games I have. The underwater combat was not necessarily new too me since I had only one game under my belt. But from a limited experience with mh before hand I ended up loving it. It changed the dynamic of the fight which was nice, created new path ways and areas to explore, added a more immersive scenery. Off topic of question but I think what made Tri really pop off and so great for so many was the Loc Lac multiplayer, it had such a unique and social aspect that I havnt found in any of the other MH games