Monster Hunter returns with a new “Stories” spin-off with some incredibly beautiful graphics, a stellar story and a Pokémon-style mechanic that will keep your inner Poké-nerd incredibly satisfied. This spin-off series boasts a beautiful anime art style and incredible stories and adventures that are more monster-raising than hunting.
After my playthrough of the game, I can confidently say that while I enjoyed the last main game, Monster Hunter Wilds, I LOVE Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection. There is a charm, a refinement, and a storytelling spectacle that make this game deliver my favourite Monster Hunter experience to date.
A Kingdom, a Curse, and Two Hatched Eggs
Stories 3 opens with a character creator and a series of cutscenes that quickly establish your place in the world. Your character is a Ranger and a child of the king. When two Rathalos hatch from a single egg found in the wild, the bad omen of twins demands that one must be destroyed. It is quite a dark and harrowing premise, but the game manages to keep it relatively light. The story does a flash forward to the present day, and you are leading a group of Rangers atop a fully grown Rathalos, soaring over a castle in real-time within the game’s first hour.
The story is surprisingly strong and sets up the rest of the game with a pacing largely decided by how deeply you engage with the side content. There is enough side content for this to be a 100 + hour game, with the main game taking around 30 hours to complete. There is a willingness to explore heavier themes of loss and abandonment alongside what is, at its core, a monster-raising-and-battling adventure.
The willingness to do something different with these side games is what kept me coming back for more. The game is reflective of your choices. You do need to find monsters that may be blocking certain areas or causing havoc. You can choose to destroy them or relocate and train them, which then allows you to return and collect their eggs, creating new environments and progressing to new areas. It is this that makes it feel very Pokémon adjacent.
Strategy Over Spectacle
Monster Hunter Wilds was my first exploration into the MH world. While I did enjoy the game, it doesn’t hold a candle to this one. The mash-up of genres, combined with the gameplay combat mechanics,
To be fair to Wilds, its combat is thrilling, kinetic, and deliberately visceral. It did become a little repetitive and button-mashy as the game kept going on. It was difficult to stay motivated and want to explore. Stories 3 is a very different beast. Its turn-based system demands engagement at every level, and the deeper you go, the richer it becomes.
Being able to hatch, level up, and customise monsties while also adapting three weapon types to a flexible playstyle is just one layer of what is available to you. Once a challenging battle begins, you are simultaneously managing elemental weaknesses, the game’s rock-paper-scissors framework, gauge meters, body part targeting, sync attacks, and companion abilities.
In the early hours, when all of these systems converge at once, it can be genuinely difficult to know how best to proceed. But Stories 3 rewards patience. You learn, you grow more competent, and battles that once felt overwhelming become deeply satisfying.
Side missions and character stories become increasingly integral for boosting stats and switching between monsties to best achieve your goal. Your average encounter can swing from a breezy 20 seconds to a gruelling 15 minutes, and neither outcome feels cheap. Being able to swap companions, monsties, weapons, and items between encounters also keeps battles fresh.
You have three different kinds of attacks, including Power, Speed and Technical, and finding out which is best to combine with any elemental weaknesses will determine your success (or lack thereof). You can target specific parts of the monster to gain a stronger attack, which can help you take it down.
A Visual Delight
The art style here is unmistakably anime-inspired, and it is an absolute spectacle. Whether you are mid-cutscene or riding your monstie across one of the game’s colourful vistas, Monster Hunter Stories 3 is a genuinely beautiful game.
Watching this on the Nintendo Switch 2 in both docked and hand-held mode was a complete surprise. Within the first hour, you are riding a dragon over a castle in real-time, and the game never really lets that visual ambition drop.
It can reach 60 FPS in certain areas of the game; however, in the open world, it fluctuates between 30 and 40 FPS. There is some extensive environmental detail here, which contributes to this, but it does run quite beautifully, and the anime art style helps. Still, there could have been some further optimisation for the Nintendo Switch 2 (hopefully this will be delivered by a patch later down the line).
Into the Wild
Exploration is one of the game’s most layered offerings. Each monstie can fly, scale walls, swim, or perform a traversal move, all callable with a single button click. The game starts you off with three highly capable monsties that tear across detail-rich environments at a relatively quick pace, and you are free to discover more as you move throughout the world.
Monsters aren’t caught in their full form. Instead, they retreat into dens you can enter and raid. Inside, you’ll find a nest at the centre of a small, circular area. Walk up, grab an egg, and leg it. You can only carry one egg at a time, and every time you swap in hopes of a stronger specimen, the risk of being attacked increases. It is a simple system but a consistently engaging one. Once caught, monsties can be added to your party of six or released back into the environment to boost their stats for future captures.
Depth Across Every System
The battle system is fairly simplistic for a game of this style. This goes hand in hand with the weapons styling. Three types are effectively required: a blunt weapon like a hammer or hunting horn, a slashing weapon like a sword, and a piercing weapon like a bow. But within each category sits an ever-expanding list of options. You can collect weapons, upgrade them and once you have figured out which one is best for which monster, depending on what you want the outcome to be, it adds a whole different level of strategy to your playthrough.
Much of your time will be spent making decisions: finding crafting materials, assessing stats, and configuring combinations for battle. The game runs on its default difficulty and expects you to engage with these systems rather than simply push through. The UI can present challenges during upgrades and strength assessments, and I’d strongly recommend spending real time in every menu before assuming you understand what each icon means.
I once spent several hours with a two-star monstie active in my party without realising, while a four-star version sat unused at level one. Side stories and character missions go a long way toward clarifying the systems, so the sooner you get started on those, the better your overall experience will be.
Final Thoughts
Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection is a deep, intricately crafted, and beautifully rendered game that stands as the series’ highlight in terms of story. The sheer number of systems available to tinker with, set within a colourful world full of secrets and layered challenges, is endearing. The battle system has a real learning curve, but one that consistently rewards attention over button-mashing.
Alongside a genuinely compelling narrative and memorable character relationships, the exploration feels rewarding, and the world feels lived-in and full of personality. It’s an incredibly addictive RPG that will be on top of many “best of” lists in 2026, myself included.
FOUR AND A HALF STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Highlights: Amazing story for an RPG series spin-off; Engaging combat, exploration and puzzle-solving; Visuals and performance on Switch 2 hardware.
Lowlights: Visual performance sometimes dips
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, Windows PC
Available: Now
Review conducted on Nintendo Switch 2 with a code provided by the publisher.
Featured header image also provided by the publisher.
