Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection Review – Soaring to New Heights

Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection takes a notable step forward for Capcom’s colorful spinoff series. The third entry ditches the child-hero trope of the first two games, opting instead for an adult protagonist. You are the heir to the kingdom of Azuria and a Ranger captain. You still steal eggs and breed absurdly overpowered pets, but thethird entry takes some massive swings with its core gameplay. The result is an incredibly addictive RPG that evolves the series for modern platforms. It provides immediate freedom and engaging customization, making for the strongest entry yet that easily onboards newcomers and provides meaningful tactical depth for newcomers.

As mentioned, the narrative completely ditches the wide-eyed childhood adventures of the first two games. You play as an adult leading a faction of Rangers in the region of Azuria. A bizarre ecological disaster called the Crystal Encroachment is driving the local wildlife insane, and your nation sits on the brink of war with the neighboring kingdom of Vermeil—the tension between the kingdoms is palpable as nervous villagers and exhausted soldiers add their dialogue to the mix, making the stakes feel genuinely high. You team up with Princess Eleanor to stop the encroaching crystals and uncover the mystery behind a pair of twin Skyscale Rathalos.

A Ranger’s Duty

Because you start the game as a high-ranking Ranger, you start with a fully-grown Rathalos as your partner. You do not have to wait hours to take to the skies. You can immediately fly around the massive, open zones of Azuria. Riding your Monsties is incredibly fun, and the map design takes full advantage of your early mobility. You might ride your Rathalos to a high cliff, jump off, swap to a Lagiacrus, and plunge straight into a lake to swim to a hidden cave. It is fast and keeps the action going, ensuring minutes are not being accumulated needlessly breaking up the flow in menus.

Exploration ties directly into the game’s new habitat restoration system. The Crystal Encroachment corrupts the land and spawns highly aggressive Feral Monsters. As you defeat these variants and shatter the crystals, the local ecosystem actually heals. But you can push this system even further. When you hatch duplicate or unwanted monsters, you do not just delete them. You release them back into the wild. This improves the ecosystem rank of that specific region. For example, defeating and removing a Feral Tigrex from a Kulu-Ya-Ku nest saves the eggs. Collecting and hatching them back at the hub lets you release the monsters back into the wild. Doing this repopulates the map, eventually resulting in Kulu-Ya-Ku roaming the area again. 

A healthier ecosystem yields massive benefits. You start finding heavier eggs with better genes. Rare monster variants begin moving into the area. You can spend dozens of hours just raiding dens, releasing herbivores, and watching the local wildlife flourish. It nearly makes you feel like an environmentalist, but in a gamified way that will successfully hold your attention. It gives every random egg run a real sense of purpose, and you actually see the grass grow back and the sky clear up as you do your job.

Combat remains turn-based, and it uses the familiar triangle system. Power beats Technical. Technical beats Speed. Speed beats Power. You memorize monster patterns to counter them. If a Tigrex always uses Power attacks, you command your Monstie to use Speed attacks. When you both use the winning attack type, you perform a Double Attack. This cancels the enemy’s move and deals massive damage.

It is simple to learn, but Twisted Reflection layers a staggering amount of depth on top of it. Your Rider fights right alongside your Monsties, and you bring three different weapons into every battle. You can swap between them instantly without wasting a turn. The monsters have specific, breakable body parts. A monster’s armored legs might resist piercing damage from a Bow, but they will shatter if you hit them with a blunt Hammer.

Veteran players will immediately notice a glaring omission. The Sword and Shield is gone. In past games, the Sword and Shield was the reliable, fast-striking slashing weapon that let you block incoming attacks. Its removal feels incredibly strange. The developers seemingly wanted to push players toward the Great Sword for slashing damage, but the Great Sword is slow and clunky. If you find yourself in a tight spot against a fast-attacking monster, you cannot just raise your shield anymore. You have to take the hit. It forces you to play far more aggressively, but the lack of a defensive weapon option leaves a weird hole in your arsenal.

You spend half your time fighting, and you spend the other half stealing eggs. You find monster dens scattered across the map. You run inside, navigate a short maze, and find the nest. You dig through the pile, looking for an egg with a distinct pattern and a heavy weight. A heavy egg means the Monstie inside has good genes. The Rite of Channeling remains one of the best character-building tools in any RPG. This system lets you splice genes from one Monstie into another. Every Monstie has a three-by-three grid of genes. You line up matching colors or attack types to get bingo bonuses.

The process is straightforward but deeply addictive: hunt for eggs, hatch and appraise, splice and align. This is where the game gets wild. You can take a gene that grants a fire-breathing attack from a Rathian and put it into a Lagombi. The Lagombi is a giant, sliding rabbit that usually uses ice. Now, you have a giant rabbit that spits fire. You can spend days hunting for rare eggs to build the perfect, weirdest monster. If you want a status-effect nightmare, a Nargacuga that can inflict sleep, poison, and paralysis in a single turn can be created. It provides total freedom to break the rules and create ridiculous pets.

A Lonely World

While the single-player experience is robust, Twisted Reflection drops the ball completely in another major area. There is absolutely no multiplayer. Monster Hunter Stories 2 had a thriving multiplayer component. You could jump into co-op expedition quests with a friend to hunt for extremely rare eggs. Carefully bred, genetically modified Monsties could be taken into player-versus-player arenas to see who had the best team. It was the ultimate endgame activity. Once you finish the main story and conquer the post-game tower, there is nowhere left to take your team. And that is a blow against the replay value.

The jump to modern hardware makes Twisted Reflection look fantastic. The cel-shaded art style pops beautifully in 4K. The character models are highly expressive, and the monster animations are packed with personality. When a Kulu-Ya-Ku drops its favorite rock, it looks genuinely heartbroken. The kinship attacks are beautifully bombastic, often resulting in over-the-top, scenery-destroying mayhem. The larger biomes feature roaming monsters, dense foliage, and complex lighting effects from the Crystal Encroachment. When you fly over these areas or get into massive fights with Feral Monsters, it all comes together beautifully.

The hardware generation leap also fixes the biggest problem from the older games. The load times are basically gone. In the past, running into a monster den meant staring at a black screen. Now, the transition is instant. You touch the den entrance and you are immediately inside. You finish a battle and you are right back on the map. You never feel like you are waiting on the game to catch up with you.

Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection Review Verdict

[Editor’s Note: Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection  was reviewed on PlayStation 5, and a copy was provided to us for review purposes.]