Monster Hunter Freedom has hit the PSP. You will get a chance to play as a hunter in a world filled with ferocious monsters. You must use your hunting skills and become a legendary hunter. Monster Hunter Freedom gives players the chance to hunt monsters but how does that game fair on the PSP?

Gameplay
Before you get a chance to hunt you must first create your character. The game offers you the basic customization elements such as sex, hair style, color, face, and name. You will also get a chance to pick the type of grunts and groans your character will make when you battling the monsters. Although the customization isn't anything new it gets the job done and sets you up to start your quest for monster hunting.

The game opens up with you living in a small village. Within the village you will be able to buy armor, weapons, items, and also be able to sleep in your house. The village will serve you as the games main station. Besides getting weapons, armor and other goods. The village is where you will be assigned quest. Once you talk to the chief of the village you will be able to select a quest to partake in during battle.

The game features two main quests and these include, hunting quests, and gathering quest. The main quests will be the hunting quests. You will have to explore swamps, cliffs, forest, deserts, jungles, and many other environments to find a specific monster.

The hunting quests are the most fun and are essentially the main part of the game. You will explore many different areas and run into many different monsters. In some areas you will be surrounded by nothing but harmless herbivores, where as others you will be surrounded by vicious carnivores who will hunt you.

The other main type of quest, gathering quest, require that you search for certain environmental items such as herbs, plants, mushrooms, and the dangerous monster eggs. These quests take up most of the beginning of the game and can become quite tedious and boring after a while. Luckily, after the initial batch of gathering quests you will get a lot more of the hunting quest to partake in.

At the start of the game you will start off with a hunting knife and a shield. However, you can quickly change your weapon by returning to your house and selecting either a great sword, a bow-gun, and a hammer. Each of these weapons are very big, powerful, and very slow. Unfortunately, you can only have one weapon equipped at a time. So if you are in the middle of a hunt and your hunting knife isn't dealing the amount of damage you want, you'll have to return to the village and switch weapons.


The Hunt Begins

One of the stand-out features of Monster Hunter on the PS2 was the inclusion of online play. Sadly, the PSP version does not include any form of online action. You can play locally with up to 3 other players using the PSP's Ad/Hoc WiFi. You can play through all the games quests as well as new treasure hunting quests. The quests are simply and require the player to find certain items, which will either be found on monsters or in the fields, and then return them to the base camp. Although Monster Hunter Freedom does feature multiplayer support it doesn't have the same impact that full fledge online support would have given it.