I’ve been playing Monster Hunter games for 8 years now, ever since Capcom’s best-selling Monster Hunter World sucked me into its addictive monster-hunting universe.
I’ve done it all, from slaying Fatalis in Monster Hunter World: Iceborne, fighting horror-themed monsters in Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak, to befriending Monsties in Monster Hunter Stories 1 and Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin.
After spending over 20 hours of the game’s first two chapters, I was shocked in the best way possible. Not only is Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection already shaping up to be the best Monster Hunter Stories game, but it also has the potential to be one of the best games in the entire Monster Hunter franchise.
This preview was made possible thanks to a code provided by Capcom. The company had no input nor saw the contents of this preview before publication.
A story that goes beyond hunting monsters
My preview with an introduction to the game’s premise. You play as the crown prince/princess of Azuria, who’s leading a team of monster Riders called Rangers to investigate Encroachment, a mysterious phenomenon that’s turning all life to crystal and driving many monster species to extinction.
The Encroachment situation is so dire that it’s caused Azuria’s neighboring kingdom, Vermeil, to aggressively expand its territory into forbidden lands that Azuria is protecting to escape crystallization, driving both kingdoms to the brink of war.
After a brief, traumatic altercation with Vermeil’s armies, our protagonist sets out on a journey along with the Rangers and their personal Skyscale Rathalos to stop the impending war by discovering the truth behind the Encroachment while saving endangered monster species along the way.
Right from the get-go, Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection easily has the best plot hook out of any Monster Hunter game I’ve played, and it’s left me wanting to see where it goes.
It has shades of grey morality, intrigue, and compelling drama, while maintaining the wondrous sense of adventure, love for nature, and power of friendship themes that the series has always had, but done more maturely, to represent how much the series has grown from its child-friendly roots.
Habitat Restoration offers new layers of monster catching complexity
This sense of maturity for the series also extends to Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection’s gameplay. In the beginning, the gameplay loop plays out like its predecessors.
You embark on a journey throughout the world, taking up quests to hunt monsters, exploring vibrant biomes to hunt said monsters, and carving their body parts to craft powerful gear to hunt bigger monsters like the mainline Monster Hunter series.
Along the way, you will also delve into Monster Dens, where you can collect monster eggs and recruit friendly monsters called Monsties to your party to help you explore precarious terrain and battle hostile monsters.
However, that’s where this game’s similarities with the first two games end. Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection introduces a new gameplay mechanic that has me completely addicted, called Habitat Restoration.
Thanks to the Encroachment, the monster population of several ecosystems has dwindled to near extinction. So, our job is to save these monsters by finding monster eggs, hatching them, and sending the newly hatched monsters back into the wilds to repopulate their numbers.
As you restore monster populations, their Ecosystem Rank within a habitat will grow and unlock the chance for newly hatched Monsties to obtain new abilities and passive stat boosts depending on what habitat they were put in.
You can even unlock powerful secret monsters to recruit as Monsties by sending specific monsters to specific regions, and it felt so satisfying once I figured out how to find them.
This Habitat Restoration also synergizes with the Monster Hunter Stories series’ stable Rite of Channelling mechanic that allows you to transfer the Genes of one Monstie to another to grant them stat boosts, passive abilities, status effect immunities, elemental resistances, and new attacks they wouldn’t naturally learn.
I spent the majority of my preview time sending monsters into the wild and farming for eggs just to see what kind of new, powerful abilities I could transfer to my main menagerie of Monsties for my efforts in restoring monster populations, and it felt so rewarding to do.
Combat that’s both familiar yet totally fresh and more creative
However, not every habitat is safe to release monsters in. Some of them are inhabited by monsters mutated and driven mad by the Encroachment called Feral Monsters that you must put down in order to secure a habitat for restoration.
Additionally, some endangered monster species can only be unlocked by defeating dangerous beasts called Invasive Monsters because they have stolen their eggs for dinner.
This leads me to the combat system of Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection, which has seen its fair share of improvements from previous games.
Combat in Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection is a turn-based affair where you, your partner Monstie, and your AI-controlled party members take turns attacking hostile monsters using powerful abilities, weapons, and tools.
It also has elements of Rock-Paper-Scissors, where some special moves have attack types: Power, Technical, and Speed.
During these engagements, you can overpower an opponent to deal extra damage if your move’s attack type beats theirs, or cancel an incoming attack outright if you and a party member both use an attack type that beats an opponent’s attack type, resulting in a Double Tacck.
Plus, when you win in these Rock-Paper-Scissors-style engagements (known in-game as Head-to-Heads), you fill up your Kinship Gauge, which, when full, you can mount your Monstie and perform a cinematic super move called the Kinship Skill to decimate your opponents with.
As for what’s changed about Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection’s combat system from previous titles, for starters, characters now use a Stamina Meter that they can use to activate special attacks with instead of Kinship Gauge (but at the cost of slowing the rate at which the Kinship Gauge fills).
Also, you can now carry as many types of items as you want (at the cost of using only a limited number of them), and you can now choose which attack type your special moves will have before performing (except special moves that have no attack type).
As a result, combat feels looser and freer, allowing the player to have more creative ways to take down monsters and no longer feel restricted by certain abilities they like using being locked behind a single attack type like in previous games.
Feral and Invasive Monsters are no cakewalk
However, don’t get cocky in thinking that these improvements will make the game easy.
If you’re not paying attention to a monster’s attack patterns, countering their attack types correctly, and being properly geared up before a hunt, they will destroy you in a flash, especially the Feral and Invasive Monsters.
Feral Monsters are boss monsters that hit like trucks, frequently use attacks that don’t have attack types to avoid being countered in Head-to-Heads, and counterattack if you hit their crystallized body parts while they’re enraged.
The few Feral Monsters I encountered in my preview were tough and encouraged me to try out out-of-the-box strategies to avoid their attacks.
These included using the new Longsword weapon type to parry incoming non-typed attacks and using attacks that focused on depleting an enemy’s Wyvernsoul Gauge to stagger them rather than dealing straight damage.
What’s the Wyvernsoul Gauge, you may ask? Another one of Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection’s new combat mechanics is the Wyvernsoul Gauge which acts as a stagger meter for enemy monsters that, when depleted, causes them to fall over like in the mainline games.
When this happens, the player is then briefly given the option to activate a Synchro Rush attack where all party members dogpile on a helpless enemy to deal a ton of damage and greatly fill each party member’s Kinship Gauge.
Alternatively, you can choose to let the Synchro Rush option pass and use this opportunity to heal your party, set up buffs/debuffs, or attack an enemy monster’s specific body part without fear of reprisal for a turn.
This opens up new layers of strategies to the combat system that lead to some epic moments where I tripped a Feral Monster and unleashed a barrage of attacks to destroy its crystal body parts while it was helpless, so I didn’t have to worry about being countered anymore.
However, such strategies won’t carry you to victory when fighting Invasive Monsters, which are ten times worse than Feral Monsters.
Invasive Monsters are creatures that have been driven to other areas thanks to the Encroachment and are wreaking havoc in ecosystems they don’t belong in. They are incredibly powerful, have a ton of health, and are almost impervious to all forms of attacks when you first fight them.
Yet the goal when fighting Invasive Monsters is not slaying them but forcing them to retreat. This is accomplished by examining an invasive Monster’s behavior, tracks, and body parts for clues and discovering specific methods to counter their Invasive Attacks.
These range from destroying certain body parts at the right time, using specific moves, and other non-conventional methods. So, in a way, battles with Invasive Monsters function more like puzzles rather than straight-up brawls and provide an interesting change of pace from typical battles.
Once you figure out how to force an Invasive Monster to retreat, you can track it back to its den and retrieve the egg of an endangered species you wouldn’t find normally while exploring, hatch it, and send it back into the wild to restore its population.
Once that’s done, you can challenge an Invasive Monster again in its den to finish it off for good using what you’ve learned from the initial battle.
However, I strongly recommend not fighting them right away before getting stronger gear and Monsties because I was doing no damage with the starter gear and low-level Monsties I had at the beginning of the game.
Overall, I absolutely loved Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection from what I played during the first two chapters, and I’m hungry for more.
It has a complex plot I’m genuinely invested in, the party members you travel with have fun and charming personalities, the combat system feels vastly improved from past titles, and the new Habitat Restoration adds new addicting layers to the monster-collecting gameplay loop.
Not to mention, there are tons of side content to indulge in, like Side Story quests that delve into your party member’s backstories, using Monstie exploration abilities to uncover hidden treasures and gear in the environment, and dozens upon dozens of Monsties to collect.
If this is just what the first 20 hours are like, I can’t imagine how crazy the gameplay will be once I hit Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection’s late game or endgame content.
Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection is set to release on March 13, 2026, for Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC via Steam.
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