Triple Play: Monster Hunter Wilds

Kirk, Maddy, and Jason grab their Palicoes and pull out their dual blades for a monster hunt extraordinaire. This week, the gang is talking about Capcom's latest Monster Hunter. They talk about the appeal of the core gameplay loop, the thrill of the combat, and the approachability compared to previous entries.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Jason Schreier?

  Last weekend, my kids asked if we could go to the circus. So I said, all right, kids, get in the car. We're going to Congress. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we are talking about Monster Hunter Wilds, a new action game from Capcom where you hunt monsters in the wilds. By the way, we really did go to the circus. It was quite fun.

• 0:30Jason Schreier?

  I'm Jason Schreier.

• 0:31Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm Kirk Hamilton.

• 0:32Speaker 02

  And I'm Maddy Myers. Hello.

• 0:34Jason Schreier?

  We remembered, we remembered our names once again.

• 0:39Jason Schreier?

  For five years in a row now, we've been remembering our names.

• 0:43Kirk Hamilton?

  We passed the cognitive test for one more week.

• 0:45Speaker 02

  Every week, panicking. Are we gonna get this?

• 0:49Kirk Hamilton?

  Just never know how it's gonna go.

• 0:50Speaker 02

  Kirk has to edit it out, but there are some weeks where it's really dicey.

• 0:54Jason Schreier?

  It is, yes.

• 0:56Kirk Hamilton?

  There was one week, there was one week where Jason's I'm Jason Schreier, after his intro, was so dramatically different sounding than his intro, that I went back to an earlier episode. And I grabbed his I'm Jason Schreier from that episode. And now I leave it to listeners.

• 1:12Jason Schreier?

  Is that really true?

• 1:12Kirk Hamilton?

  To go and try to determine which episode it was.

• 1:15Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:16Jason Schreier?

  Okay.

• 1:16Speaker 02

  Is this a true story?

• 1:18Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, can you offer a prize? Because that'll take a lot of work to try to figure this out. Can you offer a prize to whoever frames it up?

• 1:24Kirk Hamilton?

  It was long enough ago that I'm not sure I could find it.

• 1:29Speaker 02

  I don't know, I don't know.

• 1:30Jason Schreier?

  Okay. Oh, man. Speaking of Triple Click, we don't sell ads on this show. So, so you can, we are only able to make this show happen because of listeners out there who we sell directly to. We sell this show directly to you, the listeners.

• 1:48Speaker 02

  Are we selling it?

• 1:48Jason Schreier?

  By that, I mean, it's totally free. But you can help us make it possible by becoming a member of our network, Maximum Fun. Go to maximumfun.org/join and you can sign up today. In addition to, again, helping make the show possible, you also get access to our massive backlog of bonus episodes, including. Some dozens that we've already put out and new ones every single month, including the one we just published last week, which is about console launch lineups. And to kind of set us up for the Switch 2, we decided we would talk a little bit about recent console generations and what the games that came with them happened to be and what those lineups were like and what those generations were like.

• 2:33Jason Schreier?

  It's been a fascinating kind of evolution and it's really striking, especially the changes that happen when we enter the PS5 generation. So go to MaximumFun.org/join and become a member today. Also, a couple more housekeeping things. As we've said over the last couple of weeks, we will all be at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. In a couple of weeks, we're doing a very special bonus episode there where we record in person and we play a game called Conundrums. We've already got a ton of really amazing conundrum suggestions from our listeners, but we're open to more. If you have one, go to, send an email to [email protected] with the headline, "Conundrums."

• 3:17Jason Schreier?

  A conundrum being like, what would you do? Like a what if?

• 3:22Speaker 02

  Or would you rather?

• 3:23Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. Would you rather, yeah, would you rather eat apples for the rest of your life or eat oranges for the rest of your life? That sort of thing. Would you rather stick a nail in your eye or get a million dollars? That sort of thing.

• 3:39Kirk Hamilton?

  Tough one, that one. A real conundrum.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  If you could only use one game controller for the rest of your life, which one would you pick?

• 3:45Jason Schreier?

  What would it be?

• 3:45Speaker 02

  It could be a video game one, is what I'm trying to say. Or they could all be apple and orange related.

• 3:50Jason Schreier?

  A lot of them are video games.

• 3:51Kirk Hamilton?

  It's about doing violence to your eyes.

• 3:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:53Jason Schreier?

  Also, while we were in San Francisco, we will be hosting a kind of informal triple click meetup in the Yerba Buena Gardens.

• 4:01Speaker 02

  Oh, it's informal? I was gonna wear a tuxedo.

• 4:04Jason Schreier?

  Well, you can. You can wear formal wear. It's just an informal meetup, like.

• 4:08Kirk Hamilton?

  Business casual.

• 4:09Jason Schreier?

  You don't have to, you don't have to use honorifics when you see us. You don't have to.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 4:13Jason Schreier?

  Usually people come up to us and they say, "Matty-san," but you don't have to do that.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  Right. But you don't have to do that.

• 4:18Kirk Hamilton?

  You will not be announced. You and your partner will be not be announced.

• 4:22Jason Schreier?

  Well, you will.

• 4:23Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, you will? Okay.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  And we will be at the top of a really big staircase.

• 4:28Kirk Hamilton?

  The bellman will be announcing everyone as they come in.

• 4:31Jason Schreier?

  Anyway, we're gonna meet up March 20th in the Yerba Buena Gardens. We're not sure exactly where we'll be. We're just gonna camp out somewhere that looks cool. So come find us, come say hi, starting at 2:00 PM. We'll probably be there for two hours or so, just hanging out, meeting listeners, meeting buddies. It'll be a lot of fun, so come say hi. Again, that's March 20th at 2:00 PM in the Yerba Buena Gardens. All right, that's it for Housekeeping. Kirk, what are we talking about today?

• 4:57Kirk Hamilton?

  We're talking about a new video game called Monster Hunter Wilds. And I am very excited to talk about it. I wrote a little intro for it.

• 5:06Jason Schreier?

  Yay.

• 5:07Kirk Hamilton?

  Give people the skinny on what this game is before we start talking about it. Monster Hunter Wilds is the latest in Capcom's 20-year-old Monster Hunter series, which began with 2004's PlayStation 2 game, Monster Hunter. In the game, you play as a hunter heading up an expedition into unknown lands that are teeming with weird giant monsters. And, I mean, look, you're a hunter. You're surrounded by monsters. The name of the game is Monster Hunter. You know what's going to happen.

• 5:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Monster Fighter might actually be a little bit more accurate, as the game loop revolves around catching up with the largest huge lizard, or ape, or spider, or octopus, or later in the game, freaking Giga Kong, or Godzilla, or an elder dragon, or whatever. You are currently hunting and engaging in a rollicking third-person boss fight with it, chasing it across the map while smacking it in the face with one of more than a dozen increasingly specific and bizarre weapons. Wilds has been pitched as the most newcomer-friendly iteration of this famously complex and unwelcoming series, which is both technically true and somehow emotionally false. It's running on a new engine, which makes for some very pretty character models,

• 6:21Kirk Hamilton?

  even if it's also led to some significant performance problems on console and PC. It has a score composed by renowned composer Lydia Tarr, who I hear is a big fan of this series. Wait, hang on, sorry. I'm seeing here it is actually by Miyako Chino-Nae. It's lovely music, not by Lydia Tarr, though. Not sure what she's up to these days. Anyway, yeah, I am our resident Monster Hunter sicko. I put a couple hundred hours into 2018's Monster Hunter World across PS4 and PC. Spent a good 80 or so hours on 2021's Monster Hunter Rise on the Switch. I have played around 40 hours of a review copy of Wilds. I beat the story. I'm well into high rank play. I have a lot of thoughts and opinions,

• 7:03Kirk Hamilton?

  but let's start with you two, because you have played less, or a little less familiar with this series. So yeah, let's talk about it. Maddie, how about you go first?

• 7:16Speaker 02

  Sure. I'm maybe like eight hours in. I feel like it took me about four to even understand how the game worked at all. So I do feel like we need to get into the idea of this being the most newcomer friendly game. If that's the case, I dread the others. I, this is my first one, I guess I should say. This is my first time playing any Monster Hunter. And I was really struck by how confusing all of the weapon upgrade screens are. And now I understand them, and I love them, because it turns out that's most of this game. And it's pretty pleasurable. It's a real big number go up type of a game. You go, you hunt a monster, you get all of the bits from that monster's carcass, you go back to camp,

• 8:01Speaker 02

  and then you just watch a cutscene of a hot lady making your sword better with all of the monster parts that you've given her to do that task. And that's it. That's the game. That I was sort of like, is there something else to this? I don't think there is. I think it's really just exactly what I said. And once I kind of got that, and understood that loop, and also just the, just really wordy AI screens, I was kind of into it. And I just was like, all right, it's not going to be any more or less than this. I'm enjoying that. But yeah, I, the combat also feels kind of slow, which was something you had told us about ahead of time, Kirk. And I was glad you said that, because it feels

• 8:45Speaker 02

  very different from like an Elden Ring, or any other kind of combat heavy game, very technical game that we might talk about on this show. I'd kind of gone in expecting it to feel more like that. So I was glad that you mentioned how different it feels. And getting a sense of the flow of combat was also how I felt like those first four hours were for me in terms of just even feeling out what weapons I liked. I think I'm there now and I'm enjoying it, but it was a journey. It was, it was definitely a journey.

• 9:14Kirk Hamilton?

  So just so I can know, what monsters are you up to or which ones?

• 9:17Speaker 02

  Oh, boy. I'm, I'm a couple past, like, there's that big sandstorm where you're fighting. Like, I, I got past that and I'm, I'm a couple past that one. I don't remember all the monster names. I'm sorry.

• 9:29Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, no, that's fine.

• 9:30Speaker 02

  I fought several monsters and they just keep getting bigger and their cutscenes to intro them just keep getting more and more terrifying.

• 9:37Kirk Hamilton?

  They just keep getting bigger through the whole game. Okay, cool. So you're after that. That first kind of, uh, it was a very promotional set piece. That lightning storm in the desert where Dosogoma, the alpha Dosogoma turns up and there's a whole herd of them. That's a good fight. That's-

• 9:50Speaker 02

  Yes. And you'll have to kind of navigate around the lightning strikes and maybe hopefully get the monster struck by lightning in so doing. And that's kind of fun to navigate. A lot of environmental hazards as part of a combat ritual in this game.

• 10:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, that's kind of the first fight that I would say feels like, okay, now you're really in it. And then it goes from there. Okay. So Jason, what, uh, what do you make of this game?

• 10:13Jason Schreier?

  Did you know that this game has sold eight million copies in three days?

• 10:18Speaker 02

  I did know that.

• 10:19Jason Schreier?

  According to Capcom?

• 10:20Kirk Hamilton?

  I did know that. I have some, some other sales numbers here. Monster Hunter World sold 25 million or more copies.

• 10:26Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 10:26Kirk Hamilton?

  Rise sold 16 million copies and yeah, Wild's the fastest selling game in Capcom history, eight million copies in three days.

• 10:33Jason Schreier?

  That's crazy. So whenever a game is this popular, I always want to try to understand the appeal, but it is really, it has been a tough, a tough hang for me. Uh, just like every single monster game. Uh, they've all been tough hangs for me. And so before we recorded this, I actually went on YouTube and I watched this video that was like, why people love Monster Hunter? And it essentially said what you've been saying for ages, Kirk, which is that like, people just get addicted to the loop of like killing a monster, bringing back its, its parts and making new weapons and then using those weapons to kill more monsters. And that's just what people love about it. And I don't know, maybe I would be more into that if not for all the bullshit surrounding it. Um, cause yeah, the, the, uh, opacity in-

• 11:18Jason Schreier?

  The complexity of it all seems like it's going to be such a chore to try to understand. And I don't like playing through it. I don't really, I haven't yet convinced myself that it's worth taking the time to understand it. So where am I? I'm up to the spider boss thing, spider monster thing in the forest.

• 11:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Lala Barina.

• 11:40Jason Schreier?

  And.

• 11:41Kirk Hamilton?

  Who has a wonderful outfit, very great clothes from the Lala Barina.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  I was about to say, worth defeating just for how good the armor looks. That's, that's the loop, Jason. You get the clue.

• 11:52Jason Schreier?

  I think maybe, maybe, maybe that's one of the reasons that I've never been able to get into the series is because like, unlike the two of you, I've never once cared about an outfit in a game.

• 12:01Speaker 02

  That would be a tough one. This game's big on outfits.

• 12:04Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it's just never like playing Destiny, playing Baldur's Gate, like playing any RPG. I just never, I'm entirely about functionality and have never once cared about the aesthetics of my characters. Like, uh, it's just not something, there's no part of my brain that is interested or cares about that at all. So maybe that's, that's one of the reasons that I just bounce off of this series. Um, but also, I don't know, something like the combat just, just felt so repetitive to me of just kind of looking for weeks, like their bloody weak spots and then just like using the same weapon. I'm using the dual swords and then just kind of using the same buttons to attack those weak spots. When I try to like, take the time to like, figure out how other things work, again, it is so unwieldy and complex that I'm just like, why, like, this game

• 12:49Jason Schreier?

  has not really convinced me that it's worth taking the time to learn all of these systems and learn how to trap monsters and stuff. Like, I'd rather just be playing, I don't know, Horizon Zero Dawn, where it's, feels a lot better and a lot more intuitive to trap the dinos and kill them. And it's a lot more fun to knock their parts off and it's just a lot more satisfying for me. But I don't know, man, all these millions of people can't be wrong. So maybe it's just not, I'm just not wired for these games, I suppose.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  There's definitely a hurdle where you're at that I experienced, Jason, and that I forced myself past, but I don't know if that would change your mind. But I, I remember Lala Barina being one of the moments early on for me where I was like. What am I, what am I doing here? And I was just like spamming the same two attacks that you learn like right off over and over. And then at a certain point, I was like, I gotta try some different weapons. I gotta shake things up. I'm gonna commit to this and make the decision to learn. But the game asks a lot of you by having that be something that you need to do. I would say is that it's like, it's asking for your investment and for you to read all the screens. And like, we haven't even gotten into it, but there's this, what's it called?

• 14:02Speaker 02

  Like the, the radial Kirk, like the thing that you customize on your screen where you can like rifle through all of the items that you have. Like, that's a fairly complicated aspect of the game as well as just deciding what you want your shortcuts on the screen to be. Like, what are the most meaningful things that you want to draw upon battle? Are they explosives or are they health items? Where, where are you in danger? And like making those kinds of decisions, I didn't feel like it was until after I'd gotten past the Lala Barina fight, that I started even having the wherewithal to want to make those decisions. But even that is like, that's another layer of technicalities and you have to kind of enjoy diving into those technicalities.

• 14:38Jason Schreier?

  One more thing I just want to add is that I think maybe I would have more patience for like, for getting past that kind of hurdle. Like you did, Maddie, if not for all the just kind of story and anime nonsense that they pack in the middle of it. And like the, the dialogue is just so inane and the characters are just so like meaningless to me. That I'm just kind of like, it feels like I'm just wasting my time doing that. Whereas if it was just, it was, if it was a little bit quicker to get to each new monster and you didn't have to deal with all the other kind of nonsense, maybe I would be more inclined to be like, okay, I'm gonna keep giving this like more and more chances until I like really, until one of these monster fights really clicks with me.

• 15:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I think this game does a good job of getting to the, uh, to the monster fights a lot faster than the last two games that I played anyways. Like I got into this series with World and I appreciate that right at the start, there's kind of a cutscene and then you're just in it. And you fight against whatever that is, Chata Cobra, that first monster. And you're just doing a monster fight where it was worse in earlier games. You would spend a long time.

• 15:40Jason Schreier?

  That's why this one is the most newcomer friendly, I suppose.

• 15:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, well, to get into that a little, I suppose. And then I can talk a little more about my, my experience of this game. Cause I have, you know, played a lot of it and I like it a lot. I had a great time with it. Yeah, I think the newcomer friendliness is, it's a little misleading even though it's true. It's kind of like, if you, I've been trying to think of the right analogy. It'd be like if you gave someone a slightly clearer map of the New York subway system, and then they, and then told them that they had to get from, you know, like Coney Island to Queens. And, and then, I'm just picking that at random, maybe that's a bad example, they, they had to get all the way across town. And then they're like, okay, but it's still the same metro system. Like, it's still complicated. You've just given me a slightly better map. And you say to them, yeah, but well, imagine having that terrible map that I would have given you two years ago.

• 16:27Jason Schreier?

  Well, you don't know to take the G to the L to the... Yeah, yeah.

• 16:32Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. And so it's, it's that kind of thing where like, the, the fundamentals of the game are very complicated. There are a lot of interlocking systems, there's a ton of crufts, and there are millions of people who have learned this literacy and who are fluent in Monster Hunter, and as a result, are able to play it. And so they, instead of totally rebuilding all of that stuff, which I think would be possible, it'd be a Herculean undertaking, but would probably be possible to make it so that you could still have all the complexity, the ammo types, the status effects, the different buffs, you know, all the, the meal effects and all the different things with all the different weapons that can happen in this game, without it being quite so cumbersome

• 17:15Kirk Hamilton?

  in terms of the interface, which is a big problem, and I think something that holds a lot of people back. So, they've made some other changes. The biggest changes, you, you mentioned the radials, Matty. So there are a variety of radial menus that you can access via controller shortcuts. There's one radial menu that has sharpen your weapon at the top, your whetstone, which you have to do in between stages of the fight because your weapon grows gradually duller. And then on the right, there's just optimal status recovery, and on the left, there's optimal healing. And picking one of those two will just heal you with whatever type of potion you have that's most appropriate for the amount of damage you've taken. And then the status effect one will usually just use a Nullberry, which is something

• 17:59Kirk Hamilton?

  that just undoes anything like, I don't know, soaking, or poisoned, or I guess it might not undo poison, but it undoes a bunch of the other effects that can, that can get you, you know, if a monster hits you with some sort of special attack. So with those three things, just at your beck and call, as a beginner, you actually only need those. And the game kind of tells you that and kind of doesn't tell you that. And I think that's sort of the place that this game is still lacking more than anything is in onboarding and in clear tutorialization. If they just told you in the way that I told the two of you, there is this radial, you can just use that radial for the entire low rank of the game and really not worry about anything else. If it really emphasized that,

• 18:42Kirk Hamilton?

  then I think it would feel a little more welcoming than kind of showing it to you, but also showing you all these other radials and customizable radials and all this other stuff. And that's kind of true across the game. There is a training ground where you can practice with your weapon. The weapons tend to get very fun. Once you get around, once you get past the first level, where you start out, you're kind of attacking with basic attacks, then you start to figure out whatever it is, the secret thing, there's like a special thing for each weapon. For dual blades, it's demon mode, which is actually pretty straightforward. I'm a longsword main, so there's a whole series of moves you can do to charge up the sword and it gets to like a yellow level and then a red level. And then at red level, you can do special attacks that deplete it back down to the beginning. So you're constantly like leveling up and down this sort of attack,

• 19:26Kirk Hamilton?

  you know, attack deadliness by landing more and more attacks throughout the fight, which is a fun thing to manage in the back of your head while you're in the middle of dodging and rolling and getting up in a, in a monster's grill. So that's the longsword. I haven't really mastered that many other ones. There's some really complicated ones. The thing is that when you go to the training ground, it shows you some basic moves, but you actually have to go into the menus and go to play guide and then go to your weapon. And then suddenly there's a big list of every move. And there are some moves that aren't always, that aren't laid out in the training ground. So just stuff like that where you basically have to go watch a YouTube tutorial to really figure it out. And the game has to convince you to do that. And I think that is, it sounds like, Jason, you have not been convinced and so you have not put in that time.

• 20:10Kirk Hamilton?

  And as a result, yeah, you're, you're kind of standing outside of it. You're not, you're not fluent in this language. And as a result, the fights are kind of just whatever. Where I will say that as someone who with Monster Hunter World decided, okay, fine. I'm gonna learn this language. I'm gonna take the time. And with that game, I kinda started out one way and then really got forced into it by a very hard fight, the Diablo's fight. I actually wrote about this. For Kotaku, it was so hard, I got just smashed and defeated a few times and I had to go and really figure out what I was doing. And from then on, I kind of, I had a handhold in the game, I had a toe hold and I was able to get going. And now, I mean, the thing I love about this game is not actually the upgrade loop.

• 20:54Kirk Hamilton?

  It's not the loop and it's not like making my outfits prettier and chasing whatever. It's the fighting the monsters. Like, it is the gameplay. The gameplay is tremendous. It's so much fun. Every single fight is this just rollicking, exciting, wild throwdown that I'm, it engrosses me and it captures my attention and I'm on the edge of my seat and I'm always up there and it just feels like I'm totally in the face of this dragon just smacking it with my sword and then it's nailing me and knocking me halfway across the, you know, across the area that we're in and then I'm getting back in it and I'm chasing it down and I finally beat the monster. I mean, every single fight is so much fun. And because they're kinda standalone like that, each one takes like 15, 20 minutes,

• 21:38Kirk Hamilton?

  I can just sit down with the game, go fight a new monster and then be done. And it's a really, a very modular game in that way, too.

• 21:45Jason Schreier?

  So how is this different from previous games? Like, is there, is it just kind of another iteration with just like a few changes here and there? Does it feel drastically different?

• 21:54Kirk Hamilton?

  No. I would say emphatically that it is very much another, another one, particularly World. And I should also say, you know, I started with World. There have been a lot of these games. They used to be on handheld systems for a while and I couldn't get into those. I tried one of them, maybe the 3DS one. They were aggressively segmented. The map was, you know, you had a loading screen in between every region that you went to. So fights were just very, it was very hard to keep track of everything. And then the controls and the performance and everything. I mean, people love these games. They're huge, obviously, in Japan, but they're kinda big everywhere. People played them on 3DS, but that wasn't my thing. So when I say what's, that it's another one of these, it's very similar to World. It has some changes. It's using a new engine.

• 22:39Kirk Hamilton?

  It looks a little... Better in some ways, but also, you know, worse and kind of runs badly, I guess, especially for for some other folks. I've actually had an okay time of it performance-wise on PC.

• 22:48Speaker 02

  Me too, for what it's worth. I know people have not, but...

• 22:51Kirk Hamilton?

  You go and you fight, you go and you fight monsters. I mean, a lot of the same monsters are back. You know, Odogaran is back, my favorite. He's pretty much the same as in World. That's great. I don't really mind. So, yeah.

• 23:02Speaker 02

  What do you think about some of the streamlining parts of the game? Which I only know from reading Polygon's review, where, for example, you you ride around. We don't call it a chocobo, but it sure looks like a chocobo. It's called a secrete. Yeah, it's a big, cool, bird horse, and you're riding that around.

• 23:20Jason Schreier?

  It's definitely a chocobo.

• 23:21Kirk Hamilton?

  It's very chocobo-esque.

• 23:22Speaker 02

  And it's kind of like, um, it's like how in Assassin's Creed, you can just tell your your horse or your camel or whatever where to go, and you just sit back and watch the landscape rolling by. You can do that in this game, too. And so you can really just watch, watch it go. But also, you don't even have to get off your mount in order to pick up items. You can just use your little grappling hook along the way and just be like, I'll grab an herb here, a rock there. Like, that is very automated, and I found it pretty pleasing. Like, that, to me, part of what's fun is the loop. And I do think the outfits are really, really cool. So that has been something I've enjoyed. Even if Kirk is, that's not his favorite, that was definitely something that helped me get into it.

• 24:04Kirk Hamilton?

  No, no, I should be clear. It's a bonus. I love the outfits. They're very fun to chase. It's just the main attraction for me is the fights. The fights are very, very fun.

• 24:12Speaker 02

  Yes. I don't think I'm good enough at the combat for that, yet, for that to be the attraction for me. So for me right now, I'm like, all about the rewards and the loop. But that's just the mental stage I'm in at my monster hunter love story, which, to be, I don't know if it's going to continue or not. I can't even say to be continued.

• 24:30Kirk Hamilton?

  You're still a little cusp-y, it sounds like. There's, there's...

• 24:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. I'm not, I'm not hating it.

• 24:36Kirk Hamilton?

  These are like, games that people play for hundreds of hours, right? Like, you, it really does, it gives and gives and gives the more and more you go. I will be curious if you keep going. To answer your streamlining question, um, it is more streamlined. I'm fine with it. I've seen people complaining that, you know, you're... Secret, whatever, however it's pronounced, goes directly to the boss and it turns the game into much more of a just boss, fight, be the boss, go back, new weapons, story cutscene, new boss, fight. And there isn't anything else.

• 25:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:05Kirk Hamilton?

  At the same time, for me anyways, the other stuff in Rise and World always sort of felt, you know, like unnecessary. I want to go fight the monsters. So those games would make you go out in the world for a little while and you'd have to track down, you know, marks from the hunt, you'd have to hunt the monsters. So you'd find like it's been clawing the trees and leaving, you know, claw marks. And there's a little bit of that in Wilds, but way, way less. And so there isn't as much time where you're just walking around the world, looking for, you know, trace before you find the monster. It just takes you straight to the fight. And I'm okay with that. I don't really need that extra padding. I just want to fight the monsters. So I could, I could understand why someone would miss that, especially

• 25:50Kirk Hamilton?

  if maybe they've been playing the series for a long time. They're very used to that sort of rhythm and having that extra little variety. But for me, it hasn't been a big deal.

• 25:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, that is, that's not kind of interesting to like incorporate more of the hunting part of Monster Hunter.

• 26:04Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, it's always been kind of tedious to me. Like there, it's never really felt like characterful or interesting in that way that I could imagine hunting being in a game. If you really did slow it down and you had to do some investigation. It's a little more like you just walk around through areas until your green flies go over to a new clue and light it up. And then you just go press a button on it. It doesn't have the feeling of doing an investigation. It just feels like you're kind of stuck not knowing what to do for a little while until the monster turns up on your map. And then you can go, yeah, and you can go get in a big fight. And then that's the fun part. That's how it always was for me. If someone doesn't feel that way and they like that stuff, then I could see missing it.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 26:46Kirk Hamilton?

  Because it is pretty automated, especially with the auto drive on your chocobo.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. Also, are, are you playing it on a higher difficulty? Because I'm, I'm not, I'm on normal and it's plenty hard for me. But that's the other thing that I've seen. And people talk about which is like, is this game too easy? And and some of my coworkers have said this too, especially the ones who've played every Monster Hunter. And they're like, I know everything. I I know exactly what to do. I'm like clockwork in here. And I wish this game was a little more complicated, but maybe that's not how you feel.

• 27:18Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, I don't know if they I don't know about complicated. I certainly don't wish the game was more complicated. Difficult, just in terms of monsters hitting harder and being harder to defeat. It is easier for me than World was for sure. I never hit any walls like I did with Diablo's in World. Or the lightning guy in Rise was also kind of a wall for me. There were some skill checks in the previous games. That said, I'm better at Monster Hunter than I've ever been because I've played 200, 300 hours of the game at this point, which I think is a common thing for people reviewing this game where they're a lifelong Monster Hunter sicko. They're incredible at the game. And then this one isn't maybe quite as hard as World, which it is not as hard as World, I would say. And they can say, oh, this is too easy.

• 27:59Kirk Hamilton?

  So when you get knocked out in this game, you get cart. It's called getting carted because you you get taken out in a cart and then you have to go back. I didn't cart a single time through all of low rank and way into high rank. I finally got carted once. It's only happened once and it was on this giga attack from a boss that you're supposed to get behind cover for. And then there wasn't any cover and it got me. So I finally died, but I'm not amazing at Monster Hunter or anything. I've just found each fight to be pretty challenging. A lot of times I'll be, you know, absolute on my health. And if it hits me, I'm done. But because you can call your chokobo, your secretary over to rescue you if you get knocked down, you can get pulled out of the fray really quickly and that is very, very helpful. So that's a big advantage that you have in this game. You didn't have in the past ones.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  Oh, because I love doing that. That's interesting that that wasn't previously there.

• 28:47Kirk Hamilton?

  Bing. I should mention here that the Palomutes in Rise kind of could do this. I can't remember all the particulars, but there was a mount in that game. It feels kind of like a prototypical secretary chokobo thing. Anyways, just wanted to mention that. Bing. That's the thing is like, I don't mind the difficulty. I find it to be pretty, pretty fun. I mean, every fight feels challenging and exciting. I'm having a great time. My heart rate is up. I'm, I'm in the mix. It's got my undivided attention. I don't know. Is it, is it pounding me into the ground every so often? No, but I'm okay with that anyways. I, I don't know. It's, it's really fun. So yeah, it's not a gripe that I have, even though I have seen that around.

• 29:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. I can't disagree with Jason on this story though. I

• 29:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 29:28Speaker 02

  There's just nothing to it, right?

• 29:30Kirk Hamilton?

  I You don't, you mean you don't like the most annoying little kid in video game history? Just complaining about everything?

• 29:36Speaker 02

  I don't. I, yeah, that there's like a kid who's lost. I don't know that I could summarize this story for you.

• 29:42Kirk Hamilton?

  It doesn't matter. Yeah. I think the story is all right. I like what they've done with the hunter. I might be in the minority on this, but the fact that the hunter can talk in this game, which is a new thing.

• 29:54Speaker 02

  Oh, that's new. Okay.

• 29:55Kirk Hamilton?

  Hunter has a, is a kind of a commander shepherd type. Um, I'm playing a lady hunter. She has a very, you know, authoritative, authoritative voice and she just is kind of no nonsense. But it's nice to have your hunter say things, you know, contribute to the conversations because in previous games, they just stood there while everybody else talked. Um, and then there are some moments because you get to see your hunter talking and engaging with the other characters. Later on, when your hunter is doing some, you know, whatever dragon ball style face off against the most insane monster you've ever seen and a slow mo cutscene plays and your hunter draws their sword or whatever, like those big anime moments really hit for me. They're really exciting because I'm just stoked to take on this huge monster and I felt a little more invested in the character.

• 30:39Kirk Hamilton?

  The story itself, yeah, who cares? I've never cared about a monster hunter story. I don't care this time. One thing I do like is that the character designs are really good. Um, your handler, I think, and Gemma and the one lady who's like the head of your expedition, they're all really cool looking characters. Obviously Gemma is like a babe and is going to be a huge cosplay favorite.

• 31:00Speaker 02

  She's the blacksmith.

• 31:01Kirk Hamilton?

  And she's a fun character too, though. And I like that those characters all come around with you. And there's a feeling of moving with your little party through the World and through the story that carries through the whole thing. And every time you get somewhere new, each of the characters goes off and Gemma's really excited because something cool is going on and she's talking to a side character. And the handler is like conferring with other people. And there's a feeling that you're in this little moving community that I never got in the previous games and I like that. It's just, yeah, like the writing, the writing is whatever and the story is whatever and I don't really care about that stuff.

• 31:33Jason Schreier?

  So when you play Kirk, do you play multiplayer at all or like have other random people come into your lobby? Because it seems like that's another big appeal of Monster Hunter for a lot of people is just like hanging out with your buddies and playing.

• 31:47Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, the way I play the game is I typically do every fight solo the first time. So in low rank and then I'm actually, I haven't been doing this in high rank, but I've been, I've been getting back to solo play in high rank. Because I think the solo fights are very, very fun when it's just you against the monster. And I guess your palico, your little cat buddy helps and the palico is actually very helpful.

• 32:07Speaker 02

  We haven't even talked about the palico yet.

• 32:08Kirk Hamilton?

  Another thing that makes this game easier. I think you can tell your palico to go away and then you can just solo the monster yourself. And that would be a lot harder because the monster would never stop paying attention to you and you'd have to really be on your game. So I guess that's a way you could modify the difficulty. Oh, and you mentioned difficulty settings earlier, Matty. I don't know if this game has variable difficulty. I think it's just one difficulty.

• 32:28Speaker 02

  Oh, I guess maybe I'm wrong about that. I didn't check, but regardless, I'm playing on whatever it is.

• 32:34Kirk Hamilton?

  You could make it harder by not upgrading your gear.

• 32:36Speaker 02

  Right.

• 32:37Kirk Hamilton?

  But I believe there's just one difficulty and then they tend to release like G rank monsters. I think that tends to come with the expansion. They have a kind of established roadmap for these games because they have a long life post release. So the really hard stuff presumably will come later, which, you know, for anyone who thinks this game is too easy, I think that's, that's somewhat frustrating, which I understand.

• 32:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it does seem like there's ways you could make it harder. But so how does the multiplayer work? Because I haven't played it at all, but if I were to, what would it be like?

• 33:04Kirk Hamilton?

  So most of my play was a review build and so there weren't as many people online. I tend to play multiplayer after I've soloed everything, especially if I'm trying to get a really good sword or something. It used to mean especially in the earlier games, you had to kind of. Kill a monster a few times or capture a monster a few times to try to get the right parts to build the thing you want, which means just repeating fights. And once I'm repeating fights, I don't really care about summoning other people in. I don't usually do the, there's like a clan system or whatever it's called where you can get in a group. I think there's a triple click one, actually, that I might join. Oh, cool. I haven't been playing a lot post-release. I've played mostly pre-release, so if I play more post-release, I'll probably join theirs. That just kind of puts you in a matchmaking pool, I think, with other people.

• 33:49Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm not totally sure how it works. It's a little, it's typically been a little bit tricky in the way that everything in the interface in this game is a little bit, you know, more difficult to do than it should be, but I'm sure it works once you figure it out. And the way that you usually play is you can just fire an SOS flare. And if you fire an SOS flare, then anybody else who sees your SOS flare and sees what mission you're doing can just join in. And because there's so many people playing, when you fire an SOS flare, almost immediately you'll just be joined by other players, which is really fun. So then there will be three other players in your hunt. And really, then it just becomes this total gang up crazy boss fight where one player has a hunting horn, is like playing this huge weird metal saxophone to buff everyone

• 34:32Kirk Hamilton?

  else, and another person has basically a machine gun, you know, the bow gun that's shooting, and you're in there with your sword, and another person has dual blades, and it's totally crazy. Those are rarely that difficult. You know, the monster, I think the monster scales up based on how many people are in there, but it's still, because its attention is so diverted among multiple players, I've never found those to be difficult. And actually, a cool thing in Wilds that I don't remember being in the earlier games, but I'm not totally sure, I have a feeling that it might have been, is that you can summon NPC hunters. And it's actually neat, those same hunters I was talking about, the NPCs, like the characters in the story, Olivia, I know his one name's, and like Rosso or something, like the characters who are the hunters that you see in cutscenes, they come into your game.

• 35:16Kirk Hamilton?

  So you get to do a multiplayer game with computer-controlled hunters who kind of help you out. And those fights are, they're kind of mindless. It's more if you just want to put on a podcast and just get some gear and like do the same fight. They're never boring, because Monster Hunter, to me, is never boring, but they're a lot easier and kind of, you know, you can relax a little bit, just because there's four people to share the load.

• 35:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:38Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, man, it's playing it. I don't want to be a downer, so I'll leave it to you to do most of the talking, Kirk. But I was playing it. It kind of reminds me, I was just thinking about this because you mentioned needing to get parts multiple times in previous games for equipment. And I was thinking about how the first time I got parts on the first monster, I brought it back to the weapon to the blacksmith or whoever it was. And I just immediately had like 20 different options of like things, gear I could get or upgrades I could get or whatever. And I was just like, the learning investment I'm going to have to make here, it kind of reminds me of Civ 7, where like, I feel like there are going to be people out there who are like really into Civ and they're going to get invested. And for them, every choice is going to be interesting because they know all of the outcomes and they know when they're making the right decisions.

• 36:23Jason Schreier?

  Whereas with, and with this, it's the same sort of thing where like you, the learning curve is so high, the barrier for entry is so high that you really need to spend the time to just kind of dedicate to learning it. And yeah, I guess for me, it's just like, I have other to learn. I have other games to play.

• 36:42Kirk Hamilton?

  Right, which is fair. That's an interesting one. It's, I think it's interesting to hear something like that, like that kind of an experience. And to think about how they could make it better because they've added this, Gemma can suggest gear to you. And you would think that that would make things easier.

• 36:58Speaker 02

  That doesn't come up right away, by the way.

• 37:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, maybe not.

• 37:01Speaker 02

  I, that was what I, because Jason and I had the same experience and I don't think you're far enough in the game for Gemma to start making recommendations to you. And once she did, it helped me so much. And I wish they had done it a little earlier.

• 37:14Kirk Hamilton?

  Okay, but the thing is that the recommendations aren't actually very helpful.

• 37:17Speaker 02

  I'm sure they're not.

• 37:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Because she starts making them and then what the problem, there's a specific problem though. And it's that she starts suggesting a ton of stuff. And then pretty soon, there's so many possibilities that her recommendations just aren't really very tailored to what she want. And it isn't like you can say to her, hey, I'm going to go fight, you know, a fire breathing monster that's weak to ice. And then I can say, oh, well, you should make this decoration and you should get this sword. It's just, here's what I recommend.

• 37:42Jason Schreier?

  You're saying it needs chat GPT.

• 37:45Kirk Hamilton?

  So a real thought here is that I think they should rework Low Rank. And this might bum out longtime players, but the thing is, if you, this is a tutorialization issue.

• 37:56Jason Schreier?

  Hold on, they sold Amelie copies in three days. They don't need to do anything.

• 37:59Speaker 02

  But I do think other people are probably having a similar experience to us, Jason, because I had that same experience you just described. When my first parts came back, I was like, I'm ready to upgrade. I have no idea what to do.

• 38:09Kirk Hamilton?

  To be clear, to be clear, I am not saying they need to do this in order for the series to be successful. I love these games. I think they're great and millions of people play them and it's a great series. It's doing wonderfully. That's not my point. I mean, they should do this in order to smooth out the experience and actually make it more welcoming to new players, which they do seem invested in based on everything the game's director and all these people are saying, and based on some of the decisions that they've made. So with that in mind, Low Rank is so meaningless in this game. Low Rank is the story and you play through the story and you can upgrade your weapon in a bunch of different directions in Low Rank and get cool armor. But the thing is, the minute you finish the story, you go into what's called High Rank

• 38:50Kirk Hamilton?

  and then suddenly you have High Rank gear and High Rank armor in particular that opens up. And High Rank armor looks exactly like the Low Rank armor, but it's just better. So suddenly all the Low Rank armor that you have is just pointless and now you just go get it again. And that's fine, I guess, because that's what the series has always done. But I don't know that they couldn't just make Low Rank a lot simpler in terms of the numbers and the stats of the gear. Because in truth, if they just told you very clearly, here's what you should do in Low Rank. Just put on whatever piece of armor has the highest armor number. That's it. And don't worry about any of this other stuff, this crazy interface with all these different attributes and weaknesses and strengths and these plus minus shit. They should just show you that number.

• 39:34Kirk Hamilton?

  And then that's all you have to worry about. Maybe it's like you put it in newcomer mode or something. And then you're just trying to make the number go higher. So you just scroll through the gear until you get to the gauntlets with the highest number, helmet, et cetera, boots. And then with the weapon, it's the same thing. You just make a bone weapon, which those always have the highest like raw attack number. You just make bone weapons all through Low Rank. And that's really simple then, because you're always getting bones and you don't even need specific parts. You can just make a bone sword or whatever from any bones from any monster. And then when you get to high rank, if you get that far, you're probably like more aware of different systems and different things that you might want. And then maybe the gear becomes much more complicated and it starts to show you all these other interlocking systems and weaknesses and strengths and stuff. It just seems like low

• 40:18Kirk Hamilton?

  rank should be simpler and the game should make it more clear to you that not that much matters in low rank, especially because you're gonna throw a lot of that stuff out anyways when you get to high rank. It's definitely something that like, it still seems like something they could smooth off.

• 40:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, it helped me when you told us a version of that. Like, early on, you were like, just sell, you're gonna get rid of all of your armor pieces immediately. And like, that was kind of freeing for me, where I was like, okay, every single time I go back to camp, every piece I'm wearing will be different and I'm about to change it my whole life, my whole look.

• 40:49Kirk Hamilton?

  You're gonna look like a freak all through low rank, it doesn't matter.

• 40:52Speaker 02

  Sometimes I look amazing and then I have to knock it attached, because in the next, next fight, I'm gonna look terrible for some reason.

• 40:59Kirk Hamilton?

  It's a nice thing in high rank, if you do care about how you look, that any armor that you unlock can become layered armor. So you can be wearing anything and you can, it's like a, what's it called? What's the word people always use for that? Transmog.

• 41:11Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 41:12Kirk Hamilton?

  It's a transmog system. You can make yourself look like anything you want, which is, which is fun if you're into the fashion hunter of it all.

• 41:18Speaker 02

  Right. Which I kind of am. But, but that, that helped me to just be like, this is meaningless, but it is true that, like, having those recommendations is helping me at the stage of the game I'm at now, but as it gets more complicated, I can imagine that it soon won't. And that just looking at the attack numbers and like every other modifier, I don't even know what they mean. And maybe I never will.

• 41:40Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah. And I mean, I've turned off attack numbers even so that when I land an attack, I don't even see the number anymore, which I think maybe used to be how this series was.

• 41:48Speaker 02

  Well, there's no health bars. They sure don't tell you what the monster's health is. And that's part of it.

• 41:54Kirk Hamilton?

  You can just watch the monster and figure out, you know, through its animations and its behavior, you can figure a lot out, which is actually really fun. There are a lot of little tweaks like that, you know, the menu. These are all overwhelming and a little unclear in what they're describing. You know, radial type.

• 42:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know what that means. I still don't know what it means.

• 42:12Kirk Hamilton?

  Click the stick to select something in your radio. So like there are, and then there are all these, you know, YouTube videos that do basically what I did for the two of you. I should say, I like basically wrote an article for the two of you that I put in our Discord that was here are my tips for playing Monster Hunter.

• 42:26Jason Schreier?

  It's pretty good, pretty useful.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  I read it twice. I read it before I started and then I read it a couple of hours in because I was like, I don't understand anything that's going on. I need to read this again.

• 42:35Kirk Hamilton?

  And like, I think it's too bad that the game requires that. Clearly it is not hurting them.

• 42:41Speaker 02

  No.

• 42:41Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, there are YouTube videos. It's fine for them to rely on that. At the same time, it does seem like they could tackle the problem of solving this in game. And I would love to see that just because getting more people across that hump would just mean more people would get to have as much fun with Monster Hunter as I do. And I really love these games. They're always just really straightforward pleasures. There's nothing very complicated about them. It's just fun to fight big monsters and I have really, you know, have really enjoyed all three of the ones that I've played. So yeah, I hope that, I hope that that happens. But in the meantime, I suppose for anyone playing this game, either they have friends who write guides for them or they can go on YouTube and, you know, look up some guides.

• 43:23Kirk Hamilton?

  There's no shortage of, of service material for, for Monster Hunter.

• 43:27Jason Schreier?

  Get your friends to write guides for you. That's good advice.

• 43:29Speaker 02

  It's not, not a good way to get your friend into a video game, to just write them a specialized guide and put it in a Discord DM. It's, it can be very effective. Not every time you get two out of, two out of, one out of two, two out of three.

• 43:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Sure.

• 43:45Speaker 02

  However, we want to count this.

• 43:48Kirk Hamilton?

  All right, nice. Well, there are more monsters to hunt as there always are, but for now, how about we take a break and then we come back for one more thing.

• 44:02Speaker 03

  In two weeks.

• 44:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Two weeks.

• 44:05Speaker 04

  Put on your Gecko shorts and grab your pods. We're celebrating Max Fun Drive 90's style.

• 44:11Speaker 03

  Support the shows you love.

• 44:13Speaker 04

  And get some rad retro themed gifts.

• 44:16Speaker 03

  Meetup Day, bonus content and more.

• 44:19Speaker 04

  So don't miss it.

• 44:22Speaker 04

  On the world wide web, March 17.

• 44:30Speaker 05

  Somewhere in an alternate universe where Hollywood is smarter.

• 44:36Speaker 06

  And the Emmy nominees for outstanding comedy series are Jetpackula, Airport Marriott, Throuple, Dear America, We've Seen You Naked, and Allah in the Family.

• 44:52Speaker 05

  In our stupid universe, you can't see any of these shows, but you can listen to them on Dead Pilot Society, the podcast that brings you hilarious comedy pilots that the networks and streamers bought but never made. Journey to the alternate television universe of Dead Pilot Society on MaximumFun.org.

• 45:15Kirk Hamilton?

  And we are back for one more thing. Jason, I am looking forward to hearing your one more thing.

• 45:19Speaker 02

  Me too.

• 45:20Kirk Hamilton?

  So how about you go first?

• 45:21Jason Schreier?

  I've been playing a video game. It's called Sweet Conan 1 and 2 HD Remaster Gate Run and Dunan Unification Wars.

• 45:29Kirk Hamilton?

  No notes on that name?

• 45:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, perfect.

• 45:30Jason Schreier?

  No, I think if this was our naming episode, we would be like 10 out of 10.

• 45:35Speaker 02

  10 out of 10, perfect.

• 45:36Kirk Hamilton?

  10 out of 10.

• 45:38Speaker 02

  Did it.

• 45:38Jason Schreier?

  Man, it's been a wild week for Sweet Conan fans. I don't know if you guys saw this, but there was a stream on Monday night where the producers at Konami like announced a whole bunch of Sweet Conan stuff, including an anime and a stage show and a brand new game that looks like Sweet Conan 6, essentially like looks like a brand new game, except it's for mobile and it's a gacha game.

• 46:00Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 46:02Jason Schreier?

  And also the remasters of the first two Sweet Conan games come out. I don't know if you guys, have you two played Sweet Conan 2?

• 46:10Speaker 02

  Nope, never checked it out. Never have.

• 46:13Kirk Hamilton?

  It's not ringing any bells.

• 46:14Speaker 02

  Can't recall. Doesn't sound like something I would play. So I don't even know why you're asking me that.

• 46:18Kirk Hamilton?

  It doesn't.

• 46:19Jason Schreier?

  A couple of years ago, if people have not listened to it, go back and listen to us talking about this game, which I successfully got Kirk and Maddie to play by winning the predictions or tying in a predictions bet a couple of years ago. And so now Konami has Remaster the first two games and release them on modern platforms. And these remasters are fascinating. They're gorgeous. They're like total remakes of the graphics and they look fantastic. The kind of the sprites are mostly the same, but the backgrounds look great. And in action, it looks phenomenal. I've been playing on Steam Deck where it runs pretty well, which I would hope it would since it's a it's a remaster remake of a PlayStation one game.

• 47:01Jason Schreier?

  Most importantly, other than some bells and whistles, I mean, there's like a speed up button in combat. There's like, there's a toggle that lets you bypass the. So to get this one side quest in Seko Den 2, this big Clive side quest for one of the characters, you have to like speed run the game. And now there's a setting that lets you get that side quest without speed running the game.

• 47:25Jason Schreier?

  The biggest change is that they completely overhauled the scripts for both games. Because as you guys might remember, the script of Seko Den 2 is pretty busted. It's full of typos. It's full of like, not only typos, but like people saying the wrong things sometimes. And like dialoguing in the wrong place. Scripting errors. Scripting errors. And also just like nonstop like ellipses, like there will be just like 20 dots in a row between each line. Now it reads like a normal script and it's really good. It's really well done. I was actually a little worried about this. I was worried they wouldn't put that much care into it. Cause I've been looking at like Konami has had this Seko Den account tweeting a bunch. And some of what they've tweeted has been broken English. So I've been a little bit worried.

• 48:07Jason Schreier?

  But no, the script is actually really good. And overall, they're fantastic remasters of these two games. That I think a lot of people out there will want to revisit or play for the first time. But what to me is even more exciting is that Konami has said that they are like trying to bring back the Seko Den series in a big way. I actually interviewed the producer a few days ago of this like of the remaster. And like this new initiative Konami to bring back this beloved series that has been my favorite RPG series for decades. And he was talking about. And you talked about this on the live show, live stream as well. There's like multi-step process.

• 48:49Jason Schreier?

  It seems like they're trying to, they got a lot of pre-orders for this remaster and so they're trying to bring it back in other ways. Like I mentioned, the mobile game, the stage show, the anime. And then it sounds like in the future, he wants to make a new game, a new, a brand new Sukeodin 6 or like remaster the other games and like do all this cool shit. So that's all very exciting. Um, all of this is good news, which is like hard to believe from Konami, but it's all just like good vibes. I guess you could say the fact that this new, a brand new game happens to be a mobile gotcha game is kind of a monkey's paw situation, but whatever. I mean, the fact that there's like new Sukeodin stuff is, is, is wild to me in 2025.

• 49:30Jason Schreier?

  Like the last Sukeodin game, not counting these like garbage spinoffs that were released, the last Sukeodin game came out in 2006. So we're talking about a hell of a gap here.

• 49:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, 20 years almost.

• 49:41Kirk Hamilton?

  Are you gonna watch the anime? That's my question.

• 49:43Jason Schreier?

  I don't know. It seems unlikely that I will watch.

• 49:49Speaker 02

  I'll watch it for you. That seems like a way I could engage with Sukeodin.

• 49:53Kirk Hamilton?

  If there were an anime that Jason Schreier would watch.

• 49:56Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 49:57Kirk Hamilton?

  He would watch.

• 49:58Jason Schreier?

  I think the anime is gonna be based on the one you played also.

• 50:01Speaker 02

  There's probably a better translation and righted, writing version of it though.

• 50:06Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I, I actually, I regret.

• 50:08Speaker 02

  It's one of the issues I had.

• 50:09Jason Schreier?

  I regret that you guys had to play a vastly inferior version. Like there's so many changes and fixes in here.

• 50:15Speaker 02

  It's okay. We weren't gonna wait all the way for this.

• 50:17Kirk Hamilton?

  True experience.

• 50:18Jason Schreier?

  You play, yeah, you played the pure version, but like even, okay, so here's a kind of a surreal moment for me. So I played Sukeodin 2 dozens of times. Um, by the way, I, I checked out both games in the remaster. I'm kind of way further into Sukeodin 2, uh, cause Sukeodin 1 still feels a little bit clunky. It's older. Sukeodin 2 has even the original version, Sukeodin 2 had a lot of improvements over Sukeodin 1. But anyway, I played Sukeodin 2 probably a dozen times, if, if not more over the years. And, um, so I know it very, very well. And there's some parts of it that, um, I'm just used to, including, um, the kind of the war battle. There's this glitch where the music doesn't play. And in this remaster, they fixed that glitch, among many other.

• 51:02Jason Schreier?

  They fixed all the glitches that were big issues. And so you enter a war battle and suddenly you hear this new music track. And for me, it's like mind boggling to be like, oh, my God. Like, it's like, I don't know. If it's like you're playing a song that you know by heart from muscle memory. And then suddenly the notes are all off in a different way. Like, that's what it feels like when you're playing this game that you know by heart. You know so well, but then something is different. This bug is fixed that used to be there. And now suddenly the music plays and it's this new track. It's just really just a surreal experience. Everything about this is an extremely surreal experience. The fact that Sweet Conan is coming back in a big way is just extremely surreal for me. And I'm still processing it, I think.

• 51:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, that does sound really weird.

• 51:46Jason Schreier?

  But anyway, I'm sure we'll unpack this more in the future as like Konami continues on this quest to like bring back this franchise that I have loved for so many years, which is gonna be wild. But for now, I will just say that Sweet Conan 1 and 2 remaster. Sorry, Sweet Conan 1 and 2 HD remaster, Gate Run and Dunedin Unification Wars. 10 out of 10, A+. It's a really good remaster. I think it's extremely well done and it's got no gotcha mechanics whatsoever. And if you are curious about these games that I love, that you two are more Lucormon, and if you, or if you are revisiting it, you haven't played it since they came out on PS1 or something like that, go check out this remaster, because it's really good.

• 52:28Kirk Hamilton?

  I was looking, I was trying to remember what the glitch was that I found. It's the Matilda glitch.

• 52:33Jason Schreier?

  Yep.

• 52:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Is that still in the game or did they, did they fix that?

• 52:36Jason Schreier?

  I didn't actually try that one, but I'm 99% sure that it's fixed. Because, yeah, I mean, it is like, they fixed all, they fixed all of the glitches and issues. And it's like, it feels like a proper polished game. So it's like, in addition to the graphics looking great and the quality of life features. Like, it's still, don't get me wrong, it's still an old school turn-based JRPG. So like, if you're, if you, you're not a fan of invisible random encounters, like, you're still gonna bounce off of this game, I think. But like, now it feels like this is a really good entry point for the series. If you are curious about it, and you are into kind of old school turn-based JRPGs.

• 53:15Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice. Yeah, anyone going through the Max Fun Archives, listening to our triple play, who wants to finally play the game?

• 53:20Jason Schreier?

  Yes, or if you guys are in the mood to replay it, now's your chance.

• 53:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:24Kirk Hamilton?

  Anything can happen.

• 53:25Speaker 02

  I'm gonna start that right after this.

• 53:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, never say never. Maddie, what is your one more thing?

• 53:30Speaker 02

  My one more thing is a documentary called The Contestant that I really recommend, although it's a wild ride. So this documentary kind of has two main characters. And one of them is this guy whose nickname is Nausicaä. And I kind of remembered him from like when I was in elementary school, like news stories about a reality show that he was on in Japan in 1998, where he lived alone in this apartment. And they take his clothes away at the beginning, by the way, so he's naked this whole time. And he has to survive entirely off of winning prizes in write-in magazines. So the entire apartment is just this small room. It's got a kitchen and a bathroom, but it's a table with a bunch of postcards

• 54:15Speaker 02

  and a ton of modern magazines, contemporary magazines. And he's just writing and trying to win, well, food, for one thing, because he doesn't have any food. And also just everything else that he needs to survive. But he never leaves this apartment. So it's like he's living in lockdown almost, and he's like completely isolated. And like his diaries became famous because he wrote about how bizarre and upsetting and all the, all the experiences that he had here. And then there is this other character who's Toshiyo Tetsuya, who is the guy who produces the show. And I, I'm not a medical professional. I don't want to diagnose anybody as a psychopath,

• 54:58Speaker 02

  but I did have that thought a lot when I was watching this documentary.

• 55:01Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, just the description of this show.

• 55:03Speaker 02

  Because when Nausicaä is cast on this show, he does not even know that it's being filmed and that it's going to be turned into a show. Like, he's kind of unclear on that. And that's extremely clear in this documentary. And they have the adult version of him. And like, thank God they have him, because otherwise I think this documentary would be really upsetting if you didn't kind of see that he is an adult now and he's kind of gotten through it in some form and has his own take on it. And that that is sort of contrasted. With Sushia being like, yeah, I did this thing to this guy who was a really young person and did whatever I told him to do.

• 55:42Speaker 02

  And it is really haunting and and it is also like a kind of a parable about the rise of reality TV that's upsetting. But I will say that somehow, despite how stressful the documentary gets, and it gets very stressful. Like, I must warn everyone, it gets really, like, there's a point in the documentary where you're like, I think everything's gonna be okay. And then it gets way worse. And like, anyone who's watched it is gonna know what I'm talking about. And that really upset me. But then they do manage to end it on a high note at the end, in part because this guy who was on this show has somehow managed to like, take away something different about humanity than you think, where he's like, I learned about how important community is, because I was so isolated when I was on this show.

• 56:28Speaker 02

  So yeah, I really recommend it. It's it's bizarre. Like, the thing that happened to this guy. And the producer, who is just a fascinating character. I don't know. The contestant is what it's called. It's on Hulu. It's a Hulu original. So I think it's only on Hulu. That's where we watched it. I I recommend it. It's it's a really good documentary about a really specific social phenomenon.

• 56:52Jason Schreier?

  So wait, was there ever a conversation like in Japan about the ethics of this show?

• 56:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's part of the documentary as well. But contemporaneously, when the when the show was airing, it wasn't obvious to the viewers how unhappy Nausicaä was, because it was edited in such a way to make it seem like a comedic situation. And they show you that and they make it really clear that like, it was a comedy show. And then for him, though, it was traumatizing. And it's very clear that it was extremely traumatizing for him to have been on this show. But the show itself was funny. It's really weird to see that duality play out.

• 57:29Kirk Hamilton?

  It looks interesting. It looks like it was a English.

• 57:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a British documentary.

• 57:34Kirk Hamilton?

  And then was acquired by by Hulu for American distribution. Yeah, I've heard about this. I want to see it.

• 57:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I recommend it. It's it's good. It's really well done.

• 57:42Kirk Hamilton?

  Pretty crazy. Late 90s reality show. That that was a reality TV. That was that was a hell of an era.

• 57:49Jason Schreier?

  Wild.

• 57:50Kirk Hamilton?

  All right. Well, I will go last. My one more thing is a series of books that I've been reading, really novellas, very short books called The Murderbot Diaries. Have any of you, have either of you ever heard of this?

• 58:01Speaker 02

  Good title.

• 58:03Kirk Hamilton?

  I've gotten, I've seen this recommended a few different places. Some of my friends really like it. And then I think I've seen some folks on the TripleClick Discord talking about it. So I've been reading a lot lately. I've mostly been reading Jason's One More Things, or at least a lot of the bigger books I've read. So like The Bright Sword, great book. I just finished Real Americans, an amazing book. So I've been reading these longer books. In between, occasionally, one of these Murderbot books will just come in in the library, and I'll put it on my Kindle, and then I'll read it in usually an afternoon. These are incredibly short, like 150-page novellas written by Martha Wells. And there are five or six of them, and then maybe, maybe more, maybe more like eight, some even shorter versions of them.

• 58:43Kirk Hamilton?

  And it is actually, I just found out, about to be released as a series on Apple TV, starring Alexander Skarsgård as Murderbot, which is pretty wild. He is, of course, a great actor and would be great for this, even though I'll be very curious how it is, because I have my own mental version of Murderbot. And a big part of the charm of these stories is the narration and the ambiguity of Murderbot themselves, or I suppose it would call it itself, but somehow that feels off. So I'm never quite sure which pronouns to use with Murderbot. So let me explain what these books are. So Murderbot is a security droid, a security robot in the future. It's a sci-fi setting.

• 59:27Kirk Hamilton?

  We are in a kind of largely corporate-driven, intergalactic setting, though it's all a little bit vague and not overly defined, because the entire story is told in the first person perspective by this security bot, who calls itself Murderbot and who is keeping these journals, these diaries, as just a way of keeping track of its story. We learn at the very beginning that Murderbot has, it has overridden what's called its governor module, which is the thing that would normally make it obey humans and, you know, basically fit into its little place in the network and be obedient. It has overridden that, and it is now what would be called a rogue security unit, which

• 1:00:09Kirk Hamilton?

  is a terrifying thing to most people, because security units are very powerful. It has like guns in its arms and is really, is really dangerous. And it calls itself Murderbot, and even though it is actually like a security bot.

• 1:00:21Jason Schreier?

  A good way to calm people down is to be like, "Don't worry, guys. My name is Murderbot."

• 1:00:26Kirk Hamilton?

  So Murderbot only calls Murderbot, I think, almost always just to itself

• 1:00:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:00:30Kirk Hamilton?

  and its own internal monologue.

• 1:00:32Speaker 02

  So calm people down by not telling them that your name is Murderbot.

• 1:00:35Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, so here's the thing. And so from the very beginning, from the start of the story, the very first story, Murderbot is deployed with a group of humans. Murderbot is always very frustrated by humans because it's always trying to keep them safe because that's its job, but the humans never listen. And so they go and do stupid things because that's what humans do. And so much of the charm of the narration of these stories is this robot and its endless frustration with and fascination with human beings in that Murderbot is always very frustrated by people and is kind of, you know, mad or like stressed out by what they're doing. But also, this Murderbot is totally free to do whatever it would like. And it could just leave, but it never does. It's like, well, I gotta stay and help them out because these people are actually kind of nicer than

• 1:01:18Kirk Hamilton?

  clients I've had in the past and I sort of like them. And then, of course, over the course of the story, and now I'm on the third one, you know, Murderbot is a lovely person. Murderbot really cares about people and is actually a very thoughtful and caring individual who is just very, very different than human beings. So of course, there is a very common, and I would say, purposeful reading of these books, that this is really the story of a neurodivergent person who is, you know, figuring out how to coexist with neurotypical people. And that's, you know, one of Murderbot's kind of defining attributes is that Murderbot really likes to watch TV. So Murderbot has downloaded just dozens and dozens and dozens of hours of these shows that it likes to watch. Sanctuary

• 1:02:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Moon is the one that it really loves. There's like a million seasons of this show.

• 1:02:06Speaker 02

  Oh, so like fictional TV shows?

• 1:02:08Kirk Hamilton?

  And it'll get really stressed out when it has to like, you know, when, when humans are talking to it and expecting it to say things, or when it has to pretend to have emotions. And it really stresses it out. So it's like, I just want to go like be alone and just like watch Sanctuary Moon for a while. And so you see these kinds of, you know, behaviors and it really, it's very endearing and very relatable to this, to this, you know, security robot. And I really love these books. They're, they're so short. Each one really almost feels like an episode of TV. TV, they have just enough character development to really win you over. They're very, very funny. Martha Wells is just narration style. Murderbot's sort of dry and constantly beleaguered, but also, you know,

• 1:02:49Kirk Hamilton?

  unrevealingly caring, like it reveals things about itself I think that it doesn't mean to. And just the cast of characters that's developing, each one builds on the one before it. And we're seeing, you know, that it's coming back to earlier characters and earlier storylines. So it's kind of building something bigger. They're really great books. I mean, they're, they're very fun as the just little tasty treat in between longer books. Cause they're, they're all so short and they just give you a nice little adventure with some action and some intrigue and some fun character reveals. And then they just end and you move on to the next one. So I really wholeheartedly recommend them to anyone out there who thinks that that sounds fun. And I'll be very curious what this TV series is going to be, look like. Cause like I said, Murderbot's physicality is not super defined.

• 1:03:33Kirk Hamilton?

  Murderbot does not think of itself in any way as a sexual being. It, um, you know, it's just, so picturing Alexandra Skarsgård, who has, who is good at doing a kind of neutral affect. And I could see as a great actor, so I could see being great at this. Even so, I don't know, it's hard without the narration, the constant narration of a first person protagonist, it's going to be very, very different. So we'll see. I, I'm hopeful it's good. I'll definitely watch it, but in the meantime, go read the books. The books are great. And, uh, yeah, that's, uh, that's, that's all I have to say about Murderbot. So go.

• 1:04:07Speaker 02

  That sounds really good. I'm gonna read these.

• 1:04:10Kirk Hamilton?

  Check them out. They're great. Yeah, you, you dig them, I think.

• 1:04:11Speaker 02

  I think I would, yeah.

• 1:04:13Kirk Hamilton?

  And that is another episode of Triple Click, y'all.

• 1:04:16Jason Schreier?

  We did it again.

• 1:04:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Look at us go.

• 1:04:18Jason Schreier?

  We remembered not only our names, but also to record a whole podcast.

• 1:04:21Kirk Hamilton?

  We really had to make a whole.

• 1:04:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, we recorded all of it.

• 1:04:24Kirk Hamilton?

  Wild stuff. Yeah. All right. Well, for now then, I suppose that'll do it. And I will see the two of you next week.

• 1:04:32Jason Schreier?

  See you next week.

• 1:04:33Speaker 02

  Bye.

• 1:04:36Kirk Hamilton?

  Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddy Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join. Find us on Twitter at TripleClickPod, send email to [email protected], and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

• 1:05:34Kirk Hamilton?

  Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network. Of artist-owned shows. Supported. Directly. By you.