Monster Hunter Portable 3rd announced for PSP by Capcom in Japan

Monster Hunter Portable 3rd announced
The popular Monster Hunter series will continue on PSP as Capcom has announced Monster Hunter Portable 3rd (would be called “Monster Hunter Freedom 3” outside Japan) at a Tokyo fan event.

The game will be an entirely new experience for series fans and is being developed by producer Ryozo Tsujimoto and director Yasunori Ichinose.

“This game doesn’t use Monster Hunter Freedom Unite as a base; the majority of it is being built from scratch,” Ichinose said. “Thanks to that, the monster graphics and animation are a whole level better than before; we’ve got a broader range of expression to work with. It’ll feel different from both Unite and Tri on the Wii.”

As always, this third game will have you tracking down monsters as a freelance hunter, and cooperating with real life friends to do so, though in a more Japanese/Oriental style. Your home base is actually set at a traditional Japanese hotspring, which even includes an open-air bath.

“Pokke Village from the previous game was meant to have a Japanese taste to it,” Tsujimoto commented, “but we brought that to the forefront this time. We didn’t want to have just another town that looks like samurai-era Tokyo, though, so instead we added Asian tastes to the town features shared across the series.”

Naturally the game will be full of new monsters and new environments to battle them in, including a canyon filled with forests and bamboo thickets.

The single-player and multiplayer games will be expanded, and players will now be allowed to take two AI-controlled Felyne companions along on single-player hunts instead of just one.

The game will be released at the end of the year in Japan. No date outside of Japan has been announced.

Via 1UP