Toukiden 2

Toukiden 2 is by far the most interesting Monster-Hunter-Like. You may be wondering why.
Because it actually innovates on its own series mechanics, and the genre's fundamental mechanics. An accomplishment that very few MH-likes manage or even try to achieve.
Toukiden 2 is also the most depressing MH-Like because the game is dead.
Even during publisher sales Toukiden 2 remains a staggering 66.49 CDN. For reference it is 30 dollars less than MH Wilds, 15 dollars more than Rise, and 25 dollars more than World and when did this game come out on steam? 2017!? Worse still those two games go on frequent sales while Toukiden 2 here gets 1 or 2 random discounts a year, if you're lucky.
On top of that the DLC quests are not free, so you have to pay real money to experience all of the quests that Toukiden has to offer.
Oh, and the keyboard controls suck. You better have a controller if you want to play this.
Lets touch on some positives for a minute.
The World and presentation is pretty good. Toukiden 2 puts alot of focus on its characters and story, there's also some world building but that starts to fall by the wayside the further you get through the story.
Something I include in presentation are the Tutorials. I can happily say these are usually really good! Optional missions from their own quest tender that'll show you the ropes for every weapon, and every standard loadout, with simple 1 time popups for most other information.
(You can of course view these again from a certain menu)
Back to why this game is depressing. This greatest downside aside from price comes from odd inconsistencies.
Its not hard to get used to these inconsistencies, they just reek of lacking polish.
I'll use the areas with poor or no communication as the easiest example of these.
Despite the great tutorials the game offers nothing effective for weapon trees, mitama sources and locations, or even how certain equipment statistics work. You'll have to find the player made spreadsheets for those.
Furthermore there are no subtitles in standard gameplay for dialogue, and that ends up trickling down to impact a few of the games cutscenes.
The greatest advantage is the combat and skill systems, which are both surprisingly free-form and are what I can only describe as "Refreshingly limiting" as Monster Hunter continues down a path of excessive powercreep and experimentation.
So here's what you'll have access to (not including the variety of weapons)
9 passive skills, 3 active skills (and a heal) that function akin to items or spells, another 2 active skills that have unlimited uses. Of course all of these active skills have cooldowns independent of one another.
But that's not all. You also have two part breaker attacks you can use after filling their corresponding meter. 1 just breaks limbs, while the other breaks limbs or completely severs certain limbs.
This system pairs very well with the faster paced combat and NPC hunters allowing for a full party in every mission, even in singleplayer.
As a whole if I had to assign Toukiden 2 a number grade I'd say it earns an 8 out of 10 and is well worth trying if you're a fan of Monster Hunter (particularly if you've played more than just World, Rise, and soon to be Wilds)
Though if I'm being as objective as possible it's probably a 7/10 due to the price and the handful of glaring unpolished holes.

Great game, if you like Monster Hunter, you should try this game, but mind you this is more action focused than the latter.

And if you hate new gen Monster Hunter like me, this is a great option to that 😎

Its a old game, that has some flaws to get it working right, but if you take the time to do so, its a realy fun game! I have it physical on PS4 and PSVita! <3

While there are some things (quest area markers) that would improve the game a tiny bit, its honestly a fun game. And the story line itself is amazing. I have had this game on PS4 for years and my PS4 crapped out on me and I couldn't play it anymore until I finally found it on Steam and have relished the chance to play it again.

Toukiden (TKD) 2 is a decent monster hunting game that has a good story, fast paced action, less tedium and just as grindy. In this game, you hunt Onis, rip their parts off (and gloat), only to realize that they've suddenly become even more dangerous!
TKD2 has a compelling story and its storytelling is well executed. This is supported by a cast of likeable characters and great voice acting (Jap dub only) that kept me wanting to see more of it - imo, the biggest strength of the game. The story can feel short if you focus on main quests, so it's better to mix in with side quests. TKD2 uses an open world which features a day/night cycle (mostly immersion, though some side quests require to be in nighttime) and is littered with inscriptions (textual story fragments) and crests (collectables) to encourage exploration. Also, the home hub is an impressively big village which is unfortunately only really relevant during story progression. You can explore the open world with up to 3 additional AI companions and they are very competent. In fact, perhaps too much so because they will most likely carry you throughout your early-to-late single player experience; they will even pick loot for you! One annoyance I have is that there are a few translation errors and there are no subtitles for the things your companions say (when out in the open world), making it impossible to understand if you don't know Japanese. It's also a shame that the open world aspect of the game only applies to single player and not multiplayer. For the latter, it's still the traditional lobby system like most other games. The character creator is decent and looks to be the same as those used in other musou games like Samurai Warriors, but with more options.
Compared to other games in the same genre like Monster Hunter (MH) or God Eater (GE), the game takes away a lot of the tedium of hunt preparation as there are no consumables to prepare. Instead, their effects are implemented as skills in 11 collections, referred to as "playstyles" (known as "ATK", "PLN", etc in-game). Each playstyle consists of 4 skills (mapped to the face buttons of the gamepad) with one of them always being a self-heal. As such, the playstyle defines what skills you can use and each skill has limited use (and cooldown) which can only be restocked at designated points on the map. Playstyles loosely define what you bring to your party, for e.g., better at destroying parts, able to taunt or able to AoE heal. The main attraction of this game compared to its competition is the ability to tear off Oni parts and boy is it gratifying to do so! What's interesting is that destroying different Oni parts will alter its move sets, making it more interesting and challenging to learn its moves. There's (most of the time) clear wind up before big attacks and it's still important to recognize them as your own big attacks have commitment and you also have limited healing. That said, I find that many monsters have really OP bullsh*t moves that I don't really enjoy fighting.
TKD2 uses the Mitama ("honourable spirit") system to make builds and it's interesting. In a nutshell, you can have 3 mitamas and every mitama has its own list of passive abilities known as "boosts" where you can pick 3 (from each mitama) for a total of 9 boosts per build. Some of these boosts are weapon-specific, working like traits, while others improve stats or improve playstyle-specific skills. Mitamas are unlocked by playing the story mode, side quests and hunting specific Onis; they also need to be "levelled up" in order to unlock their boosts. In total, there appears to be as many as 200 mitamas in the game (excluding DLCs). Every mitama is tied to a playstyle and time period. Depending on the slot they are equipped, the player gains a set of additional evade and attack skills that is dictated by the playstyle of the mitama. Also, when using mitamas from the same period (or hidden historical relationship), you also gain combination boosts. There's a fair amount of thinking needed for finding optimal mitama choices to build synergies which is where the depth of build-making is primarily at. Unfortunately, there's no option to show damage numbers and there are no training dummies to test changes. Although you can see health bars of the Onis, it's hard to know objectively whether you're doing better damage when fiddling with setups. Another thing to note is that there's only few resources online which will pose a challenge when min-maxing your gear/mitama setups.
The game has a good selection of 11 weapons which are technical though not quite at the level of MH but definitely more compared to GE; they also feel less weighty but I feel it's because controller vibration during player actions feels non-existent. There are in-game tutorial missions for all 11 weapons which does a serviceable introduction but the advanced stuff will require exploration. The weapons all play very distinctly, and using them do require mastery because you can't just spam-to-win unless your gear outlevels the Oni (which some of the spammy moves might suggest). Interestingly, quite a number of weapons allow you to do airborne combat in order to hit the hard-to-reach places and some monsters are very tall. Overall, I think TKD2 strikes a nice balance between visceral and deliberate combat which works reasonably well on small and big monsters. In comparison, MH's combat works for large monsters, but feels unsatisfying for small ones.
In terms of the presentation, the graphics still hold up imo, even if they aren't the best. The color palette, however, is a tad too washed-out for my liking. The music is apt and suitable but I haven't found any strong tracks that caught my attention. The UI and control scheme could be better although it's not terrible. For example, it's hard to find things on a list because you can't sort alphabetically - even though you can sort in other ways. It also doesn't make very good use of the DPad for control scheme, like using it for rotating 3D model when previewing gear.
Performance-wise, this game runs great and I've not got a single crash (except one instance of suddenly very long loading which I closed the game and restarted). However, this port is a mixed bag although it's far from a bad one. For one, it doesn't have borderless window mode which is an inconvenience and doesn't allow you to remap controls on the gamepad. While I've never played with keyboard/mouse, it doesn't seem like it would work very well with mouse. It also always launches with its configuration tool which can be bypassed but requires additional manual work/research on your part.
Overall, despite some of my gripes, I strongly recommend TKD2, especially for players who like monster hunting as an offline or JRPG experience. However, I'd recommend getting this game only when on sale (which, admittedly, is rare) as I don't think it has a reasonable asking price for such an old title. I really hope Koei Tecmo will continue this series in future as it has pretty good fundamentals down. I think with a bit more polish to its weapon and combat mechanics (like adding more counterplay), the TKD series can become a serious competition to the MH series. But perhaps I compare TKD too much with MH (the gold standard) because with TKD2, it's really become is its own thing and sets itself apart from the others in the genre, like MH and GE.
PSA: There are free DLCs available for the game which are not listed on the store page. You can search "toukiden 2" in the store and add them to library. There's also an online manual showing what the game has to offer at

Old monster hunter but faster.
Though it kind of feels more like a traditional RPG than a MH-like. The goal is to drain the monster's HP before you run out of resources, instead of dancing with the monster, sneaking in hits, and punishing openings. I'd recommend MHW over this, but this pretty decent if you're just looking for more hunting content.

It's dated and a little janky because of that, but one of the few MH style games to really experiment with the genre. The movement abilities, weapons, monster styles, and dismemberment mechanics are great fun, giving it a fast action feel while making the oni still feel like a threat.
I'd buy Toukiden 3 in a heartbeat.