Notes on Monster Hunter XR in USJ

Not sure if this will be of interest to anyone, but I recently went on the Monster Hunter XR experience in Universal Studios Japan. I struggled to find many details online about whether it is suitable for non Japanese speakers (they give you a warning that the experience is Japanese only before you buy a ticket) so thought I would give some notes here:

The monster hunter experience is within USJ but requires buying a separate ticket, which you can purchase on site at Studio Gifts west or purchase ahead of time online. It costs 2980 yen each (I think the price used to be lower since there are conflicting reports on the web).

When we bought the tickets first thing in the park, the only time slot available was 11.10-11.20 and we were told the experience would last about an hour. We arrived at 11.10 and queued for a bit. We put our belongings in a locker and were given printed out instructions in English that covered most of how to play (e.g how to use a weapon, how to follow the green guide flies and avoid leaving the area). We then went to a tablet that could be used in English or Japanese, that showed a short video covering the same points and let you create your character (which is how you will appear to others in the experience) and choose your weapon (great sword, long sword, hammer, switch axe or heavy bowgun).

There is then more queuing before you get to see a short show with two actors in monster hunter costumes explaining the story, but this is entirely in Japanese. Then another short queue before are given a vr headset, hand detectors and a backpack and get to start walking around the experience. If there are less than 4 of you, your group may be combined with others or you may get to do the experience as a 2 or 3 depending on other group sizes. You do have mics to talk to each other, but little cooperation is required.

What isn’t covered in English:
There are a few details that aren’t explained in English anywhere (they are explained by the actors or NPC’s in the game) that we had to figure out:

* you can turn your right hand palm up to see an inventory (nice detail but not necessary)

* you can put your left hand out to get a targeting reticule for your wristbow/grappling hook

* there is one point where you need to climb a vine by going hand over hand

* the heavy bowgun is different to the other weapons (the actors explained how to use it and it involves pressing a trigger on the weapon, but no idea if there is more to it than point and shoot. The melee weapons all have the same controls of swinging, charge attacks by holding over your shoulder before swinging, and blocking)

Actual review of the experience:
So first the downside of the experience – they seemed to be having a lot of technical issues when we were there that made the queueing take a lot longer as people had to have their backpacks replaced/restarted. This made the experience take more like an hour and a half overall. However, once we got into the experience it was really great. The first half is walking around a linear monster hunter environment looking for resources like plants to pick up and surmounting a few simple obstacles. Then you are given your weapon (you are handed an actual physical weapon as the same time as the npc in game gives you your chosen monster hunter weapon) and get to take part in combat against two different monsters. Combat has you standing still but timing your blocks and charge attacks and interacting with the environment a bit. You can’t be killed, everyone gets to see the whole experience, but at the end you will get a qr code which will show you the scores of everyone on your team based on what collectibles you found and how well you did in combat. Overall a really fun experience and definitely worth checking out if you are in USJ even if you have no familiarity with monster hunter. Just be aware it might take longer than an hour if you have timed entry for other attractions.