A combination of interesting prey and plenty of missions for players to take on has ensured Monster Hunter's place as one of the most popular gaming franchises in Japan at the moment. The latest game in the series, Monster Hunter Freedom Unite , for the PSP is set to continue this trend boasting even more animals to hunt, as well as over 400 quests. One of the biggest new features to hit the game is the addition of Feline warriors that will assist you during the solo component of the game. We recently got the chance to sit down and check out the first part of the game, as well as accompany three other prospective hunters on some missions.

　　The missions in Freedom Unite are divided up into two types, hunting and gathering. Hunting missions, as the name suggests, sends you out with the objective to kill and loot a certain creature. Gathering on the other hand has you searching the map to find and bring back several samples of a certain plant species. As this was our first mission, our party opted for a gathering mission to search for 11 mountain herbs. The mission itself was straightforward enough and gave us a good chance to practice our combat skills on some of the weaker animals while looking for the herbs. Combat is initiated by pulling your sword with the triangle button, then attacking by using the triangle and square buttons. If you hit triangle as you're running you'll also be able to do a lunging attack, though we couldn't determine if they did more damage than your regular attacks. One of the core mechanics behind Freedom Unite is looting your fallen prey and taking their limbs for weapons and items. Since we were killing smaller animals, we were only picking up pieces of meat, which we could use to lure and distract other animals with later if we decided to send them down an irreversible path.

　　As the mission progresses we were forced to search higher areas of the map, especially since, as the name suggests, mountain herbs only grow in the mountains. Thankfully we had a map to guide us round the multi-zoned level. Each mission is comprised of several zones and there's a slight delay when travelling from zone to zone on the map, as the game loads it off the disc. After a while of scouring the higher-up zones we eventually found all of the mountain herbs and headed back to base to collect our fee for the mission.

　　Before embarking on the next quest we decided to look around the town to try and upgrade our weapons. Unlike traditional RPGs where you level up your character, in Freedom Unite you level up your weapons and armour instead. Upgrading our weapons was a fairly painless process, all we had to do was head over to the town blacksmith, select the weapon we wanted to level up and paid the money--nice and simple, the way we like it. You also go through the same process for upgrading armour. With our gear sorted out, we went about organising our apartment so that we could get some food to take away on the next mission with us.

　　To open up the kitchen in our apartment, we needed to buy some feline workers who man the culinary room. Thankfully, there was a cat dealer right outside of our apartment to buy a cat from. The transaction was fairly straightforward, just requiring us to pick the cat with the coolest name and give the store owner the money for our new companion. One thing to look out for is whether or not the cat can also double up as a fighter for solo trips, but we'll get to that later. Now that the cat situation was under control, the kitchen in our apartment opened up automatically.

　　Rostering the cats on and off the kitchen will allow you to take them along on quests.

　　With our kitchen sorted out we went down to the town farm and played the fishing mini-game to get some ingredients to take back to the kitchen for our cat to cook. The mini-game was pretty basic, it only required us to press the x button when a fish had bitten onto our bait, at which point the game automatically reels it in and added it to our inventory. You can also mine for ore, grow plants and catch bugs down at the farm in a similar one button press action. Catching bugs is an interesting one; we were able to use the Fire Bugs we caught to combine with one of our drinks to make it warm, which would increase our stamina during the colder missions.

　　As we mentioned earlier, the domestic cats can also double up as feline warriors for solo missions. While we didn't get a chance to play this part of the game, a Capcom representative gave us a demonstration of what it's like hunting alongside your animal friend. Once you've started a mission, the first thing you'll notice is that your feline has swapped its apron for a nifty set of steel armour, complete with helmet to protect its whiskers. The cat doesn't do much during lulls in the action, but it appeared to be a great help when it came to taking down monsters.

　　Unlike AI partners in other games, the cat showed that it could hold its own against creatures bigger than it--which is, understandably, pretty much everything. In the demo we saw, the cat would take a break and retreat from the battle to regain stamina, before returning to the fight fully charged. Thankfully the cat is also smart enough to perform basic tactics, ranging from flanking to distracting a monster while you heal up or attack the monster from behind. As helpful as the cat is, you can't just leave it to fight all your battles. Just like your character, the cat can take damage and when enough damage is dealt, roll over and pass out unconscious.

　　That's just a brief overview of what we got to see in Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, but stay tuned to GameSpot for our full review shortly.