Look what I received last week! Despite my earlier comments about Freedom Unite only adding minimal stuff to the existing Freedom 2, I ended up buying it anyway. It’s my first purchase from Youbeli.com after its merger with Pcgame.com.my too. Oddly enough I thought that the purchase had failed when I was led to an error screen after inputting my credit card information but someone called me the next day to confirm the details.

Of course I bought Freedom Unite only because I knew that it had a saved game transfer function so you could bring over your existing character from Freedom 1 or Freedom 2 with all of his or her gear intact. Except when I tried to actually do it, it didn’t work. After a bit of investigation, I found that this was because the copy of Freedom 2 I’d been playing is an EU-region version while the copy of Freedom Unite I’d just bought in Malaysia turns out to be a US-region version. While the PSP itself happily acknowledges that there’s a Freedom 2 saved game file on it, Freedom Unite simply won’t recognize the file as a valid saved game to import from.

This means that I’ll have to restart my Monster Hunter career basically from scratch. This actually sounds more daunting that it really is. Even though I’d put more than 30 hours in Freedom 2 I’d only ever worked up to the Elder 3 quests. Now that I’ve developed the skills necessary, I’ve managed to reach the Elder 2 quests in just a couple of days of playing. Plus, this gives me a chance to diversify away from the noob-friendly longsword to the formidable but incredibly unwieldy greatsword.

The biggest visible change, apart from some very handy tools to make inventory handling easier, is the addition of the felyne comrades. So far, my pet cat doesn’t seem to very good at actually fighting (he can’t even kill a vespoid mosquito by himself!) but he’s proving to be a very handy distraction for the monsters. Still, it seems that I need to be careful whenever he decides to toss bombs arounds because that thing can hurt even me when it lands too close! More updates as I get further into Freedom Unite.