History VideoGame / MonsterHunterStories2WingsOfRuin

* During the final battle with [[spoiler:Oltura]], Kyle implies from an early comment he makes and a scene from a earlier cutscene that his attacks have no effect on it (due to the creature's light blocking his attacks), but that yours and Ratha's do, with him not actually able to do it damage until he makes some unique arrows. In the gameplay of the battle he inflicts damage like usual.

* BeamOWar: If two opposing monsters possess an element aside from Non-Elemental they will periodically engage in brief contests of strength where they blast out the element as a destructive stream of lightning, water, ice, fire, or Dragon energy from their mouth. The attacks collide and it's up to the player to press button inputs quickly enough to overpower the opponent's attack, netting them some extra damage that doesn't take up a turn and increases their Kinship gauge.

* FamilyUnfriendlyDeath: [[spoiler: Guardian Ratha]] suffers a surprisingly gruesome one. The game until that point went out of the way to downplay visual damage and death. This in turn made the scene more unsettling and shocking as it's [[spoiler: ''torn apart and eaten'', with blood spurts being shown]].

* FamilyUnfriendlyDeath: [[spoiler: Guardian Ratha]] suffers a surprisingly gruesome one. The game until that point went out of the way to downplay visual damage and death. This in turn made the scene more unsettling and shocking as it's not only [[spoiler:eaten with blood splurts everywhere, but it's also heavily implied to be ''torn apart'']].

* FamilyUnfriendlyDeath: [[spoiler: Guardian Ratha]] suffers a surprisingly gruesome one. The game until that point went out of the way to downplay visual damage and death, which in turn made the scene more unsettling and shocking for the game’s standard.

* BonusBoss: As in the first game, there are various bosses you can only fight in the post-game, including most Elder Dragons, but the big one is the one that lies at the bottom of the post-game dungeon known as the Elder's Lair: [[spoiler:Fatalis, reprising its role as the Bonus Boss, just like in the first game.]]

* HavingABlast: The Blast element centers around causing explosions, with the Blastblight status effect causing characters to take large amounts of explosive damage at the end of each turn. In particular, the Bazelgeuse's Kinship attack involves it raining down explosive scales a la a bombing run... and then crash-landing on top of them to detonate them.

* HeroOfAnotherStory: Navirou confirms that his "old buddy" is still out there somewhere, but is otherwise engaged for this new crisis gripping the Old World of ''Monster Hunter''.

* BeamOWar: If two opposing monsters possess an element aside from Non-Elemental they will periodically engage in brief contests of strength where they blast out the element as a destructive stream of lighting, water, ice, fire, or Dragon energy from their mouth. The attacks collide and it's up to the player to press button inputs quickly enough to overpower the opponent's attack, netting them some extra damage that doesn't take up a turn and increases their Kinship gauge.

** Deviljho's Kinship Art has it notice Naviroh about to eat a piece of meat and then go on a rampage trying to devour him.

* [[spoiler:WhereItAllBegan]]: [[spoiler:Hakolo Island is both where the story begins and where Oltura reaches maturity and fights the protagonist and their team as the final boss battle.]]

* SuperPersistentPredator: The Nergigante [[spoiler:Cheval had been tracking proves to be one. It has been flying all over the place as if looking for something, even attacking villages along the way and inflicting substantial casualties (either out of redirected frustration or the perception that the humans are interfering with it). It turns out to have been tracking Oltura (whose burrows crisscross many places), such a inexperienced-yet-powerful Elder Dragon being an ideal energy source if the Nergigante can slay it (as well as the sort of "too strong for the natural order" Elder that Nergigante are theorized to help cull). So focused it is on the task that despite having just come out of a grueling fight and being in no condition to battle something so powerful, it still barrels ahead when Oltura finally shows itself on the surface. This proves to be the Nergigante's undoing, as Oltura easily knocks it unconscious and it proceeds to fall into the pit.]]

** Guardian Ratha returned to keep the peace on Hakolo Island, but never allowed anyone else to ride him, all in memory of his deceased Rider, Red.

* PsychicRadar: While it's not explained if its entirely an enhanced version of mundane senses or an actual psychic or magical ability, talented human Riders and many Wyverians are seen to possess the ability to sense the presence of particularly powerful monsters. They can also use this when in close proximity to judge the strength of a monster's life force. Ol' Dede, Cheval, Ena, Yoomlana, Avinia and the Protagonist all explicitly display some version of this ability during the events of the game.

** The game implies that many of the monsters you "slay" are not actually being killed. Notably Kayna refers to the Aptonoth you first fight as "good training partners," and other early fights as simply "getting past" monsters in the way rather than killing them. Further, a early subquest boss is noted to be a individual that local Riders have fought for training for years, and tasks you with doing the same despite it too being counted as "slain" when beaten. Most explicitly is the late game story quest where you have to defeat a [[spoiler:Nergigante. You will get materials from it and the monsterpedia will record it as slain, and the text under its boss entry will even state how slaying it powered up your and Cheval's Kinship Stones, but in the scene itself the Nergigante gets right back up, weakened but in one piece. Cheval even tells Yoomlana in the next scene that they did not slay the Nergigante.]] Further, in the post-game there is a quest where Lilia has you search for a Kirin den. Despite the quest requiring you to "slay" the Kirin, after you do Lilia will state that now that she knows what is living in the den she won't give permission to anyone but you to enter it, implying the Kirin is still alive. All in all, "slaying" in the game's story can count as nothing more than defeating or otherwise driving away the monster, at least when no actual body is seen in a cutscene afterward. The Bloodbath Diablos quest has you slay it in gameplay like in most encounters, but the clerk who gave you the quest refers to the Diablos as having "retreated."
** Among the many monsters that you can hatch and obtain as Monsties are Deviants. In main-series-lore, Deviant Monsters are supposed to be stronger than average monsters that have survived life-threatening experiences and come out of it with new adaptations as a result, and yet it's possible to hatch them. The most outlandish one by far is '''Bloodbath Diablos''', which is explicitly stated to hold a burning grudge against Hunters, a fact that doesn't prevent you from using one as Monstie. That said, it's mitigated in that such lore appears to be absent from the ''Stories'' universe, with Deviants being treated as unusual and powerful but still somehow natural variations of regular monsters rather than individuals that went through specific life events. Even Bloodbath's hatred of humans seems absent, albeit its viciousness remains.

* HandicappedBadass: Razewing Ratha was born with unusually small, black wings, that it seems unable to unfurl, rendering him incapable of flight. In spite of that he's still a ''Rathalos'' and his condition is a sign of a doomsday prophecy, that when the wings do eventually grow and unfurl disaster will befall the land. [[spoiler:Averted once his wings fully develop and he's able to fly around with ease]].

* SoapOperaRapidAgingSyndrome: After a fashion. The Monsties you hatch are immediately ready to go, just like in the first game, but the ArtShift has made the jump from "baby mode" to "combat-ready Monstie" a bit more jarring (and hilarious). This is on special display with the Kulu-Ya-Ku you get at the game's start, because it gets to hang out in a few cutscenes ''as a baby'' (which is adorable), and then, as soon as the cutscenes are over, it's in your party and ready to rock at full size, with no indication in-universe that an especially large amount of time has passed.
* ProtagonistCenteredMorality: The game offer a bit of an analysis of this with the Hunters early on. To the Riders, they're a pack of narrow-minded JerkAss outsiders trespassing in sacred grounds and hunting a monster that's no threat to anyone. The issue here is entirely a perspective shift, as in the main series games, these sorts of legends typically have some genuinely dangerous truth to them, and a singleminded determination to stop them at the source is considered a virtue of the [[PlayerCharacter protagonist hunter]].
* TimeSkip: There's been one since the first game, of about 4 years (to mirror the time between the first game's release and the development of the sequel according to a developer interview); it's been long enough that Avinia and Lilia have gone from being kids/young teens to being working young adults.

* AscendedMeme: Plesioth's Hyperspace Tackle move has it make a damaging wave of air by using a hipcheck, referencing the Piscine Wyvern's [[ThatOneAttack infamous]] HitboxDissonance-laden attack in the main series games.

* ApocalypseCult: We get scarce few details on how it functions, but [[spoiler:Zellard leads a small group of like-minded Wyverians and humans, some of them Riders, who worship Oltura in the belief that it will destroy the world when it awakens and begin a new, better world. For Zellard at least this means a world that does not suffer from weak, short-lived humans (its unclear if his human allies share this belief). They are completely off about Oltura's motives, as it has the mentality of a newborn and is only concerned with its own life, but there is just enough ambiguity in Oltura's actions and thoughts that Zellard is able to read into them a whole belief system (colored by his own growing despair and misanthropy).]]

** The game implies that many of the monsters you "slay" are not actually being killed. Notably Kayna refers to the Aptonoth you first fight as "good training partners," and other early fights as simply "getting past" monsters in the way rather than killing them. Further, a early subquest boss is noted to be a individual that local Riders have fought for training for years, and tasks you with doing the same despite it too being counted as "slain" when beaten. Most explicitly is the late game story quest where you have to defeat a [[spoiler:Nergigante. You will get materials from it and the monsterpedia will record it as slain, and the text under its boss entry will even state how slaying it powered up your and Cheval's Kinship Stones, but in the scene itself the Nergigante gets right back up, weakened but in one piece. Cheval even tells Yoomlana in the next scene that they did not slay the Nergigante. Further, in the post-game there is a quest where Lilia has you search for a Kirin den. Despite the quest requiring you to "slay" the Kirin, after you do Lilia will state that now that she knows what is living in the den she won't give permission to anyone but you to enter it, implying the Kirin is still alive. All in all, "slaying" in the game's story can count as nothing more than defeating or otherwise driving away the monster, at least when no actual body is seen in a cutscene afterward. The Bloodbath Diablos quest has you slay it in gameplay like in most encoutners, but the clerk who gave you the quest refers to the Diablos as having "retreated."