Review: Monster Hunter Wilds
The sharpest double-edged great sword.
Monster Hunter Wilds was my second most anticipated game of the year, just behind Death Stranding 2, and it is likely the one I sunk the most time into of all the games I touched this year. I was introduced to Monster Hunter by way of World on the PS4, having an absolutely turbulent but fun time with the game, then moving on to Rise and sinking hundreds of hours into it. Monster Hunter has become my comfort game. I am by no means a multiplayer gamer — aside from fighting games and a single, successful run of Baldur’s Gate 3, my multiplayer experience mostly comes down to party games and that is about it. I also generally dislike games with monotonous gameplay loops or tons of grinding, the style of gameplay Monster Hunter is known for. Yet, for some reason, I fell in love with Monster Hunter Rise, bonded with some of my closest friends, and when I am not sure of what game to play, it is the one I come back to to comfort me or hang out with my friends in. There is something truly special about the mechanics and, especially in Rise’s case, seamless multiplayer connectivity of the Monster Hunter titles. Monster Hunter Wilds is a game I expected to fall in love with. However, I have grown to have a love-hate relationship with the game and managed to spend less time in it than I expected. Now that Title Update 4 has released, the final content update for the base game, I figured now is the best time to unpack what I think about Monster Hunter Wilds.
Monster Hunter Wilds takes a lot of what makes the game and genre so great and capitalizes on it well, with the core gameplay mechanics showing how sharp their blade truly is. In terms of actually playing the game, battling the monsters feels nearly the best it has ever felt (a close second to the wonderful weight of every attack in World). The updated weapon move-sets add just enough to make most weapons feel fresh, and the new focus strike system is the BIGGEST star of the game. Being able to redirect attacks mid-swing makes weapons like Great Sword and Hammer feel significantly better to use, and the visual representation for wounds does streamline your plan of attack quite well. Coupling the focus system with being able to bring two weapons with you adds a significant amount of variety to the combat in the game, and with it loads of new tactics to employ while out on the hunt.
When it comes to Monster Hunter, the maps and monsters are the primary difference game to game. The new map designs are gorgeous, and they change in appearance and features over the course of the game as well. Each map, being as large as they are, have loads of environmental attacks to hit monsters with. You have things from vines you can pull from trees, to rock formations you can pull from hanging cliffs and geode walls, to even being able to use the weather to your advantage as tactics against your prey. The lineup of large monsters in this game is stellar — It never feels like you are hunting fodder, low-rank monsters. Fan favorites across multiple generations make an appearance in this one, even in low rank.
Capcom employed many quality of life features in this one, which are mostly welcome. For example, armor and hair are no longer gender-locked (Shoutout to all of my queer baddies out there (or people who like fun)! To help you get across the large maps, you have a mountable buddy again in this one (much like Rise) via the new seikrets species, and the game has a plethora of (now customizable) sub-camps all over each map to discover. Unlike in Rise with your palamute, seikrets do not take the place of a buddy or fellow hunter, so a full party of hunters can all still bring their mounts. Another highlight of the many QoL features for me is the ability to cook and eat a meal anywhere, in or outside of camps and hubs. Did you go on a hunt with your friends and realize after getting knocked out of the sky when you were just trying to do your cool insect glaive flips and shit that you didn’t eat? Now you can just waltz behind a tree while the monster rips your friends apart and eat a decadent looking meal to get those sweet, sweet buffs.
There are many, many things to love in Monster Hunter Wilds. For how sharp this title is, it is a huge shame that it is the largest double edged great sword around. Nearly every single aspect of this game that I gave kudos to has a direct negative effect, as well.
Lets start with the largest selling points of this title: Open World map design. The open world is cool in theory, but completely misses the point when it comes to how people play the game. When developing these large, sprawling maps, Capcom didn’t consider the fact that most people are questing with their friends, and each person playing the game likely has a different objective. Some people are crown hunting, some are hunting monsters for specific materials, some are finding hunts that will drastically raise their HR, some are doing event quests, and so on. When you throw four friends together in a party, all with very specific quest criteria, the open world suddenly doesn’t mean shit. I imagine the way Capcom envisioned people playing the game is that they would form a 4-player environment link, and run across the open world together, carving through or capturing any monsters in their path, giggling and swinging their feet off of their seikrets while it all goes down. I would wager that of everyone actively playing the game while you are reading this article, the vast majority of players are not playing the game like that and it completely misses the point of the core gameplay loop that makes Monster Hunter what it is.
The open world map design ties into one of the largest critiques you will see posted in forums online about this game: difficulty, or rather, lack thereof. Most hunters online find this game abhorrently easy compared to previous titles. My theory on how Capcom thought people would play this game compared to previous titles with its sprawling open maps is like a large factor in monsters being much easier with much less health. It would likely grow stale quick if you are running around the open world maps with your friends if each encounter took 20-40 minutes each. Additionally, although the large-monster list is full of bangers, the lack of smaller monsters causes the cool large monsters to have to take on that role as well. I know plenty of people who rarely upgraded armor well into high-rank, and played with new players who didn’t cart once until the final low-rank quest. Finally, another factor of the open world design, your mount makes getting around but easier, but the fact that it automatically takes you to the monster you are looking for basically auto-plays the game for you while you traverse these oversized and pointless set pieces, heat-seeking the monsters you are supposed to be hunting.
Aesthetically, for all of the cool environmental effects, fur, and lighting effects the game throws at you, it really does not feel like a 7 year jump over Monster Hunter World, but the performance requirements certainly make the game feel that way. The drop in performance does not remotely line up with the gain in graphics, and the fact it has taken Capcom a year to sort it out, only making it worse on some systems, is completely baffling — At this point, it is inexcusable, if it wasn’t from the beginning. I have to dock huge points from polish due to the fact that this game takes a supercharger to run well, and even then, it may still randomly crash on you or decide not to render in textures. What is the point of forcing me to start at my screen once every couple of weeks during a shader compilation, that takes anywhere from 5 minutes to 35 minutes mind you, for the game to fail to show me textures anyway?
Finally, the story. In my opinion, it was easier to be engaged with than in the base game of World. Natta’s story, although fairly predictable, was nice to watch unfold. However, in a natural pattern for this game, the story gets in its own way often. Monster Hunter World’s biggest issue is the fact that you have to start your assigned/urgent quest in single player, see the cutscene you need to see, and then you can invite others to the quest with you made multiplayer severely clunky, as everyone on the quest has to have experienced the cutscene at least once. The departure from this in Monster Hunter Rise was probably the biggest benefit that game had, as all cutscenes were optional, and players could just skip them or watch the cutscene together after taking the hunt. Unfortunately, Wilds goes backwards on this, where you have to get through an unskippable walking section at the beginning of nearly every urgent quest through low-rank before the game will feed you the cutscene and allow other players to join. This direction, again, tied to the open world design and Capcom wanting you to take in the scenery, rubs directly against what makes these games so special in the first place.
At the core, what makes Monster Hunter so special is jumping on, grouping up with your friends, and grinding out quests. Every aspect of Monster Hunter Wilds’ new design and concepts seems to be at complete odds with this. It’s hard — at the core, you have the most mechanically satisfying Monster Hunter title to date, but on top of it all you have a game that misunderstands what the player wants to do, and no matter how great the mechanics feel, an unoptimized game just means less players can enjoy their $70 dollar hunting game. I do enjoy the game when it lets me play it, but its hard to fall in love with it the way I did Rise when it’s constantly getting in its own way.
Score: 6.7
Gameplay: 30/40Polish: 8/20Aesthetics: 12/15Story: 10/15Contribution: 7/10
I wrote something very similar a day or two ago. Almost every cool new feature has some drawback. (Though I see less upside than you do for some of them)
It really was a huge miss. Every mechanic added feels like it has a much worse downside because Capcom didn't consider A: How do players play the game and B: How do the mechanics change the core gameplay loop.
I glanced at yours briefly as I'm at work right now but I'll give it a read soon. Thanks so much for reading!
I know they'll invest in an expansion at this point, but, I wish they'd just scrap it and move on to a new title, learning from this disaster lol