Welcome back to Save State, where Fresh Look columnist Neal Sayatovich and I are busy playing Monster Hunter Wilds and occasionally riding to the rescue of other players in distress.
Editor’s Note: Check out Vincent’s full review of Monster Hunter Wilds!
With the first major update of Monster Hunter Wilds released, my friends and I have been hunting all of the late-game monsters dozens of times (several dozens, in my case, as I have atrocious luck obtaining gems and other rarer materials). Mizutsune, one of my favorite monsters from Monster Hunter Generations and Rise, made a comeback and has fainted many a player in front of me using his tail slam. Fun fact: all Mizutsune you’re able to hunt in Monster Hunter are males, as all the females of the species have duller colorations of scales and fur, and the males tend to be more aggressive during mating season.
Zoh Shia, the final boss of low rank, has become available as a repeatable hunt with its own gear as of this update. For anyone who was saying Wilds is too easy, Zoh Shia is likely the developer’s response to them, featuring powerful novas that require player knowledge and quick action to avoid getting carted back to camp. Zoh Shia is capable of making crystals erupt out of the ground, and its nova attack does more of the same, but players can largely neuter this attack and stand safely in front of the boss by destroying the crystals using the elemental slinger ammo in the boss room. Zoh Shia is definitely the kind of hunt I was waiting for in Wilds though and showing newer players how to avoid taking damage from its novas has been a fun highlight.
Zoh Shia’s return for high rank players cements it as one of the more well-done large boss battles in the Monster Hunter series. The game does a pretty good job of teaching you that Zoh Shia can use the crystals it litters the ground with to extend the range of its elemental attacks, so if you think you’re safe from its fireball but are standing near a crystal… no, you’re not. Zoh Shia is a challenging boss fight with a large amount of health that tests your execution, game knowledge, and endurance. If this is the level that title update monsters will be, I say bring them on because this is a fantastically designed challenge, and I’m not just saying that because I’ve hunted over 50 of them already. Zoh’s a new favorite, for sure.
For the most part, I play any and every weapon in the series of Monster Hunter. Since I began with Freedom Unite back in 2008 or so, I always pick one weapon to primarily use while going through the story, then branch out into others upon reaching the endgame. In Wilds, this time I chose gunlance, which got a new, powerful combo string that has you slashing and exploding any monsters that dare stand against you. Probably my favorite iteration of the weapon since first trying it in 3 Ultimate, long gone are the days of only slapping with the gunlance – Wilds’ iteration is now called the funlance.
The Sword and shield combo is another weapon that massively benefitted from Wilds’ new system. This weapon can perfect guard and power clash just like the gunlance, but you also get huge opportunities to keep yourself safe and reposition with the new sliding slash. Perfect Guarding actually allows you to use the shield in sword and shield, whereas in many previous titles this was a sword plus a buckler you’d use to smack monsters in the face.
Notwithstanding, there’s a lot of fun to be had with other weapons since ones like the switch axe can do Offsets that, if you time your attack perfectly with a monster’s, will blow back the monster and put you in an advantage state to get in another attack. I actually had a moment when I joined a hunt in progress and before I had been able to make it to the monster, the host carted, and I saw there were no longer any faints remaining. By the time I had hopped off my mount to fight, the second player in the hunt was stunned by the monster, which is a condition where you can’t move or take any evasive action as punishment for taking too many hits in a short period of time.
The monster, the only 8-star difficulty one in the game at the time, was gearing up to do a follow up attack on this poor, defenseless hunter. Conveniently positioned between the monster and the other player, I figured I had nothing lost so I upswung my switch axe at the monster’s whips to try and get an offset, and successfully flung it backwards, saving the stunned hunter. As he spammed the “Thanks!” sticker repeatedly, I felt absolutely incredible for saving their hunt.
Monster Hunter is, and has always been, a series about stories. You get out of these titles what you put into them, as some enjoy times just to relax and talk with their friends, and some like to get right down to it and struggle against a difficult challenge until they eventually turn it into a breeze. I love it all, the accident faints after boisterously yelling out, “Hey, watch this,” conducting what is essentially animal abuse when chasing crown sized monsters for achievements, as well as showing off in front of random players. Sometimes I just want to see if I can kill a Gravios with a water ammo heavy bowgun in a minute after work, you know?
One fun thing while playing Wilds has been helping a few new players get through the story. Neal Sayatovich, resident columnist and savorer of delectable deli hams, joined my friends and I a little bit later, but we all pitched in to help him get through various hurdles and familiarize himself with the game. I suggested he try out the gunlance, since that’s been my personal favorite weapon of Wilds so far, and I’m proud to say that after multiple attempts of trying to get Neal into Monster Hunter, using the gunlance in Wilds is what finally made it click!
Sometimes, new players to Monster Hunter can try to force the use of a specific weapon that doesn’t exactly jive with how they actually interact with the game. In Neal’s case, the poor guy was trying to force the use of the regular lance without actually looking up how to use it, making for a pretty miserable time in both Monster Hunter World and Rise. With me as his trusty gunlancer mentor, plus Wilds being more accommodating than ever to new players thanks to the new Focus Mode system, he was able to Full Burst combo his way through the entirety of low rank and felt confident enough to branch out and help other players with their challenging hunts.
Of course, there are some things in Wilds that I’m not completely crazy about. Performance is still kind of sketchy, though thankfully I was able to fix performance to an acceptable 60fps on my rig by using a few mods to fix some various issues that honestly should have been caught by QA. I learned how to use bowguns while being forced to aim using the d-pad on a PSP, and I still believe Wilds to have the worst iteration of light and heavy bowguns in the series, but there’s always time for title updates or an expansion to add some versatility in play styles or adjustments to make those weapons more satisfying to use.
Wilds’ first update also added a hub area where all hunters in a lobby can congregate to arm wrestle or chase the highest score in a cute bomb bowling minigame. There’s also a giant bird that gives you items, so it’s always worth seeking out its nest for free goodies. Nobody knows where it gets the items… it never seems to leave its nest, so just don’t think about that too hard. Title update 1 also brought in the arena and challenge quests, with the first challenge quest ending the day before this article goes live.
The first challenge quest of the game, Doshaguma of the Hollow, was supposed to be a big event where players can get some free bling, a special pendant you can attach to your weapons, depending on your performance in the arena hunt. Arena quests are a little different in that you don’t get to build your own set or take your own items to advantage yourself- you have to use the weapon groupings, armor skills, and item sets the developers specify, and compete for the best time using the set gear. A special pendant was supposed to be given out for the top 10,000 players with the best times, but unfortunately thousands of players cheated to get times in the literal seconds ranges, which aren’t possible, causing Capcom to reverse course and give out the pendants to anyone who scored an A rank on the hunt.
Which, obviously cheaters were going to make this a problematic competition because they cheat when there isn’t a reward for doing so, adding a reward only makes it more alluring. Capcom’s initial stance was to scrub the leaderboards of illegitimate times, but I’m assuming there was some kind of issue with detection since they changed course on this. I suppose the good news is that I helped all of my friends get the best pendant since we all got A ranks on the duo hunt, but I am interested to see if they try doing something like this in the future, even if I kind of forget the pendant system is even there.
Anyway, Monster Hunter Wilds had a great first update. It added one new monster and beefed up another into one of the best hunts in the game, added a central hub for players and their friends to hang around in, and had one of the goofiest competitions walk-backs I’ve seen in a modern video game. Monster Hunter Wilds is still a great time, as could be perceived by the fact that I’m over HR320 already and still enjoy hanging out and chasing achievements with my friends. Hopefully, you can find a good squad to hunt with too- assuming nothing devolves into a boisterous political discussion while trying to take down your 50th Zoh Shia. See you next time on Save State!