Monster Hunter is a series near and dear to my heart. This is a franchise that never rests on its laurels, and it always tries to innovate in new and interesting ways. From underwater combat, hunter arts and styles, and even the inclusion of high-flying wirebugs and Silkbinds, Monster Hunter goes out of its way to present players with new, interesting ways to turn your favorite creatures into a dapper hat. Monster Hunter Wilds doubles down on the focus on a large, living environment with its own ecology, giving players some of the largest hunting zones ever seen in this series. Is this Monster Hunter wild enough to keep your interest, or has it gone off the rails? Let’s find out.
The story of Monster Hunter Wilds is front and center in this entry, likely an attempt to lure in new players by telling a story that’s about more than just making new pants out of every megafauna encountered. Of course, that’s still mostly what the story breaks down to, since this is Monster Hunter, but this entry takes place in an uncharted land that was previously thought to be devoid of human and wyverian life. A small child named Nata is rescued shortly into an expedition in the Forbidden Lands, and the research commission is tasked with reuniting Nata with his family while braving the monsters and unnatural weather cycles of this world.
The story of Monster Hunter Wilds has some pretty exciting moments and is likely meant to draw in new players by telling a larger narrative. A lot of the story focuses on trying to find the White Wraith monster that attacked Nata’s village and led to him being separated from his family. Strangely though, to tell this story there are a lot of on-rails riding segments to reach your destinations, and the title won’t let you deviate from the intended route to even pick up some honey. Effectively, any time someone wants to speak to the players in Wilds, you’re going to slowly trek somewhere while your plucky gang of researchers chats about current events, and it will always end with a large monster hunt. Every single time. What really helps is that your crew has some strong personalities, with the strong, taciturn Olivia, the excitable blacksmith and engineer Gemma, and your knowledgeable handler, Alma.
A major mechanic of Monster Hunter Wilds is Focus Mode, where you can hold (or toggle) the left trigger to have more control over where you direct your attacks. This singular feature is probably one of the largest for making Wilds one of the more accessible entries in this franchise because in previous games, if you aimed a slow attack and the monster moved, you were going to miss and there was nothing you could do about it. In Wilds, if your aim is slightly off, you can adjust it, depending on what attack, using either the left stick or controlling the camera with your mouse or controller’s gyroscope. That’s another huge deal. Wilds has native gyro control support right from its setting menu, which is an extreme rarity but very much appreciated by anyone who plays with Dualsense or Switch Pro controllers.
Focus Mode really changes up how you play for a lot of weapons. The ranged weapons haven’t been changed much to accommodate Focus Mode, but weapons like the Sword and Shield can now completely cling to the monster and rarely need to put on the brake. The Greatsword is probably one of the single largest benefactors of this mechanic, as being able to turn and aim your charged slashes is something players have been longing for over many years. Dealing enough damage to monsters will also leave wounds on their body, which you can attack to deal more damage than usual since a weak spot has been created. You can also use a Focus Strike to “break” the wound, dealing big damage and with some weapons gain a buff related to your chosen weapon, which can be very useful for Charge Blade players.
The environments of Monster Hunter Wilds are deliberately and delightfully detailed, letting players venture through vast landscapes and tackle the creatures that make these environments their home. Journeying through the Windward Plains, you’ll see all sorts of endemic life, rock formations, areas to set up camps, and even large caverns completely filled with crystals. While the opening area may be a little on the drab side seeing as how it starts off as a desert, you’ll quickly see the environment change as a lightning storm rolls in, its coming functioning as the herald of a powerful monster. Soon after, the storm subsides, and what was moments ago a desert will transform into a gorgeous savannah, lush with different kinds of monsters and life.
These cycles of fallow, inclemency, and plenty show the transformation of the different regions you’ll explore as a hunter in Wilds. The inclemency events are things like the aforementioned lightning storm, torrential rain, or incredibly high heat and magma eruptions; each area has its own cycle and conditions. Depending on what state the areas are in can change what monsters you hunt, though it is worth mentioning that while you’re pursuing the story events, there will be times that locations will be locked into specific weather conditions until you complete the required story section.
Of course, it’s hunting monsters that you’re here for in Monster Hunter Wilds- it’s in the name after all. While there aren’t many total monsters in the title because as Wilds has fewer total monsters than 2017’s Monster Hunter World, Wilds makes up for this shortcoming by having various challenges and chases for players to conduct in the end game. Frenzied monsters can appear, who are apparently supposed to attack faster but don’t have much health as compensation, while tempered monsters return from Monster Hunter World and gain a significant increase in their attack and health, making them perfect for late game challenges.
The variety of monsters is something important to any monster hunter title, and Wilds will have players hunting oil-spitting leviathans in the sandy plains, ballerina spiders in a scenic forest, and flaming monkeys in a fiery cavern. There are snowy peaks with flying centipede creatures and claustrophobic hallways, and you’ll even hunt creatures that have overrun the ruins of a fallen civilization. Monster Hunter Wilds brings back a fair number of fan favorites, like everyone’s favorite gassy ape, Congalala, and it even introduces an entire new species of creatures to carve for new hats: Cephalopods. While a big deal is made about monsters running around in packs with an alpha, that only really seems to happen a few times and is largely inconsequential outside of the couple times it happens in the story.
The story of Monster Hunter Wilds largely encapsulates the game’s low rank, and it will take most players 15-20 hours to complete depending on if they stop to farm new gear or play with friends. The story of Wilds is very easy, but the low ranks of all Monster Hunter titles are, and once you beat the story there are still a couple of epilogue chapters to complete. These additional chapters have sparser story content, but due to being in high rank now, monsters will hit harder. As you raise your Hunter Rank, you’ll begin to encounter new monsters, or powered up versions of previously encountered creatures, such as tempered monsters, which have survived injury in the past, recovered, and have become even stronger thanks to the bountiful energy of the new frontier.
It’s worth hunting the different forms of monsters primarily because they yield higher rewards than just hunting their regular versions, with tempered monsters providing players with chances for decorations, as well as ancient weapon parts that can be reassembled for a satisfying end game grind for the perfect weapon. These special weapons not only have story significance, but they give players a level of customization in assembling their own ancient weapon with the level of sharpness or element they might be looking for. The decorations you acquire from hunting let you slot additional skills into your weapons and armor, which can help you make the perfect armor set for whatever weapon you choose to play.
Speaking of the skills system, Monster Hunter Wilds has dramatically shaken up the formula by segregating skills to weapons and armor. Given that you can carry two weapons at once, it makes sense that weapon-specific skills would be tied to the weapons themselves, rather than the armor you’re wearing, to make for a more intuitive experience with the weapon switching system. There are still some issues with the system, as many of the crafted weapons from monsters will have inherent skills baked into them, but the vast majority of the skills on these weapons are poor or nearly useless as the developers really liked putting draw attack boosting skills on weapons that don’t need to sheathe very often, like the Lance and Gunlance.
Overall, the new armor and weapon skill systems are interesting and hopefully get fleshed out more through updates and in an expansion because it is convenient to carry two weapons with you while you explore the large and lush environments of Wilds. Due to the size of the hunting locations you’ll venture through, it can take several minutes to chase after a monster if they run from one end of the Scarlet Forest to the other, but thankfully you can establish outpost camps that you can freely fast travel to. These camps locations have to be discovered first, but you can restock items, swap weapons, and more at these small camps- assuming a monster hasn’t destroyed them.
Some camps can be established in areas where monsters may occasionally tread, which will lead to them being destroyed by fauna pretty regularly. When the camps are destroyed, you can’t use them for fast travel, restocking in between different hunts, or anything else until they’re rebuilt. I cannot for the life of me think of any reason why the “monsters sometimes destroy your fast travel points” mechanic exists. It just seems to be purely to inconvenience the player and make you have to ride further for little beneficial reason. I sure do love setting up fast travel points that randomly and arbitrarily can’t be used sometimes; that sure is some game design there.
Online play in Monster Hunter Wilds can be a little bit confusing at first. The easiest method to play with friends is for you to all join in the same lobby. This is primarily how playing with friends was handled in the previous titles, as you can see all quests being undertaken by all players in your lobby. Conversely, you and your friends can be in completely separate lobbies, which can be useful if you’re trying to snipe particularly valuable quests (more on this later) and still send quest join notifications to one another using the Link Party system. Note that Link Party is separate from Environment Link, which is a more limited system that lets you and your friends all run around the same world map to hunt together because otherwise your friends vanish once you leave camp.
Which it’s worth mentioning that during an Environment Link, you and your friends can’t go to any other map. If you start a link in the Windward Plains but see a monster in the forest region that you want to hunt, you have to leave the Environment Link then start it again in the forest. It’s a fun idea, as it’s like all-you-can-hunt expeditions from previous Monster Hunter games in a much larger sandbox, but the system is still strangely limited for whatever reason.
There are, of course, some things Wilds could improve upon. For example, starting Seikret controls are horrible, and without venturing into the Options menu, you will very likely get frustrated by the fact that even manual movement of your mount still somewhat controls like the auto move option. Performance, especially on PC, leaves a lot to be desired at this point in time, as you’ll experience hitches, stuttering, and slowdowns even if you’re running the best CPU and GPU on the consumer market. To add onto this, reducing settings is always an option, such as reducing texture quality, but any texture that’s not in the high-resolution texture pack has incorrect Mipmap settings, causing them to look significantly worse than they should (nearly Nintendo Switch levels of fidelity when set to high rather than highest).
It’s worth mentioning that when Monster Hunter World released on PC, there were similar problems with both the regular and high-resolution textures. Hopefully, with how much of a runaway success Wilds is, Capcom will take even more of an interest in PC development to the extent that they’ll prioritize performance and visual fixes. Things like the texture streaming issue, where turning your camera will load and unload textures as you adjust your view, can easily be fixed in a patch. Monster Hunter Wilds is an incredibly fun title that’s hampered, at least at this moment, by copious technical issues.
Overall, Monster Hunter Wilds is a great building block for a new Monster Hunter experience. Many of the weapons have been revamped to make them easier to play at first, while still allowing for great skill expression at late game, and the story it tells should have moments that appeal to both newcomers and longtime fans alike. Low rank is specifically where Wild’s story primarily takes place, and it’s pretty easy. But later on, tempered monsters should still have a decent challenge for players who are concerned with difficulty. The monsters and weapons are fun, and the environments are expansive and have lots of endemic life for players to interact with.
As it stands, Monster Hunter Wilds is great, though it does suffer from performance problems. There are a number of title updates announced which will include new monsters and, hopefully, fixes for a good number of the performance issues that currently plague Wilds by computer systems that can’t simply brute force the poor optimization.