Ever since it was unveiled at the end of The Game Awards 2023, Monster Hunter Wilds consistently made players’ jaw drop. Every time new footage was unveiled, it looked better and when I took another look at the game behind closed doors at Summer Game Fest last year, I knew it would be a shoo-in to be the best game whichever month it got released. Now that we’re here, I can confirm that this is easily the best release this month and even though it’s early, it’s in contention to be one of the very best games of the year.
As big as Monster Hunter Wilds is, for fans or veterans of the series, there isn’t much to say. You know what you’re getting yourself into. It’s more Monster Hunter, just bigger and better than before. If anything, the game’s campaign is the most plot heavy its ever been, but still–it’s hardly the reason why the game is as awesome as it is.
The game begins with what looks like a natural disturbance in an icy climate, so much so that a middle-aged man seals his young companion, Nata, in a cave to keep him safe from the danger the monsters present in the hopes that he can survive elsewhere. Time passes, and Nata is then saved and taken in by the Hunters’ Guild while at the Windward Plains, and they decide to bring Nata back home–assuming there’s still a home to bring him to.
The NPCs you meet as part of the guild are actually pretty cool.
For those new to the series, the story is what sets up the foundation for what Monster Hunter is all about: hunting monsters. Once hunted, you can use their remains as sustenance or resources to craft gear to help fight even larger monsters. Every big story beat in the campaign ends up with the guild having to deal with a monster, and it does a fair job throwing players into the wild to fend for themselves with the weapon(s) of their choice.
Monster Hunter Wilds features 14 different weapons to use, each one having their own strengths and weaknesses that’ll drastically change how you play. For example, you can unleash devastating slash combos using a greatsword, but movement is slow and sluggish. The dual blades are quick and effective, but they don’t hit nearly as hard as the swords. Projectile weapons like the guns and the bow are also fun, but you also have to worry about reloading, which can make you vulnerable. Weapon choice can go a long way to making the action feel like you’re playing Ninja Gaiden or you’re playing a Souls game, so if you don’t like how a weapon feels, you should definitely try another. There’s no harm in that.
Mounts are back in the form of birds called Seikrets, which you can totally re-design to make them look like chocobos.
All the weapons are great, but adding to the depth of Wilds is the ability to use two weapons on a hunt that you can switch at will. Tinkering with your loadout has always been a cerebral experience in Monster Hunter, and the ability to have two weapons definitely deepens the strategy. The main thing to keep in mind is that in order to change your weapon, you have to mount your Seikret (the bird-like companions you’ll make early on in the game), which leads to holding back on your attack. While you aren’t 100 percent safe when on your mount, the speed of your mount also makes you harder to hit, making it easier to heal up or sharpen your weapon if needed while you’re on that ride.
On the note of new things affecting your hunting strategy, there’s one new component that’ll definitely welcome players looking to hunt enemies in faster succession. New to Monster Hunter is the Focus Mode and Focus Strike. When on Focus Mode, not only can you target monsters and better aim your attacks and guards, but you can also highlight weak points you left on the monster. You also have what’s called a focus strike, which allows you to destroy monster wounds, which usually results in a satisfying animation of your hunter dealing massive damage to the monster. I’m a dual blade user, so when I use a focus strike, it shows my guy launch himself up and then tornado slash through the monster the way Levi Ackerman does on Attack on Titan.
In addition to focus strikes, you can also use the environment to your advantage. Some places allow you to pull stalagmites and decaying parts of nature to pull and trap unsuspecting monsters, really giving you more options to defend yourself.
All this said, these nuances feel like they make the game easier, which is weird for me to say as someone that generally sucks at Monster Hunter. Of course, as any veteran will tell you, there’s more than just the campaign. It took me just over 12 hours to roll credits on the game, as there were were only three chapters to play through. I won’t go into too much detail about what happens next, but there’s definitely more to the story after you think you beat the game, but more so than that, there’s an onslaught of monsters that are much more aggressive than the ones you go through in the story, and you’ll definitely want to squad up for those if that’s an option.
As it has in the past, the Monster Hunter experience is best experienced with friends, and up to four people can take part in a hunt by firing an SOS Flare. The best part of it is any human player can perform the main objective or goal, and it’ll still count for the player that hosted the game. I, for example, have never really nailed the art of capturing monsters, and there’s a mission where that’s the objective. I actually died playing that mission, but as I made my way back, my friend captured the monster, and it was cool receiving all the spoils for the mission anyway. If you can’t squad up with real people, the NPCs in the story will come to your aid when you fire the flare.
The “white wraith” is quite the terror.
That’s the real beauty about Monster Hunter. As long as I’ve been playing, the community has always been overwhelmingly positive. You’ll definitely come across randoms who are only there to pilfer the monsters they hunt for their own gear, but you still are entitled to the same spoils and resources to build whatever it is you need, so it’s not like anybody gets screwed out of anything. This has never changed and has always been a positive in the series as far as approachability to newcomers.
While every new Monster Hunter release focuses on new steps to make the game approachable, even as someone who’s bought in thanks to Monster Hunter World, I can’t say Capcom has found the secret ingredient yet. The series has always done a fantastic job at introducing gameplay features, but it’s never really done a great job of both actively showing their importance as well as how to actually pull them off. A big part of that is the game’s clunky UI that ties your weapons to a menu that has you use face buttons to navigate, an item wheel that’s finnickly in its own right, and tabbing commands that takes you out of the action but doesn’t exactly keep you safe because there’s no ability to pause the game even if you’re playing offline. I don’t actually know where to start on how Capcom can actually make these better, especially since PC players still say they’d rather play on a controller, but these are factors I’ve seen people quit the game because of, and as a fan I wish that wasn’t the case.
While we’re on the topic of the game’s imperfections, I wanted to go into a few more subjectives. Monster Hunter Wilds follows in the footsteps of Monster Hunter World in an attempt to be more of an open world game. It definitely succeeds in some regards in the form of easily going from biome to biome with pretty much no load screens, but it still doesn’t feel like a truly open world game that’s all part of one map. This is the case in the menus as well, as you actually have to tab through various maps. The game is in no doubt huge, and these are definitely the most detailed environments the series has ever seen, but the numerous areas in the game still feel disjointed.
I’m also not too impressed by the way the game looks. We’ve had these review builds for some time, and I’ve been playing the game on performance mode on the PS5, but honestly doesn’t look anything close to the first two trailers I’ve seen. It’s definitely more visually fuzzy, and there’s been numerous occasions where I’ve seen things in the distance move like they had a lower frame rate. It reminded me a lot of what I saw from windmills in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. All this said, it doesn’t look “bad”, especially when you’re actually dealing with hunts–this is actually when the game looks its best, but I definitely expected something more along the lines of what we see out of Naughty Dog. Maybe it’s just time for the RE Engine to be updated.
The game isn’t without a few shortcomings, but for everybody that expected Monster Hunter Wilds to bring the series into the next generation while bringing on new fans, it absolutely succeeds. Monster Hunter Wilds improves upon World andRisein just about every aspect, and nuances in gameplay such as the focus strikes will definitely make it more approachable to newcomers, but the best part of the game is that it remains true to the biggest fact of the series–you’ll get as much fun as the time you put in. The more you play Wilds, the better it gets, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the game grows as much as I’m looking forward to the collaborations and added features we’ll undoubtedly get.
Ever since it was unveiled at the end of The Game Awards 2023, Monster Hunter Wilds consistently made players’ jaw drop. Every time new footage was unveiled, it looked better and when I took another look at the game behind…
Ever since it was unveiled at the end of The Game Awards 2023, Monster Hunter Wilds consistently made players’ jaw drop. Every time new footage was unveiled, it looked better and when I took another look at the game behind closed doors at Summer Game Fest last year, I knew it would be a shoo-in to be the best game whichever month it got released. Now that we’re here, I can confirm that this is easily the best release this month and even though it’s early, it’s in contention to be one of the very best games of the year.
As big as Monster Hunter Wilds is, for fans or veterans of the series, there isn’t much to say. You know what you’re getting yourself into. It’s more Monster Hunter, just bigger and better than before. If anything, the game’s campaign is the most plot heavy its ever been, but still–it’s hardly the reason why the game is as awesome as it is.
The game begins with what looks like a natural disturbance in an icy climate, so much so that a middle-aged man seals his young companion, Nata, in a cave to keep him safe from the danger the monsters present in the hopes that he can survive elsewhere. Time passes, and Nata is then saved and taken in by the Hunters’ Guild while at the Windward Plains, and they decide to bring Nata back home–assuming there’s still a home to bring him to.
The NPCs you meet as part of the guild are actually pretty cool.
For those new to the series, the story is what sets up the foundation for what Monster Hunter is all about: hunting monsters. Once hunted, you can use their remains as sustenance or resources to craft gear to help fight even larger monsters. Every big story beat in the campaign ends up with the guild having to deal with a monster, and it does a fair job throwing players into the wild to fend for themselves with the weapon(s) of their choice.
Monster Hunter Wilds features 14 different weapons to use, each one having their own strengths and weaknesses that’ll drastically change how you play. For example, you can unleash devastating slash combos using a greatsword, but movement is slow and sluggish. The dual blades are quick and effective, but they don’t hit nearly as hard as the swords. Projectile weapons like the guns and the bow are also fun, but you also have to worry about reloading, which can make you vulnerable. Weapon choice can go a long way to making the action feel like you’re playing Ninja Gaiden or you’re playing a Souls game, so if you don’t like how a weapon feels, you should definitely try another. There’s no harm in that.
Mounts are back in the form of birds called Seikrets, which you can totally re-design to make them look like chocobos.
All the weapons are great, but adding to the depth of Wilds is the ability to use two weapons on a hunt that you can switch at will. Tinkering with your loadout has always been a cerebral experience in Monster Hunter, and the ability to have two weapons definitely deepens the strategy. The main thing to keep in mind is that in order to change your weapon, you have to mount your Seikret (the bird-like companions you’ll make early on in the game), which leads to holding back on your attack. While you aren’t 100 percent safe when on your mount, the speed of your mount also makes you harder to hit, making it easier to heal up or sharpen your weapon if needed while you’re on that ride.
On the note of new things affecting your hunting strategy, there’s one new component that’ll definitely welcome players looking to hunt enemies in faster succession. New to Monster Hunter is the Focus Mode and Focus Strike. When on Focus Mode, not only can you target monsters and better aim your attacks and guards, but you can also highlight weak points you left on the monster. You also have what’s called a focus strike, which allows you to destroy monster wounds, which usually results in a satisfying animation of your hunter dealing massive damage to the monster. I’m a dual blade user, so when I use a focus strike, it shows my guy launch himself up and then tornado slash through the monster the way Levi Ackerman does on Attack on Titan.
In addition to focus strikes, you can also use the environment to your advantage. Some places allow you to pull stalagmites and decaying parts of nature to pull and trap unsuspecting monsters, really giving you more options to defend yourself.
All this said, these nuances feel like they make the game easier, which is weird for me to say as someone that generally sucks at Monster Hunter. Of course, as any veteran will tell you, there’s more than just the campaign. It took me just over 12 hours to roll credits on the game, as there were were only three chapters to play through. I won’t go into too much detail about what happens next, but there’s definitely more to the story after you think you beat the game, but more so than that, there’s an onslaught of monsters that are much more aggressive than the ones you go through in the story, and you’ll definitely want to squad up for those if that’s an option.
As it has in the past, the Monster Hunter experience is best experienced with friends, and up to four people can take part in a hunt by firing an SOS Flare. The best part of it is any human player can perform the main objective or goal, and it’ll still count for the player that hosted the game. I, for example, have never really nailed the art of capturing monsters, and there’s a mission where that’s the objective. I actually died playing that mission, but as I made my way back, my friend captured the monster, and it was cool receiving all the spoils for the mission anyway. If you can’t squad up with real people, the NPCs in the story will come to your aid when you fire the flare.
The “white wraith” is quite the terror.
That’s the real beauty about Monster Hunter. As long as I’ve been playing, the community has always been overwhelmingly positive. You’ll definitely come across randoms who are only there to pilfer the monsters they hunt for their own gear, but you still are entitled to the same spoils and resources to build whatever it is you need, so it’s not like anybody gets screwed out of anything. This has never changed and has always been a positive in the series as far as approachability to newcomers.
While every new Monster Hunter release focuses on new steps to make the game approachable, even as someone who’s bought in thanks to Monster Hunter World, I can’t say Capcom has found the secret ingredient yet. The series has always done a fantastic job at introducing gameplay features, but it’s never really done a great job of both actively showing their importance as well as how to actually pull them off. A big part of that is the game’s clunky UI that ties your weapons to a menu that has you use face buttons to navigate, an item wheel that’s finnickly in its own right, and tabbing commands that takes you out of the action but doesn’t exactly keep you safe because there’s no ability to pause the game even if you’re playing offline. I don’t actually know where to start on how Capcom can actually make these better, especially since PC players still say they’d rather play on a controller, but these are factors I’ve seen people quit the game because of, and as a fan I wish that wasn’t the case.
While we’re on the topic of the game’s imperfections, I wanted to go into a few more subjectives. Monster Hunter Wilds follows in the footsteps of Monster Hunter World in an attempt to be more of an open world game. It definitely succeeds in some regards in the form of easily going from biome to biome with pretty much no load screens, but it still doesn’t feel like a truly open world game that’s all part of one map. This is the case in the menus as well, as you actually have to tab through various maps. The game is in no doubt huge, and these are definitely the most detailed environments the series has ever seen, but the numerous areas in the game still feel disjointed.
I’m also not too impressed by the way the game looks. We’ve had these review builds for some time, and I’ve been playing the game on performance mode on the PS5, but honestly doesn’t look anything close to the first two trailers I’ve seen. It’s definitely more visually fuzzy, and there’s been numerous occasions where I’ve seen things in the distance move like they had a lower frame rate. It reminded me a lot of what I saw from windmills in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. All this said, it doesn’t look “bad”, especially when you’re actually dealing with hunts–this is actually when the game looks its best, but I definitely expected something more along the lines of what we see out of Naughty Dog. Maybe it’s just time for the RE Engine to be updated.
The game isn’t without a few shortcomings, but for everybody that expected Monster Hunter Wilds to bring the series into the next generation while bringing on new fans, it absolutely succeeds. Monster Hunter Wilds improves upon World andRisein just about every aspect, and nuances in gameplay such as the focus strikes will definitely make it more approachable to newcomers, but the best part of the game is that it remains true to the biggest fact of the series–you’ll get as much fun as the time you put in. The more you play Wilds, the better it gets, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the game grows as much as I’m looking forward to the collaborations and added features we’ll undoubtedly get.
by Danreb Victorio
