Monster Hunter Wilds Review

Many moons ago, I reviewed Monster Hunter: World – Capcom’s first real foray into a modernised Monster Mash experience. In fact, I had actually written a healthy portion of this review before starting to feel a niggling tug at my subconscious – like I had written some of these words before. Sure enough, terms like ‘inspired iteration’ and ‘emphasis on accessibility’ had indeed left my pen already, all the way back in 2018 – but does that make me a whack-ass self-plagiarist?

No, you silly duffer. It just means that Capcom has a formula. And it slams.

Monster Hunter Rise and Monster Hunter: World were bangers in their own right, so you’d think that a cherry-picked solution of their best bits would be an easy fit for what comes next. Gameplay improvements from Rise – like mounts and electrifying new attacks – with a smattering of seamless, high fidelity environments a la World would still be a killer app, Monster Hunter-wise; but it’s the new and exciting stuff in Monster Hunter Wilds that really separates and elevates it.

Is this where the lion sleeps tonight?

Taking place in The Forbidden Lands, Wilds offers a surprisingly robust narrative experience. The full glorious might of the RE Engine is on display, with seamless transitions between cutscene and gameplay making an immediate impression as you set out across windswept fields, frozen ruins of ancient civilisations and even an oily pit of simmering fire. Classic Monster Hunter fashion sees you and your explorer friends bewildered by the oddities of this brave new world, first with the revelation that its status of being an uninhabited wasteland was grossly incorrect – being that your first act is saving a young boy – and secondly, that man and beast don’t quite live in harmonious union OR accepted conflict here. Across 20 or so hours you’ll delve deep into secrets that hold some pretty groovy weight in the Monster Hunter mythos, and if you are anything like me you’ll be giddy with just how generous the style and setting is for new content to come down the line.

This glorious setting is then supercharged with the incredible implementation of seasonal weather effects, resulting in far more than the occasional drizzle or sunny day. Biomes offer both time of day and cycling phases of Fallow, Inclemency, and Plenty that impact the ecology in a huge way, meaning your hunting experience feels super varied. Sure, you can manipulate these to an extent to try and encourage a particular encounter – but having the wind come rolling in organically, choking your breath and obscuring your eyesight never feels anything less than epic. Coupling this with the intensely neat mechanic that some of the scarier creatures only make themselves known when the weather turns ultra-shithouse makes the world feel more alive than ever. Exploring an environment in the throes of meteorological inclemency feels dangerous and exciting, but it wears you down over time making the systemically emergent moments of calm all the more welcoming between storms.

The environments also offer a ton of utility to a resourceful hunter, cribbing some excellent notes from past games while taking care in not overloading what you are capable of at any key moment. Organic trap opportunities can be set to give yourself some breathing room, and I was super jazzed to see that dangerous ceiling doodads can provide a ton of utility if you are careful with positioning. There’s a restraint in making sure that these gimmicks are not overpowering to what you are trying to achieve, ensuring each monster battle space isn’t a Wipeout course of goofy slapstick encounters that demand intense micromanagement. Even when fighting something that feels like a ‘pinnacle’ creature, a standout BIG fight, the game is comfortable enough to mete out some environmental mechanics for the sake of uniquity – without going whole hog with things that would feel antithetical to the core Monster Hunter experience – meaning you can go toe to toe with your foe without feeling like you and the game world are coming to blows.

Gemma somehow turning a cracked basilisk foreskin into a tasteful dinner jacket

But any established hunter worth their salt knows the main draw of a Monster Hunter game isn’t the narrative OR the world, it’s just a convenient bonus that Wilds offers perhaps the most enjoyable implementation of both. It is the thrill of the hunt that gets your heart pumping, and of course your tale is punctuated with impressive face-offs with immense beasties. A more than ample range of new and returning wildlife call the sprawling locales home, from the hulking Doshaguma to the enigmatic (and inflatable) Rompopolo – the monstrous cast of Wilds is weird, wonderful and just ever-so intimidating. A good hallmark of a fun monster is that feeling of unease that bubbles into your gut when their music hits – like the theme of a wrestler emerging from behind the curtain – and there are more than a couple of bastards here that kept me on my toes long after I had established a base set of gear that felt “decent”. Even familiar faces have a handful of new twists to shake the rust off old-school players and get you leaning forward in your chair.

It helps that the game just keeps serving up new targets for you to chase down. The reaction on my end on more than one occasion was genuine fist-pumping hype as a cutscene revealed what I was going up against next. Even stumbling over the odd unexpected fellow while picking up bugs and flowers in the world quickly shifts your gears from a chill material farming sesh into an impromptu investigation into what you are made of. The progression of Wilds seemingly hits a breakpoint of “ah yeah I have surely seen every monster now” on more than one occasion – but bam, fucko, you are wrong. There is more, and for good reason – so get to tracking them down.

So far it still sounds a great deal like a Monster Hunter game – Monsters, Hunting, y’know – but under the hood, Wilds is a different beast. Slight shuffles and shifts to mechanics and masteries long since set in stone are the order of the day – but does it still end up feeling like Monster Hunter?

Careful, that thing is loaded (not talking about the gun)

Thankfully, doing the important stuff in this game is familiar and comfortable, like slipping into a pair of old jeans – just without the worn out knees and ragged hems. It may all be shiny and new, but Capcom has danced this dance a few times before, so their lead is logical. The buttons you need are in the places you expect, and the new ones that aren’t are nestled in easy to find places, complete with unobtrusive tutorials to get you up to speed. Unsurprisingly, there is the odd case of some things not being quite at your fingertips – but it’s a friendly level of friction that feels quintessentially Monster Hunter and never quite hits that nerve of being truly frustrating. So what if it is three button presses to replenish items via a Loadout? It could have been four. It’s still a game of a million menus, but any old hat knows this is just how the game is played.

While the weapons are all what you’d expect, some tweaking has been done to shake things up a little. My beloved Light Bowgun is a prime candidate here, considering that its ammo economy has been streamlined to remove crafting requirements on the more basic bullets (like Piercing or Spread ammo) and a new ‘push and pull’ playstyle has been implemented with Rapid Fire and Chaser shots. Rapid Fire mode is a depleting special mode that you can activate, where your hunter slaps a big ol’ drum magazine on the side of the gun and starts chewing through rounds much faster than normal, then recharges when said magazine is spent and you resume firing normally. Chaser shots are essentially a combo shot that you can opt into doing after firing, where you root yourself in place to quickly fire off a fast burstfire. It’s a fun cadence of damage output that asks you to measure up your current situation and see what kind of gun-kata you can get away with – with the most electrifying being when you can just hit everything all at once, slinging lead like an action movie hero.

While I might be addicted to playing modern Monster Hunter games like a third-person shooter, you still need to acknowledge that the same deliberate, hard-hitting melee gameplay is present and has received similar polish. The most obvious is how the newly minted Focus Mode allows players to better direct their enormous blade swings during many animations, removing some of the teeth-grinding frustration of dropping a massive hit into the ground because the beast pivoted 2 inches to its left. This then gives way to a specific Focus Attack that can be leveraged against Wounds on a beast, destroying the Wound outright and rewarding the player with a stylish hit that looks and feels awesome. Most melee movesets have incorporated a ‘greatest hits’ of mechanics from both Monster Hunter: World and Monster Hunter Rise, so you can absolutely pull off the equivalent of a Spinning Reaper for your Sword and Shield if you are doing the right inputs.

Your purr-fect companion

It’s important to note that both Focus Mode and the Wounds system are impeccably designed to uplift that iconic combat feeling – not disrupt it. Anyone who has played a Monster Hunter game before will find themselves up to speed immediately, albeit with a few more neurons firing in their grey matter. For new players, it taps into that primal urge to identify and capitalise on an advantage that scratches a lizard-brained itch in so many other titles. The way Wounds are woven into Monster behaviour is also brilliant, with some moves telegraphed with a Wound marker that can actually be destroyed to stop that attack from ever occurring. Even the most mundane of interactions have you deciding if you want to repeatedly hit a Wound marker for the sake of increased damage, or instead trade off wholesale Wound destruction via Focus Attack to stagger the beast. It’s spicy stuff.

There’s also a sanding of rough edges when you look into the social aspects of the game, a long suffering thorn in the side of all Hunters with mates. Using a familiar lobby system to Rise, the options to pick where and who you play with are a little more developed, but don’t go in expecting perfection. I was fortunate enough to stumble into some friendly journo colleagues during my treks in the world, and via the Link Party feature we could progress our tale together with (relative) ease. The best way to describe a Link Party is that it exists as a more intimate level of grouping than a standard lobby, automating invitations to help each other with quests as they are encountered. The frustrating element here is that if you and your buddy are neck and neck with the story, you will likely both finish a cutscene at the same time – right as the game asks you to slay (or capture) some terrifying mother hubbard. At this moment, a Link Party quest invite will actually display on both of your screens, inviting the other to come and help out with your brute, resulting in that awkward shuffle that happens when two people approach opposite sides of a doorway. Discussing who should take the lead first can alleviate this, but it does genuinely feel like one person would benefit from being the party ‘leader’ to reduce the awkwardness of two people accepting each other’s invites and finding that both quests have been cancelled altogether as the quests get simultaneously abandoned.

Another option is to forsake real people altogether and indulge in the addition of Support hunters that can come in and lend a hand. These AI friends kind-of-but-don’t-really resemble the AI companions from Rise’s Sunbreak expansion, in the sense that they offer another target for the monster to molest on occasion while you try and work your own personal magic. It is somewhat relieving to shave off a small portion of your performance anxiety by incorporating your very own support crew, acting almost like backup singers to your centre stage self. They will share buff items, heal you on occasion, you name it – they perform at a level higher than that of a brand new player, and FOR a brand new player, they would almost offer a blueprint for how basic Monster Hunter co-op should go. Inoffensive, helpful and entirely optional, it is a new feature that just gets a big tick for existing.

Does it have to grin quite so maliciously?

Another signature new feature for Wilds is the Seikret mount – a feathered raptor friend that dutifully carries you about the place. “Now hold on!” I hear you say. “Monster Hunter Rise already HAD MOUNTS Ash, you magnificent idiot.” Well, let me clarify. Where the Palamute of Rise was more like an upgraded companion, that aided you in fights when you were not atop its back, the Seikret is far more of a utility critter. Firstly, the Seikret does not assist in the fighting at all – more than likely because Support Hunters exist – and will instead lurk nearby for when you next call. Secondly, Seikrets have a brilliant autopilot feature that means they will self-navigate to a monster or a selected waypoint at the press of a button, allowing you to do other stuff. What other stuff, you ask? Well that is the third cool thing your Raptor buddy can do – they are also a mobile support platform. When riding your feathered and taloned mate, you can actually perform a range of helpful actions – such as sharpening your weapon, rooting around in a support pouch of nifty goodies, or in a shocking twist, actually swap to another weapon. That’s right, in Monster Hunter Wilds, you actually get to take two weapons into a mission and swap between them when riding.

Now I must admit, as a gun-addicted doofus I did not utilise this feature to its full potential. Having a secondary weapon available to me meant I could swap to something quick and nimble for when the arena maybe got a bit unwieldy for gunplay, such as the Sword and Shield or Dual Blades. At times I even whipped them out when the action got a bit crowded, when additional lesser beasts perhaps started mucking up the scene. It felt so natural to do so, I eventually wondered if I could embrace my inner American and take TWO guns into the field.

And you know what? I bloody could. Yippee Ki-Yay, bang bang.

The final frontier of game visual fidelity: Food Porn

Final Thoughts

When it comes to reviews, some games elicit a reaction of Oh god, I need to pour 30 hours into this to even feel remotely ready to comment on it. In the case of a new Monster Hunter Game, however, it is more a case of Oh good, I get to pour 30 hours into this to even feel remotely ready to comment on it. The act of ‘beating’ a Monster Hunter title is really a Sisyphean effort, being that there is always something new to explore – that, and the main difference being that the role of Sisyphus is played by someone desperately excited to roll that stone straight into the face of a slavering creature in the hopes of making a killer new dinner jacket from its hide. It’s the spirit of inspired iteration that makes exploring a new Monster Hunter game so exciting. 

With 21 years of games under their belt, you could be fooled into thinking the Monster Hunter team can’t teach this old dog any new tricks – but somehow this pooch is STILL serving some showstoppers. The fact I am begrudgingly putting pen to paper to write this review when I would much rather be playing more Monster Hunter Wilds, should tell you this hunt has a lot of life in it yet.

Reviewed on PC // Review code supplied by publisher

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