Monster Hunter Wilds Review – Epic Hunts, Frustrating Flaws

Monster Hunter Wilds Review

As revered gaming franchises go, Monster Hunter is, frankly, a little weird. Once appealing to mainly a hardcore audience, the series keeps trying to reinvent itself for the masses while remaining familiar to long-time fans. In doing so, it adds new mechanics while sometimes breaking old ones, or trying an idea then dropping it the next time around. Monster Hunter Wilds is an obvious sequel to Monster Hunter World, almost entirely ignoring whatever Monster Hunter Rise brought to the series. Weird, right? Ultimately none of that matters to the new players Wilds is hoping to hunt, and the faithful are probably going to gripe no matter what.

I suppose I am the target demographic for Wilds. Bouncing off of the legion of early Monster Hunter games, I was firmly converted by Monster Hunter World.  That game had a well-paced, exciting campaign and somewhat streamlined mechanics that were deep but not entirely inscrutable. After dipping into — but largely ignoring — Monster Hunter Rise, I came to Wilds primed for something akin to World’s experience. I largely got my wish, but the experience hasn’t been without problems.

Finding Your Tribe

I won’t dive too deeply into Monster Hunter Wilds’ narrative, in part due to review restrictions. Broadly, it focuses on a young boy named Nata. He belongs to a tribe called the Keepers. Nata is found at the border of the Forbidden Lands, separated from his family after an attack by a monster called the MacGuffin…I mean, the White Wraith. Essentially, your task as a Hunter is to follow the White Wraith’s trail through a number of sprawling, monster-filled zones. There are a few more complications, but the story feels very much like a vehicle to encourage exploration. That’s nothing new to Monster Hunter.

However, while Monster Hunter World had a relatively taut story with a lot of momentum, Wilds’ pacing suffers from inconsistency. In part, this comes from the “open zone” design. You can largely ignore the main quest for hours at a time, freely exploring, gathering materials, and hunting. Encounter a monster, and the hunt begins without having to join it from camp. The handful of immense and diverse ecosystems are filled with endemic wildlife, herds of monsters, and, of course, main quest end-boss foes.

The way monsters and other wildlife live and interact with the changing zones is one of Wilds’ strongest new elements. It generates a feeling of observing animals in their natural environments, studying their habits, and using the landscape to your advantage. This has always been a part of Monster Hunter, but now everything feels a bit less gamified. Weather changes and with it, the state of the world, making hunts more challenging.

Go Get Lost

We’ll come back to the story and characters. For now, let’s focus on what’s new — or newly missing — in Monster Hunter Wilds. Most of these will be familiar to interested players from the widely discussed open betas. Maybe the most contentious addition is the rideable mount called a Seikret. Unlike Rise’s Palamute, Seikrets’ combat abilities are mostly support-focused by holding an extra weapon, assisting in some mobile attacks, and being a mode of transportation. By default, mounting them will initiate an automatic follow to the next quest objective or monster position. Taking two weapons into combat at one time wouldn’t be a huge feature in most action RPGs. In Monster Hunter Wilds, it is. However, you can only switch between weapons on your Seikret. Monster Hunter giveth, and taketh away.

Another new mechanic is Wilds’ Focus Mode. Not a lock on, it allows the player to target specific areas of the monster with a moving reticle. When the monster is wounded, the player can use devastating Focus Attacks on that vulnerable part. In practice, the free-floating Focus reticle felt pretty loose and imprecise. An actual lock-on — or at least the option for one — would have been much more welcome. After making an appearance in Monster Hunter Rise, Wirebugs are nowhere to be found. Instead, the Hunter uses a Hook Slinger to snag collectibles and manipulate the environment.

There are quite a few other mechanical changes and additions in and out of combat, like the ability to place temporary camps in the world, and refinements to the game’s blocking and parrying systems. Your Palico is now voiced but you can turn it off and revert to Palico-speak. Thank goodness.

Old Wine, New Bottle

Monster Hunter Wilds does a great job when it comes to monster design and behavior. There are dozens of returning endemic creatures and smaller monsters, plus excellent new boss types with challenging status effects and close ties to the environments in which they’re found. At the core, hunting — alone, with other humans or NPCs — remains thrilling, challenging, and extremely varied. The game’s classless design means it’s easy to try new weapons and evolve a very specific character.

When it comes to weapons, let’s hope you liked the selection in Monster Hunter World, because Wilds brings them all back without adding anything new. They’ve been given a slight visual overhaul, and of course, new monster parts mean a new catalog of weapon upgrades and armor. Players coming to Wilds with hundreds of hours of practice with a specific weapon will be happy, I guess. But I find it sort of inconceivable that Wilds doesn’t give us anything really new.

Fighting the Game

There is a lot to enjoy about Monster Hunter Wilds’ world design and combat, and if that’s why you come to it, you’ll probably be happy. But you’ll need a tolerance for imperfection that borders on broken at times. The game still needs a great deal of technical polish. Constant texture and geometry pop in, stuttering animations and inconsistent framerates lead the list. They’re followed by characters getting stuck in the world, cut scenes that crash, and long loading times. The audio mix is kind of a mess, though there are lots of ways to tweak it.

The game’s mini-map now takes into account the world’s changes in elevation. But the map can be so densely cluttered with information as to be nearly useless. It’s desperately in need of filter tools so that you can, for instance, turn off all the icons for resources. The UI in general needs to be wrenched into the modern era. It remains an awkward and frustrating collection that can be an enemy in its own right.

Visually, there’s a soft-focus, desaturated look about Monster Hunter Wilds a lot of the time, with rich color, sharp detail, and vibrancy more the exception than the rule. Character designs — and the excellent character creator tool — are a step up from World. On the negative side, the game’s writing and dialogue can’t pick a tone and stick with it. As a result, what could be a dramatic story of a struggling people is undercut by bad humor and superficiality. The player character is voiced this time, and I appreciated that. It helps to make the Hunter feel more fully part of the story.

Hunt or Stay Home

Monster Hunter Wilds builds on Worlds’ combat, crafting, and upgrade systems. The new open zones and more complex monster behaviors are impressive and interesting to explore, and as always, hunts can be challenging, rewarding, exhausting, and fun. The lack of new weapons is disappointing, as are the many technical issues and the game’s often unpolished feel. The bigger environments and more open-ended gameplay could have been the foundation for something really new and special. Monster Hunter Wilds feels like a lateral move rather than a significant advance.

***PC code provided by the publisher for review***