Capcom has done it again.
Monster Hunter Wilds is the latest entry in this long-running series of action RPGs. What was a pioneer in console online gaming during the PS2 days, the series later retreat into becoming a cult hit that’s mostly big in Japan and big on the small screen of portable gaming platforms. But that changed in 2018 with Monster Hunter World.
While the follow-up to that, Monster Hunter Rise, was a return to the old-school feel of MonHun, Wilds is where it truly sheds its skin and embrace its presence on more performance-capable platforms. And that increase in production values is paired with thoughtful changes in making the game feel more comfortable to play for newcomers, making Monster Hunter Wilds the best game yet for anyone yet to catch the monster hunting bug.
Presentation
There were legitimate worries during the open beta phases of Monster Hunter Wilds in regards to the performance. The game’s beta runs rough on PS5. But thankfully, the beta was not a glorified demo, the end product is leaps and bounds better, performance-wise.
With the prioritise performance on a base PS5, the game can maintain what I perceive as 60 FPS on the regular, with only a few edge-cases where it gets frame-y. A full 4-player session hunting a monster that can spout laser beams like it’s a rail cannon during an intense sandstorm will understandably get a bit hitchy.
(That does meant that the screenshots captured here don’t quite represent the visuals in motions- action shots look less sharp and aliased despite it looking fine in motion. The screenshots in cutscenes and photo mode does do come out nice.)
MonHun made the switch to Capcom’s in-house RE Engine back in Rise, but it’s only with Wilds we can truly see how much of a graphical powerhouse it has become. Bigger, more detailed maps. Herds of animals can be rendered. Far enough draw distance. The Forbidden Lands does have gorgeous views.
But it’s also a little drab and saturated. There are many instances where the scene lacks colour. Wilds can pass off as a really detailed 7th-gen console (PS3) game with its monotonous colour grading. There’s a story reason, sure, but it doesn’t mean I like seeing this gorgeous game tends to present itself as an ugly drab of misery. Especially more so when I find the lighting options in the character creator doesn’t quite reflect the lighting scenarios of the wilds you’ll be hunting in. So making a tan or brown-skinned character to appear just right is a struggle.
Speaking of characters, they are sublime to look at. And I don’t mean just the ladies that makes up the main cast, they look fine. But look at those monsters. They all have a distinct look, movement and even just sheer presence. I’m a MonHun greenhorn who barely played the recent games in the series and I can immediately tell the difference between a Rathian and a Gravios. From a mile away I can see that peri-peri chicken that is the Quematrice prancing around.
And I’m so, so grateful that the two spider-like monsters, the Nerscylla and the Lala Barina, feels spider-like without triggering arachnophobes like myself. There’s an arachnophobia mode to replace the actual small spiders into less-cool but less creepy jelly blobs, but I’m glad that intricately designed large monsters are not filtered into blobs, as they don’t need to be. Something about the far camera view helps obfuscate the elements that would personally trigger my fight-or-flight response.
And we all know one thing the graphics department put extra love in: the food. There’s something about how good the food looks. The way it presents the ingredients you pick when you cook a meal. The details of raw protein sizzling in a pan gives that appetizing feel. And there’s of course the meals you can be offered by the local villagers.
And while I don’t personally feel this, but I won’t be surprised if practicing Muslims that are playing Monster Hunter Wilds at launch, which coincidentally drop at the start of the fasting month of Ramadan, find it a struggle. Those food look so appetizing it can make you go hungry. The fact that it caused a sharp surge of demand for naan cheese in Japan proves my point.
The music goes for the orchestral approach. Hunts feel appropriately epic but the soundtrack just enunciate the action rather than steals the show. Though there are a few standouts- the hunts at the Cliffs get a dose of church organs, and that one hunt sells the poignant tone with a complementing somber musical arrangement. These are not songs I’d personally put in my playlist, in that it’s not catchy or an easy listen to outside of the game. But it fits its purpose, to amp up the excitement of each hunt. Well, the default camp music, the game’s theme song and the new arrangement of Proof Of A Hero are exceptions. Those are evergreen bangers.
Monster Hunter Wilds has a more involved story, and as such has made the decision to drop Monster Hunter language from cutscenes. You can still hear that iconic gibberish as ambient dialogue, though; Even the main cast has lines in Monster Hunter language. At least Palicos, your loyal felyne companion, can still speak in meows and purrs, as they should.
Overall, Monster Hunter Wilds’ presentation is phenomenal. If it weren’t for the drab ambience the world tends to appear as, I would have nothing much to complain about in this regard. I heard the performance on PC isn’t quite bulletproof yet, but I reckon it’ll get there eventually on the account these MonHun games have a long life in them.
Gameplay
In Monster Hunter Wilds, you are a Hunter assigned as part of an expedition heading east, to what’s dubbed the Forbidden Lands. The Hunter’s Guild you are associated with have never set foot in the lands for centuries and the various team from the Guild is set to change that. And on this journey, you’ll be discovering hidden secrets and truths and learn about the local ecosystem, that includes how the monsters and humans are co-existing here.
Monster Hunter Wilds falls under the nebulous and now too-general umbrella of an action-RPG. But to be more specific, it’s a monster hunting game, named after, well, the Monster Hunter series. And these games follow a simple loop. Pick a quest, which involves hunting a least one target. Then, make preparations whether that be changing equipment, readying your items loadout or eat a meal to get the correct buffs for the hunt. Then you go off to find the target and it basically becomes a boss fight. Beat them in a series of fights that can last within 10-15 minutes. Once succeeded, grab the materials it drop and use it to make better equipment and be more prepared for the next hunt.
It’s a specific style of gameplay, where it’s all about the boss fights, essentially. And it wouldn’t have worked if the monsters you’re here hunting are not fun to fight against. Each monster fight differently, have different tells, different strengths and weaknesses that make them engaging to fight against.
And what’s more fun is that there’s some layers in obscurity that makes it even more exhilarating, or for the uninitiated, terrifying. There’s no health bars for the monsters. But you do get a pulse reading that more or less hint at the state of the monster. And you can just tell by looking at how a monster move and fight. You know when it’s tired and about to drop dead when it starts moving all wibbly-wobbly, or you can see it drooling in the mouth. You know it’s angry when it screams at you to a halt and start doing more aggressive attacks. You can intuit into being a better hunter. The game’s cool like that.
And it’s not just the monster that makes the gameplay loop fun. It takes two to tango, the dance partner to a monster is the hunter. Your character don’t level up like a typical RPG, as all the stats are purely based on gear. And there are plentiful of options on how to build your character, but the game is smart enough to not get you thinking about builds in the early game so you can focus on the fundamentals, that is how you fight with your weapon of choice.
Monster Hunter Wilds offer the same 14 different weapon types that World and Rise offers. And they all have wildly different playstyles, even if they seem similar. A Switch Axe gets long reach by default with its Axe mode and can morph into the faster Sword mode but you have limited swings and you move much slower. But the Charge Blade doesn’t just flip the Axe and Sword modes. The moveset, gameplan and mechanics to really reach its max potential is a whole lot different, and that’s without me explaining how a Switch Axe has some odd mechanics that the typical Great Sword and Long Sword don’t. And even the Great Sword and Long Sword, despite seemingly similar, have minute differences that is enough to change how you approach hunts entirely.
While Wilds may not add new weapons, the moveset and the feel of the combat does. For example, there are now Offset moves available or certain weapons, which is effectively a parry attack. Like Rise Of The Ronin’s Counterspark where it’s not just a deflecting parry, but a weapon attack that can parry if timed properly and certain conditions are met (apparently, just like monster mounting, you need multiple attempts before it even has a chance to trigger). And man, pulling off a parry on a King-Kong-esque gorilla about to do an elbow drop on you is absolute cinema. The camera even zooms in to your player character view upon doing to catch that shot of you pulling a follow-up to that satisfying parry.
The other new move is Focus Mode. You can now aim your attacks. And it’s actually game-changing. I usually struggle at getting my character pointing the right way before committing to an attack, which meant many occasions of whiffing them and looking all silly. I’m too used to playing faster-paced games that it feels like I have to point the analogue stick at the right direction forever before the character eventually turns, which they usually don’t. Focus Mode solves the issue as your character will immediately attack in the direction the camera is pointing at when it’s engaged. Plus, you can also pull off Focus Attacks that does more damage on wounds. The quality of life change removes what I consider a jank feel in Monster Hunter’s core combat system, and it’s for the better, if you ask a newbie like me.
But more importantly, this fundamental dance in Wilds rightfully assumes that the first few hunts are to be done by absolute greenhorns that are not particular acquainted with the series’ quirks and features. The early hunts are easy, in that the early monsters don’t regularly pull moves that takes away from the player having any control of the character. It’s one of my main gripes playing World as my first Monster Hunter, the early game throws a lot at you with its oppressive monsters that expect you know how to play the game, but as a newcomer I was already battling how clunky the controls are. You don’t learn how to intuitively draw a weapon and accommodate the movement speed difference, understand that doing any action requires a commitment and not all of them can be cancelled by a dodge-roll. And MonHun has a specific control scheme that slightly eschews modern gaming conventions due to its handheld gaming roots. That’s a lot to juggle in World.
Rise slightly addresses this by frontloading a super hand-holdy tutorial of a first hunt and hoped you absorbed everything in one go. At least that’s the impression I had of the past two MonHun games before I eventually drop them.
In Wilds, the onboarding is more gentle. The Chatacabra and Balahara make for great beginner-friendly hunts in the early game as they lack that oppressive moves that stops you from pressing buttons. There’s enough wiggle room to make mistakes, learn, and find the limits and more importantly, just get comfortable with the controls. By hour 5, I felt locked in and ready for tougher fights, but instead was given opportunity to style upon these weaker beasts. It’s until hour 10 until I hunted down a Congalala where I started getting flung around for not carefully avoiding getting hit. Those monkeys sure got gas in them.
Wilds also makes it clear and upfront that it’s totally okay to call for backup. The SOS flare can not only open up your session for other players to join, but also can fill the room with AI-controlled support hunters. Rosso, Alessa and Olivia are all characters within the game’s story, lead hunter in their respective units, and they are properly fleshed out as proper party members with specific tendencies. Rosso tends to mount monsters. Alessa draws aggro, and Olivia being the Ace Hunter does a little bit of everything. Even the story makes a point that it’s totally okay to hunt together, or split up when hunting multiple targets, by using these NPCs. And it definitely made me feel more comfortable, as a novice player, in trying out the SOS flare. Even if no actual player responds, these three hunters will always be there when you need them.
It’s also nice that in the case of an online connection fails mid-hunt, the game just continues, even if you are not the host, and the missing team members are backfilled again by the support hunters. They’ll always have your back.
Not all of the gameplay changes are a net gain. Wilds makes the ambitious move to have base camps on all the maps, allowing players to just immediately go outside on a field survey instead of having a dedicated hub world. But that means the hub is less congested (and less lively), even in a massive 100 player server it doesnt feel as lively as the previous games had been, as players can spread across multiple base camps.
And it’s not like you would find them all roaming in the open world either. Unless they are a Link Member, which you have to opt them in, everyone loads into their own instance of the region map as soon as they step outside of base camp.
I get why, the idea of having a hundred people constantly going around wiping out all the monsters in the open world and not allowing others do them might be an issue. But it also makes the change of having base camps within the region itself pointless unless you engage with it, and I don’t feel incentivised in doing so. There’s not much to be gained for doing it, but I do admit it is pretty cool to seamlessly go in and out of the base camp.
Monster Hunter Wilds made some significant changes to the formula, but it hasn’t rocked the boat too much. Though it does make many welcoming changes to how it onboard new players and get them comfortable and at least see the story through.
Content
Monster Hunter Wilds has made an attempt to beat the allegations of the series being a colonialist power fantasy. There’s a gentle tone to how these foreigners, that’s all of us in the Hunter’s Guild, make contact in these new lands and its ecosystem. The Guild preaches coexistence, whether that between humans and the natural ecosystem, or their presences as foreigners with the local folks. There’s constant reminders that they’re here to study and help, and has toned down a bit of the happy-go-lucky jingoistic vibe that World may have mistakenly emanated. And a hunter only hunts when it is the last resort, and must also have autorisation from the Guild, via their assigned handler, to even do so.
But that doesn’t mean the storytelling doesn’t have epic moments. Plenty of the story cutscenes involved monster-on-monster action that will get kaiju aficionados giddy. And the player character Hunter, who’s now not mute and the resident no-nonsense badass everyone in the Guild respects, have their badass moments of badassery.
“The Guild authorises the hunt” is basically a Tokusatsu-esque catchphrase. MonHun fans are losing their minds over this not because it’s some secret kink, they just love cool catchphrases, a proof of any good hero.
But I do feel that the game structure during this early game could have been a bit better. For newcomers, it’s a constant barrage of the same quest, where it’s mostly you just do a walk-and-talk and wait for a cutscene happen and then start a hunt of a new monster. And you do that over and over ad nauseam. You can do side quests, in the form of attempting the same hunts again. But there’s little else to do other than progress the story.
It really felt weird as the game keeps on rushing so the you unlock and visit new regions, but spent barely any time to get us acquainted with the maps themselves. At least in World you spend a good time just going around the map looking for a monster to hunt. You don’t do that in Wilds. You have to make an effort to go out and explore the twisty map with so much verticality and secret areas yourself. Between the quest design and the over-reliance on the Seikret, the mount from Wilds and a carry-over mechanic from Rise, natural exploration has been de-emphasised. But you should go explore and forage materials on your own—there are cool armour sets slightly hidden from the main path.
And for the veterans, I can totally see the early game feels unappealing. It’s a slog if you want to just get to whacking Rathalos over and over like you always wanted out of these games. But to get there you have to see a kid go through a character arc (and I know some folks just don’t emphasised with children so this is even worse for them) and hear them yap about some worldbuilding thing. In that regard, the story really gets in the way for the game to really get going.
But personally, I find them enjoyable, though it could have done some quests where you are required to explore the map. I wouldn’t mind a fetch quest at this stage, actually.
It takes about 20 hours to finish the story of Monster Hunter Wilds and see the credits roll. But the game isn’t over at this point, rather it only just begun. The cinematic story is there to properly establish what’s initially called the Forbidden Lands and justify why the Hunter’s Guild is here. And it’s essentially a very long tutorial. What you’ve played this far is what Monster Hunter calls Low Rank.
The real game begins at High Rank, where you’re more often than not are left to your devices in what hunts you wish to participate and are free to rack up Hunter Rank. If you find it easy to just grind-craft your way to that cool armour set in Low Rank, it takes more effort to do the same in High Rank. This is the real MonHun game, a reason to keep hunting the same monster over and over again: loot.
There’s still some storytelling going on in High Rank, just not as dramatic and with less cutscenes. You see a lot more of that shot-reverse-shot camera as two characters converse, instead of the more cinematic angles using higher-res assets seen earlier on.
It took me 40 hours to see the story truly completed, which then unlocks the endgame filled with the toughest hunts all available. You’re going to sink in a lot of time and if you love the core game loop, that’s a good thing.
And by the endgame, the gameplay systems truly comes alive. Now you can start thinking about builds, and how to combine the five armour pieces to get the right perks and bonuses. And start messing around with decorations slotting, to add more of those perks and bonuses. And then maybe even acquire some other weapons and gear, just as an excuse to keep on hunting. Or pick up a new weapon type and learn a new playstyle.
Monster Hunter is a grind-craft game in where it’s loot-based but not quite. You don’t get random weapons and gear, you get sort-of random materials to craft specific weapons and gear. And it’s all in the ancillary systems, the decorations, where you have to interact with RNG of some kind. But like most Monster Hunter games, it’s not entirely RNG, there are ways to get a specific thing you want.
Plus, you can expect regular content updates. Capcom already teased one monster coming as a post-launch update. And if past games is of any indication, there’s likely a big paid expansion down the line.
Personal Enjoyment
I know that for many folks out there, Monster Hunter Wilds is the biggest, most anticipated game of the year outside of GTA VI. And you can see the excitement manifested, and how much goodwill Capcom has, by the amount of players being there on day-1.
Personally, Monster Hunter is a series I respect but could never really get into. Similar to my relationship with Dark Souls and the soulslikes genre, I couldn’t get into the current hot genre gamers around the world faun over for one reason or another. It wasn’t until I played Wild Hearts, of all things, that made it click for me. And even then, I still couldn’t vibe with Monster Hunter World or Rise.
But Wilds did it for me. I finally cleared a MonHun game, and not only that, I’ve even made builds for endgame hunts and going online to see who needs help smacking Arkveld. And I usually am not the one that got carted!
Though I have my embarrassing moments of attempting to try a seven-star hunt immediately upon unlocking only to get one-shotted by Gore Magala and triple carted. There are definitely gear checks in this game.
I finally become a fan, and it’s all thanks to the smoother onboarding, which I understand doesn’t make for a fun experience for vets, and the commitment they made in storytelling.
And oh yeah, those offset parries are sweet, sweet dopamine hits. Love it.
However, I don’t quite like that fact that they monetise the character editor, a practice carried over and maintained from previous titles. You can freely customise the underclothing, hairstyle, eyebrow and voice pitch of your character at any time after character creation. But to access the rest of the edits, you need to get a voucher. And it’s DLC. You get one free voucher but if you need to make more changes it’ll cost you RM25 for a packet of three vouchers. So you can’t be cosplaying as different characters under the same save that often unless you pay up.
And it sucks if you happen to create your character to look a certain way based on the editor’s lighting only for them to appear different on account of the game’s world’s lighting is a bit more saturated and monotonous. And you need to spend money to fix that. Oof.
On another note, and this doesn’t particular bit doesn’t affect the score but hear me out: it also sucks that with Capcom firing on all cylinders, there’s no other developer that can truly step up to the challenge in this game genre. Wild Hearts has long gone dormant. And Dauntless, the free-to-play monster hunting action RPG that had potential, finally dug its own grave with a horrible relaunch back in December, and now is set to close down in May.
Monster Hunter remains the top dog, the apex predator, the one on top of the food chain. But can this truly be sustainable? As Monster Hunter Wilds preaches in the game, a too-dominant apex predator can bring unwanted effects. And I fear for the worse to happen in the years to come with no one keeping Capcom honest, with not enough strong competition.
But let’s all enjoy the ride for now, while we can still affectionately call this company Capgod. And with that minor tangent of a rant done, let me reiterate: I never played so much Monster Hunter before Wilds and now I can’t stop, even after pretty much done with this review. I’ll be adding more hours into that 50-hour save I have so far. I need to get back at hunting more Tempered Gore Magalas. And go fishing.
Verdict
Monster Hunter Wilds evolves the class-leading monster hunting action-RPG into something more approachable and appealing to newcomers. A gentler onboarding as well as a gentler story do a good job of portraying monster hunting as cool without glorifying the act of slaying them.
The epic scale and deep action and RPG gameplay remains unmatched. The beauty of each monster fight and the many ways one can approach them has no contest.
Capcom has reasserted its dominance in this very kingdom they created. The undisputed top dog of the food chain remains uncontested. And even looking outside of its own ecosystem, Monster Hunter Wilds is one of the best games you can play this year. A well-crafted game done with passion from developers listens to the community.
Played on base PS5. Review copy provided by the publisher.
Monster Hunter Wilds
Monster Hunter Wilds is one of the best games you can play this year. A well-crafted game done with passion from developers listens to the community.
- Presentation 8.5
- Gameplay 9
- Content 8.5
- Personal Enjoyment 10