Since the 2016 release of Monster Hunter: Worlds, the Monster Hunter franchise has become an all-time favourite of mine, being welcomed into a solid community I’ve poured hundreds of hours into. From Worlds itself, to the criminally underappreciated Rise and its expansion Sunbreak. Or the charming spin-offs in Stories and Wings of Ruin. Monster Hunter: Wilds marks the next mainline entry in the long-running series, bringing back the same familiar gameplay loop, whilst making it a touch more accessible, adding an actual story with some interesting new mechanics. Even though it’s not perfect, this has been one of the most enjoyable gaming experiences in the past year.

Story

During an expedition to the Forbidden Lands located in the Old World, the hunters guild finds a child, called Nata, who is lost in the desert, separated from his people who have been attacked by a creature known as the White Wraith. Believing that nobody was living in the Forbidden Lands, the expedition teams set out to discover the land’s past. Your goal is to reunite the child with his family and stop the White Wraith before it can unleash devastation to the world.

The story has never been a focus in Monster Hunter, so it was a pleasant surprise to see some effort put into it here. Nata is the emotional hook of this game and has already proven to be a divisive character, a character as we meet him has gone through a lot of trauma seeing Arkveld laying waste to his people. Whilst his actions can certainly be annoying, his growth from the first cutscene up until the final boss fight is surprisingly interesting. It’s a character I’m not too fond of, but I can certainly appreciate what was attempted.

Elsewhere, we finally have a voiced protagonist who is an active part of the story, instead of just sitting on the sidelines waiting to be tagged in. There are some really badass moments with your player character making decisions. Alma is your new quest board for this game, and the replacement to World’s infamous Handler is a much-needed improvement.

Monster Hunter: Wilds is certainly a lot heavier on the story than I thought it was going to be, and this does cause some issues, resulting in some mixed feelings, namely with the pacing. Very often you will be thrown into moments where you have to follow a character, or after a hunt, be teleported away to the next area. It’s weird since Capcom poured so much love into these environments and it just railroads you through them. Thankfully, the cinematics fare a lot better, with some great setpiece moments and monster fights that pull you right back into the action. Whilst I would recommend experiencing the story for the first time, unlike World you can now fully skip cutscenes,  something that will massively help if starting second characters. However, you will need to repeat those pesky following missions.

The above is more focused on the low-rank stuff that makes up a bulk of the story and takes roughly fifteen hours to complete. Anyone familiar with Monster Hunter knows the game doesn’t really start until high rank as low feels more like an extended tutorial and that’s very much the same here. High-rank is where the game really opens up and whilst still having story-heavy moments it doesn’t feel as poorly paced. Once completed, it finally unleashes you onto the world and gives you a sense of the game’s full scope. In high-rank, you are free to progress at your own pace up until the conclusion of the main story where you will be spending the bulk of your time.

Gameplay

Moving onto gameplay; that sweet sweet gameplay formula has remained here. You will be hunting a wider variety of large monsters in order to create new, more powerful weapons and armour to help you kill bigger and badder monsters. In a story exploring the relationship between humanity and nature, the conflicting gameplay loop that has you becoming a force of nature hunting down nature is ever-satisfying. If you liked the previous games, you will most likely like this one as well. Combat still feels heavy, and there’s that same sense of progression and attention to build variety, however, there are also some key changes.

When start the game feels much more open world, this is punctuated by the fact the quest board is now a character that follows you around. Alma will follow you around in the background collecting resources and authorising you to hunt (or reminding you to carve the tail). This all leads to a rather seamless experience that doesn’t force you back to loading screens every time. Just open the map, see what monsters are roaming around with their rewards and heads towards them. It feels like an evolution of the Guiding Lands from Iceborne, that had you trekking through smaller biomes on a single map. The traditional quest system is there if you don’t want to engage with the open world or have specific side quests to hunt for.

The world itself feels absolutely massive, giving us a hybrid open world with a more traditional structure. Each biome is still separated into zones as you’d expect. However, you can almost seamlessly travel between them and the biomes as well. In Worlds, the maps would normally have three monsters roaming around here though monsters; both small and large appear in greater quantities fill out the world and interact with each other. Turf wars between monsters occur in a much more frequent basis in Monster Hunter: Wilds, and often times with more than two monsters present. Mix this in with a dynamic weather system, and you get a game world that feels much more alive and responsive.

As always, you have access to the core fourteen weapon types to play around with. Each has distinctive mechanics and moves that should appeal to players of all kinds. From the fast-combo heavy dual blades, to heavy hammers and gunlances, there’s something for everyone. Personally, I lean towards the Insect Glaive, allowing me to unleash devastating aerial combos. There have also been some major improvements, focusing on giving a lot more grounded options, making the weapon much more flexible and adaptable to certain situations. On the side I have the Switch Axe, which feels just as glorious as ever, with some incredibly smooth combos and one of the most over-the-top finishers.

One of the biggest additions is the new focus mode that applies to every weapon. Using focus allows you to aim your weapons with better accuracy, target particular weak spots or simply not whiff as many attacks. Deal enough damage to a certain spot and a wound opens up. From there you can use the new focus strike which deals devastating damage and buffs your weapon abilities. It creates a new satisfying loop of opening and closing wounds to keep your buffs active, damage high and pressure on the monster. Wounds can be opened up from mounting monsters as well, with some insanely cool finishing moves. Using this to its full extent creates a beautiful flow in fights.

Palamutes may be gone from Rise, but the same idea has been brought forward with Seikrets, who give us some of the biggest changes. You can now carry two weapons at a time with you, one on your back and one on your Seikret. Giving you full flexibility to experiment or adapt to situations on the fly. You can also jump on your Seikret at any time, even during combat to move around, drink potions and sharpen your weapon without leaving yourself open for an attack. If you get particularly creative, mounting up to set yourself up for a lunging attack from great heights, the Seikret adds another strategic layer to the combat. Controlling them can be a pain, though, and you will probably need to delve into the options to fix this.

All of these new mechanics and features lead to Monster Hunter: Wilds feeling a fair bit easier than its predecessors. Whilst this may partly come down to me pouring in hundreds of hours into the other games, I feel like all these new mechanics make it a lot less punishing. Monsters are much easier to stagger, and you have a lot more recovery options after fifty hours of gameplay dealing with tempered monsters.  Despite this, the spirit of Monster Hunter isn’t compromised, and I’ve enjoyed just about every single minute in high-rank. Hopefully, future updates will bring back some difficulty. If you’re looking for the challenge it just isn’t here yet.

Speaking of which, it wouldn’t be a Monster Hunter game without a wide variety of monsters to hunt, and we’ve got an incredibly solid selection here as well. With monsters such as Rathalos (obviously) and Nerscylla making a triumphant return with some brand new additions that will surely become fan favourites. Among them includes the spider Lala Barina, with its white and crimson red design, using paralyzingly fast attacks, or the octopus-themed Xu Wu, able to creep in and out of arenas.

There’s a lot in the roster to like with a solid variety and a few subspecies to pad the list out, so including the new flagship monster, Arkveld, A wyvern creature with chain whip-like appendages that can be retracted. It’s a striking design, with an even more striking moveset. Arkveld absolutely does deserve the title of flagship. Whilst the overall number of monsters may come in slightly lower compared to worlds, the variety is much bigger. This is a stellar roster of monsters to fight with very few weak spots and I’m not even spoiling the best ones.

As a whole, Monster Hunter: Wilds does play things relatively safe, with that same gameplay loop that really defined the series and genre as a whole. And that’s a good thing. All the new changes both small and large all come together for an entry that feels like a refinement of what came before. The story itself will be a hit or miss for most people, but beyond that there’s an incredibly rewarding gameplay experience that no other game can quite hit.

Sound and Graphics

Running on Capcom’s RE Engine and we’ve got some interesting results here. This engine has previously impressed us with games like Resident Evil 4 and Devil May Cry 5 still looking and running great even after a few years. However, games like Dragon’s Dogma 2 have shown that it might have reached its limits and that remains true here with some spotty performance and inconsistent visuals that put a sour mark on an otherwise great presentation.

As always, the designs on display are all excellent. I don’t think there’s a badly designed monster on this list, with some excellent animations that are easy to read, yet still intimidating. Monster Hunter: Wilds also has some of the most detailed environments and dynamic weather systems I’ve ever seen. The first time I saw this, I was blown away. However, on multiple occasions we noticed an extensive amount of texture pop in, some textures not loading in at all. Mix this in with underwhelming performance across the board, and it can occasionally feel sluggish. This was probably the most disappointing aspect of Monster Hunter: Wilds.

Then we have the sound design and once again this is wonderfully done. The monster roars feeling as powerful as they look, and the environmental effects fully immerse you in the experience. Voice acting may be a bit of a hit or miss, however, it’s the soundtrack that stands out. Just about every monster in this game has a unique theme that suits it perfectly, and “Proof of a Hero” continues to be an all-time great theme in video games.

Monster Hunter: Wilds

Once again you can join hunts with up to three other players, from private lobbies with friends (and it’s crossplay as well!), up to 100-player open lobbies giving you a wide pool of quests to join or SOS flares. Once in a lobby, you can then send an environment link if you want to explore the world and pick up quests on the fly. It’s a system that does work, but is incredibly confusing thanks to a completely counter-intuitive invite system; the entire UX could do with one more pass it just feels a little too cumbersome. Thankfully, once you’ve got things figured out it works like a charm.

At launch, we have a huge array of content to dive into. There is the roughly fifteen hour long story that serves as the game’s tutorial and introduction before entering the meat of the game. At the time of writing, I’ve put over fifty hours into the game and no signs of slowing down. And this is only the start, with a wealth of content coming in future updates I expect to be playing this game for hundreds of hours. Unfortunately, there are some missing features like the gathering hub that will be arriving in the first title update alongside a new monster and endgame progression system. Hopefully, this does bring a little difficulty back in.

Monster Hunter: Wilds is a triumphant new entry. Whilst the story does have some issues with its writing and pacing issues it is one still worth paying attention to and once that’s done the game truly begins. With the same exceptional gameplay loop, we’ve come to love. There are a few rough edges but none of them stand in the way of Wilds just being my latest addiction.

 

Graphics: 7.5 A lot of rough edges hold back an otherwise pristine presentation.	Gameplay: 9.5 A refinement of what came before whilst keeping that same addictive gameplay loop.
Sound: 9.5 Voice acting may be a mixed bag, but the soundtrack is one of the best I’ve heard in years..	Fun Factor: 9.0 Monster Hunter: Wilds continues to grow the franchise in new and interesting ways. Not all ideas work and it’s not perfect but it’s still incredible.
Final Verdict: 9.0

Monster Hunter: Wilds is available now on PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5.

Reviewed on Xbox Series X and PC.

A copy of Monster Hunter: Wilds was provided by the publisher for Xbox Series X.