Monster Hunter Wilds Review

All the monster hunting parts of Monster Hunter Wilds are the best they’ve ever been. There’s a lot around the edges that borders on feeling pointless but as a long time fan of the series those elements are very easy to ignore.

This is one of those games that will steal hours from you if you’re wired to love the grind. It’s an easy recommend for anyone who has even mildly enjoyed the series in the past. If you’ve never played a Monster Hunter game before it’s a decent entry point but beware the grind is not for everyone.

Visually, the game is stunning. I am playing on PC with a fairly recent GPU so things run fairly smoothly even with the visuals turned up. I’ve read some stories about poor optimisation and crashes but have yet to experience any myself.

There’s clearly been a lot of effort put into the design of the environments and monsters. Each zone is interesting and full of unique features. Running between way points on your Seikret is a journey packed with gathering spots, smaller monsters and level design that make the world feel very alive.

Monster Hunter is, as its name suggest, primarily a game about fighting monsters. These giant creatures roam around the map and you, potentially with the help of some friends, need to take them down. Even from the very first quest you’ll be face to face with a big angry creature that’s wondering why you started whacking it with a big sword.

These monsters all have interesting an unique move sets and manage to string attacks together in a way that feels very fluid. The monsters never seem stupid or get themselves into situations where the immersion of being in a video game breaks.

A new feature in this game is the wound system. Hit a monster enough and parts of their body start to glow. Time the right attack and you can break that wound, dealing some extra damage or knocking over the monster. Breaking wounds also drops some extra monster parts to upgrade your weapons and armor.

Paired with this new wound system is focus mode. Focus mode lets you aim all of your attacks with a crosshair. This works for Great Swords and other melee weapons as well as the ranged weapon set. This feature does add quite a bit of quality of life. In older games if you’d charged a strong melee hit and been slightly off center you’d whiff the shot and do no damage. Now you can somewhat correct for poor aiming and land more hits.

Focus mode does somewhat make fights a little easier because missing is harder now but it maintains the pace better. There’s still a lot of precision and good timing needed to win higher level fights without getting destroyed in the process.

The early game, which is the quests designated as Low Rank and even some of the High Rank quests are mainly there as a very long tutorial. They don’t feel slow paced or like they are holding your hand but the difficulty certainly ramps up once you reach the end game. I’d say that most people who aren’t planning to grind through the Hunter Ranks could get through the games main quests and have a great time playing.

The quests are also where the game’s story lives. I will admit that after about the second quest I skipped most of the cut scenes. Monster Hunter isn’t really a game about story telling. I can see what they were trying to do here but the dialog and progression felt half baked. You can get through everything with no idea what anyone said to one another easily enough so there’s no real harm in skipping things.

While ‘bad dialog and story’ would be a criticism of most games, here it just signals something that is a minor annoyance in the way of the gameplay. Almost every cut scene is skippable and you can move through non-cutscene dialog very quickly.

The overall story is the same as many other games in the series, there is a big bad monster and you slowly work out what its up to, then hunt it. In this game the story also helps to connect the various biomes. The game has a much more open world feel that previous entries and it strings the zones together very well. There’s a lot more exploration which feels fun and starting a hunt in the wild automatically turns it into a new, repeatable, quest which is a nice touch.

Online multiplayer is fairly seamless. By default you’ll be in a lobby with other people. They can jump into any quest you’re completing and likewise, you can view a list of theirs and jump in any time. I’ve had a lot of fun joining strangers in their quests, helping out and then parting ways.

Occasionally I’ll join a quest that was a minute away from completion which is always a nice little surprise but ultimately feels a little silly. I have a group of die hard Monster Hunter fans in my friend group so being able to quickly team up and fight big monsters with strangers is handy.

Other small things I would say aren’t great are the pop up camps and the changes to the meal mechanic. I’ve hit around Hunter Rank 40 and not once setup a pop up camp. The path finding and fast travel are good enough that you’re never really far from where you need to be.

The changed meal mechanic is one that’s a little more disappointing. Not because the meal effects are wildly different but now everything happens via your portable BBQ. You’ll occasionally be invited to a meal with an NPC but the games iconic cat chefs are decidedly missing from this game.

Despite those two small things this is a great game. It’s fun, easy to jump in and out of and I expect will continue to get new quests and content over its lifetime. I’m glad this series has found some popularity and has been able to grow into a wider audience while sticking true to what made it so good in first place.