Cloaked in high-level parts carved from many, many fallen creatures, there’s a point in Monster Hunter Wilds, as in all Monster Hunter games, where you start to feel sorry for the monsters. Your character and skills have evolved to such a point that you can wade through the less powerful amongst them in moments and, as they flail before you, parts pinging off them like sparks from a fire, you wonder whether it’s you that’s the bad guy. Then, you’ll do it again. And again. And again.
This is the unalterable loop of Monster Hunter. You hunt monsters. You kill or capture those monsters. You use their bones, webbing and tails to make yourself fancy new gear with better statistics, and then off you trot to murder another victim. Monster Hunter Wilds is the current culmination of years of perfecting that loop.
Where early games were obtuse, with control schemes that felt like playing an Ocarina and gameplay mechanics that had players crying into their strategy guides, the series has come on leaps and bounds in recent years, with Monster Hunter World the game that truly brought it to the masses with a much smoother, more accessible experience. Wilds is fundamentally a direct continuation of that game, though at least one or two of Monster Hunter Rise’s best tricks have also made it along for the ride.
The storytelling is one of those key improvements. Monster Hunter stories have either centred on enemy creatures entering the wrong habitat, spreading a disease, or a combination of the two. Wilds tells a similar tale, but the way it is told is easily best directed in the series’ canon.
Your created hunter is fully voiced, lending an immediacy to every cutscene, while the cast here – also fully voiced, with an excellent dub in both Japanese and English – are endearing and memorable. The only misstep has been to grant your feline Palico companion full voice acting, when they’ve always made cat sounds in the past. Thankfully you can revert to the original cat sounds in the menu, because their voice is amongst the most annoying things to ever happen to Monster Hunter.
The story is kicked off by the discovery of a young boy named Nata on the edge of the Forbidden Lands. This region is thought to be uninhabited, but you soon discover that’s not remotely true, instead finding a region stuffed with new creatures and a series of villages and new tribes.
A key change to the environments is that the majority of these areas are connected. It’s one whole open-ish world, though the corridors or tunnels that you’re funnelled through between each biome are clearly hiding some loading, with a bit of judder while it all tries to catch up. Either way, you can run through a series of distinct locales, hunting your way through them without pause.
You don’t even need to return to your base between each quest. You can run up to any monster you encounter in the open world, whack it a few times with your sword, and the game will automatically set you off on a full quest, with the resulting rewards and framing to match. I’ve hared after five monsters in a row, all without having to return home, and it’s an absolute blast, making everything flow so much better than it did previously.
Helpfully, there’s a new mount to get you through these immense landscapes. Replacing Rise’s canine Palamute, the Seikret is a feathered friend that you can ride on, and they’re incredibly handy, able to automatically take you to your destination, whether that’s the monster you’re hunting or a shopping list of ingredients you need for crafting. Some might decry that there’s now much less in the way of actual ‘hunting’, but when those old days could be 30 minutes of hide and seek with a giant ape before even swinging a sword, I know which one I prefer.
Monster Hunter Wilds plays host to the most memorable cast of monsters the series has ever seen, initially giving more focus to its new members, before ushering in a batch of the most recognisable faces. More time is given to the Arkveld – Monster Hunter Wilds’ signature monster – than they would have been in World or Rise, and when it’s a wicked combination of a Viking helmet, chains and a dragon, that’s the correct decision.
Beyond that, there are various stars, from Lala Barina, an arachnid-like with a giant scarlet flower instead of an abdomen that flutters paralysing spores around the arena, through to Nu Udra, an octopod that lives in the Oilwell Basin, sliding through the oily landscape while setting itself on fire.
Witnessing one of its multiple-limbed fireball-chucking attacks would be one of the highlights of the game, if you weren’t running for your life while it happened. It gives you a wholly new set of problems that are distinct and different from the winged dragon, great apes or oversized iguana archetypes that remain the series’ staple, and it’s refreshing in all the right ways.
There is a lingering question about how quickly you can put these incredible creatures down, though. Difficulty creep is a real thing, and it can be harder to quantify when I have twenty years of Great Sword experience already, but this is undoubtedly the easiest it’s felt. Monster Hunter World was capable of knocking some sense into you, especially by the first time you face Nergigante, and Rise’s mix of tower defense and hunting proved tricky to master at first too. Monster Hunter Wild’s has been a hell of a good time, but it’s rarely pushed me to the limit when playing solo.
There’s the sense that Wilds is, as with the last two games, an opening salvo, a tasty bit of hunting that’s been designed to get you into the flow of things, sampling all the new delights, while a main course waits in the wings. Some of that will come as free updates with new monsters special events and crossovers – the Monster Hunter team are one of the best in the industry at this – but you can bet that there will be an Iceborne or Sunbreak style expansion in around 18 months to give us the full vision for this generation and add Master Rank gear on top.
That won’t mean much to newcomers, but returning players will know that this isn’t the finished article, despite being a wholly complete game. That hard-won armour and weaponry will be made a mockery of the moment that the expansion arrives. This fact has never felt as immediate to me as it does here, but I don’t want to wish the next year and a half away. There’s still a huge amount to enjoy.
Once you’ve rolled the first set of credits, and then completed the actual story some thirty hours later, you can settle into the rhythm of hunting, collecting and crafting. You’ll find tracks or monster parts while exploring, which give you access to special investigations and hunts, and they’re much more controlled than the insane number of quests you’d find in World.
Besides that, it’s all about the fashion and function. Your endgame drive is to collect every single piece of armour – which can immediately be used as cosmetic layered armour – as well as every single weapon, and to then min-max your build to your heart’s content.
It’s a timesink that Monster Hunter aficionados will know well, and it’s no less enticing here, particularly when the overall visuals and armour designs are an exquisite new high-point for the franchise. There’s also Artian weapon crafting to dabble in, collecting special rewards from certain hunts that you can combine to create specific weapon types, with a spectacular set of stats. An Artian blade was my endgame weapon, and so far it’s proving hard to put down.
Focus Attacks are a powerful new addition to the formula, and help to add even more weight to the already hefty strikes the game is known for, but Monster Hunter Wilds biggest change to combat has been the ability to take two weapons into the field with you, stowing an extra one away on your Seikret to give you options in the field. I played through much of the game with a Great Sword and a Bow, giving me the perfect mix of close combat and ranged offence. It helped to force me out of my comfort zone, changed the way I play the game, and slowed my progress down in the process – perhaps the lower difficulty was a deliberate choice to get people experimenting with different weapons?
It certainly helps that Monster Hunter Wilds’ bow feels unbelievably good to use, mixing up powerful dodging, different arrow types, and the ability to drop a hail of arrows on any monster’s head before following it up with explosive homing attacks. They’ve already tweaked this following the beta as people again felt that it was too easy, and there’s every chance that the team will go in and make further changes following the game’s initial release. It’s going to be very interesting to see how that pans out.
Monster Hunter Wilds is at its best when played with others. The difficulty scales up alongside this, and each monster’s elongated health keeps them in the fight far longer than when playing solo. There’s also crossplay here so you can hook up with players on any other platform, either sharing a lobby or using the new Link Party. This ties you together, no matter what platform you’re on, bringing you across automatically when one of you starts a quest. It’s a slight faff to set up, but once you’re connected with friends it works incredibly well, and has to be one of the greatest additions to the game’s underpinning tech.
Across the board there are further changes, both big and small. Amongst the group of players we’ve had for review, the one that has caused the most controversy is the changes to eating a meal. You used to have to dine before every quest, but now, since you’re out in the field, you can just whip out your BBQ spit, and make a host of hearty meals whenever you want, even in the middle of a fight.
It breaks the fiction of it, not least because you shouldn’t be able to do it when involved in combat, and sitting down to a meal with your friends in a lobby used to be a highlight. Whether that was due to the glorious cutscenes – there’s still some good munching action here at least – or Rise’s saccharine Bunny Dango song, it’s hard to say, but I’d like to see the option to sit down for food return.
This is getting into the weeds, though. After twenty years of monster hunting, it’s hard not to pick at the small things and miss the greater whole. Monster Hunter Wilds is absolutely a remarkable entry in the franchise, and one which furthers the lore and refines the action a few increments further. Is it the best one yet? Yes, it is, but greed and expectation will keep me waiting for the second wave, the Master Rank it will bring with it, and the ‘complete’ experience of this hunting generation.
