A bigger, bolder, wilder World than ever

Monster Hunter Wilds feels a lot like its predecessor, 2018’s Monster Hunter World. The fifth mainline iteration of the franchise definitely plays like an evolution of its predecessor, which made the jump to serious hardware after the series’ humble beginnings on handhelds, and not so much of a reinvention or revolutionary step forward into something different. 

But that’s not to say that Wilds is an exact copy of World because there have been several improvements this time around that have made the experience much more satisfying and worth every second.

A vibrant, evolving World

The meat of Monster Hunter, its beast-slaying combat, is as fun as ever with the addition of Focus Mode. Using the mode’s Focus Strikes allows you to deal big damage to weak points on monsters you create while fighting them. When you come in for a massive hammer swing or huge dual dagger combo, you sometimes create wounds. Using L2 to aim and then R1 to attack, you can then “break” the wound for extra damage. And it always feels so, so good to pull off with any of the game’s 14 weapon types.

Taking a page out of spin-off Monster Hunter Rise’s playbook, the Seikret is a game-changing mount you can ride and glide with to traverse MH Wilds’ massive maps. While Rise had the dog-like Canyne as your mount, the Seikret looks like a cross between a bird and a velociraptor, and it’s fully customizable cosmetically, along with your hunter and your Palico cat sidekick. 

Using your Seikret to explore the maps, which now allow for seamless travel, is always a good time. Even if you’ve done an expedition in the same area before, the regions dynamically change with different weather, time of day, flora, and fauna, so it’s always worth heading back to check out something new or something you missed.

One of the single best additions to this game, however, is how you’re able to equip a second weapon on your Seikret, hop on its back, and swap to it seamlessly during combat. I’ve had so much fun deciding which weapon types to use depending on the monster I’m fighting.

Sometimes, you may want a hammer to break a monster’s skull, and other times, you need to swap to a greatsword or greataxe to chop off its tail that you need for a weapon upgrade. It just adds another incredible wrinkle to how it feels to go on hunts.

Using pop-up camps that you can place within the world map, fast travel is unlocked, allowing you to get back into the action quicker than ever. These are customizable and dynamic, too, and can actually be destroyed by wildlife in the area but rebuilt quickly enough.

Wilds’ World is big and pretty, but unfortunately, the review build suffered from some annoying performance issues involving texture bugs and some big framerate drops, even on high-end PCs. My hope is that the final product will feel better than my time did because it’s a rare weakness in the game.

As big as you want it to be

MH Wilds’ storyline is nothing groundbreaking or noteworthy, and serves as more of a backdrop to the excellent gameplay loop, giving you a reason to fight bigger, weirder, and stronger monsters as the story progresses. The Wilds surname is fitting, though, as the bulk of the story involves you and your companions venturing ever further into uncharted territory to find new monsters, materials, and even new people. But the game doesn’t truly begin until you’ve finished the main story.

Once the story ends, the endgame begins, and this is where the bulk of player time will be spent in MH Wilds. In my time with the game, I haven’t begun to scratch the surface of what endgame entails (especially with friends), but High Rank missions are back, bringing in a slew of new gear to unlock and upgrade while fighting a big roster of both new and returning monsters.

The difficulty ramps up, offering different variants of monsters you’ve fought before and even new ones. And with plans already announced for seasonal updates that add new monsters, starting with Mizutsune in the first post-launch update this spring, you can always come back to find something new. Don’t be surprised to hear about a new DLC expansion like MH World’s Iceborne or Rise’s Sunbreak in a year or less.

Some players may finish the story and be ready to move on to their next game, but my bet is that most players will be so hooked by the gameplay and grind for better gear that they will continue on into High Rank and beyond for 100-plus hours.

My one warning to new players is that the control scheme is odd, and always has been in Monster Hunter. The button combos needed to fight are relatively unlike most other action games, and took me a while to get reacquainted with, even after playing MH World for hundreds of hours. Give it some time and practice before giving up because the reward of this game’s joy is worth it.

Repetition for emphasis

Ever heard of the term “repetition for emphasis”? It’s a literary device used in things like poetry and speeches to drive a point home by repeating the same words, sounds, or phrases over and over. Monster Hunter is kind of the same in a way, because you will find yourself repeating missions and monster fights to emphasize how the key gameplay hook is grinding for better gear, especially in High Rank.

You will often need several of certain key body parts dropped by monsters to upgrade your armor and weaponry so that you can take down whatever’s next. And you will need to craft more, better weapons, with different critical hit rates and elemental effects to take down all of the monsters you come across.

This is a bit of a rinse-and-repeat cycle, but it works so well in this game because the combat and exploration are so satisfying. You’ll need to do the same for gathering materials in the wild, which is easier than ever thanks to the Hook Slinger now allowing you to grab things from a distance instead of having to run right up to them.

Grinding for gear upgrades never feels like a chore in MH Wilds, and you never have to do it alone if you don’t want to. Using an SOS Flare, you can call in assistance from up to three other players or NPCs to assist you in your fight. You’re never truly alone in the game unless you want to be, and that’s fine too.

When diving into MH Wilds, it’s safe to expect more of the same fun, addictive monster-hunting combat, which incentivizes foraging, deep customization, exploration, and endless loot grind all wrapped up in a promise for more with future free updates and a likely expansion in the pipeline. It’s an early potential GOTY candidate for me.