Monster Hunter Wilds Review
A Whole New Ecosystem For Us to Disrupt
This review contains a few unmarked story spoilers. Good thing I’m so late to the party, eh?
It’s fair to say that 2018’s Monster Hunter: World was quite the turning point for Capcom’s long-niche action franchise. With series innovations like seamless maps with no loading zones and a significantly increased focus on visuals and ecology, it remains not only the best-selling game in the Monster Hunter franchise, but the best-selling title in Capcom history. What was once a famously hardcore and obtuse experience with a small, but dedicated community had its gates flooded with newcomers, forming a vibrant community of hunters unheard of back in the PS2 days. Though the next installment, Monster Hunter Rise, would return to the more arcade-esque feel of titles like Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate, Monster Hunter Wilds is a clear successor toWorld’s more grounded approach. Not content to rest on their laurels, Capcom is aiming high with Wilds’ gameplay, world design, and story. It’s a game that’s trying to meet all the expectations of legacy fans while still providing something that feels brand new. No game can do everything at once; luckily, Monster Hunter Wilds succeeds in all the areas it really needed to, and comes out feeling fresh and exciting even if it can’t be everything it wanted to be.
One of the newest features of Wilds is its emphasis on story. Clearly influenced by the growing trend of cinematic storytelling in triple-A games, Wilds restructures the series’ typical introductory “low rank” fights into a cinematic narrative. As a tour through the locales and monsters that make up the gameplay loop, I thought it worked quite well. Rather than wasting time on pushover tutorial monsters, Wilds puts you up against a catalogue of mostly brand-new monsters designed specifically for the game’s detailed environments. Every step of the story has you learning more about the map’s various seasons, the cultures of the people who live there, and the way these monsters function as a part of that ecosystem. Placing the beasts you fight within a richly-detailed environment has always been the unique appeal of Monster Hunter, and this game may just do it better than all the others.
Wilds’ many original monsters are varied and unique, branching out from the series’ many wyverns and dragons with monsters more like chickens, octopi, or spiders. The highlights are each ecosystem’s apex predators. The Windward Plains’ Rey Dau - my favorite monster - is a flying wyvern that harnesses the energy of the plains’ frequent thunderstorms to launch massive bolts of lightning. The Oilwell Basin’s Nu Udra is a massive cephalopod able to coat its oily body in flames, perfectly suited to navigating the basin’s crags and crevices. Uth Duna may just seem like a chunky leviathan, but it throws its weight around in the Scarlet Forest’s waterways to literally wash hunters away. These monsters stand out even compared to the few harder fights in the game because they feel like fighting the entire ecosystem.
Unfortunately, the actual narrative is perhaps not the shining new story Capcom had hoped it would be. Wilds’ story is generally about making you feel like a big damn hero, jumping in to save the locals from monsters in the new land you’re surveying. Monster Hunter’s gameplay, especially at higher ranks, largely consists of sport-hunting animals constantly so you can turn their skin into a new pair of slacks; to say the least, this doesn’t exactly back up Wilds’ message. The story keeps creating scenarios where you kill the monsters in defense of others or yourself, but once you’re done with it, it’s just open season. Other than that, I don’t have much to say. Though this game is clearly trying to tell a more interesting story, even going to the effort of actually naming its characters unlike most past entries, it’s also just not doing a very good job. The themes and characters rarely see development, and when they do, it’s not very convincing. Ideas like the artificial “guardian” monsters flesh out the world, but thematically go almost nowhere.
This is a good example of the difference between storytelling and worldbuilding; you can have all the cool lore you can imagine, but the most resonant experiences come when you use those things to send a message. With such a richly developed world, the potential for storytelling in Monster Hunter is high, but Capcom refuses to pursue any of the truly interesting angles. How ethical are the Guild’s hunting practices? Does hunting actually stabilize the ecosystem? Does your average hunter really care much about the environment? Answering these questions could be interesting, but it also has the unfortunate risk of making players feel bad for engaging in the entertaining gameplay loop. I guess it’s fair for Capcom to play it safe in this department, but they can’t expect a strong narrative to emerge out of that.
Speaking of that gameplay loop, the fundamental Monster Hunter experience is as sharp as ever in Wilds. Monster Hunter’s signature combination of excellent boss fights and RPG mechanics remains a winner, and changes and refinements in this installment make it feel better than ever. Every monster makes for an interesting battle with varied movesets and environmental habits which you can learn to improve your hunts. You can take advantage of what you learn about monsters with useful gear like blinding Flash Pods or traps. You’ll have a lot of equipment at your disposal at any given time, but the customizable radial menu keeps all of your most important gear just a couple inputs away even during intense moments.
The series’ iconic system of targeting specific parts to weaken a monster, such as the ever-satisfying tail cut, is now complemented by the new wound mechanic. Attack a part of a monster enough, and a wound will open up. Targeting the wound with your weapon’s Focus Attack will briefly stun the monster and deal a lot of damage. Focus Attacks are used in conjunction with the new Focus Mode, a system which gives you precise control over where you aim your attacks.
The standard 14 Monster Hunter weapons all return here with lots of new moves; many of them feel like their most comprehensive iterations yet. New mechanics like the obligatory Perfect Guard or Offset Attacks, which you can use to deflect a monster’s attack and topple it over, combine with the precision of Focus Mode to provide the best sense of control in any Monster Hunter game. The weapons cover a wide range of playstyles, from simple to complex, melee to ranged, and heavy to nimble. Your choice of weapon can change the feeling of the whole game; any player is sure to find one they like.
Some people feel that these loaded weapons, combined with Focus Mode and wounds, make the game too easy. For Focus Mode, I’ll never complain about a game being easier because it feels better to play. Aiming manually in past Monster Hunter games can feel so clunky by comparison, and that’s not the kind of “challenge” I’m looking for. For the latter, wounds are very powerful - especially in multiplayer - but it already seems harder to open wounds up on some of the harder hunts introduced in recent updates. No Monster Hunter game has ever been at its hardest in its early days; I’m sure this game will provide some truly crushing battles in the years to come.
The lively ecosystem doesn’t just come through in the visuals, too; using the environment is key to success. Using your trusty slinger, you can yank down natural traps like vines or unstable rubble to ensnare or knock over monsters. If you’re running low on potions or other useful items like the blinding Flash Pods, you can snag the flora and fauna used to craft them and make more in the middle of a hunt. Monsters may get busy fighting each other in the middle of your hunt, giving you the time you need to heal up or sharpen your weapon. These systems make the game more than a boss fight simulator, creating a rugged sense of wilderness adventure in the midst of battle.
Outside of battle, you’ll need to forage and mine for materials to keep your equipment stocked up and your armor and weapons in top shape. It’s here that Wilds’ new “open world” mechanics really shine. Traditionally, Monster Hunter starts players out in a hub and only lets them into the main maps during time-limited quests. Wilds makes a no-brainer decision and says “Hey, why don’t we just let players run around these living, breathing ecosystems we designed whenever they want?” Rather than having to accept a quest just to grab some more herbs and honey, you can run out into the world whenever you like to find what you need. Adventuring is made all the easier by the seikret, a wonderful new mount that help you navigate every inch of the map. There’s even scores of endemic life and fish to catch and observe; there’s not much of a functional point to it, but the range of critters and plants in every ecosystem makes them feel that much more lively.
Monsters also roam the open environments, and this is a big improvement to the feel of hunting. Instead of picking the monster you want to fight from a list like in older games, you can actually just see what’s running around and choose what to fight from that. This helps make every fight against a monster feel more unique, since you aren’t just picking the same exact quest where you fight them over and over again. With many of the monsters being exclusive to high rank, I have a lot of fond memories of running into a new monster while roaming and getting acquainted with the hunt right then and there. What you encounter will depend on the area and the season, both factors which can keep hunts feeling fresh.
A lot of convenience features exist to accomodate grinding for monster parts within this system; you can rest at camp to change the time and season, fast travel between maps and pop-up camps within maps, and the seikret can automatically navigate towards marked waypoints. All of these features are covenient, but the latter two risk being too convenient. The maps aren’t so big or boring that fast travel is necessary to make navigating them bearable, and letting your seikret run you towards everything almost completely removes the need to engage with the world. The seikret feels just fine to control manually already (I always steer it myself on principle), and I think it would be reasonable to only allow fast travel from camps. As it stands, camps are hardly convenient for anything but fast travel since you can always fast travel back to base if you need to restock. Limiting fast travel like so would incentivize placing more camps to be closer to what you need regardless of where your hunts lead you.
Last, but most certainly not least, let’s talk multiplayer. Like always, this game allows you to hunt in teams of up to 4. You can gather a group up before setting out or call for help in the middle of a hunt with your SOS beacon. Getting into a hunt with your friends is kind of a hassle of private rooms and passwords, but once you’ve got it set up, it’s a lot of fun. Alternatively, you can fight alongside your impressively helpful Palico as long as you have less than three humans on the team. Both single player and multiplayer are fun in different ways. Single player is harder, but more satisfying and predictable; you get to claim every severed tail or broken wing as your own doing, and the monster’s always paying attention to you (or your Palico, but you can also leave them at home). Multiplayer makes things chaotic, with the monster’s attention getting pulled between every player, but it can be a lot easier and quicker to hunt this way. Unfortunately, other hunters may use up the three-faint limit, so hunting solo is more reliable if you’ve got the chops for it. A wide range of gestures, stickers with fully-customizable text, and custom auto-shoutouts make socializing fun in multiplayer, too. Unfortunately, the new exploration features feel much more geared towards solo play. If you can convince your friends to get in an environment link with you instead of just running hunt after hunt, it might be fun to explore together, but it hardly seems like what most people are after.
Overall, I’d say Monster Hunter Wilds succeeds at being a fresh new step for Monster Hunter. The story may have fallen flat, but that’s not what anybody ever played Monster Hunter for before, and video games are afforded the unique luxury of still providing something artistic even without a good narrative. The sense of adventure and immersion in Wilds’ detailed worlds, solo or with friends, makes for a worthy experience. The series’ signature hunts feel better than ever, and future updates promise a steady stream of new fights just as good as the ones we already have. Though the game could have taken more risks and improved its narrative, it had such an ambitious scope that it can get away with not meeting all of its benchmarks. Wilds does more than enough to freshen up the feel of Monster Hunter while still giving fans the core experience they’re looking for, and that’s all it really has to do. I’ve already logged a lot of time in this game, and I’m excited for the future of what it has to offer.