Monster Hunter Wilds Review – New Frontier

I thought I would miss the Wirebug from 2021’s Monster Hunter Rise. Not just because of the verticality and fluidity it introduced to traversal, but also because of its vital role in combat–whether you were incorporating Silkbind attacks into combos or using the Wire-dash to avoid certain death by the skin of your teeth. The Wirebug was a fantastic addition, and yet its absence is something I never really felt in Monster Hunter Wilds. Such is the strength of its combat, the seamlessness of its open world, and the impact both of these facets have on a core gameplay loop that remains infinitely compelling. There are a few missteps along the way–of both an artistic and technical variety–but Wilds is another excellent entry in Capcom’s beloved series.

For seasoned veterans, that core gameplay loop will be instantly recognizable. You hunt monsters, craft their parts to make better weapons and armor, and then use these upgrades to hunt even more challenging monsters. It’s an evergreen formula, although an emphasis on narrative hasn’t always been part of the equation. The lone exception is 2018’s Monster Hunter World, and in many ways, Wilds feels like a continuation of that game’s approach to storytelling. By integrating Guild and Village quests into one cohesive story with multiple characters and a fully voiced protagonist, Capcom clearly intends for the story to be more than the afterthought it has traditionally been.

The game’s opening moments see the Hunter’s Guild arrive in the Forbidden Lands: an uncharted region believed to be uninhabited for the past thousand-odd years. This misconception changed, however, when a young boy named Nata was discovered near the border. Pensive and frightened, Nata recounts how his village was attacked by a fearsome monster known as the White Wrath, forcing the Hunter’s Guild to embark on an expedition to investigate this mysterious creature and potentially save Nata’s Indigenous people from annihilation. As a hunter, it’s your role to slay a bestiary of monsters and protect the balance of the ecosystem in this dangerous new frontier.

What follows is a predictable Monster Hunter tale, despite the renewed focus on storytelling. Surprises are few and far between as it adopts a narrative throughline similar to other games in the series, to the point where you can see each story beat coming from a mile away. If you’ve played Monster Hunter before, you know the deal: Something is upsetting the ecology and it’s your job to defeat several aggressive beasts before uncovering what’s responsible.

Major characters are slightly more fleshed out than those you met in earlier games, with backstories you might want to dig into–such as Alma, your handler, whose past training at the Guild academy gives some insight into Monster Hunter’s lore. Nata’s character development is also relatively easy to invest in, as he goes from exhibiting a deep sense of guilt and powerlessness to gradually finding his purpose in this hostile world. For the most part, however, Wilds’ story is content with subjecting you to several lengthy exposition dumps, with more than a few meandering walk-and-talk moments thrown in for good measure. The story does provide some context to each hunt and monster but doesn’t otherwise add anything meaningful. Though Monster Hunter has never suffered for its barebones stories, Wilds’ narrative focus draws arguably too much attention to a weak tale when a less-is-more approach would suffice.

Fortunately, a dull narrative doesn’t adversely affect the game’s core gameplay loop and monster-slaying action too much. While there aren’t any new weapon types in Wilds, the 14 available have all been tweaked in some capacity to make for a more fluid and dynamic style of combat that’s still quintessentially Monster Hunter. Armaments that can guard, for instance–such as the Great Sword and Lance–can also execute a Perfect Guard if you time your block just before a monster attack connects. This negates all damage and lets you follow up with a gratifying counterattack, but also triggers the new Power Clash mechanic when performed against specific attacks. From here, you’re thrust into a brief power struggle as you battle the monster for the upper hand, clashing steel with fangs as you’re engulfed by what must be the foulest-smelling breath imaginable. If you’re victorious, you’ll dish out some damage and stagger the creature, opening it up to further attacks.

A few other weapons–like the Hunting Horn and Switch Axe–also have access to new Offset Attacks, which allow you to interrupt a monster’s attack by hitting it with one of your own at the exact same time. You can then follow up with unique strikes specific to each weapon while it’s disoriented. Neither Perfect Guard nor Offset Attacks occur too frequently, but being able to read a monster’s moves and respond with a flash of cinematic flair is endlessly satisfying, adding another layer of depth to Monster Hunter’s thrilling battles.

Beyond this, the general feel of combat is much more fluid than before. There’s still a palpable sense of weight behind each strike, but even heavier weapons like the Great Sword and Hammer feel more nimble than ever before. This is partly because interrupting a combo to dodge out of harm’s way is so responsive, but also because you’re sometimes able to shift your positioning mid-strike, allowing you to adjust your angle of attack without halting a combo in its tracks. Good positioning is still essential, but being able to make these micro adjustments means you’re less likely to completely whiff on an entire string of attacks.

This is particularly useful when combined with Wilds’ new Focus Mode, which allows you to manually aim attacks by pulling the left trigger. While this can be useful for striking specific monster parts, its primary usage revolves around targeting wounds. By dishing out enough damage to an enemy, you’ll open up deep cuts which are then highlighted in Focus Mode, allowing you to hit a wounded area with a Focus Strike to destroy it, deal massive damage, and stagger the monster. Not only is this an expedited route to ending an enemy’s existence, but each wound you destroy also rewards you with additional monster parts for crafting new weapons and armor. There are few better feelings during a hunt than unleashing one of these powerful attacks and seeing the fruits of your labor scattering in every direction as the monster stumbles and falls.

While you can play through the whole game solo, Wilds makes it easy to join up with other people, whether they’re friends or not. You can invite pals to two different party types: one for embarking on quests and another for going on field surveys–the latter letting you explore and hunt as many monsters as you want. You can also send out SOS flares or respond to one if you’re eager to hunt with random players. This process is usually pretty quick, but on the rare occasion that your SOS goes unanswered, Wilds will gradually fill your party with NPC companions who can more than hold their own in a fight. Multiplayer has always been integral to the Monster Hunter experience, and its implementation here is seamless.

In a first for the series, Wilds also allows you to take two separate weapons on a hunt. While one is equipped on your person, the other is carried by your Seikret–a Chocobo-esque mount similar to the Canynes from Rise. You can summon your Seikret at any point to use as a launch pad for mounting monsters or a ferry to take you from one location to another while you sharpen your weapon and apply buffs. Or, you can hop on to quickly swap out weapons, creating various possibilities depending on the situation and your play style. You could take two versions of the same weapon into battle, each with a different kind of elemental damage for tackling two different monsters on a single hunt. Alternatively, you might switch to a faster weapon like the Dual Blades to deal with an especially quick and aggressive monster, or swap to a ranged weapon when playing with others to create a more balanced team. The choice is yours, but the decision to introduce weapon swapping is clearly predicated on Wilds’ shift to an open world.

The strength of [Monster Hunter Wilds’] combat, the seamlessness of its open world, and the impact both of these facets have on a core gameplay loop that remains infinitely compelling

The Forbidden Lands is partitioned into five distinct biomes, yet unlike past games in the series, it’s possible to seamlessly travel from one to another while on foot. This isn’t something you’re likely to do when fast traveling exists, so Wilds doesn’t particularly feel like an open-world game. Instead, this change is notable for how it alters the game’s overall flow. Rather than having an entirely separate hub area where you’ll find the smithy, cook meals, replenish your items, and join friends, each biome now has a base camp that fulfills the same purpose. Since these base camps exist in the open world, you can simply walk out and be on a hunt. There are no loading screens, and preparation doesn’t feel disconnected from everything else; you can even pull out a portable barbeque at any point if you need to cook and eat another meal while out in the field. The same is true after you’ve completed a hunt, too. While most story missions make you return to camp, others carry on if you want to continue gathering materials or track down another monster to slay. This might seem like a minor change, but it strips away a lot of the bloat and ensures that downtime is minimal.

The biomes themselves are certainly varied, from the swaying grasslands and sand-swept dunes of the Windward Plains to the rocky, deep sea-inspired bowels of the Oilwell Basin. Some are teeming with life–a home to roving herds of small and large monsters alike. Others, however, are bereft of living beings beyond the land’s most dangerous creatures, such is the hostile nature of the environment itself. Locations like the frigid Iceshard Cliffs are vertically connected, full of deep chasms and otherworldly platforms suspended in midair–a stark contrast to the Scarlet Forest and the way it spreads out before you in every conceivable direction.

Weather also plays a crucial role in the Forbidden Lands, as its ever-changing climate veers wildly from harsh to tranquil. The Fallow period is one of desolation, as hungry predators roam the land looking for food. With resources so scarce, monsters are prone to aggression and often fight each other. This is followed by an ecology-altering Inclemency that differs from one biome to the next. In the Windward Plains, it manifests as an all-consuming sandstorm roiling with thunder and lightning. In the Scarlet Forest, it’s a torrential downpour that floods the area, giving aquatic monsters an edge in combat. Once the Inclemency has passed, the land experiences a period of Plenty as life blossoms again and the weather mellows. Monsters aren’t as aggressive and are less likely to form packs, while the abundance of endemic life gives you more chances to use the environment to heal and apply buffs.

Fighting a monster amidst a swirling sandstorm is an eye-catching spectacle, with the threat of lightning strikes adding another exciting element to a hunt. But these moments are rare and undermined by how frequently the game’s weather system comes at a cost to its visuals. While the Plenty period has flashes of striking beauty with its blue skies and vibrant vegetation, the Fallow period is decidedly drab. This is by design, of course, but plenty of other games have offered bleak environments that aren’t this much of an eyesore. The muted lighting just makes everything look flat, and the desaturated aesthetic results in a washed-out look that isn’t helped by the prominence of browns and greys in its color palette. It’s difficult to even tell the difference between night and day during the Fallow period.

Muddy, low-resolution textures do little to alleviate the problem, although this is mainly confined to the environments–character models, and especially the monsters, still look fantastic for the most part. There is a high-resolution texture pack on PC, but it wasn’t available to download during the review period, so I haven’t tested it out. Not that it’s a viable option for most people anyway, considering 16GB of VRAM is required to use it. I have an RTX 3090, Ryzen 7 7800X3D, and 32GB of RAM, and managed to achieve a somewhat steady 60fps with DLSS on “performance” and everything else set to “high.” It’s playable, despite the occasional dip, but anything higher than that was too erratic, and the visual fidelity still left me wanting for such a demanding game.

These issues are disappointing, but at least they never hampered how much fun I had fighting the game’s rogues’ gallery of diverse monsters. Whether you’re battling returning foes like the flatulent Congalala and fire-spewing Yian Kat-Ku or taking on a slew of exciting, new beasts, there’s never a dull moment when engaged in the throes of Wilds’ combat. Take the fearsome Quematrice for example: this massive wyvern might resemble a Tyrannosaurus Rex with its short-armed build, but the comb protruding from its head gives it an appearance reminiscent of the mythological cockatrice.

When it’s not trying to peck you to death like a giant, angry chicken, it’s spreading a flammable powder over the battlefield that ignites with each sweep of its sagging tail. Or there’s the Rompopolo, a nightmarish creature covered in bulbous sacks that could only be filled with poisonous gas. With a stinger on the end of its tail, this mosquito-inspired monstrosity loves to inject the ground, making use of the Oilwell Basin’s flammable oilsilt to create violent explosions. Deflating its sacks offers some reprieve, but then you’re left with a truly horrifying sight.

I won’t spoil any of the other monsters you’ll come across, but there’s seemingly no end to the cavalcade of creative monster designs coming out of Capcom. This has always been Monster Hunter’s greatest strength. Whether you’re alone or playing with others, Capcom understands the value of throwing you into one climactic battle after another in what would be a set-piece boss fight in almost any other game. Monster Hunter Wilds suffers from some performance issues, the environments are often bland, and the story feels superfluous, but when you’re face-to-face with a fearsome monster, few situations are quite as riveting. Monster Hunter Wilds may only make iterative improvements to further refine the formula, but that’s all it really needed to do.