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Over a decade enjoying Eldensoulsborne games should have cured me of any pride or hubris. Alas, I am an imperfect vessel. Monster Hunter’s combat, which I once wrongly assumed would come easily to me with my Souls-lover badge in hand, has always thwarted me, dooming me to forever watch my friends battle their dinosaurs without ever donning the hunter’s mantle myself. Until I equipped the dual blades in Monster Hunter Wilds, that is. Now I finally get it.
I bounced off Monster Hunter World not once, but twice—first on PS4 in 2017 and then again when it launched on PC later that year. Any time my Monster Hunter veteran friends would pull me into a hunt, I’d watch them shred that early game Anjanath while I struggled to get a single hit in. Embarrassing.
Something about the specific input delay, the heaviness of the dodge roll, and the character movement eluded me. I’d get stuck slashing at empty air half a second after a monster turned away or swiped with a tail I failed to dodge more times than I care to admit.
I swapped from the switch axe to the longsword to dual blades and none of them seemed to click. “I can play the other action RPG with big weapons and bigger enemies,” I thought. “So why not this one?” Something about my high endurance and rapier-loving Souls player style just did not translate to fighting big critters.
I never did successfully wrestle Monster Hunter World to my will. I skipped over Monster Hunter Rise, detoured to the turn-based combat in Monster Hunter Stories 2 (which I did enjoy), and started sweating as Monster Hunter Wilds approached knowing that I could crash out again, fated to FOMO.
Things started badly for me in the beta. Should I have known better than to grab the switch axe first again? Yes, but I’ve already established that pride was my downfall. The same slightly-too-slow reactions and whiffing at monsters initially plagued me and I worried I was once again going to fail at becoming a hunter.
One of my MonHun sicko colleagues saved me with a nudge to try the dual blades again and it was like I could at last hear the divine chorus of hunters past singing across the ages. The pace of dual blade strikes actually gels with my style and the dodge roll doesn’t leave me underfoot of my quarry.
Dual blade “blade dance” combos are quick and slick. I can sheathe them to heal faster than with larger weapons. The Demon Mode and its specific ability to dodge through incoming attacks was made for a Souls player. Our dual blade builds explainer might put it into MonHunter parlance better than I am, but damn it, the knives feel good. I finally feel like the Souls player in me is an asset, not badly-tuned muscle memory holding me back.
Even the quiet side conversations among PCG’s veteran hunters asking “do the dual blades feel too easy this time?” cannot dampen my spirit. I went Beyblade on a Balahara’s ass and I feel alive. I’m finally killing monsters all by myself—well, aside from my Palico—without an SOS flare or getting carted by the most basic early-game enemies.
It’s not all just down to the weapon choice though. As explained in our Monster Hunter Wilds review, there is a very “streamlined” feel that it brings to the series. Parts of Wilds are still archaic as hell, but the Focus Mode system that lets me aim melee attacks and the wound system (more on that in our Monster Hunter Wilds tips) that powers the above-mentioned dual (bey)blade effect, are a big part of what’s helping me feel more at home here.
Maybe Souls players who favor greatswords and hammers have found their skills more obviously transferable to Monster Hunter games already. There’s at least one unfortunate hollow among the PC Gamer significant others who’s with me in the competent-Souls-player-to-failed-monster-hunter pipeline, so I suspect there may be literally dozens more of us around the world. I say unto the rest of ye: main dual blades. At least to start with.
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Kurt Indovina
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