Conquering the Wilds: A Deep Dive into Monster Hunter’s Evolutionary Frontier

Monster Hunter is motivate, returning with a complete array of modifications and franchise innovations that define Monster Hunter Wilds separate from its forerunners – resulting in arguably the most user-friendly, crowd-pleasing and novice-friendly installment within the series to date.

Nonetheless, Capcom aims to pull off a delicate balancing act here. On one side, it seeks to attract a demographic of gamers who find comfort within the streamlined MonHun Lite experience provided by titles like Horizon Zero Dawn, yet who have always found the original Monster Hunter rather perplexing. The advantages of this approach are clear – new life, a larger audience, and Capcom keeps winning.

Conversely, there’s a fiercely dedicated and vocal base who genuinely appreciate that perplexity, in fact. Monster Hunter is joyfully unlike anything else available. Attracting a brand new audience risks alienating the existing one, and thus Monster Hunter frequently finds itself in a position where it wants to experiment with new ideas while borrowing elements from its contemporaries, all while preserving every intricate detail of the foundational gameplay loop, lest it face the harshest critique: ‘dumbing down’.

This core loop that Wilds seems much more eager to immerse you in, compared to its predecessor, Monster Hunter World. In preparation for the recent six-hour preview event at Capcom’s London headquarters, I revisited World in a futile attempt to avoid making too much of a fool of myself in front of industry peers. One of the most notable aspects was how long it actually takes the game to let you dive into the part where you begin hunting monsters. For a game with hardly any downtime, Monster Hunter World is astonishingly verbose in its first few hours. Its extended tutorial section feels like onboarding for a temp agency rather than signing up for a lifetime of desert-based wildlife combat.

I’m pleased to report that this is the foremost significant change evident in Wilds – right from the start, it plunges you into an exhilarating action-packed segment: a thrilling arcade run through arid landscapes, pursued by an enormous, furious ostrich creature alongside mini-sandworms, creating a bizarre blend reminiscent of Frank Herbert’s Dune and Road Rash on the Sega Mega Drive. And you know what, as an opening move, it bloody works. It gets you hyped. The genuine tutorial elements unfold gradually throughout the initial half-dozen or so story missions, with your equipment setting up camp as they appear.

Since this is an experience largely centered on enhancing your equipment, the smithy receives a suitably lavish introduction as Gemma, the enthusiastic blacksmith (complete with Capcom’s signature bare midriff), manages the forge for you in a flamboyant display that resembles more of a Broadway musical about shoeing horses than traditional metalworking. It’s wonderfully absurd, but this is a game where your cat is a well-mannered assistant that boosts your productivity and never messes up your floors. It has its own distorted reality, and you just have to accept it.

Traversal undergoes a significant transformation in Wilds with the introduction of Raptor-like Wyvern mounts known as Seikrets, which is rather perplexing since while you gallivant around telling people you adore riding an animal yet it remains a secret, you risk receiving a visit from the authorities. These mounts are essential for navigating the vast biomes in Wilds, but they also reveal the vertical dimensions of the map – carving paths along rocky cliff faces and tree canopies that can shortcut lengthy journeys and expose uncharted territories – just like your Palamute mounts did in Monster Hunter Rise. They even come in handy during battles, allowing you to perch atop them and launch devastating attacks from the sky.

Speaking of combat (I mean, we should address it, given that it is 90% of the game), it feels largely reminiscent of World’s mechanics, fundamentally based around the same classic 14 weapons. The significant changes include ‘Focus Mode’ and ‘Wounds’. The former enables you to unleash powerful strikes by concentrating your attacks on specific body parts. Wounds, on the other hand, glow red once they are ready to be struck, and can renew if you cause the appropriate animation, meaning they aren’t something you can simply exploit. Overall, combat now heavily revolves around creating opportunities for focused attacks as well as chipping away at a huge health bar – a task that is more enjoyable with friends and even random players, as was the case in the previous title. This time, however, your SOS signal can summon a competent team of AI-controlled hunters to assist you, making Wilds significantly more enjoyable as a solo experience than World ever was. Consequently, your individual playthroughs are also far less dependent on that ever-evasive metric of simultaneous players.