Monster Hunter Wilds Hands-On: Streamlining Hunts for Newbies and Veterans

When it comes to swinging big weapons at even bigger monsters, Capcom’s Monster Hunter franchise rises above the rest — and I got to play a chunk of the next game in the series ahead of its upcoming release. Monster Hunter Wilds is coming out in a matter of weeks on Feb. 28 on PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC, and the slice of the early game I got my hands on had lots of familiar gameplay for returning fans. 

It’s understandable for Capcom to hew close to 2018’s Monster Hunter: World, which was a colossal success that broke the game into the mainstream (the game sold 25 million copies as of last March, the publisher said). For much of this preview, I wouldn’t have been surprised if this was a DLC expansion for World, as a lot of the hunt-specific gameplay loop is similar: choose a powerful monster to hunt down, roam into the wilderness evading or killing lesser beasts, engage your target for a prolonged fight and, when victorious, harvest it for parts to make better equipment. 

But so long as players don’t expect any grand deviations from the formula, I saw plenty of smaller ways Monster Hunter Wilds adds its own unique touches. This is the first game in the series made for the current generation of consoles, and the SSD on the PS5 I played the preview on meant unnoticeable load times as you venture from the frontier camp to the wildlands in the series’ first true open world. Graphics look sharper than ever, and the upgraded hardware allowed developers to group wandering beasts into behaving like herds that graze together and protect each other.  

“One thing we’ve always wanted to do in the past that we researched was the implementation of herds and packs of monsters, which is a huge factor in Monster Hunter Wilds,” said Ryozo Tsujimoto, producer of the Monster Hunter series since its inception. “Because each monster will have a mind of its own and move on its own, it had a huge effect on how users experience gameplay.”

Developing for modern hardware with massive memory and fast processing opened up new ways to reflect a world in flux, Tsujimoto said. Beyond hunters like the player and the monsters they take down, there are people who also live in the same environment that’s changing over time, including the climate and environment. With higher performance in modern computing, Wilds can move a lot of this processing in the background to achieve fluid changes that persist, even if the player doesn’t see it.

“So for example, there may be monsters fighting each other in the background and have wounds that you didn’t implement, but it’s there because it was fighting a monster somewhere that players can’t see,” said Monster Hunter Wilds game director Yuya Tokuda. 

This is the kind of immersion awaiting players in Wilds, though the first they’ll experience is simple enough: walking outside camp to find beast-filled wilds laid out before them without a loading screen in sight.

What else is new in the Wilds?

From the couple hours I got to play, Monster Hunter Wilds’ iterations on the formula are all for the better. After releasing Monster Hunter: World’s expansion Iceborne, Capcom’s developers did a lot of research to figure out where players were dropping off from the game. The Seikret mounts are one innovation in Wilds to more quickly direct players to combat, as they make it easier to run between areas by auto-navigating to hunts, Tokuda said. 

The team made other developments to reduce the daunting choices awaiting new players, like adding a questionnaire just after the game starts that helps them suss out which of the game’s 14 weapons suits them best. Gemma, a nonplayer character who acts as the player’s personal blacksmith, also makes recommendations for which armor and upgrades to pick reflecting which new rare materials they pick up after successful hunts. 

Just don’t expect any new weapons in Wilds. Whenever they start planning a new entry in the series, the developers discuss how to evolve the weapons they have, Tokuda explained — and there’s always the possibility of adding a new weapon type. But it turns out it’s tough to introduce something completely new that can belong as well as the 14 weapons that have been refined over two decades of Monster Hunter games. “It’s hard to think of a new weapon to catch up on those 20 years worth of experience in the past,” Tokuda said. 

Carrying a second weapon in the saddle is my favorite new feature in Wilds, keeping the challenge of endurance hunts while relieving the annoyance of having to go back to town to swap out a weapon that doesn’t work. The wound system has been refined, adding exploitable weak points in areas you keep attacking that can stagger the enemy if hit enough. They can be tough to strike with less precise arms like the Great Sword, though. 

Hands-on hunts: From haunting spider beasts to farting hippo lizards

After playing through the same introduction I saw alongside my colleague Sean Booker at Gamescom in August, I jumped into initial hunts for the Quematrice, a cockatrice-like large and deadly bird and a beastly Doshugama across the plains, both of which served as a sort of tutorial. Onward I went into a densely wooded forest and discovered a few new delights.

First, I enjoyed the benefits of new Pop-Up Camps, which let you swap equipment and serve as fast-travel hubs (helpful if you die in a hunt). Second, I ran into a group of feral versions of the Monster Hunter series’ civilized cat-like Palicos, the tribal Lynians, that would allow me passage through the woods if I hunted a creature plaguing them: the spider-like Lala Barina.

Every other beast I hunted in the preview fit in the Monster Hunter series’ reliable spectrum of big game, which typically runs a spectrum between scaly dragon to rampaging quadrupedal mammal (with a few massive avian raptors thrown in for good measure). But the Lala Barina was an arresting departure from the monsters I’m used to: a spindly limbed white-fluffed arachnoid that, when agitated, revealed a blood-red layered rear end — essentially, it unfurled a rose-like butt to attack me. Elegant, bizarre and dangerous, the Lala Barina is what I hoped to see more of in Wilds.

The catlike Lynians (or Wudwuds, as they called themselves) asked me to take on another hunt to help clear out their forest: the Conglala, a hippo-faced scaly beast that kind of looked like King K.Rool. The haunting spider-like boss from before was cleared from my memory as the new boss swung his rear end toward my hunter and let rip a massive fart complete with blowback brown cloud. Monster Hunter Wilds contains multitudes.

My preview ended with a pair of group fights that shook me from my solo experience, both set later in the game. Freed from the pressure to hunt “optimally,” I set out in my first four-hunter fight against the gross bug-like Rompopolo equipped with the Hunting Horn, which in this game is more bagpipes than didgeridoo, which let me play up my Bard-loving support hunting fantasy. 

While it’s fun to take down big monsters yourself, my Monster Hunter Wilds enjoyment ratcheted up with three other hunters — not just because the pressure was spread out to my fellow warriors, but also that it set the scale appropriately. Whittling down a big boss’s health bar alone turns to monotony after a while, but darting in between its area attacks feels so much more fun in a group. I finished my preview taking down a Nerscylla, another spider-like beast whose scything forelegs were no match for the four of us (and my mighty horn).

Watch this: I Played Capcom’s Upcoming Game Monster Hunter Wilds at Gamescom

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