Monster Hunter World: Iceborne introduced the Guiding Lands — a dynamic, borderline sandbox map that had monsters of all shapes and sizes come and go as players investigated its more open environments.
Monster Hunter Wilds is essentially the Guiding Lands, but spread across an entire Monster Hunter title. And as a result, Wilds pushes the series in a slightly more freeform direction, where quests can be issued on the fly and each explorable ecosystem feels alive and obsessively detailed.
Having said that, Wilds also opts for a more structured, story-driven campaign, and it’s only when the credits roll do you truly feel like you’re let off the game’s well-meaning but surprisingly oppressive leash.
We’ll say it right now: some players won’t like Wilds’ approach. The 20-hour narrative can be very handhold-y, as you’re funneled between cutscenes, dialogue, and tutorial-like missions. If you already know Monster Hunter, some of this stuff is going to be a slog — and that’s without even touching upon the title’s hit and miss storytelling.
Capcom’s tried to make this instalment matter in terms of characters and plot, but a combination of banal writing and surface-level personalities stunt events from beginning to end. Simply put, the narrative is not why you should be playing Wilds (but most of you saw that coming).
Now look, we don’t want to completely bury the developer’s efforts in dung pods. To its credit, Capcom has crafted what is probably the most welcoming Monster Hunter experience yet; where the linear campaign may drag for some, others might appreciate its willingness to introduce gameplay systems and mechanics at a steady pace.
And to be fair, a few of the story beats are reasonably interesting, especially when they delve into the histories and cultures of the game’s various tribes. Plus, the actual cutscenes — the properly rendered cinematics — tend to be brilliant, boasting top notch animation and direction. Almost every monster gets some kind of dramatic intro, and they really help set the stage for the incoming clash.
We like how your custom hunter is handled, too. Wilds, as its name suggests, takes place in a broadly untouched region known as the Forbidden Lands, and your hunter is recruited to be one of the expedition’s chief problem solvers.
Your fully voiced protagonist gets a lot of screentime, as they face down seemingly unstoppable threats and impossible odds. The game does a great job of making you feel like the hero — one of the only members of the team who’s actually got the skill and expertise to fell creatures ten times your size.
So Wilds’ story isn’t all bad, but it does find itself in that awkward spot where Capcom’s clearly sunk a lot of resources into it, and yet it rarely commands your undivided attention outside of those fantastic cutscenes.
Thankfully, there are plenty of deeply engaging battles spread across the campaign to keep you pushing on. And, mercifully, there are no gimmicks this time around — like the tedious Zora Magdaros fights in World, or the bloated Rampage quests in Rise — to distract from pure monster hunting excellence.
Gameplay has always been king in this franchise, and it’s no different in Wilds. Capcom could have come up with one of the best-told stories on PS5 and it’d still be the beast-bashing, creature-crushing gameplay that keeps you coming back for more.
We’re tempted to say that this is peak Monster Hunter with regards to the action. Fundamentally, Wilds sticks to the series’ decades-spanning blueprint of going toe-to-toe with hulking opponents, and bringing them to heel with a collection of outrageously oversized weaponry.
Combat remains crunchy in a way that no other property has been able to replicate. Without wanting to sound psychotic, the act of smacking, slicing, and gouging all manner of colossal foe is eternally satisfying; there’s just nothing like Monster Hunter when it comes to laying into large lizards.
And that’s what sets Wilds apart: momentum. The flow of combat now hinges on a new ‘wounds’ system, where monsters develop visible injuries in places that have been repeatedly targeted by the player(s). Further blows inflict additional damage, and wounds can then be ‘destroyed’ in order to really pile pressure on your overgrown adversaries.
Not only does destroying a wound deal massive damage, it often forces your foe to the floor, swinging the battle’s momentum in your favour. This system gives Wilds’ action an aggressive edge that better rewards players who pick the perfect time to strike.
Wilds is still about knowing your enemy’s attack patterns and mastering your chosen weapon type, but wounds bring an even greater sense of satisfaction; there’s now a defined climax to chipping away at your opponent, knowing that your well-placed wounds will soon result in a serious amount of all-or-nothing damage.
To some extent, we suppose that this is a win for accessibility as well. It’s not that wounds make combat easier, it’s that they provide an effective route for big damage even if you’re a relatively inexperienced player — and that can mean a world of difference for someone who may not have clicked with the more methodical approach of past titles.
While we’re on the topic of accessibility, it should be noted that Wilds feels more natural to navigate than its predecessors. Most notably, hub areas now exist within the game’s larger environments — you just flit between them as you please without having to select a quest or join an ongoing investigation.
Wilds is structured more like an open world adventure, where you simply head off in a direction of your choosing, or towards a custom map marker — and it helps that its varied environments feel so rich. To be clear, this isn’t a fully open world; Wilds is broken up between several large zones, but each of them is impressively dynamic and well-realised.
As alluded, the game excels when you’re out in the field, free from the relative shackles of the main story. You travel between camps, harvesting resources and cooking up delicious-looking meals to maintain your stat boosts between battles. All the while, day turns to night, and the game’s superb weather system dictates which monsters roam the land. At its best, Wilds provides a sense of proper off-the-cuff adventuring.
What’s more, fast travel — via selecting a known location on your map — takes no time at all thanks to the PS5’s lack of load times. There’s a fluidity to Wilds that Monster Hunter hasn’t had before, and that extends to the hunts themselves, which can now be undertaken dynamically just by assaulting a creature of your choosing.
Likewise, getting a co-op session up and running is easier than ever — and it’s about damn time. Depending on your settings, you can welcome anyone to any hunt that you begin — dynamic or not — and you can peruse ongoing quests at any time by talking with Alma, your constant companion. Again, there’s no need to load back into a hub and hit up a specific co-op quest counter.
Believe it or not, you don’t even need to fumble about with room codes. There’s just a straight-up ‘Invite’ option on the menu now — a crazy concept, we know — and when you first boot the game, you can choose whether to begin in a public, private, or single-player session. It’s taken about 20 releases for Capcom to get it right, but Wilds finally feels like a title with modern online functionality.
AI-controlled ‘Support Hunters’ are available as well — a welcome carryover from Rise — letting even the most unsociable of slayers group up for tougher encounters. And of course, you’ve got your trusty Palico partner to fall back on. Your feline ally’s able to use a wide variety of tools this time around, and their support can prove to be a real boon for both beginners and veterans.
But even with Wilds’ conveniences, Monster Hunter remains a complex creation. Legacy knowledge still counts for so much when you’re learning the ins and outs of this new instalment; convoluted control schemes, clunky inventory management, and menus buried within menus are all elements that will inevitably frustrate newbies.
It’s a shame that Capcom has never quite been able to streamline these components, but then in some ways, they’re what allow Monster Hunter to maintain its mechanical depth. As per usual, there’s a superbly addictive learning curve to Wilds, and once you get over the initial hump, it’s a game that may never stop giving.
Less forgivable however, is the game’s performance. Three graphics modes are on offer, prioritising visuals, frame rate, or a mix of both — and none of them are particularly close to being perfect. We’d recommend the dedicated performance mode because it’s the closest you’ll get to a stable 60 frames-per-second, but it makes Wilds look pretty damn blurry at times.
The resolution mode, meanwhile, caps things at an undesirable 30fps, but things do look noticeably sharper. And then the so-called ‘balanced’ mode might be worth a shot if you can stomach a fluctuating frame rate in exchange for better image quality.
Capcom’s managed to massively improve graphics and performance since the beta tests — thank god — but again, none of these options are what we’d call ideal.
But hey, Wilds doesn’t look too hot to begin with. While the art direction is genuinely outstanding — across environment, character, monster, and equipment designs — the title is plagued by shockingly low quality textures. Granted, it doesn’t make much of a difference when you’re in the heat of battle, or galloping through an area atop your reptilian steed, but stop to gawk at the clothes of lesser NPCs or the nearest rocky outcrop, and you’ll swear that you’re playing the port of an old PS2 release. Rough.
