Monster Hunter Wilds Review: Two Steps in the wrong direction

As a long time Monster Hunter Fan I can see a lot of good in Monster Hunter Wilds. It deserves a lot of the praise and success it gets, however in my eyes it’s missing the soul of a monster hunter game.

The feeling of the hunt

I remember the feeling like it was yesterday. My friend and I all alone out in the wild. We were running low on supplies and the sun was slowly going down. We fought Qurupeco already very hard but again he managed to escape. We knew if we wouldn’t kill him soon it would be too late. We split up one last time to collect some herbs and heal up and then we both climbed the mountain together to face Qurupeco one last time. With only minutes to spare we finally landed the killing blow. We felt tired and exhausted but also very happy.

That was my first experience with Monster Hunter. Back then on the Wii with Monster Hunter Tri. It was the moment I fell in love with the Series and since then I have played every single Monster Hunter game. Some more, some less but this feeling was always there. Sadly Wilds is for me the first game in the series were this feeling got lost. At least a bit.

How did we get here?

With Monster Hunter Worlds the series tried to become more Newcomer friendly. A lot of features got more streamlined. No more paintballs, multiplayer got a lot easier with SOS signals and a much more guided story mode. Honestly most of those features I even liked. I’m not a big fan of the story but reducing some of the friction wasn’t a bad thing. World at its core still felt like a Monster Hunter game. Hunts always felt challenging and the game forced you to engage with all its systems in order to be successful on the hunt.

Rise on the other hand got more playful and faster but still at its core it gave me this monster hunter feeling. The thrill of the hunt, the need to prepare, something that is missing in wilds.

Getting more Mainstream comes with a cost

On Paper Wilds sounded perfect to me. The promise of an open world got me excited. One of my favorite games of the past few years was Dragon’s Dogma 2. I loved the feeling of getting lost in a world that felt real. I already imagined myself getting lost in such a world with Monster Hunter. Building camps on the way. Getting surprised by big Monsters and desperately trying to survive in a world that wants to kill you.

Sadly for me Wilds went in the exact other direction. Instead of creating a believable world and hunting experience, wilds went more into an even faster paced direction. Your Seikret will bring you automatically to the next monster and restock your supplies. Fights become faster and even if the map got bigger it feels more on rails and smaller in scale than ever before.

In many ways wilds reminds me more of a modern MMORPG. It feels more like a theme park than a real world. I no longer feel the thrill of the hunt, instead it feels more like a boss rush and makes me “farm” more loot instead of hunting wild monsters. I would have loved to see the vision of an old school monster hunter realized with modern technologie.

A very good game but a bad Monster Hunter

Now it’s not all bad. The game is still a lot of fun. The core combat and gameplay feels better than ever before. Multiplayer works smoothly and I do like many of the new ideas like the weather system and most of the new monsters are amazing. The endgame loops is also fun and I’m sure the game will get more challenging again with updates and a big expansion in a year or two. However Monster Hunter lost the one thing that made the series so special to me. The thrill of the hunt is gone. At least for now.

Rating: Worth a try