[Review] Monster Hunter Wilds [PS5]
Monster Hunter Wilds, released on Feb 28th, 2025 builds on the mechanics introduced in World & Rise, all the while introducing new mechanics and Monsters into the series to keep things interesting and Fresh! Would I recommend this title? You bet your Great Baggi I would, as with 29 introductory monsters, free title updates slated to release as soon as April 4th of 2025 and plenty to explore, capture/hunt, and collect, this title is absolutely (in my opinion) worth your time.
If you would like to know the ‘Why’ behind my decision, keep on reading!
From the first teaser trailer to the release of the beta, Monster Hunter Wilds teased the capabilities of the new engine (RE Engine) and really wanted to focus on emersion into the title, breaking free of the restraints of previous entries within the series while also trying to balance and maintain the lifeblood and charm the previous titles brought and built upon. Though, maybe not as ‘Open World’ as we had hoped, we can clearly see the passion the development team put into the game. Such as allowing you to transfer between primary and pop-up camps without needing multiple loading screens, or allowing you to transverse the forbidden land from various entry/exit points per locale.
I love the freedom brought with quest creation and the easy drop in/drop out of private/public lobbies allowing you to quickly join other hunters on their current hunts, or having hunters join you on yours. Granted, this isn’t without some quirks, like lobbying with friends can be cumbersome at times. That said, with the announcement of the Grand Hub and other updates slated to drop in April, I suspect a lot of these issues we saw during the beta and release will be corrected or improved.
Wilds starts as a cinematic masterpiece, outlining the mission and introducing you to your characters and discussing the threat that faces you. Unlike previous entries to the series, your character actually has dialog, and chimes in rather than the simple nod or grunt, which I personally appreciate as it helped drive the story home and made me far more invested in the plot rather than feeling like a cog in the machine. The story starts out with you, an Ace Hunter, being hand picked for a mission to explore the Forbidden Lands, to help a child, Nata, return home and begin communication between the East and the West.
As the plot progresses, you find that everything you thought you knew about the Forbidden Lands was far from true, and find beautiful and fleshed out locales to explore, people and cultures to meet, and how the ecosystem has thrived and developed over the centuries. Capcom expanded on this by adding a large roster of new monsters, with designs that took a step away from the typical creature designs we saw in the previous titles, making them feel more ancient, aggressive, and overall foreign to what we were used to which I believe they nailed, as when I first looked at say ‘Rey Dau’ during he Sandtide in the plains, the design felt familiar, and yet at the same time didn’t ‘feel’ like a Monster Hunter Monster to me.
Though I felt there was a good blend with the roster between new and returning monsters, it wasn’t until maybe the 50th hour in the game did I really start to appreciate these new monster designs, and they began to feel that they belonged in comparison to the classic monsters like Rathian or Rathalos.
Wilds keeps a lot of the core mechanics intact, such as hunting monsters for monster parts to build armor and weapons to hunt stronger monsters to get better parts to build even stronger armor and weapons. With the addition of Monsters appearing freely in the locales, they introduced a couple of new methods in which to initiate a quest, that being either a.) begin attacking the monster until you inflict enough damage to initiate the quest and begin the hunt officially, or b.) pulling up the monster on the map and creating the quest from there, or, create an investigation to save the quest allowing you to challenge it up to 3 times by yourself or with friends.
Being able to create investigations like this has been something I personally have enjoyed, as it will snapshot the monster and monsters on the field, holding any potential crown sizes or quest rewards offered at the initial encounter, allowing you to share both with your friends, or, your friends can share with you, really helping build on the amazing community that Monster Hunter has.
Capcom also developed on the combat, and personally after spending as much time in Wilds that I have it’s ‘really’ hard to go back to say Rise or World, as the combat in Wild feels amazing. As someone who mains SnS and HH, both are very rewarding in the new combat system, such as the Sword and Shield allowing you to block certain monster attacks to counter attack, or, through the new wound system where if you hit a certain monster part enough it creates a wound that you can then exploit for a burst of damage, knock a monster down, etc. Each weapon has a different way to interact with these wounds, such as the Hunting Horn allowing you to play a rush of notes quickly while dealing damage, or the Sword and Shield allowing you to tear down or jump up and shield pound for stun damage while also inflicting bonus damage, and in tempered hunts even rewards you for finding scars on the monster and breaking those wounds for additional bonus items.
In addition to the improved combat, hunters can now have a Primary & Secondary weapon, with your Seikret allowing you to actively swap out in the middle of a hunt by boarding your mount and making the swap, which I cannot express enough is a game changer as well as an ‘End Immediately’ option at the end of a completed quest which is a god send.
Though I am sad that the wirebugs didn’t make a return from Rise, I didn’t feel hindered at all with my movement, nor did I feel slow or sluggish while fighting the monsters as I did when returning to World. I personally appreciate the measures Capcom took to combine both combat styles from both games to make something feel well between the playstyles, but without sacrificing too much in one direction or the other.
We also saw the introduction of ‘Guardian’ monsters, which I won’t go into too much detail surrounding the concept as to avoid spoilers but did want to touch base on them briefly as due to the nature of guardian monsters we could potentially see returning monsters which haven’t been included in a title in some time, which is exciting!
Some of the things I did not like about Wilds upon release, which I’d mentioned above was how difficult it was to play with friends. There were a few ways you could go about this, either by A.) inviting them to a link party which would notify them of any time someone within said party would post a quest, or B.) trying to get into each others public or private lobby, which would often lead to timeouts or similar issues preventing one from joining the other. Granted, the system worked, but just not as ‘well’ as I would have liked myself and with the drop of the Grand Hub, hopefully these will be issues of the past but only time will tell.
I also am not a ‘huge’ fan of the lack of control with the Seikrit vs say the Palamute from Rise. The game focuses heavy on automatic control where the Seikrit will take you to your destination, however, when doing so regaining control can sometimes be problematic but not impossible. I feel there is room for improvement, and a lot of videos out there for recommended settings for the Seikrit that help with this, however, personally I’m just not a fan of the movement but do love the design.
Things I think they did well on was the change to the quest system, allowing for players to save instances of encounters to share with friends further strengthening the community and engaging them to work together be it through crown hunting or resource collection. I am also excited that with the title updates, we’re going to see a lot of returning aspects from previous titles such as arena quests and similar that weren’t initially available on launch.
I do love the possibilities that we’ll see in the concept of the Guardian Monsters, as given the nature/creation of the creatures mean we could potentially see other ‘returning’ monsters in guardian form that I am absolutely excited for, say perhaps, Guardian Monoblos, though I’m not holding my breath!
All in all, I am deeply satisfied with the released product we received, and super excited for the future content release surrounding Wilds, be it through the free title updates or future expansions and Master Rank, should they keep that tradition going into Wilds. I would recommend this title to any Monster Hunter veteran, or for anyone looking to pickup the series for the first time. This title is more in line with the Quality of Life improvements we saw from Worlds, and further explored in Rise, which if you’re more aligned with Classic Monster Hunter more like Generations Ultimate, this may not be a title for you but even so, I strongly encourage you to check it out and make your own opinions, but I loved everything about this title from start to finish!
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