Cornerhorner Monster Hunter Wilds Review

Monster hunter wilds is the most streamlined experience in the franchise yet. In an attempt to reach a broad audience, capcom has reduced any and all friction. Gone are the days of simple gathering quests or small monster slaying. The main story is a high octane boss rush with the biggest focus on narrative in the series yet. The core gameplay loop is still the one we all know and love. Hunt monsters to make armor and weapons to then hunt stronger monsters for stronger armor and weapons and on and on ad nauseum, ad infinitum. The Quality of life changes have been so numerous at this point compared to the older titles that it has become a somewhat different qualitative experience. The change is not as dramatic as something like Breath of the Wild was to its predecessors, but the aggressive attempt to remove any and all friction from the experience forgets that in Monster Hunter, like in the bedroom, a little bit of friction is a good thing. The only thing I’ll say about the narrative is that it has never been the strongpoint of this series and by focusing so much on it this time around, it highlights that weakness more than usual. The combat remains excellent despite a few unwelcome changes to the movesets of some weapons. We can no longer launch a super amped element discharge from a shield thrust when playing charge blade. We must first do a regular amped element discharge before finally being able to execute our signature move. The heavy bowgun, too, suffers from the removal of recoil mods, making the spread ammo type all but unusable. Other weapons though have received some great facelifts. The Greatsword has a nice offset attack that performs a similar countering function to the shoulder tackle. It’s a bit redundant, but still neat and unintrusive. The hammer no longer needs to be charged which I’m sure makes it easier for newcomers to use. The monster roster is small, and serviceable yet inferior to the world's initial roster. The elder dragons were a lot more interesting than the endgame monsters in this entry. Wilds is also weirdly lacking in mid-tier monsters like diablos. There seems to be a lot of easy or “difficult” ones, not much middle ground. I put "difficult” in quotes because much has been made about the fact that this game is much more forgiving than previous titles. I am personally happy with the current high rank difficulty, though I do expect more of a challenge from the inevitable master rank. This game, like Rise before it, also provides us with a mount. Instead of a palamute, you have a seikret - a velociraptor/bird thing that carries you from place to place. It is more useful than a palamute in that it can automatically take you to the monster's location without any input from you. It’ll also save you after being knocked down by a monster much like the wire bug system did in the previous game. While it is a useful addition, and one that we can probably not live without moving forward, I do feel like it made for a much less intimate exploration of each of the maps, especially since the main story experience is mostly on rails. The endgame, the true monster hunter experience, consists of hunting the strongest tempered monsters for resources that you can use to craft “Artian” weapons. These weapons are highly customizable depending on the materials you use to craft them and how lucky you get with the RNG rolls while crafting them. I don’t like this system. I feel like it takes away from crafting the monster weapons since the Artian weapons are mostly better than them. I found this endgame loop much less addictive than the one in the base monster hunter world game. Happily, even without engaging with the Artian weapon system too much, there is still plenty to do just building armor sets and farming for decorations. Decorations are much easier to obtain compared to the world thanks to a more generous melding system where you can use excess trash decorations to meld the ones you want. While monster hunter wilds doesn’t reach the heights that world did on release, it still scratches the monster hunting itch. It remains to be seen whether content updates and master rank will elevate it from merely serviceable to an excellent entry in the series.