Review Date: 2025-03-03
Release Date: 2025
Developer, Publisher: Capcom, Capcom
Verdict: Negative
Disclaimer: Please take with a grain of salt that this review was originally written on 2025-03-03, and reviews the state of the game at that point in time. Any additional patches, updates, and DLC delivered since that time are not included in the scope of this review. I am republishing this review that I orignally wrote on Steam, with some minor tweaks for content.
Monster Hunter Wilds is a disappointing entry to the Monster Hunter series, that continues the trend of the franchise straying further from its roots, and further into soulless triple-A territory.
I have been a diehard Monster Hunter fan ever since seeing MH3 in a Nintendo Power magazine back in ~2009, and thinking the game looked so cool.
After countless hours in the series over the years (MH3 and MHGU being my favorites), I was looking forward to this game with tempered expectations. The writing has been on the wall since MHW that classic MH is sadly a thing of the past, and unfortunately, MH Wilds has turned out to be no exception.
The games today are being catered to a wider audience, which is marked by a variety of design choices and "QoL" that really has just ripped the soul right of the series.
Here are some primary examples from MH Wilds:
The game is a completely desaturated blob, from the player, to the monster, to the environments. The series has been trending this direction since MHW, and it has really just become an eyesore, and makes the game feel a lot less special than before. Areas are no longer unique and memorable, they all just feel the same. You can even see this difference in returning monsters. Compare MH4/MHGU Nerscylla to MH Wilds, and you'll see what I mean. In fact, look at any of the classic MH games, and compare the environment, characters, and monsters to MH Wilds.
This also doesn't just impact the visuals, but the audio as well. The OST is completely unmemorable, unnoticeable, bland "grand adventure" movie-type music, unlike the amazing soundtracks put together for classic MH games.
Capcom has apparently decided that players don't have an attention span nor two functioning brain cells, because this game essentially plays itself. If you thought the MHW scoutlfies were hand-holdy, you haven't seen anything yet. In MH Wilds, you don't even need to track monsters, watch shadows, or paintball! You just auto-sprint (on your mount) to the monster's current location. Good thing too, because they completely got rid of any logical sense of monster movement patterns... a monster can crawl into a wall to the east, and three seconds later pop out all the way across the map in the complete opposite direction. This has completely ruined the immersion of actually going on a "hunt".
Capcom does not stop hand-holding at auto-navigating though... no, pretty much every other core mechanic of the game has some sort of hand-holding. From easy and plentiful resource gathering to auto-crafting, they have simplified every aspect of the game so that you don't ever have to think about anything.
You don't ever have to plan for any hunt anymore. Resources are abundant everywhere you go, often in the area that you need them.
Speaking of not having to think about anything - this game is by far the easiest MH that I have ever played. You pretty much have to actively try to get carted, to be carted. HR, Guardian, and Tempered monsters do not increase difficulty either, in any meaningful way. Monster attacks do little damage, and they are extremely slow.
A good chunk of this is the result of Capcom's new movement ideas in recent games, such as the player being able to roll out of most actions, movement while using items (made even easier now that you have a mount you can use items while sprint-riding in the middle of combat), grapple hooks, speed climbing, and of course the mount itself. Players now never have to actually strategize when to sharpen their weapon or when to drink a potion around a monster's attacks.
The new mechanic regarding breaking wounds is also very cheap. Is it fun? Sure, but when you can effectively knock over or heavily stagger a monster on-command, repeatedly throughout a hunt, the monster you are supposed to be "fighting" just becomes a punching bag.
Also, the new health bar spikes red with plenty of warning if a monster is going to hit you with a deadly attack... yet again, you don't even have to think anymore. Why even bother to learn monster movesets or learn how they telegraph certain attacks, when the health bar will just warn you anyways.
Perhaps the game will introduce at least a modicum of difficulty with the DLC they are sure to release in a year's time, which brings us to our next topic: DLC and Capcom's, in my opinion, greed. While even classic MH games had subsequent releases with more content and more difficult monsters, we're now paying $70 for a game that will probably have MR/G rank released as separate DLC at another big price tag. Not to mention the other money-grab DLC to change your character's appearance...
MH games have never had great UI, but this one takes the cake for the worst. The UI looks like they copied the homework of a run-of-the-mill eastern MMORPG. The minimap is completely cluttered and unreadable. Giant glowing damage numbers flash on the screen for every hit. The name of the attack you are doing flies up on screen, along with the button combos. Every status bar is moving like a hyperactive EKG. All of your status icons are incredibly tiny and insignificant. I could go on...
In terms of UX, the menus are also nonsensical, actions/settings crammed into disjointed categories. Item bars, expanded item bars, multiple radial menus, pause menu options, all to do the same things.
This general confusion also extends to multiplayer. Not only is multiplayer split into four different concepts (lobbies, squads, link parties, and environment links), which is far more convoluted than it needs to be, Capcom has made zero progress in actually streamlining anything multiplayer, and made this game feel less like a community.
Arguably, Capcom has taken multiple steps backwards with this system. It is hit or miss on whether or not you even see your friends on your screen in the "hubs" or the environment, even when in the same lobby and party. All meals are now consumed alone in your private tent. All prep work is now done alone in your private tent. There's no quest counter. No houses to decorate and share with your accomplishments. No small games in the hubs (e.g. arm wrestling) to play together while waiting for others to finish quests.
Capcom has made MH Wilds multiplayer feel like an extremely lonely experience, and even when you finally do get deployed onto hunts (after screwing around with which type of party or link or lobby or whatever), there were multiple disconnects experienced by my group throughout our playtime. The disconnects weren't the worst, but amongst the clutter of all the UI elements, it was often a little bit before party members would realize that they had even disconnected from one another.
The vast majority of the characters were just entirely insufferable, the dialogue cringe-inducing, and the world building was sub-par. I will give one piece of credit for the primary concept of artificial monsters being a cool idea to explore, but they just executed the story around it so terribly.
MH has never been known for its story being its strongest element, but Capcom is trying way too hard with this one... to the point where they regularly force players into "on-rails" walk-and-talk story exposition like it is RDR2 or something... in a Monster Hunter game...
One thing MH has always been known for, however, is the gameplay loop, which has been utterly demolished by this entry into the series. As mentioned, gone is the "hub", gone is the canteen, and gone is the quest counter.
Instead of completing a variety of key quests to unlock an urgent/story quest, the story takes you from one story mission and cutscene to another. There are a limited number of "optional" or "side" quests.
I believe this was done so that players would do more "environment" hunting, but the effect of this is now that you no longer need to do any planning on what items to bring, no longer need to plan out your meals (since they now are timer-based instead of quest-based), no longer need to plan out your weapons or armor (especially in this game where it is so easy that you will kill monsters seemingly faster than ever before, no matter your armor or weapons, and since you can bring two weapons to every fight), and worst of all, barely need to grind.
Take this with a grain of salt, because I do not have the exact data, but I feel like rare-item drop rates have increased substantially for this entry in the series. Again, seems like a decision made to cater to a wider/modern audience that wants immediate gratification and zero difficulty.
Could you do some tweaking of your build(s)? Sure. But given the rest of the game, the excitement about the prospect of growing my build further just isn't there. It just feels like your options barely matter.
I am fortunate enough to have just recently upgraded my computer with fairly high-end components. If I had not done so, I wouldn't have been able to play the game on my previous system on anything about 20 FPS. The performance issues that this game suffers, especially for people with mid-budget builds are inexcusable for company as large as Capcom. They appear to have learned no lessons from the Dragon's Dogma 2 fiasco.
MH Wilds is a continuation of Capcom's stray from classic Monster Hunter. While Capcom is a business and needs to make money, this entry into the series is the least fun yet, as it trades its soul in for another attempt at mass appeal. From its baby-simple difficulty and handholding "QoL" to its soulless art direction, Capcom appears to be trying its hardest to make Monster Hunter generic one-size-fits-all triple-A schlock in the age of immediate gratification and short attention spans.
It, unfortunately, is not much of a surprise anymore, after the direction of MHW, Rise, and the creation of a Monster Hunter movie, but it is still disappointing.
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