Note: Most of this review has been written during the initial 1.000.02.00 launch
I am very new to the Monster Hunter series. I know it has been going on since the original Playstation 2 back in 2004 and I have only played Monster Hunter 4 as a demo on my 3DS. I enjoyed my time with it but was not in a good financial situation to buy the full game. I skipped over Worlds for the same reason. However Wilds came in at a time when I had some spare cash to spend and turns out I was assigned to review it! So let's boot it up and see if the series can get a hold of a newbie to the series.
Monster Hunter(MH) Wilds is the 5th mainline game in the MH series. It is an action/adventure game where specialized hunters fight giant monsters that are terrorizing the local ecosystem using a large collection of weapons ranging from giant swords and knives to giant saxophones and crossbows. After hunting these monsters you collect parts that you use to build better armor and weapons. You also can create weapons & armor for your cute companion, the palico cat! These fights are the main attraction in the series as each one is essentially a dark souls boss fight. Each one is unique with different attacks, weaknesses and immunities, and you will have to change your strategies depending on the weapons you brought along and each fight feels like an achievement when you finally kill them. You can take 2 weapons along with you, a main and a secondary, and you can change them when you get on your mount. For this review, my primary was a heavy bowgun and my secondary was the twin knives. I felt this was a good balance as the heavy bowgun felt more like a sniper and the twin knives were a good alternative for a closeup quick attack.
Each large monster is a 10+ minute boss fight, and can even last over 40 minutes when playing the higher ranks. They have their own weak spots, strengths, element weakness and unique battle elements that will have you either hate or love certain fights. An example for one of my more hated fights is the Hirabami. This is a large snake monster that floats/flies around the fighting arenas and moves very quickly. For a heavy bowgun/twin knives person like myself the fact that it moves very quickly in the air leaves my heavy bowgun at a disadvantage and the fact it rarely lands leaves my twin knives secondary at a loss as well. However that's where the fun comes in to fighting these monsters, The planning. You have to study and look at all the advantages you have to bring to these fights. When playing with friends you can coordinate who can bring what weapons. Fighting a monster that is covered in rocks? Bring in some bombs to destroy them. Monster covered in lava? Time to bring out the water weapons and water ammo.
One thing I will say though, you will need to go through a LOOOONG tutorial before you get into the actual game. By that, I mean that the initial campaign, from start to finish is the “Low Rank” story line. Once you reach the end credits, the game WAY opens up into the “High Rank” storyline. Once you reach “High Rank” you really don't need to go back to low rank at all, because of the low rank weapons and armour is pretty much useless. However, by the time you reach High rank….that's about it. The goal now is to get specific parts to create the armor/weapons you want and once that happens, there's not really much to do. You can repeat previous hunts and help out other hunters, until the free updates for more large monsters. It gives off “It gets better after 20 hours!” feel that a lot of RPGs have when you're trying to recommend a game to a friend. But speaking of friends….
Of course, you don't have to fight them alone, you can either use an SOS to summon your AI companions, random folks or your friends to take down these monsters together to share the loot. You can coordinate with them in basecamp to organize who will be the close up tank, long range sniper, bard healer or support fighter and collaborate to try and take down the monster as fast as you can. The collaboration you get from this can just make that takedown even more satisfying. Matchmaking can be iffy at times, you can either start the mission and hope someone joins your SOS flare, or wait around in the lobby to see if people will join while you prepare for the hunt. Sometimes you'll get through an entire mission without getting a single other player, while in others you'll instantly fill up the minute you send out a SOS flare.
You'll be able to explore the forbidden lands and all the different types of terrain that lies within. Each different land you visit feels very lived in, with multiple areas where there will be roaming small monsters that will either be herbivores that will ignore you, or carnivore monsters that will attack if you stay too long. Each area will also contain insects and plants to collect for crafting items and research, as well as fish at certain spots on the map. There's a lot to collect, see and each area has their own unique ecosystem. Heck, even some of the bigger monsters will fight each other if they run into one another, causing a “Turf war” and you can use these to your advantage by getting a monster youre hunting to fight another monster, giving them a distraction and causing damage, making your job easier! So, you have these ecosystems, but how good do they look?
The performance at launch really needed to be worked on before launching the full game. On certain fights, I've had multiple instances where the game would slow to a crawl because of the amount of things happening on screen and leading my framerate down below 15FPS. I've also had instances of polygons exploding, textures popping in or slowly going from very low settings to high after a few seconds every time the camera changed angles during cutscenes and the very long load in time on launch. When you are in the basecamp, once you have multiple players in there the framerate can get VERY choppy when just walking across the camp. I want to mention as well that my machine has specs around the recommended settings (2070 Super, i9 CPU, 64gb ram), so this is what Capcom expected a lot of their audience to have. I did not download the Very High Graphics Settings DLC as the normal High Setting is already just below what my PC can handle, however, I can understand why people are a bit angry at the fact you have to download an entirely separate DLC to just have a higher graphics setting, especially when its 70gb. Speaking of DLC…
The DLC situation for this game has been a mess. It was released with 23 DLC packages, 5 of which are free. Most are standard Cosmetic or social interaction addons that don't affect gameplay, but there are 3 pieces that are not superfluous. First is the high texture DLC mentioned earlier, the second is a Welcome Pack that gives items to players but is free so no harm there. However, the last bunch is just confusing and baffling…DLC to change your character. Not multiple characters, DLC to change the LOOK of your character. YOU NEED TO PAY TO CHANGE HOW YOUR CHARACTER LOOKS LIKE.
Overall Monster hunter wilds is a game with equal positives and negatives. The environments and monsters all look absolutely beautiful, but the framerate and performance to make said areas look good can cut the impact. The big monster fights are fun and tension-filled,but it can get tiring doing the same fights over and over again and you have to get through an entire campaign just to get to the really good stuff. It's a very beginner friendly version of monster hunter that's a good start for folks who want to get into the series, but it needed a bit more work before it should have been released. So what im saying is: Wait till theres a sale then see if it appeals to you.
