Monster Hunter World came out an extremely hard to believe 7 years ago, back in 2018. It’s now 2025, and we have Monster Hunter Wilds. With Monster Hunter World, we also got a subsequent expansion in the form of Monster Hunter World Iceborne in 2019, and then in 2021, we got Monster Hunter Rise with its expansion, Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak, in 2022. Monster Hunter Wilds was announced in 2023, and Capcom has been drip-feeding us tiny tidbits of information touting a living world with weather effects and a lot more freedom to explore.
Now, in 2025, the game is finally in our hands, and after two Open Beta Tests that kept us busy recently, we’ve been salivating in anticipation. So, does the game live up to the hype surrounding it, and is it worth checking out?
Monster Hunter Wilds
From the get-go, Monster Hunter Wilds makes it clear to you that it means business. The game kicks off with a cut scene involving a child being discovered in the East-West buffer zone near the Forgotten Lands desert. You’ll enter the character creator soon after and be thrust into the story quite quickly. The game’s character creator is quite extensive, just like in Monster Hunter: World, and it’s quite easy to spend literal hours crafting your character’s facial structure to your liking as well as changing their hairstyle and colour. You can also create your Palico, a cat creature that will accompany you on your hunts and again, the customization is pretty good here too.
Once you’ve created your character, the game onboards you with a story scene that has you jumping from a land ship onto a Seikret, a bird monster that essentially functions like a horse in the game. If you’ve played Final Fantasy titles, the Seikret will immediately remind you of a Chocobo. You’ll be introduced to Alma, a guild Handler, who will task you with quests and give you clearance or authorization to hunt monsters. Alma also lets you pick your first weapon after some quick guidance on the various different types available.
Once again, there’s a lot of variation to the types of weapons you have available. Unfortunately, there aren’t any brand-new weapon classes, but there is a twist this time around to the gameplay formula this time around in that you can now carry two weapons into battle. This is a massive change in that it allows you to quickly change from one playstyle to another on the fly in battle. For example you can use a Heavy Bowgun for breaking a monster’s armour and then quickly change to Dual-Blades to deal massive damage in quick succession.
Another big change is the fact that ranged weapons like the Light Bowgun, Heavy Bowgun, and Bow have an altered ammo system now. You no longer need to use resources for normal, pierce and spread ammo, with only elemental ammo needing strategic resource gathering and crafting. Additionally, all 14 weapon classes have access to the new “Focus” mode, which allows you to target a monster’s weak points and inflict massive damage and cause wounds.
While series veterans might find this to be a simplification of dealing extra damage to monsters, newcomers will love it. Heck, I enjoyed it, too! Especially because it really feels as if you’re doing a lot of damage to a strong opponent when you use a focus attack on their weak points.
This also brings me to a major caveat that more hardcore Monster Hunter series fans will find a tad disappointing. The actual hunts in Monster Hunter Wilds are very streamlined and straightforward. They don’t drag on for too long and the cinematic nature of the storytelling means that it’s quite obvious as to where to go and what to hunt. Another key point to consider lies with the fact that players can easily find other monsters out in the larger open world areas. This means that you can go hunt a monster that will give you the materials to craft stronger weapons which will let you decimate your current main quest objectives with ease.
That’s not to say that the game is easy. On the contrary, there are plenty of hunts in Monster Hunter Wilds that will still keep you busy for a significant portion of time as you get to grips with the various monster’s mechanics and movements. However, if you’re a seasoned veteran from the old days of Monster Hunter, the game will feel a lot easier to you because of all the assorted quality of life improvements and tweaks that have been made to the core gameplay formula.
One baffling decision from Capcom was the exclusion of a “Gathering Hub” and a serious step backwards in terms of letting players play through the story missions co-operatively with friends. Monster Hunter Rise had the system streamlined, and the fact that Capcom had to upload a YouTube video with a guide regarding playing the game co-op says enough about the complexity of the issue and how it will be extremely annoying to both series fans and newcomers alike.
The story of Monster Hunter Wilds revolves around the “Keepers” and a boy named Nata. Without spoiling too much, there are a few monsters in the story that are so incredibly fun to face off against because you don’t know what you’re up against as they are quite different to series staples we’ve seen before. Capcom are also going to be adding more monsters over time and based on user feedback, I’m sure we’ll be seeing some fan favourites making a comeback too. Mizutsune, for example, has already been confirmed as a monster that will be added to the game soon.
Graphically, Monster Hunter Wilds is an extremely mixed bag right now. Playing the game without the high-resolution texture pack is a completely different experience from playing the game with it installed. Everything just looks way better with high-resolution textures, albeit with a knock to performance. On PC, if you move the camera around your character, you will immediately notice a dip in the frame rate. This isn’t game-breaking, but it is jarring to see happen, especially when you’re in the middle of a heated battle.
This happened to me on two separate PCs, with both PCs running Nvidia RTX graphics cards (3060 and 3070Ti) and an AMD (Ryzen 5 7600) and Intel (i7-14700KF) processor with 32GB DDR5 RAM, respectively. Capcom needs to do a lot of work here to get the game running as smoothly as possible. I do have to say though, some of the visual glitches have been hilarious to see in-game, and I had a good laugh at them. Some gamers out there, however, may not see this in a positive light and will be furious about it for sure so I do hope that it does get addressed soon.
With that said, though, the game looks absolutely fantastic when every graphics setting is cranked up. I did encounter some mild artifacting and texture pop-in, but for the most part, it wasn’t as bad as some Steam users were reporting. Monsters look great and I’m a big fan of the new monster designs, particularly one late game monster that is just so freaking cool! The “open world” isn’t exactly as open-world as I thought it would be, but the areas are still quite large and look amazing.
Especially two particular locations that are packed with detail. Photo mode users, rejoice! There’s so much potential here for screenshots, you’ll have a blast taking some truly awe-inspiring images in-game. The weather effects that Capcom touted are great to see, but they were overhyped, in my opinion.
Another slight graphical complaint I do have, though, is that the blacksmith has the same animation for everything that she crafts. So if you’re crafting a piece of armour, you’ll still be met with the cutscene animation of her crafting a weapon. This is a minor oversight by Capcom, but it is immersion breaking and also very confusing because you might think that you selected the wrong option when in reality, you didn’t.
Monster Hunter Wilds soundtrack is as excellent as ever, with the main Monster Hunter theme and the various monster themes. However, there wasn’t a catchy village tune this time around that gets stuck in your head like Seliana’s theme from Monster Hunter World: Iceborne or Kamura’s purification theme from Monster Hunter Rise.
The voice acting in Monster Hunter Wilds is performed by some very notable seasoned veterans that have been in the industry for years. Surprisingly, your playable character also speaks quite a lot which is a departure from previous games where your character was essentially mute apart from making battle sounds.
The core gameplay of Monster Hunter Wilds is a well-oiled machine, and players can play the game entirely solo should they be inclined to. You can also take NPC hunters along, and they legitimately do a great job in helping you out in battle which is amazing for gamers who don’t have friends to play with. However, despite the above, the major fun aspects really do lie with the multiplayer component of the game. Being able to hunt monsters with your friends is immensely more satisfying than soloing everything with the NPCs.
As with previous titles, Capcom have introduced scaling to the game, so when hunting with friends, everything isn’t exactly a pushover, but it does feel a lot easier to hunt with friends than it does to hunt alone. Unless, of course, your friends are completely helpless, in which case, it will be time to “Git Gud,” as the saying goes.
Final Verdict
Overall Monster Hunter Wilds is an excellent game that I still had a tonne of fun with. It’s the perfect entry point for newcomers to the franchise, and it most definitely will attract newcomers, given how popular the series has become in recent years. Seasoned veterans will still have a blast, but I foresee a lot of minor grievances and complaints bubbling up to the surface as the game goes through its initial teething phase of tweaks, balances and changes that Capcom will be bringing to the table.
Right now, PC performance is a major issue, and hopefully, this will be addressed soon. Even with that, though, Monster Hunter Wilds gets a solid 9/10 from me, with the minus 1 point being deducted for the rough PC graphical performance and the watering down of certain gameplay aspects that Monster Hunter: World and/or Monster Hunter Rise did a lot better. Capcom, you did a good job here. You just need to build on this further now and turn it into an even bigger success with subsequent patches and updates. We’re “On the hunt!” for more refinements and polish, so don’t fail us now!
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