Posted by Monster Hunter: World was the first Monster Hunter game that I really played and got into. I did get Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate for my Nintendo 2DS when I was a lot younger, but I could never make it past the first quest or two due to the awkward combat and annoying resource management. World eliminated large portions of that and felt a lot more accessible, which was great for my first Monster Hunter game. I really enjoyed World, putting in a little over 400 hours (over multiple accounts), and I’m currently playing through Monster Hunter Rise at the moment. All that being said, I’ve been very excited for Monster Hunter Wilds. I’ve been following the news and keeping up to date on all the different reveals, so when a beta was announced for this weekend, I knew that I had to play it. I was not disappointed. While I do have some minor complaints, I think that the game is in a very strong place.
First and foremost, I played the beta on an Xbox Series X. I didn’t have the graphical issues that PC versions of the game have been struggling with. In terms of performance, the game ran fine. I noticed some stutters and noticeable frame drops here and there, so hopefully the full game feels a bit more polished. In terms of the graphics themselves, the game looks really good, and yet there’s something about it that strikes me as uncanny at times. I can’t put my finger on it, but something graphically did feel a little off.
Wilds boasts massive maps, and the Windward Plains in the beta definitely lives up to it. I didn’t explore the map as much as I probably could have, but what I saw looked really cool and detailed. It feels like a very fleshed out biome, and I assume the other locations will match in quality.
Turning to the titular monsters, they were awesome. The beta features four monsters to hunt: Chatacabra, an Alpha Doshaguma, Balahara, and Rey Dau. If I were to rank the monsters in terms of my enjoyment, it would go Alpha Doshaguma, Balahara, Chatacrabra, and Rey Dau. Despite being the tutorial monster, and pretty easy as a result, I found Chatacabra to be a really enjoyable fight that would go quickly and not overstay its welcome. And because he was so simple, I felt confident in trying out new moves and learning how my weapons handled. The Alpha Doshaguma wasn’t a bad fight, but it lacked a lot of the oomph and novelty that some of the other fights had, which weakened it in my eyes. Yes the pack mechanic was cool to see in action, with two smaller Doshaguma following the Alpha, but it was so easy to just use dung pods to get the regular Doshagumas to leave so it didn’t actually feel that impactful. That being said, I think I enjoyed the fights the most when I didn’t use dung pods but instead allowed the Doshaguma to attack as a pack. Balahara is a fight I wanted to like a lot more than I did. Maybe it’s just because he’s not a good match-up for my main weapon (which I’ll touch on in a bit), but a lot of my fights devolved into Balahara using the same attack or two. He’s still a unique and visually interesting monster, but I did find the fight a little bland and samey at times. Rey Dau is the best fight hands down. Visually, he’s an awesome looking monster with some crazy cool attacks. He literally turns himself into a lightning rail gun, and it makes for a tense fight that’s also visually stunning and feels climactic. Rey Dau is the apex of the Windward Plains, so his fight should be a bit higher in quality than the rest, and it definitely delivered.
I main bow. In Wilds, your hunter is allowed to wield two weapons that you can swap freely between on your Seikret mount. The other weapon I chose was dual blades. Beginning with the dual blades, they felt more or less the same from World, where I last used them a little bit. They feel fast and responsive while maintaining your own mobility. They were a nice change of pace and I definitely intend to use them in the main game. As for the bow, it feels absolutely incredible. It did change a bit from its previous iterations, but it’s all for the better. In World, and even Rise to a lesser extent, I found myself playing bow the same in most hunts and under most circumstances. Wilds gives the bow so many options and tools to use. The controls have changed a little to compensate, but it only took a hunt or two before I knew what everything did. I love everything that Capcom did with bow, from the new implementation of trick arrows that allow you to fire tracer arrows or apply coatings (I used more coatings in the Wilds beta than in my 500 hours in other Monster Hunter games), to the ability to create pseudo-weak spot rockets that you can auto-target and blow up with Focus Mode, it all feels really good. Wilds also introduces Focus Mode, which allows you to better target parts on the monster and destroy little wounds that pop up during the battle for massive damage. I do like Focus Mode, even if I don’t use it that much on dual blades. I constantly use it on bow in part because Focus Mode is inherently active when I aim the bow. Overall, I do like Focus Mode, and everything they’ve done with my main weapons. I can’t speak on the other 12 weapons, but from my understanding they all seem pretty good.
The other major new inclusion is the Seikret mount. The Seikret allows you to traverse the map faster, swap weapons, and serves as an item repository where you can get resupplied. I like the Seikret in principle, but it handles a little awkwardly. I’ll need to mess with the controls more, especially because I heard you can change its controls to be more like Rise‘s Palamute, but the default controls feel a little clunky. My other major nitpick, which is still minor and will likely be remedied with more playtime, is that the game can be a bit overwhelming. There’s a lot going on on your screen at a given time, namely with environmental pick ups and materials, and I find it very easy to overlook them. There may be something in the settings to fix this issue (the settings are very customizable, which is awesome), but I find myself needing to slow down, which is awkwardly given the Seikret controls sometimes, to see what’s going on. A similar issue I have is that it feels like the monsters sometimes blend into the environment a little too much. When I say this I don’t mean that they use it to camouflage themselves as a gameplay element, but they almost seem to get lost in the ambient background. It’s a strange nitpick that’s hard to put to words, but I hope in the official release the monsters are a bit more distinct from the background biome.
Finally, I think the story and characters all look pretty solid. I remember playing through World and not minding the Handler at first, but the more I replayed it, the more I grew to dislike her. I don’t think any of the characters in Wilds will be like that. Alma, the new handler and the primary NPC you interact with during the beta, actually does stuff for you and feels like a member of your team. I’m very excited for the game’s full release.
Overall, the Monster Hunter Wilds beta makes me very hopeful, and excited, for the game’s full release. While I do have some nitpicks, I think a lot of them will be remedied by just playing the game more and getting more familiar with it. I only put five hours into the beta, but I found that to be more than enough time to fight all the new monsters a few times, both by myself and with my friend. The beta definitely lived up to my expectations, and I’m confident that the full game will even exceed those expectations.
Broad Scope Entertainment 