The Second Monster Hunter Wilds Beta Definitely Makes Me Confident, and Excited, For the Full Game

This weekend, the Monster Hunter Wilds beta returned, and this time around it brought two new fights in addition to the previous four in the last beta. My opinions on the four original fights remain largely unchanged seeing as nothing about the fights changed. As for the new fights, I definitely have some thoughts I want to share.

Gypceros is the first of the new fights, even if Gypceros is a returning bird wyvern featured in other games. The fight with Gypceros was enjoyable enough, though I did notice some annoying design elements. First was Gypceros’ iconic flashbang attack. I have nothing against this attack in principle, but in practice I had some gripes about its hit detection. For the first half of the fight, the flashbang never once hit me. Then during the second half of the fight, the attack hit me a handful of times, including once when I was directly behind the monster and had shrugged off similar attacks earlier during the same fight. I know it’s just a beta, but I hope that the full game has better hit boxes and hit detection for instances like this because nothing feels worse in a game than taking a hit when you shouldn’t have. My second complaint about Gypceros is with his running attack. He hit me with it once, which knocked me down right in front of him and allowed him to hit me with the same attack the moment I stood up, knocking me down again and allowing him to hit me a third time once I stood up. Getting hit by the same attack three times felt really bad because there really wasn’t a whole lot I could have done to avoid it, other than dodging the initial attack. All those nitpicks being said, I didn’t mind the Gypceros fight. It wasn’t my favorite by any means, but it was fine. He had some cool abilities and gimmicks that I could see being fun or nostalgic, but it was by no means the best fight in the beta.

The best fight in the beta belonged to Rey Dau. Or at least it did. Then we got the Arkveld fight in this beta. Arkveld is the game’s flagship box art monster, and at first I didn’t have any strong opinions on him. I thought some of the other monsters looked a little cooler and more interesting, but Arkveld still looked fine. Then my friend and I fought him. I already knew going into the fight that he was gonna be tough seeing as you only have twenty minutes to beat him. Gypceros took us around twenty-five minutes, so my hopes for clearing Arkveld weren’t high. I said I’d give him one try before hopping off for the night, so we launched the hunt. It was incredible. Arkveld brought a level of flash and flair unseen in the other monsters (though Rey Dau could get close). It also felt fair, at least in terms of damage and hitboxes, though the time was still very tight. My friend and I finished the fight with around a minute and a half left on the clock. To say it was a tense fight is an understatement. And that’s what made the fight so great. While this likely won’t be the case in the full game, the Arkveld fight was a perfect combination of aggression, difficulty, game knowledge and mechanics, and skill. In my experience with Monster Hunter, there’s a fine balance between aggression an passivity when fighting a monster with the first encounter usually being more passive and then additional fights becoming more aggressive as you become familiar with the monster. Due to the strict time limit, Arkveld forces you to be aggressive and use everything at your disposal, and it felt great. In addition, he’s not overly punishing. Sure he can hit hard, but I never felt like the attacks were unfair or poorly balanced. And then there’s his aesthetic and animations. Everything about this fight felt great, easily making it the best fight in the beta. I remember during the first confrontation, my jaw dropped as he began unleashing some of his flashier moves. All in all, I adored this fight, and I can already tell that if Wilds maintains this caliber of quality, it’s going to be an incredible game.

I really enjoyed this second beta for Monster Hunter Wilds. The two new fights were both enjoyable, and it makes me pretty confident in the quality of the finished game. There were still some technical hiccups here and there, but I assume those will be taken care of once the final game releases. All in all, if you’re a fan of Monster Hunter or a newcomer looking to get into the series, the best thing you can do right now is try out the beta. It’s free, and fun, and definitely inspires confidence that the final game is going to be excellent.