Posted by This past week, Monster Hunter Wilds released a new update that changed up its endgame progression system. The new update added in randomly rolled charms/talismans that combine weapon and armor skills and decoration slots, which opens up plenty of new ways to buildcraft. However, with this new system comes a new level of difficulty, and I want to talk about it.
First and foremost, I was never in the “Wilds is too easy crowd.” Sure, I definitely found the game more manageable than previous ones (namely World), but I attributed a lot of that to Wilds being my third game in the series that I’ve played and my having put a few hundred hours in its previous ones. As a result, I consider myself decent at the game. I didn’t mind the previous update that made some of the monsters tougher, though I can’t deny that Title Update 2 made me question the direction that the game’s difficulty was going in. With the advent of nine-star quests that reward these new talismans, I can say with confidence that I don’t like the direction the difficulty is heading in.
Something that always bothered in World was having these hunts that took twenty to thirty minutes (if not more) because the monster was ridiculously tanky. One of my video game complaints in general (especially with Monster Hunter) is that I despise one-shot attacks (unless there’s a reasonable build-up to it that you can prevent or avoid like regular Jin Dahaad or Safi’jiva). Nine-star hunts combine both of those. I’ll use Gore Magala, arguably the toughest fight in the game, as an example. My friend and I fought him the other day. He was hard. Arguably too hard. Gore Magala is one of the fastest, most spastic monsters in the game and some of his attacks come out so quickly that you can barely react to them. The fight was going smoothly for the most part. My buddy ate a cart at one point, but we had Felyne Insurance, so it wasn’t a big deal. Then Gore Magala one-shot me. He turned and hit me with a relatively basic attack, and I was just deleted from basically full health (I was missing maybe 1-3% of my health bar, but it was an amount that was so negligible it wouldn’t have made a difference). As I’m running back to the fight, my buddy eats another cart. So now we’re sitting at one more cart and the quest fails. We went from fine to on the verge of the failure in moments. And we’d already been fighting Gore for a good length of time. We succeeded in capturing the Gore, but it was still a pretty sour victory, and one that I think paints a good picture of my problems with this new difficulty. Oh and I should add that Gore spent a good 75% of the fight in his enraged state. I get that Monster Hunter is the kind of franchise that rewards you for learning the monster’s behavior and attacks and properly preparing, but nothing feels worse than getting twenty minutes deep into a hunt and failing because the monster has so much health and deals so much damage that one wrong move catches you out of position and just flattens you. And frankly, the rewards aren’t even that worth it!
Don’t get me wrong, I really like the new RNG talisman system, but suffering through a twenty-minute slugfest that could end in failure at any time only to walk out with half of your talismans being some combination of niche elemental resistance and some skill that’s actually detrimental given the weapons I play (i.e. “paralysis resistance and maximum might”) feels genuinely awful. I’m sure that this system will get smoothed out down the line with roster changes and fixes, but as it is now, I’m not a fan.
I do think that many of these complaints boil down to the roster. From my understanding, Wilds was an experiment to make an endgame that didn’t rely on Elder Dragons. I think that this experiment has abjectly failed. The power vacuum of Elder Dragons has been filled by stretching regular monsters to fill those roles in ways that they just shouldn’t. The same eight monsters should not have four different levels of difficulty, especially when the rest of the roster is just left to rot. Now, I know that you can only make low-tier monsters like Chatacabra so difficult but give me a reason to fight it again. That’s the big issue. Players complain about lack of variety in the endgame fights, and this problem is only being exacerbated, and in my opinion made worse because the difficulty has been cranked up to twelve. There’s no reason that these talismans couldn’t have been added to eight-star quests as the reward. It also terrifies me to see how the difficulty power creep is only going to get worse. Assuming Shagaru Magala gets added, I’m not looking forward to the fight because of how ridiculous Gore currently is. Seregios and Lagiacrus are high-tier monsters for sure, but they don’t rival Elder Dragons at all, so I’m real worried about the game’s difficulty once Elder Dragons (hopefully) arrive.
Another important issue I need to address is that not every monster is created equal. Why on earth would I willingly choose to fight Gore Magala for these rewards when I can fight Rey Dau or an easier apex for the same results? Sure, Gore might give me a few more talismans per run, but it’s only a matter of time before I find a duo quest with an easier apex and some low tier monster. The first monster my buddy and I fought was Rey Dau, and we cleared it easily with no carts. Now I admit that I haven’t tested the entire nine-star roster, but what’s the point? Why should I waste my time grinding obnoxiously hard monsters when significantly easier ones guarantee me the same rewards? As I’ve already addressed, I don’t find these harder fights fun, so from both an enjoyment and reward standpoint, there’s no real reason to run them. I do intend to try and beat every nine-star quest in its hardest mode so I can say that I have, but I know it won’t be as fun as previously tough fights; it’s just going to be annoying.
So how should this system be fixed? It’s a good foundation, but it definitely needs tweaking. First and foremost, lower tier monsters need to feel meaningful. Give me a reason to hunt them again. Make them drop lower tier talismans or increase the amounts that the apexes give to actually make it worth farming them over the little guys, or something like that. Alternatively, and I’ll admit that this is both my favorite suggestion but also the least likely one, walk the difficulty back a little back. These monsters don’t need to be hitting this hard or be this tanky. In retrospect, I realize that these fights likely are on par with previous endgame Title Update fights from World (though I also must admit that due to various reasons I didn’t engage a whole lot with World‘s endgame until its content cycle was over), but it’s also different in the sense that World had hard fights you were meant to run a few times to craft a few pieces of gear, not ad nauseum due to a new gameplay loop being introduced.
In conclusion, I really like the new concept behind Monster Hunter Wilds‘ RNG talisman endgame grind, but the execution feels awful. I’m sure it will appeal to the hardcore grinders and fans of the series, but for more casual fans like me who still enjoy playing other games, I don’t think it’s going to be enough to fully drag us back in. I really hope that the difficulty gets tweaked or walked back in some way because at the moment it feels incredibly overtuned, which is fine in a fight you’re only expected to run a handful of time, but when it’s a core gameplay loop now, it’s going to get old, and annoying, fast, and I see the playerbase quickly optimizing it so that those highest tier monsters are barely engaged with because the rewards just aren’t worth the effort given the other options available.
Broad Scope Entertainment 