Monster Hunter Wilds is, without a doubt, one of the most anticipated games releasing next year on PC and consoles, and the excitement was palpable during Gamescom 2024, with extremely long lines to try out the game for the very first time since its announcement. During the show, I also had the chance to try out the next entry in the CAPCOM series, playing through a single-player quest that acted more as a tutorial before jumping into a more challenging multiplayer quest focused on hunting the powerful Alpha Doshaguma.
From a gameplay perspective, there isn’t a whole lot to say about the single-player quest other than that it served as a decent introduction to some of the series’ basic mechanics, story, and setting. Though I never truly cared for the story in any Monster Hunter game, I appreciated how the main character and Palico are now fully voiced, which definitely helped immersion and made me feel more engaged with the characters and world. This quest also showed effectively how the formula has been further streamlined over World and Rise, providing some welcome quality-of-life improvements that continue to address some of the clunkiness the series was known for in the past. I particularly appreciated the Seikret, a dinosaur-meets-bird creature that hunters can use to move around the vast world of Monster Hunter Wilds. This introduction seems to strike a great balance between the scripted mounted animals of World and the Palamutes of Rise, giving players the chance to do quite a few things while mounted, including, for the first ever in the series, switching between two different weapons. This is sure to influence build crafting on the final game quite a bit, as players will likely have to strike a balance for skills that work with both of their weapons of choice.
While riding on a Seikret allows the hunter to use ranged weapons, having never really used the bow or the bowguns, I opted to go with the two weapons I was more comfortable with: the Long Sword and the Great Sword. Needless to say, I felt instantly at home with both, although my lack of knowledge of Doshaguma forced me to go for more forgiving Foresight Slashes than Iai Spirit Slashes with the Long sword. Though familiar, I appreciated some welcome changes for both weapons. The Long Sword’s basic combo string and Foresight Slash, for example, are both enhanced when the Hunter reaches the highest Spirit level, giving users more reasons to hold onto their powered-up Spirit Thrusts and stay at the red Spirit level for longer. For the Greatsword, on the other hand, I did not have much time to discover all the new tweaks that the game will introduce, but the weapon felt as slow yet powerful as it always did, featuring the full array of moves seen in Monster Hunter World.
The biggest change for both weapons, and I’d say the combat as a whole, is the introduction of Focus Mode, which gives players the chance to be more accurate with their attacks, and makes it easier than ever to break parts, as wounds are highlighted when the mode is active. Attacks in Focus Mode can also be woven seamlessly into regular offense, so I expect it will be a big part of the Monster Hunter Wilds gameplay.
One more feature that will set the new entry in the series apart from the rest of the series is its big world, which is more dynamic than ever. During the fight against Alpha Doshaguma, I was caught in a sandstorm, which heavily impacted the combat scenario with limited visibility. My fight was also interrupted by another powerful monster at some point, prompting more environmental changes that looked impressive. Sadly, it was difficult to fully appreciate all this due to the roughness of the PlayStation 5 demo. Resolution was obviously rather low, and the demo never ran at higher than 30 FPS, which threw me off quite a bit, coming from the high framerate experience easily achievable with World and Rise on PC. As there’s still some time before the game’s release, I would expect this to improve considerably in the final release.
While Monster Hunter Wilds doesn’t revolutionize the series’ formula in any way, it competently continues to smooth out some of the formula’s rough edges to present a more engaging experience. This little taste of the experience left me hungering for more, and I really cannot wait to see what surprises the game has in store for hunters when it launches on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S next year.
