Monster Hunter Wilds Review: Capcom's Latest Entry a Wild Success

Monster Hunter Wilds arrived. After countless hours in the world, we are finally ready with our review complete with details. As huge Monster Hunter fans, we approached this title with equal parts excitement and scrutiny, given Capcom's pedigree and the community's high expectations. It is undoubtedly awesome, but is Monster Hunter Wilds perfect? Tune in as we break it down, highlighting the good, the bad and what you should be expecting now.

What is Monster Hunter Wilds? Hunting Through a Story-Driven Experience

Monster Hunter Wilds is set in the epic Forbidden Lands. This entry sets itself apart with a more serious story approach. You accompany your hunter and a mysterious lost boy as you try to reunite him with his people. As you progress, you will venture across various and beautiful lands with changing weather. Weather will generate different gameplay and feel. Get ready to take down amazing monsters and uncover a richer story than ever told in the Monster Hunter franchise.

Compared to earlier entries in the Monster Hunter series that slammed you through the gates into the hunt-grind loop, Wilds takes its first hours to prioritize world-building and character development. That slow unspooling immerses you in the lore and stakes before the familiar Monster Hunter experience fully breaks loose. It adds more immersion to the hunts and ultimately a dimension that veterans may find ephemeral at first, but that is ultimately what this does.

Gameplay: The Core Monster Hunter Experience, Elevated

At its core, Monster Hunter Wilds has a lot of the same gameplay loop that fans love, just taken to a larger scale. The hunting gameplay is better than ever, with a massive lineup of monsters to hunt, a variety of weapon types, and complex environmental interactions. The act of mastering weapons, crafting ideal loadouts, and methodically hunting them down to nab loot is still extremely satisfying.

Take everything you enjoy about Monster Hunter gameplay, and wrap it around a story that will give your hunter an arc and a real reason to step into the world in the first place. Add a reason for really caring about the characters around them. You have the recipe for something memorable. If you miss that Monster Hunter: World feeling, Wilds definitely scratches that itch, mixing together elements of Monster Hunter Frontier and new mechanics.

The Focus Mode system is a highlight. It gives you pinpoint control over your characters when making them attack, leading to smoother and easier combat, particularly for new players. This makes it easy to know where you are in relation to the monster to focus on attack timing and monster behavior better. While we will be going into both the positive and the negative sides of Wilds, it cannot go without saying that the roots of the gameplay – the hunting, the monster encounters, the progression – is excellent.

Story and Characters: A Focused Narrative

The main story of Monster Hunter Wilds takes around 10-15 hours to complete. It mainly contains the low-rank section of the game. Those hours are jam-packed with almost continuous story moments. Without revealing any spoilers, I can assure you that there are shocking revelations and lore development for Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate fans. However, certain things left mixed feelings, somewhat similar to Monster Hunter Stories 2. Hopefully, they get expanded upon in future updates. Another addition and very much welcome, is the voiced hunter. This addition greatly increased immersion and the feeling of the hunter being a part of the world and the story. It is difficult to imagine going back to silent protagonists after playing for so long while fully engaged. The story writing and music itself are also one of a kind, especially in the later parts, which never fail to create epic and breathtaking moments. The monsters themselves have more variety, even though the total count is less compared to base World or Rise. However, this is hardly a negative point. High rank content unlocks after finishing the story, and the traditional Monster Hunter grind starts as usual, giving plenty to farm for.

Pros: Story & Characters

• Compelling Story: More story driven compared to others with lots of lore and character development.
• Voiced Hunter: Much needed immersion.
• High-Quality Story Writing and Music: epic moments.
• Varied Monster Roster: slightly less than some but excellent fights and monster variety.

Cons: Story & Characters

• Slightly Disappointing End: Some final story felt like it has room for expansion.
• Monster Roster Size: obvious point for some.

Seamless World & Exploration: Potential vs. Reality

Monster Hunter Wilds includes a large, seamless world of interconnected ecosystems that can be traversed without loading screens. For players who enjoy exploration, Wilds provides various areas and ecosystems to view stunningly, including breathtaking monster behaviors to watch. Ultimately, getting lost in the world and observing dynamic shifts in weather and gameplay altering the environment is genuinely rewarding and immersive. However, endemic life can be collected, but a player house or customizable home to display them is a massive loss for potential integration. Nonetheless, the seamless world, while appreciative, still suffers from not feeling as fully utilized as was hoped. Quest initiation and fast travel are relatively similar to previous games; those fantastic questing and fast travel events are still challenges. The Environmental Link system allows seamless co-op but likely will not compare to the lobby and team systems taking the front seat for coordinated hunts. The seamless world is a massive, well-crafted play area but feels like a significant missed potential in terms of gameplay integration.

Pros: World & Exploration

• Seamless and Diverse World: Large, interconnected ecosystems without loading screens to improve immersion.
• Dynamic Weather System: The game's weather system shifts environments and gameplay significantly.
• Immersive Exploration: It encourages one to get lost, exploring and seeing hidden details and monster behavior.
• Visually Stunning Environments: Plenty of State areas are lovely, vibrant, and alive.

Cons: World & Exploration

• Limited Seamless World Utilization: Most seamlessness does not significantly affect core questing or co-op gameplay cycles.
• No Player Housing: Lack of a place for players to live or to show off endemic animals collected appears wasteful.
• Weather System Drawbacks: Harsh weather states can make environments appear drab and washed out.

Quality of Life Improvements and Art Style

Monster Hunter Wilds is stuffed full of quality-of-life improvements, ironing out a lot of the series’ traditionally fussy bits. From in-field cooking to a shareable loadout system, and a reworked wishlist, tracking and managing resources is more convenient than ever. Overall, these improvements create a more fluid and entertaining experience for players.

The art style is incredible, with so many moments where you just want to stop and look at the surroundings. But much of the visual experience is dependent on the weather system. Though Plenty weather states are colorful and vibrant, inclement weather can gray out environments. This design decision, as it relates to the game and its themes, allows the visual presentation to vary based on what is happening in the game.

Pros: Life and Quality Art Style

• Host of QoL Improvements: Systems in place to improve cooking, loadouts, wishlists, and beyond.
• Awesome Art Style: Beautiful landscapes, especially in Plenty weather.

Cons: Art Style

• Weather Dependent VFX: Bad weather can bring down the visual vividness level of the environment.

Co-op: Hunt Together, Story Apart

Co-op is, as it has always been, the cornerstone of Monster Hunter, and Wilds delivers the same exhilarating experience of hunting enormous monsters with friends. The collaborative, strategic, adrenaline-pumping moments and shared victories are at the heart of the fun. The Link Party system is a great improvement too, sending quest invites to group members automatically—no need to send a single invite to join the next quest.

Having said that, story co-op is a staggered and frustrating experience and while it has improved from earlier titles, it is still far from ideal. You still have to watch each cutscene for individual story quests before you can join in on the hunts. The ability to sort through access to other players during a hunt via Link Party eases some pain points in the invite process, but the overall experience of seeing the story together is choppy. A big annoyance is having to leave friends mid-hunt to go rejoin, then go back to hunting. For general hunting and non-story co-op, though, the system is massively improved, with 100-player lobbies, squad lobbies, and the Environmental Link system. Yet Wilds still does not quite make the cut for a flawless co-op story progression.

Pros: Co-op

• Great Co-op Hunting: Co-op gameplay is still just as fun and captivating.
• Environmental Link System: Connecting multi-party systems simplifies joining hunts.
• Massive Lobbies: Improved social and multiplayer features, including 100-player lobbies and squad lobbies.

Cons: Co-op

• Staggered Story in Co-op: Even if you manage to play co-op, story progression still feels friction and annoying, since full cutscenes are required for the story to progress.
• No Story Campaign Co-op Seamless: Cannot pass through the entire story campaign seamlessly with friends.

Palicoes and Minor Missed Opportunities

The fact that there is no traditional Gathering Hub is a glaring oversight. There are still larger lobbies and base camps, but the social hub vibe of past Gathering Hubs feels absent, which may disappoint long-time fans.

Palico management has been tightened. But this does sacrifice depth and control of their tools, gadgets, and skills. While Palicoes are still useful and entertaining companions with genuinely amusing gadgets, they offer players less in terms of customization and tactical control than in previous titles.

Cons: Minor Issues

• No Gathering Hub: Some fans are disappointed by this one.

Pros: Streamlined Palicoes

• Decreased complexity and options for customizing Palicoes and their skills.

Performance and Graphics: PC Concerns

The PC performance on the RTX 4080s we tested with was haphazard. Despite the systems’ similar specs, some had smooth performance, and others had crashes, bugs, ghosting, and frame drops. Additionally, there were visual bugs like texture flickering. The same hardware experiencing different performance levels is a red flag. PS5 performance capabilities remain unknown because our review is based on the PC version. Furthermore the HD texture pack was unavailable for testing; therefore, it is possible the game can be enhanced visually, implying more graphics-intensive work, which could be a challenge to manage. Monster Hunter Wilds is a visually stunning game, especially in Plenty weather, but its erratic performance does it a disservice.

Cons: Inconsistent PC Performance

• Performance varies even on identical hardware, ranging from excellent to troublesome.
• Visual Bugs: Texture flickering and other visual problems.
• Performance Variability: Some experience smooth gameplay, others do not.

Result: A Top Monster Hunter Experience

Despite these few criticisms, Monster Hunter Wilds is an excellent game and a significant evolution of the series. The concentration on the narration is fantastic, and the primary gameplay remains just as challenging and satisfying as it used to be – it is obvious that this is the direction the Monster Hunter franchise is now taking. The continuous world co-op experience and collaboration story lines do not achieve their full potential, and the PC performance issues must be addressed. However, as far as the game goes, Monster Hunter Wilds shines where it counts. Action never stops; this is the most important aspect to remember. The story and overall impression solidify Wilds as a top-tier title in the Monster Hunter series.

Technetbook Rating
Rating Score	9/10
Stars	★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Monster Hunter Wilds offers an outstanding experience missing only a semblance of performance consistency and the potential for co-op and a seamless world to feel complete. However, Capcom has redeemed itself with an excellent new Monster Hunter installment, and we cannot wait to see what the future will bring to this incredible start. What do you think of Monster Hunter Wilds? Feel free to share your comments in the section below.

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