The Monster Hunter games have never had good stories. Each game’s so-called “plot” follows the same pattern, with something upsetting the ecosystem in the region du jour. You and your hunter pals show up and destroy a whole bunch of crazed monsters before uncovering the hitherto unseen giant creature that’s been wreaking all this havoc.
This isn’t so much a criticism as it is a simple fact. Nobody plays Monster Hunter for the plot.
The main event has always been the monsters themselves. These glorious, majestic beasts and the nail-biting battles against them, along with the always gorgeous orchestral soundtracks is what elevates every single Monster Hunter game above their subpar storytelling.
The point of all this preamble is to help you understand my utter shock when I tell you that I walked away from Monster Hunter Wilds, the latest entry in this storied franchise, thoroughly pleased with the story. That’s not to say this is suddenly competing with Final Fantasy or something but this time around, there is as much a focus on storytelling as there is on giant monster fisticuffs.
We open on a young boy, Nata, running away from his village as it gets destroyed by a raging mythological beast dubbed the ‘White Wraith’, before he gets found by you and your hunting party. Much of the narrative thrust of Monster Hunter Wilds is on helping young Nata return to his village, while trying to solve the mystery of what that White Wraith’s problem was.
Along the way you’re joined by a surprisingly lovable supporting cast. There’s Gemma the smithy who takes care of all your armor and weapon forging needs, Olivia, a fellow hunter who sometimes backs you up on hunts with her massive hammer, Erik the researcher who, in classic scientist fashion often forgets his own safety in the excitement of studying a new ecosystem. Rounding up the crew are Nata, the aforementioned young boy, and Alma, your handler who also pulls double duty as the resident archeologist (read: lore interpreter)
It’s a very solid cast of characters where each person arrives fully formed with their own little quirks that make them uniquely memorable, if not necessarily compelling. Every named character gets at least one major moment where they get to shine. It’s good enough to see a Monster Hunter cast who is actively involved in the story events, however, if you take the time to talk to them between missions, they reveal surprising depth as they speak about their needs, wants, and dreams. By the end of the game, I actually got a bit wistful as I turned to look at my camp and all the lovable weirdos who stayed with me through the journey.
The story is also more concerned, compared to prior Monster Hunters, with the role your hunting guild plays in the ecosystems and societies it interacts with. Your role in the forbidden lands is tricky. What, to you, is a new unexplored frontier, turns out to be inhabited by people who have lived and thrived there for centuries, and watching these two worlds interact has been handled with a refreshing sensitivity and purpose.
It’s not all feels however. After all, it wouldn’t be a Monster Hunter without a healthy dollop of silliness. Not more than an hour after watching a child get traumatised by a monster destroying his village, you’re watching a glorified chocobo chase a bunch of cats around. Monster Hunter Wilds goes from straight-faced sincerity to bombastic action to some full on horror without missing a beat. The story takes you on a guided tour of the various biomes in the forbidden lands as you go from village to village, solving the local monster troubles along the way. It’s a pretty good yarn with its fair share of twists. The payoff to the central mystery of the White Wraith is something straight out of Resident Evil, but that’s all I’m going to say on that matter.
Once you’re done being impressed by the narrative chops on display, Monster Hunter Wilds delivers just as exceptionally on its gameplay.
If you’ve been with the series for any amount of time, you will immediately notice the tweaks and improvements Capcom has made to the combat systems. I’ve always been a Long Sword main so I’m generally used to having some mobility during combat. But even by those standards, Monster Hunter Wilds feels much more nimble. Most weapons have been given windows between attacks in a combo string where you can hold the left stick to slightly shift your footing. This sounds minor, but in a game where you’re expected to fully commit to every input with no animation cancelling, being able to adjust your angle of attack or sidestep an incoming hit without interrupting your combo is a literal game-changer.
Another game changer is the fact that you can carry extra items and even a secondary weapon on your mount, allowing you to restock healing potions or switch to another weapon midway through a fight. In the early game I was mainly carrying two Long Swords with different elemental damage, but I later changed to a Long Sword and Switch Axe, and oh boy. If you’re even slightly versed in Monster Hunter, you know what a big deal it is to be able to switch weapons in the middle of a fight.
The real star of the show, however, is the new “Focus” mechanic that lets you manually “aim” your attacks with L2. In the Monster Hunter of yore, if you wanted to change your direction of attack, you’d have to stop attacking and manually turn your character. Here, you can simply hold L2 and turn the camera, with your character slowly turning themselves to face where you’re aiming.
That’s good enough alone, but the actual point of Focus mode is to supplement the new “wound” mechanic. Monster Hunter has always been about targeting specific body parts on monsters, either to disable some of their attacks (don’t like being tail whipped? Cut off the tail) or to farm for specific parts and materials. That’s still the case but now, once you land a number of hits on one part, it becomes “wounded.” Going into Focus mode highlights wounded areas for you to land a focus strike, unleashing a heavy finisher that does major damage.
This is an immensely satisfying mechanic that neatly slots into the usual pace of Monster Hunter fights. In the early game the loop of opening wounds and focus striking them saw me blazing through hunts to a point where it almost started to feel unfair. Almost. But the second half of the campaign some absolute freaks at you that make mastery of this system almost essential for survival.
The monster fights have also benefited from Capcom’s newfound cinematic flair. The story-specific fights are truly ‘epic’ in every sense of the word. You’ve fought dragons in videogames before, but have you fought a dragon in the eye of a thundering sandstorm while also fending off stray attacks from frenzied sand worms? The systemic interactions between monsters was introduced in Monster Hunter World, but it’s taken to new heights here.
Outside of combat, the gear game has seen some changes too. Like any Monster Hunter, your equipment defines your play style. There are no stat points or skill trees, instead it’s your equipped armour pieces that, say, boost your ability to guard, let you use items more quickly, etc. In Monster Hunter Wilds, the more offense-centric abilities are found on weapons rather than armour.
This was done to encourage players to use the new weapon switching mechanic without feeling restricted by their armour loadout. In Monster Hunter World and Monster Hunter Rise, switching weapons meant having to also switch to armour that compliments that weapon, as changing only your weapon would make many of your armour skills irrelevant. That is no longer the case. Eventually, I still ended up crafting armour sets that were more optimised to my long sword, but swapping over to my Switch Axe no longer makes my armour skills irrelevant. This, in short, is very good!
All of these new systems get to really shine in the late game and endgame, especially in multiplayer hunts which are now easier to join than ever. As soon as you boot up the game and select your save file, you’re given the choice to join a lobby, create your own, or start in “Online Single Player” without joining a lobby. While there is no explicit “offline” option, you can, in fact, play Monster Hunter Wilds entirely offline even when you aren’t connected to the internet.
Even in single player mode, you can fire off an SOS flare that takes you online and starts matchmaking. In case you aren’t matched with any players, a party of AI hunters will step in to help you out.
Visually, Monster Hunter Wilds is absolutely stunning. Each biome you visit has a unique identity and, if you excuse the game review cliche, feels alive. This is something that was equally true of World and Rise, but in Monster Hunter Wilds, you see the wildlife actively interfacing with the environment. Herbivores move in herds, graze the grasslands, stop by streams for water. The levels feel like actual ecosystems rather than just “levels” in a videogame. Saying a Monster Hunter has good music is like saying a Resident Evil has good zombies, but Akihiko Narita’s background score still deserves special mention for how adeptly it tackles Monster Hunter Wilds’ wild tonal shifts.
There were a lot of question marks around the game’s performance during the open betas, but I’ve been playing the full release build including the day one patch, and it ran absolutely flawlessly on my launch PS5. There are three visual modes on offer: Fidelity, Balanced, and Performance. And you can set framerate caps independently from your chosen mode to 30, 60, or uncapped. If you want to run Fidelity mode with an uncapped framerate, more power to you. PS5 Pro players will be very happy with this. 40fps caps are also available if you’re connected to a compatible display. I played through most of the game on fidelity mode, but switched to the performance mode in the latter half, and experienced locked 30 and 60 frames respectively.
Since 2013’s Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, the series has been on a slow trajectory to make itself more approachable to newcomers. While both World and Rise made minor strides on that front, this feels like the logical conclusion of that journey. It’s the series at its most approachable, most mechanically refined, most narratively ambitious, and most visually stunning. Yet another feather in Capcom’s perfectly plumaged cap, Monster Hunter Wilds is a treat.
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