I’ll never be one to bemoan my privilege to play much-anticipated games early, yet getting just an hour to go hands-on with Monster Hunter Wilds is as agonizing as it is delightful. I adore Capcom’s beloved RPG series, and Monster Hunter World – the storied developer’s best-selling game to date – had me hooked for 2,000 hours before I had my fill of its Iceborne expansion. Spending such a brief time with the sequel at Gamescom 2024, then, is like licking my favorite ice cream once and then walking away. With that said, I’m pleased to report that Monster Hunter Wilds tastes more delicious than ever.
With 14 weapons to choose from, each complex enough that it feels like a separate game, there’s no way I can even begin to test everything about Monster Hunter Wilds that I’d like to. Yet the general feel is on point – as expected, it’s closer to World than the slightly faster-paced Rise – and the environments are a dramatic step up. That’s perhaps the most immediately striking aspect, given that World’s significant evolution of the locales and the way you interacted with them helped cement it as one of the best RPGs ever.
I’d seen the reveals before Gamescom, yet experiencing it for yourself is something else. The design is even more intricate and natural, maintaining the series’ classic zone-by-zone structure without ever feeling brazenly mechanical in its construction. Having a sandstorm kick up around you, followed by the thunder rolling in as spiky new lightning bastard Rey Dau arrives, is a spectacular sight.
The first monster I’m there to fight is a Chatacabra – a stout, spiky-jawed creature somewhat reminiscent of a cross between fan favorites Dodogama and Pukei-Pukei. Despite the intimidating opening, this poor pal is rather a pushover. That probably isn’t helped by me picking my most-used weapon, the Longsword, which retains its excellent Iai Sheathe stance from Iceborne and Rise along with the vast majority of its usual bag of tricks. With that said, the fight is a fun one, even if it’s rarely out of my control.
I slide away from attacks with the Spirit Counter, quickly build up my Spirit meter, and then unleash it to deal huge damage. Here, I test out Focus Mode, the new showpiece feature, which has you hold L2 to zoom in and manually target your attacks. This isn’t essential to use, but it allows you to quickly reorient your attacks and helpfully highlights spots to wound, which is made even easier using a new Focus Strike move on L2 and R1.
The wound system is a smarter adaptation of the clutch claw softening from Iceborne. Wounds start to form as you attack a specific part multiple times, and while you can spot them on the monster fairly easily, you can also use the Focus button to highlight them. Deal enough damage, and you’ll score a break, which instantly nets you a drop that goes straight into your bags.
The slinger also makes a welcome return, allowing you to fire off the various crafted or gathered pods that you can use to gain an advantage mid-fight. There’s also a grappling hook on your slinger, which is handy for snatching items at range. This trick also works on gathering spots such as ore, although you’ll only get one pickup each time, and you can even use it while riding your mount.
That mount, the Seikret, functions as a halfway house between Iceborne’s Raider Riding and Rise’s Palamutes. You can control its movement manually, or hit up on the d-pad to send it into autopilot towards your current target. While on board, you can sharpen your weapon, use items, and then leap off to deliver an aerial attack to try and snag a cheeky mount. Some might find this almost too much of a convenience, but I like it – I wouldn’t want to lose the sharpening mechanic altogether, but dying because of it is rarely fun.
With Chatacabra handled, my next target is an Alpha Doshaguma – the leader of a pack of similarly giant, shaggy beasts. Fighting several of these at once, especially on the steep sand dunes, is just as chaotic as you’d expect. Fortunately, a new ‘large dung pod’ is a great way to scatter the pack out quickly so I can pursue the leader in a more one-on-one format.
This time, I’ve brought along a Hunting Horn and a Bow – another handy feature of the Seikret is that you can store a second weapon, allowing you to switch between them mid-hunt while mounted. The Hunting Horn has me curious because Rise’s implementation was so distinct from what came before, but what we get in Wilds is much more akin to World’s implementation, which feels like the right call. There is a little taste of Rise, however, as the new Focus Strike is very much that game’s Earthshaker wirebug skill.
A little experimentation quickly reveals that, yes, you can still sneak a second note input on the two-hit swing. Excellent. Even more interestingly, your buffs seem to carry on even after you switch weapons, although whether the time taken to swap over, map out and play your songs, and then swap back will actually be worth the effort remains to be seen.
My Bow skills have more notably atrophied of late – especially as Rise gave the weapon a slightly different rhythm – so I don’t stick with it for too long here. That said, my brief experimentation reveals that it retains a lot of the slide-and-shoot mobility that makes it so much fun to play, allowing you to deftly swoop away from enemy attacks as you deliver constant barrages.
The Bow also has some nice tricks up its sleeve: a new tracer round causes further shots to home in for a short while before detonating, making it easier to focus on damaging specific parts. This move, along with applying coatings, is now handled by spending a meter that refills as you hit enemies or perform perfectly timed dodges. It’s a smart way to make using coatings play a little more of an active role in the hunt, and should also ensure you won’t run out of them and have to go back to camp to restock.
Those smart little decisions are evident everywhere in Monster Hunter Wilds, even in my short time playing. The BBQ has been expanded to a system where you can combine ingredients to achieve various effects. A new heal option will automatically select the right strength of potion to drink based on the damage you’ve taken when you use it. The item bar now has a setting that allows you to stack items up in a grid format rather than a single line, allowing you to access the gear you want even faster. All the usual control tweaks remain available, too, and in much the same layout as always, so getting my preferred setup was handled in no time.
The last thing I’ll touch on is the story. This has never really been the primary draw of the Monster Hunter games, although I enjoyed World and Rise’s light narratives well enough. Wilds, however, looks to step things up here as well. The cinematic presentation is strong, and I was particularly taken by how much the characters care for their Seikret, rather than treating them as disposable assistants. As one final quality-of-life improvement, you can now skip all those cutscenes if you want to get to business ASAP.
So far, Monster Hunter Wilds is more evolution than revolution – but given that World was such a good game, that’s absolutely the correct move. And what an evolution it is: bigger, scarier, more awe-inspiring. I’m just desperate to play more. The Monster Hunter Wilds release date is set to fall in 2025, and while we don’t have any more information than that, I’m quietly hoping that Capcom is planning to stick with its love for first-quarter launches. If they do, there’s a slim chance we might even see a public demo late this year. Pretty please?
While we wait, at least we have the best games like Monster Hunter to keep us busy. Alternatively, if you can’t get enough of the thrill of adventure and exploration, the best open-world games are packed with wondrous places to explore.
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