Game Over: Monster Hunter Wilds

It has been over a year since Monster Hunter Wilds officially released to everyone, and a little longer since I eagerly first played it for a review. With over 370 hours clocked and counting, I’d say I got my money’s worth. Now with the base game practically finished and the Master Rank expansion announced, I’d like to take a good look back on Monster Hunter Wilds and the wild ride (bud-dum tsh!) it has been to get to its current state.

Join me on my insane Monster Hunter journey!

Let’s start off with the difficulty of the game. Many felt that Wilds was too easy, given all the new tools and techniques hunters have gotten, while the base roster of monsters wasn’t given anything equivalent to catch up. Well, Capcom took that as a challenge and made sure everyone suffered for it. We’ve since gotten new monsters that really up the challenge, such as the bloody invader Seregios, the elegant yet deadly Mizutsune, and the long-requested Lagiacrus; these monsters will seriously mess you up if you don't prepare for them, especially when going against their Tempered counterparts.

The most baffling exclusion from the base roster was… the final boss for Low Rank: Zoh Shia. Once you beat the Assignment, you didn’t get to fight it again. It was a great fight, but it took some time until we could refight it, as it was relegated to a post-release update, along with the Grand Hub. Though its armour set was worth it, as it was visually stunning with some pretty good skills… for then, at least.

Is it cute or freaky I have a set that makes me look like a human cat?

But nothing could beat the reveal of Gogmazios, which is practically the final story quest of the base game overall. It literally has every available hunter, including Fabius (who is only available during festival seasons), participating to bring this Elder Dragon down. And this is the first time we actually can kill the thing, not just make it run away after enough damage is dealt. The fight is chaotic and tough as nails, which will test your build and fighting ability; but, damn if it isn’t one of the most fun fights in the game. Plus, the armour is really good and has gotten me through some really insane hunts.

But if that’s not enough of a challenge for you, there is one more quest meant to challenge even the best hunters: Proof of a Hero. Named after the series’ classic theme, it pits you against four 10-star Arch-Tempered Apex monsters, including the recently introduced Arch-Tempered Arkveld, who has insane dragon element attacks and gets back their Guardian abilities (heals own wounds, creates Wylk, doesn’t get tired, insanely aggressive). No special conditions, no extended timer, no extra carts. It’s purely one of the most intense hunts in the game.

Proof of a Hero is a true hunter's test.

It took me at least a dozen tries, and even then, I needed a full team of player hunters; but, I did manage to earn that player card fair and square. It’s also one of the few quests to both make me cheer in real life and physically exhaust me afterwards.

This was definitely helped by the plethora of overpowered weapons that I had at my disposal, thanks to the Artian system. While I did previously praise it, it soon became apparent that, due to its customisability, it left monster-made weapons in the dust. If you have a perfect Artian weapon, you won’t need anything else (unless a tough monster has an elemental weakness). This was made even worse with the introduction of Gogma Artian, which lets you further strengthen and add set bonuses to them. No matter if you’re a casual hunter or a competitive speedrunner, your armour sets will be using Artian weapons in some capacity. The only reason to forge anything else is so that you can change how your weapon looks through Layered Armour, which kind of disappointed me, to be honest. There are some great unique skills on so many weapons, but having the best decorations slots in the game and better stats can’t quite bridge that gap in power.

Are you ready for this jelly?

Though I had long completed my goals, what kept me logging in daily were the Event Quests. They started off kind of boring but did eventually become better, offering unique hunts and rewards. There was some great equipment you could build, such as the Shatterseal Great Sword, which was created by Nolan Lu after winning a design contest held by Capcom last year (though, I’d wish all weapons got contest designs). At the very least, they helped you grind out armour spheres, HR points, and food to ensure you’re never quite hurting for stuff.

My personal favourite Event Quest? Neon Neopterons, which has you fight against a bunch of colourful slimes reused from the Archanophobia mode. They are cute, funny, and they will melt your HP in seconds, even with endgame armour. The quest has nine carts for a reason!

Slay the Specter of War.

However, I think the crossovers were at their best here. It wasn’t just new armour and weapons but entire quests that became part of the base game. First off was with Street Fighter 6, and although I wished it was Devil May Cry, I was amazed by the amount of effort put into it. It lets you play as Akuma, forgoing weapons to use the Satsui no Hado to fell monsters as if you’re in a fighting game, with combos. It’s not the strongest style, and you have to look like Akuma if you want to use it, but it’s really fun to use.

But Akuma’s challenges don't compare to the collaboration with FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn, which pitted hunters against a literal planet killer: Omega Planetes. Just like Behemoth from Monster Hunter: World, Omega acts as a raid boss who will utterly destroy any hunters who don’t come in prepared for the worst… in its base form. As Savage Omega Planetes, it will truly test your ability to work with others, play whatever role is given, and not die. You will develop PTSD over “eScape” if you don’t have a real team to back you up.

Eggs, Rathians, and Congalas. It's like Egg Quests never left.

Oh, but it wasn’t all just hitting monsters until they die: the collaboration with MONSTER HUNTER STORIES 3: TWISTED REFLECTION brought back Egg Quests to the game, where you deliver monstie eggs in exchange for pendants. Wow, the art style clashes way more than the last time we had a Monster Hunter Stories collab, but the pendants are quite cute.

One of the weirder (yet somewhat unsurprising) collaborations was with ICHIRAN. You know, the Japanese ramen chain that is all about serving you noodles without talking to anyone or, if you can’t make it to Japan, make them at home. You can eat an ICHIRAN meal as long as you have a ticket, which is given out every day by ICHIRAN Chef Ichiran (yes, that is their name).

...You know, I could go for some ramen right now.

This isn’t the first food collab in this game, as you can get a KFC pendant if you got a code in Japan, and let’s not forget that Pizza Hut was featured in one of the older games. Oh, and I just remembered we got new emotes thanks to Fender, the guitar company, allowing you to rock out to a metal version of “Proof of a Hero”.

With all that said, as much as I love the game, in my review, I didn’t take into account the performance due to assuming that my PC just wasn’t up to snuff to run it properly. Unfortunately, it affected way more players than it should. The PC version of the game was riddled with performance issues that would make even high-end computers struggle to run it at a decent framerate. Since it was released, Monster Hunter Wilds sat at Mixed to Mostly Negative. I will defend the game’s gameplay, but not its performance. I thought I was alone in suffering through origami people and sub-30 FPS, but as it turns out, so was everyone else!

Precious memories.

This was not helped at all by the abundance of DLC made available to purchase. Though many were cosmetic only, it still stung to see so much cool stuff locked behind a paywall. Also, some of them can be a little… risque. Look, Layered Armour and pendants were one thing, but when you have Gemma’s Flamefete outfit staring at you and see her quest completion animations, you get sorely tempted to drop money.

That being said, there have been many improvements since then, slowly optimising systems and dealing with issues (such as having DLC = better FPS). While it took over a year, the game is finally showing Mostly Positive recent reviews. It will take longer before it loses its Mixed status, but it is getting there. There are still crashes, and I’m scared that the loss of Windows 10 support will eventually make the game unplayable, but as long as it still plays on my machine, I’m not stopping.

Until the next hunt!

Monster Hunter Wilds is the first Monster Hunter game I’ve completed with all the rewards available… mostly thanks to an exploit that has since been patched to find all the monsters I needed crowns for. Although it had its ups and downs, with criticism abound, I will still keep playing… because at the time of writing, not all the anniversary Event Quests have been released. I eagerly look forward to doing it all again when the Master Rank expansion releases.