Into the Wild frontier.
Monster Hunter World is Capcom’s best selling title of all time, reported to have sold over 21 million copies. For a series that was considered niche in its past entries, that is a remarkable achievement. Monster Hunter Rise only trails it by a few million, but ranks as the second best seller for the publisher. The latest entry, Monster Hunter Wilds, is on track to likely join its brethren, thanks to a more approachable structure, even if it causes Monster Hunter to lose a bit of itself in the process.
At its core, Monster Hunter Wilds feels very much like its predecessor in Monster Hunter World. While the title sees a change from the MT Framework engine to the versatile RE Engine, the visual advancements are not as pronounced, due to systems and mechanics I'll dive into shortly. Nonetheless, Wilds has larger environments, a greater sense of life across its many biomes, and a larger focus on traversal than we've seen in several entries prior, feeling very similar to what Rise had offered with its Palamutes.
What also sees a change is that currently, at launch, there is no central hub. You'll have base camps that are stationed in each region, but no cemented home for your hunter and their allies. This is because you are strangers in a strange land, recently becoming aware that life does exist out here in the wilds. You'll meet the local tribes and people that make up this land, forging bonds as you come to grips with a plot that sees you hunt a monster that is causing an ecological disaster.
In fact, this monster, Arkveld, is at the core of the story. In the game's opening moments, you'll meet Nata, a young boy who is seeking help after this monster attacked his people. This causes your travelling group to help him get home. While the story pushes beyond this to get to the heart of the matter, it's a decent story if not entirely too memorable. That said, Monster Hunter has never been a series to really see its narrative as the driving force as while some players are eager to see this narrative roll out, a good portion of its audience simply want to get to the fight. The story sequences here are fairly short, but provide a cinematic flair to how they are directed alongside gorgeous visuals, lighting, and music.
Once you complete the story, you'll be tasked with remaining in the area to take on a series of side missions and additional quests, discovering more about the area and what troubles its people. While additional missions, new monsters, and expansions are set for release post launch, this is what is present across the game currently for its endgame, a series of fights against increasingly harder enemies, tempered foes, and more. The Monster Hunter Life is about the grind, the continued hunts to perfect your gear and min-max your stats to prepare for the eventual drop of its Master Rank missions, and new threats down the horizon.
What has been a point of contention with Wilds is that many find the initial lead up to its endgame to be the easiest Monster Hunter yet. Honestly, I agree that the base difficulty is certainly easier than World and felt similar to what I felt with Rise. However, what makes a lot of Wilds easier is how certain systems have been streamlined and that you can dash in and out of battles on the back of your new companion, the Seikret. This bird-like creature can swoop in to retrieve you from a grisly death and allow you to sharpen your blade, consume potions, or auto-follow your foe to their destination, all on their back as they speed around.
This addition certainly can remove some of the tension, allowing you to perform actions that were once difficult to find the time to do so in battle. Here, accessing them is as easy as pressing a button. Press up to have them come to your aid to move around the battlefield, press left to do the same while checking your supply box, and press right to retrieve your second weapon type, a first of its kind feature for the series.
Your Seikret also serves as a new way to leap into the air and mount your foe, especially for the less agile Hunter classes. Regardless of how the Seikret is used in battle, it'll be interesting to see how future Monster Hunter games will improve or replace this feature, given it opens up Monster Hunter to be a more faster-paced title than we've seen even prior to Rise.
Now, I mentioned it just briefly, but Monster Hunter Wilds allows you to bring a second weapon type into the mix, allowing you a quick way to swap between them. While this feature is pretty interesting, it does have some drawbacks. Since your gear is focused on the weapon you are wielding, unless you have a slightly similar weapon as your secondary, you could potentially swap to a weapon that doesn't compliment your gear. Had your Seikret also swapped to a secondary fit of gear, then this feature would be far more ideal, given the min-max nature of how gear and weapons work.
This is furthered by the fact you can upgrade your equipment. From using armor spheres to increase your stats, to adorning decorations to your weapons to boost elemental damage or improving your ability to heal or deal critical damage, your base weapon and equipment stats are just the beginning of how you craft your builds, equip your hunter, and how you engage with each hunt. Having a second weapon that doesn't compliment your gear doesn't quite make sense from a stat-based angle unless you are looking for something similar in your equipment.
Monsters also have more readable “tells” that make it easier to determine if they are aiming for you, allowing you to summon your Seikret and haul ass out of there. What is also added in Wilds is the ability to drink the most relevant potion to your circumstance. Poisoned or in need of a particular potion and unsure what to drink? Just select this feature and it will consume the recommended potion. There is a lot of customization in your item-wheels and even a quick select in the bottom right corner that makes it easy to access your item pouch.
Now, Monster Hunter Wilds doesn't mess with the structure of what Monster Hunter has been, especially since World. Ensuring you are sticking to the format of your best selling game is a smart call. You still go out on hunts, defeat or trap these magnificent beasts, and carve away at their carcass, earning the needed materials to craft new weapons and gear. This loop is still present either as part of the story, investigations, or other missions. And with certain materials having particular drop rates, or even a hybrid of multiple monsters, you'll be tackling numerous hunts to build the equipment you'll need to get you to the next hunt, or building a set that cosmetically suits what you want, especially as you can change the appearance of your gear to anything you have crafted before. This feature is present for both you and your Palico, your feline friend and helper.
Hunts eventually move into high rank, causing the challenge to greatly increase. This is where the standard difficulty comes into play, fights that can be utterly brutal, especially as some of the larger monsters have screen-clearing attacks that down you in a single strike. One particular battle requires you to use your Slinger to pull down debris to stand behind an upcoming and very telegraphed blast, otherwise, you'll be instantly killed, regardless of how much health you have. These types of battles are an absolute joy to take on due to some incredible presentation and something added into the fight beyond just hacking away at it.
While new weapons have been added in previous entries, the assortment of weapons present here is identical to the last few entries with no new additions. From the Bow to Sword and Shield, to my personal favorite in the Switch Axe, the reliable entries you were able to wield in World and Rise are here, albeit with new variations due to the arrangement of new monsters. Weapons can have decorations adorned to them to enhance certain traits or add entirely new ones, which ties back to the weapon swapping complaint I mentioned previously.
Weapons, like armor, are split from low rank to high rank, resulting in you needing to hunt high rank monsters to get the required materials to craft the more powerful variant. Where armor differs from weapons is that you can use armor spheres to increase their stats. Decorations act the same way by allowing you to min-max your gear to suit your weapons. Armor can also be cosmetically altered to take on the form of other gear, as well as changing colors for each piece. Unfortunately, you cannot transmog your weapons, due to each weapon having different sizes and designs that may conflict with the hit box.
While having the appropriate weapons and armor is one thing, you'll need monsters to hunt, and Monster Hunter Wilds launches with 29 large monsters, and 18 small types, resulting in 47 monsters to track down and harvest materials from. Out of this total, there are plenty of new monsters to hunt. Doshaguma, Chatacabra, Balahara, Lala Barina, Rey Dau, Uth Duna, Quematrice, Rompopolo, Ajarakan, Nu Udra, Hirabami, Jin Dahaad, and Arkveld, are among the new monsters, with many of these having some of the best designs and battles in the series. Arkveld, the cover monster for Wilds has a series of chain-like whips that can decimate your hunter if you take the attack head-on. Jin Dahaad, is another favorite of mine, with ridges all over its body that make it a visually distinct beast.
Wilds also features a few returning monsters with many staples of the series coming back. Blangonga, which was introduced in Monster Hunter 2 joins Congalala, a fellow Monster Hunter 2 addition. Nerscylla, Gore Magala and Gravios, from Monster Hunter 4, are back with series originals Gypceros, Rathalos, Rathian, and Yian Kut-Ku, making their standard appearance yet again. Sadly, none of the original monsters from World seem to be here.
Monster Hunter World was a chore to play through the campaign with friends, and Rise didn't fare much better. While some improvements have been made here, it nonetheless is a convoluted mess in some areas. From exploration link parties to friends lists and clans, there is a variety of ways to join other players, provided you have their hunter ID. This is due to cross play, and while I can understand the method of why this is needed, I can’t help but think that other games have done this sort of thing better and less convoluted. However, once you have your friends’ IDs, you can invite them to your party, host plenty of friends in Link Parties, and they will have alerts automatically sent to them when you engage a monster.
Now, if you want to take part in random quests, this is easy enough. Approach Alma near your tent and interact with her. She will provide a menu that you can easily find what you need. You can search within your lobby or link party, or SOS alerts where players are requesting a bit of help. The filters and options here make it very easy to find the match you are looking for, making playing with other players to be very streamlined.
Monster Hunter Wilds is certainly a looker on high-end PC’s, offering a decent optimization for certain rigs. My experience with Wilds was on Series X, taking advantage of the quality mode and performance alternative. Quality does certainly look better, putting the game at 30fps, with performance lacking the detail and lighting improvements but maintaining a higher fps as it floats around 60. Despite the lower framerate, I did opt for quality mode as the 30fps never affected my enjoyment, even if it did feel a tad more fluid under the performance setting. PS5 Pro is certainly the definitive console experience, as it combines both settings for a much smoother and cleaner image, should you have the mid-gen refresh from Sony.
I mentioned at the top of the review that the visuals can be inconsistent, and that comes down to the time of day and weather conditions. During sunny days or clear skies, Wilds looks incredible, clearly improved from World and Rise. However, during evenings, nights, and bad weather, a lot of that sheen and detail is lost, taking a game that is absolutely gorgeous and making it dark and hard to parse the intricate details to the environment and your hunt. Thankfully, during your own hunts, you can change the weather conditions, but anything preset, as in the story or certain side missions, are locked to what is required of the narrative.
While Wilds doesn't reinvent the series or really advance it further, apart from the addition of the Seikret, it nonetheless impresses with the swap to the RE Engine and the Monster Hunter loop we've enjoyed for years. The new monsters are a treat, especially with the likes of Lala Barina and Uth Duna, and while the multiplayer is still somewhat convoluted, the ease of finding hunters in distress nonetheless makes it easy to find those farming the monsters you need to perfect your loadout. While the next in the series could see some improvements to multiplayer functionality and new weapons added to change up the meta, Wilds is nonetheless a stellar experience that delivers a fairly enjoyable story and the foundation for more to be added in the future.
Developer - Capcom.
Publisher - Capcom. Released - February 28th, 2025. Available On - PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC. Rated - (T) - Blood, Crude Humor, Violence. Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X/S. Review Access - Monster Hunter Wilds was purchased by the reviewer for the purpose of this review.
Jeff is the original founder of Analog Stick Gaming. His favorite games include The Witcher III, the Mass Effect Trilogy, Hi-Fi Rush, Stellar Blade, Hellbade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and the Legend of Heroes series, especially Trails of Cold Steel III & IV.