‘Monster Hunter Wilds’ Review: The Monsters Are the Thing, and That’s More Than Enough

Capcom’s Monster Hunter Wilds is a major achievement in many regards, but its story-heavy campaign—what the game categorizes as its Low Rank section—puts an unfortunate damper on things. The narrative here is pretty soggy, in that it doesn’t have the structural integrity to support the weight of its seemingly endless dialogue.

The plot of the game concerns the trials and tribulations of a young boy, Nata, who’s been separated from his village in the long-isolated Forbidden Lands and needs your monster-hunting skills to return home and learn the nature of the White Wraith that drove him away. It’s a decent enough excuse to go on an adventure, but Nata—bless his heart, he’s been through a lot—barely utters a single interesting phrase in the course of the game’s approximately 25-hour Low Rank section, and the rest of the cast isn’t much better.

Thankfully, the game’s hunts are several orders of magnitude more compelling than its story. And once you roll credits and proceed to the game’s High Rank section, the story takes a decided backseat to the game’s real meat and potatoes: tons of hunts against an expanded roster of monsters, with a difficulty curve that slowly but surely continues to ratchet up.

While learning how to handle the game’s 14 weapons rewires your synapses in a way that’s somewhat reminiscent of a fighting game (each has their associated combos, timings, and contextual button inputs), combat here mostly evades comparisons to any game save the rest of the Monster Hunter series. This is illustrious company, and the game sets a new high-water mark. Monster Hunter Wilds ditches Monster Hunter Rise’s snappily immediate wirebugs, which functioned like highly versatile grappling hooks that could be used to recover quickly from a knockdown or vault into the air almost at will, but its new wound (as in an injury) and focus mode systems bring a degree of specificity to combat that’s a net improvement.

Wounds act as weak points, and they can be generated by hitting monsters repeatedly in the same place. Once open, hitting wounds again with regular attacks will deal additional damage, while connecting with specialized wound attacks breaks these wounds for a high-damage burst, opening up new combo and movement possibilities in the process.

This requires highly accurate targeting that’s only possible because of the addition of focus mode. Toggling the mode on zooms the camera in slightly and adds a reticle to the screen. It also allows you to change your positioning even when attacks are in motion, delivering an unmatched sense of control over combat. As a whole, these changes mean that the game’s action places an even higher premium on diligent observation and careful precision than its predecessors. Monster Hunter Wilds flows remarkably well, with combos feeling less restrictive than they ever have in the series, and flashy finishing moves and slick aerials aplenty.

Though as great as its action may be, the game’s secret sauce is expectedly its fascinating creatures. Rey Dau is a massive dragon that’s able to “store, amplify, and discharge” lightning through its horns, resulting in such powerful explosions that, should the beast do this in a sandy environment, will leave spikes of fulgurite (otherwise known as lightning glass) in its wake.

Far less grand are the rotund Gypceros, which bear an unnaturally stretchy tail that’s both dangerous and unsightly, as well as a horn that can flash brightly enough to stun any hunter too slow to interrupt the attack or flee to a sufficient distance. The ace up the Gypceros’s sleeve is its tendency to play dead, lulling inexperienced hunters into a false sense of security.

Then there’s the Blangonga, a muscular, ape-like animal that fights in a rhythm that’s pretty tricky to predict, and which boasts a feint wherein it appears to turn and disengage before uncorking a powerful backwards lunging attack. The kicker, though, are the smaller Blangongas (presumably its children) that show up throughout the fight. These will encircle hunters in a howling throng, mirroring their larger counterpart’s attacks from a distance in a display of support for their elder that is as intimidating as it is heart-wrenching.

In just about any other game, even a single boss fight that displayed this level of carefully detailed lifelikeness would count as a major highlight. But in the context of Monster Hunter Wilds, the examples above can almost feel unremarkable, because—as in much of this series—the entire roster of creatures is suffused with the same level of care, detail, and life.

This game was reviewed with code purchased by the reviewer.