Monster Hunter Wilds

2025-03-16
I started Monster Hunter back with 3 and when Monster Hunter World came out it genuinely felt like a big step forward. The interconnected world, the better tutorials, the amazing graphical leap, hell, the fact that I could actually convince my friends to play one of these games for the first time. Wilds is a further evolution of Worlds and in that sense it's amazing. The world feels more like a living breathing place than ever, the set pieces are pure AAA sugary eye-candy, there's new monsters like Molerat Lion, Ballerina Spider, Dragon That's Actually A Gun, and of course, who could forget, Leather Gimp-Suit Mosquito-Raptor Full Of Gas? But Wilds also weighs down this bounty of treats with more of the dreadful story that they've started to add to the newer Monster Hunters. Do I care about yet another tale about an ancient civilization that killed itself with its own miraculously advanced technology? No I want to cut that BDSM mosquito-raptor so I can wear a new hat. Do I care about Timothee Chalamet's internal struggle with, I dunno, the ethics of killing dinosaurs? No I want to kill that BDSM mosquito-raptor so I can wear new gloves. And even if an involved story didn't feel at odds with the pure-gameplay-driven core of Monster Hunter, it's so bad. Not only does the dialogue and cast of characters feel like they were drawn up by a teenager, the game repeatedly feels the need to force you to slow-walk through levels leashed to these characters as they blab their banal bullshit at you. You literally can't run because running is cancelled and if you try to slowly walk away they'll yell at you to not go too far off. Going through these felt like the game equivalent of Squidward bashing his head into the cash register waiting for Patrick to order.

Despite it's moments of excruciating faff it is more Monster Hunter and it's brighter and more bombastic than it's ever been before. The gun dragon, Rey Dau, is fucking fantastic. The music is dope. The set pieces involving face offs between monsters against the backdrop of the beautiful world, like the Doshaguma getting pulled into a sand dune by a Balahara in the middle of a thunderstorm, are amazing. Mechanically everything is as tight as before but with extra QOL improvements, most notably being able to carry two weapons. If you've been playing these games for a while you know that's a massive change.

I'm in the camp that the next Monster Hunter needs to shake things up in a bigger way similar to what Worlds did. Rise tired me out and kind of bored me but thankfully Wilds was just enough of a shot in the arm to bring back my love of Monster Hunter. Who am I kidding? If they have another Rey Dau or Lala Barina in them I'll keep coming back for more. Even if they beat me over the head with some garbo storytelling.