First-person shooters have let players carry two (or even more!) weapons for decades. But I can’t explain the excitement I felt when I saw the hunter swap weapons in Monster Hunter Wilds.
This was mid-hunt, too—though Wilds also blurs the meaning of “mid-hunt,” thanks to its seamless world design. In many ways, this feels like the next generation of the franchise.
This feels like a more direct sequel to World than Rise did, if that makes sense. It looks beautiful in motion, with a certain level of grandeur that befits the monstrous scale of the creatures you can fight.
Mount and Do
Like Monster Hunter Rise, Wilds features a companion mount called Seikrets. They move as quickly as Palamutes, but they seem more agile, able to dodge enemy attacks at a moment’s notice.
Additionally, you can pick up items and interact with the environment while on your Seikret, which is very handy considering that the map we saw is twice as large as usual, according to a Capcom spokesperson.
Players can attack while mounted as well. But more importantly, you can equip a second weapon and swap between them while on your Seikret.
In the preview we saw at Summer Game Fest Play Days, the hunter started with a great sword and heavy bowgun, swapping freely between them depending on the situation. Afterward, he equipped a long sword and dual blades.
If you’re new to the franchise, it’s hard to explain how big of a paradigm shift this is. It’s sort of like going from a 1v1 fighting game like Street Fighter to a team game like Dragon Ball FighterZ. They’re both fighting games, but the approaches are wildly different.
Storming Into Battle
For the preview, we saw a hunter take on an Alpha Doshaguma, a bulky four-legged beast. It could tank a lot of hits, and its speed required some mounted combat just to keep up.
At first, its herd of three fellow Doshaguma made it hard to deal with, but the cunning use of another monster’s sand trap quickly whittled down the numbers for a more even encounter.
This incredibly mobile fight eventually found its way to a naturally occurring storm, bathing the entire field in an eerie blue light and buffeting winds. Lightning occasionally strikes in this space, at yours and the monsters’ perils.
To amp up the stakes, storms also contain a dreaded apex monster. In an attempt to lure the apex to the Doshaguma, the player got one-shot from full health, really illustrating the risks in the storm.
After the storm though, the plains sung green, as a period of abundance hit the field. It suddenly became lush and verdant, with vigorwasps (that can heal you) being plentiful.
Other local flora and fauna changes with the weather; special attention was given to some birds building nests during the green season. Like with other Monster Hunter games, planning is absolutely vital—but so are improvising and making the best of the hand you’re dealt.
The Seamless World of Monster Hunter Wilds
This feels like the grandest entry in Monster Hunter to date, and a big part of it is just how few barriers there were in our preview. From the hub village, we saw the player talk to some NPCs, buy some cheese, set up camp, cook a meal, then find the Alpha Doshaguma.
There wasn’t a single loading screen here.
You can just walk out of the village, find a monster, and start hitting it. The map shows all sorts of icons about the monsters around you, and you can mark one to immediately create a quest for yourself.
If you have a monster marked and your scoutflies are tracking it, you can even make your Seikret auto run to it. It’s a small convenience, but it’s great for if you faint and have to return to the fight.
After beating a monster, the usual 60-second timer to carve materials shows up, but you don’t have to return to the village after that’s done. Rise also let you continue to explore after a quest, but it still felt compartmentalized from the hub. Here, it all feels more like a living, breathing open world.
There are some logistic questions that I still have; like if you want to farm a specific monster, would you have to reload an instance of the world after killing it? What happens if you lead a monster to the village? Are there more maps with their own hub village within?
Whatever the answers to these questions are, I’m absolutely on board for more of what Capcom’s serving.
It took me five tries to learn how to enjoy Monster Hunter, with Rise finally being the first one I “got.” And now that I understand what I’m on board for, I’m ready to set aside another 100 hours for Monster Hunter Wilds.
Monster Hunter Wilds was previewed during a hands-off presentation session at Summer Game Fest Play Days.
