Monster Hunter World<\/a><\/strong>. It\u2019s a slightly different experience than you\u2019d get with the more Nintendo-y MH games; the MHW games are more focused on appealing to a wider audience to bring in new players and, being completely un-portable, only support online multiplayer. That\u2019s already a knock in my book, because 50% of the fun of Monster Hunter is getting together with my brother to hunt locally.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThat factor aside, I’ve had a lot of fun with Wilds over the first week. While not a single one of the pre-release trailers got me hyped in any way, I\u2019m happy to report that the game is just as good as or better than any that came before it. Which is what you\u2019d hope for from a sequel. It\u2019s been a while since I’ve played either World or Rise, so I was a bit rusty at first, but I got back into the swing of things pretty quickly. At least as far as basic mechanics go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
There are a lot of little changes and new features in Wilds, and a number of those are still tripping me up. To be quite frank, I still have a poor understanding of how the online system works. And also my PS5\u2019s wi-fi connection is pretty dodgy and disconnects at random times, so it\u2019s a bit of a crapshoot for me anyway. Fortunately, the SOS flare makes it easy to ignore the lobbies and parties and whatever, and just hop into a quest or summon other players to your own. And if nobody shows up after a few minutes of firing off your flare, the game will spawn in NPC hunters for you now. Neat!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The revamped item box interface took me a long time to figure out. Upgrading armor is also super unintuitive now (it didn\u2019t help that it took ten hours to actually unlock the feature. WHY?). The map is generally nice, but I would like a simpler way to fast travel, please. I don\u2019t really get the point of the Ingredient Centre or whatever it\u2019s called; thanks for the rations but why do we need a whole menu for this? Fishing just doesn\u2019t seem to work; I\u2019ve tried many times for many minutes, and I can\u2019t get a fish to even nibble the lure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those are my teeny-tiny gripes for now. I\u2019m sure that I’ll either figure them out or learn to ignore them in time, none are actually a problem in any way. The thing that actually<\/em> bothers me is the sheer volume of story in this game. I know Capcom went to a lot of trouble to try to write a compelling, emotional narrative for this big blockbuster game, but I just don\u2019t care. It\u2019s not what I play Monster Hunter for, and it\u2019s not interesting enough to really add anything to the experience. It just forces you through numerous cutscenes and endless dialogue and so many times when the game wrenches control away from you. I, personally, would like to go back to the times when the story in Monster Hunter was five text boxes after an Urgent hunt.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe other thing that\u2019s driving me nuts are the story NPC characters that follow you around and chatter at you endlessly (“You can carve small monsters, too!”). It’s not nearly as bad as the pawn chatter in Dragon’s Dogma<\/strong>, Capcom’s other<\/em> kill-giant-dragons game, but it’s still annoying. Compounding the issue is that palico partners can now speak English, which is a terrible curse, since they actually never shut up. I initially thought that the old-school meowing would be more annoying, but I was wrong. So very wrong. I miss my silent palamute from Rise.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBut hey! The core gameplay is still rock-solid! That\u2019s why I\u2019m here, so I\u2019m pretty darn happy about that. I don\u2019t think there are any major changes to how combat operates on a fundamental level. The switch axe, my weapon of choice, now has a slick counter move, which is much appreciated. It\u2019s not 100% ingrained into my muscle memory yet, but we\u2019re getting there. I think there are actually two<\/em> new counter abilities, but I haven\u2019t really learned how to do the one for axe mode yet, and the tutorial made it seem like the timing is too precise for my rusty old reflexes anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat is<\/em> different is Wilds\u2019 main gimmick: the wound system. In previous games, you could break monsters\u2019 parts to earn bonus rewards at the end of a hunt, but this goes way beyond that. Now, as you\u2019re fighting a monster, if you keep hitting the same spot over and over, you\u2019ll see a glowing wound form. If you attack that wounded area, you\u2019ll then cause more damage than usual. Going one step further, if you use a special attack on the wound, you\u2019ll do massive damage that will often topple the monster over, giving you a huge opening to pile on even more<\/em> damage. Honestly, it\u2019s felt a little broken in my favour while I\u2019m still going though the story, though I\u2019m assuming that once I bump up to High Rank it\u2019ll seem less overpowered.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFollowing that, Wilds has been\u2026 very easy so far. I know I\u2019m an MH vet and that I\u2019m still only in the story half of the game, which is always much easier, but still. I\u2019ve only been knocked out once in about 10 hours, and only because I wasn\u2019t really paying attention to what I was doing. I\u2019m eager to get up to High Rank and square up against some truly dangerous monsters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A tiny new feature is that you can now hold the touch pad to end a quest immediately after slaying\/capturing a monster. It\u2019s not like waiting the full minute before going back to camp is a huge hassle, but having the choice to skip that timer is cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finally, the most important thing in a Monster Hunter game: the monsters. Wilds has a fairly paltry gang of 29 monsters (compared to Rise\u2019s 46 at launch), though 20 of them are brand new. I didn\u2019t pay much attention to the pre-release material, so I had little knowledge of what I\u2019d be going up against. Most of the new monsters I\u2019ve gone up against so far have been really cool! Chatacabra is your run-of-the-mill boring tutorial monster, and the rock leviathan guy is just a weak Agnaktor without fire powers, but the rest have been really neat! Probably my favourite so far has been the weird plague-doctor-bird-thing; Rompopolo, I believe it\u2019s called. It\u2019s not a particularly challenging fight, but the creature is just so damned odd-looking and creepy that I can\u2019t help but be obsessed with it. Having fought half the roster at the time of this writing, I\u2019m looking forward to seeing who\u2019s left to meet!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The returning monsters are\u2026 less impressive. For starters, we get Congalala, Blangonga, and Gypceros, which nobody has ever liked. Then of course you have to have Rathian and Rathalos which everyone\u2019s kind of over but it\u2019s Monster Hunter law that they appear. That leaves four more legacy monsters: Nerscylla, Gore Magala, and two that I don\u2019t know yet. Nerscylla\u2019s cool, but also an easy beginner monster (that first appears halfway through the game). Gore Magala is one of my all-time favourites, so I\u2019m very happy that it\u2019s here. I can only hope that the last two aren\u2019t Plesioth and Tigrex, but Capcom loves<\/em> Plesioth and Tigrex.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSo all in all, huge success! And it’s only going to get better once the story is done and out of the way and I can simply focus on the hunts. I get that this is supposed to be a AAA-style game, but did it really need dozens of walk-and-talk segments?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I also streamed the first couple hours of the game last Friday. If you want to see just how long it takes to get to any real game play, go and check those out. I say “those” because my PS5’s connection pooed out halfway through so the stream is broken up into two VODs. And the DualSense’s mic technically worked well enough, but the quality is definitely a few steps down from what I’d like. I’m never streaming directly through the PS5 again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n