Monster Hunter Wilds is a gateway drug [INITIAL VIBE]
Rhianne Ward
I've spoken about this before a couple times I think, but I've always struggled a little bit to get into the Monster Hunter series. I started my journey with Rise, playing it for around 5-10 hours, before accepting defeat and dropping it. I don't know what it is about that game, but it just doesn't hit for me at all. I think I found it to be lacking in a strong atmospheric through-line. You jump from mission to mission, only spending as much time in an area as is needed to hunt the monster. The areas themselves are very functional and clearly designed with this specific activity in mind, but lack a sense of place, at least for me. The game itself is fun, but emotionally I was left pretty cold by the experience.
Last year, anticipating the freshly announced Wilds, I tried out World, which had been sitting in my Steam library for years. I wasn't expecting much, but I figured I'd scratch the itch while it irked me. Then, like magic, I switched sides. Monster Hunter World fucking rocks. By embracing a slower pace with its hunts and prioritising a more intimate understanding of the environment, the game came alive in a way I never felt in Rise. Some might consider it boring to find tracks and gradually pursue them through a dense, sometimes confusing forest, but to me that's where I thrive. It demands an attention to the mechanics and my surroundings that makes the game instantly more engaging, and feel less like arbitrary busy work. All of a sudden, I am a hunter, in pursuit of monsters.
With the second Wilds beta, I cannot tell you how excited I was to try it. I missed the first one for whatever reason, so this was my chance to rectify some wrongs. By this point, I have not touched World in a while, not because it's bad, but simply due to the fact that Wilds is fast approaching and, curse my consumer habits, I'd rather play with the newer, shinier model. Rest assured though, I still love that game a lot, and I'd like to revisit it someday if I ever have a thirst that needs quenched. With monster blood. Too much?
So I've been playing a lot of *Monster Hunter Wilds today, February 7th. To be honest, I had expected to give it a solid shot, decide that I liked it, and wait patiently for the full release. That…is not what has happened. By end of day, between solo hunts and some co-op play with my veteran MH-enjoying flatmate and my complete newbie other friend, I have played around 7 hours of this beta, and I genuinely have no idea where the time has gone. I am bewildered.
Make no mistake, I'm having an absolute blast. For one, the character creator is an absolute treat. It's quite extensive, and the hair looks gorgeous, so that's two personal boxes checked. I decided to go for a lot of yellowy-gold accents in honour of the new release, and I quite like how my Hunter turned out! I very creatively named her, “Rhianne”.
The first hour of this experience was creating Rhianne, then enjoying a short introduction to the world of Monster Hunter Rise. You save a little girl, then her brother from a big angry slimy toad. You kill it, then head to base camp, and that's pretty much where the story content ends. I gotta say, although we have vanishing little to chew on, I get a good vibe from the story here. It seems like you and your party have come here to help out for no other reason than a genuine, altruistic desire to help. In another game, I might call that boring, but here the characters are so immediately likeable, and their admittedly silly dialogue delivered with such bombast and genuine sincerity, that I can't help but be captured by it. I think I'm going to get very attached to this band of do-gooders, and I'm excited to see what is in store for them come February 28th.
It's a very me move to talk about the narrative of a fucking Monster Hunter game before the actual Monster hunting, so how is that?! Monster Hunter controls unlike anything else I've played, and that's kind of exciting whenever I pick one of these up. Every swing of your sword is so deliberate. At least, this is the case for my beloved Great Sword. You don't just learn the enemy attacks to make it easier; you actually have to, or you will die. Use of the Great Sword is basically pointless if you're not paying attention. There are a bunch of other weapons to choose from - I've personally dabbled in and enjoyed the Dual Blades, the Bow, the Switch Axe, and the Long Sword - and what really impressed me is how each of them feels so completely different from one another. It goes without saying, of course, that a glaive will give you a different kinetic experience than a hammer, but what makes Monster Hunter Wilds so interesting, and so insane, is the way every weapon type has its own set of sub-mechanics to think about.
The Switch Axe, for example, lets you swing a mighty axe, obviously, but pressing R2 will transform it into a sword instead, with its own slightly different moveset. You want to be using both types, because axe attacks charge up the sword’s elemental abilities, allowing you to do big damage if you land a certain hit just right. The balancing act inherent to the set makes it a little complicated to use, but it is unbelievably satisfying once it all starts to click. Even the Great Sword, a staple of the Monster Hunter series, brings a couple additions to make it a more interesting playstyle. You can now perform an upswing which works as a parry move, interrupting enemy attacks and causing them to stagger. Once I realised I could pair that with my regular charge attacks and sneak them into my 1-2-3 charge combo, I felt like exactly the experienced hunter the Guild seems to think I am.
CORRECTION FROM RHIANNE'S FLATMATE JAMES WHO IS MUCH BETTER AND MORE KNOWLEDGABLE AT MONSTER HUNTER THAN HER: The switch axe builds sword form guage in axe form, which in turn lets you build elemental discharge gauge in sword form, which makes it so you can climb on a monster and make it all go boom.
I think the beauty of Monster Hunter lies in its little nuances you can only understand but playing the game. There are tutorials abound, and the game goes out of its way to place button commands on the top of your screen at all times in case you forget. It's a kind of handholding I'd tend to hate, but any MH worth their dung pods will know that being good at Monster Hunter is about much more than simply understanding the buttons you're meant to push. It's about combos, and precision, and positioning, and environmental awareness, and elemental defense, and a million other things. The magic therein is simply playing the game and figuring the strategies out yourself, fully organically. I love the shit out of it.
With Wilds, I figured I'd try something else new too. I finally gave the multiplayer a go! I've always been told that Monster Hunter is best with friends. Lucky for me, I have a friend who is dangerously addicted to these games. Truthfully, though, I always felt a little weird playing the other games with him. After all, he's already played these games inside and out. The balance would be off! I'd be experiencing it all for the first time, and while I would always appreciate the help, I can't deny that some of the magic of those first-time encounters would be lost with another person knowing exactly what to do and holding my hand through the whole thing. My favourite fights in Monster Hunter are awash with chaos and carnage and unexpected twists. Nothing fills me with joy more than thinking I'm almost done with an enemy, only for them to pull a super lightning attack out of their ass at the eleventh hour and fry me into dust. That's the good shit.
Wilds, therefore, is a perfect entry point. I don't know shit about fuck, but for the most part, neither does my friend. We're sailing the same sinking ship, but at least we're drowning together. We got to fight Rey Dau and Arkveld together - witness the flashy movesets as the music crescendos amidst the madness of a deadly thunderstorm - both for the very first time, and that shared experience was genuinely magical. With this game, I think I'm finally starting to genuinely understand what makes playing Monster Hunter with friends so special, and I cannot wait to do it again and again for dozens of hours when the full game comes out.
I don't know if I have an awful lot more to say about it. I'm just having an absolute blast playing this game. I'm going to play more tomorrow (EDIT: I wrote this before PSN died for a full day, so I did not do this sadly) and the next day (EDIT: PSN is back up, so I will probably do this!), and I'll probably play even more when the beta re-opens next week. I think 2025 is the year I become truly, utterly, Monster Hunter pilled. Rathalos help me.