Monster Hunter Wilds REVIEW - big, dumb, stupid, fun
Rhianne Ward
I used to really like sports; specifically football when I was a kid, and later rugby. I enjoyed understanding their respective rulesets, and appreciated the ways in which players would use those restrictions to their advantage, scoping out any leg up they could muster. When all those clever plays fell into place, it was like watching magic be cast before my eyes. I also adored the minutiae contained within the industry: league tables, player transfers, team synergies, and so on. I loved looking at upcoming fixtures, and attempting to predict the outcomes (typically unsuccessfully). I would figure out how many points my team needed, and cross reference that with other teams, determining a conceptual perfect outcome.
Sports are also a notoriously head-empty pastime, an “opiate of the masses” if you want to be a dick about it. The mental buy-in for being invested is very low. Did you team score? Celebrate! Did they concede? Languish in despair! It's pretty straightforward stuff. There are hidden complexities to the entire operation, but ultimately, it's a game of winning or losing, and that's about all that matters in the end.
This isn't me dismissing the whole thing as stupid bullshit for dumb people. There is a genuine sense of community to be found in sports! Relationships are made and broken by this silly hobby, and that can't be discounted. Humans care deeply, no matter what, but we get to choose what we care about, and for some, it's sports. Not to mention, the thrill of watching your team, the group of people you have invested your emotional core into, overcome odds and come out victorious is a high so insane few things in this world can match it.
To me, Monster Hunter Wilds is like sports. It has every aspect that makes up the experience of enjoying sports. The initial ask is simple: hunt monsters, turn them into clothes or weapons, to better facilitate the hunting of monsters. The game has a plethora of weapons to choose from, varying in complexity. I favoured the Switch Axe for its flashiness and range of moves, but there are options for the more…minimalistically inclined. The Sword And Shield will get you where you need to go with a reliable “slash with Triangle, guard with R2” arsenal. The Hammer is similarly easy to grasp, more concerned with positioning but the majesty of bonking a big lizard in the head until it falls over remains undefeated.
I'm not going to go through every single weapon type because we would be here all day and, to be honest, I ended up gravitating to a select few so I'd feel a bit unqualified. What I appreciate about the weapons of Monster Hunter Wilds is that they each feel so distinct that your choice of arms is essentially a decision that affects the type of game you want this to be. The Great Sword turns Wilds into a methodical dance of enemy attack memorisation, looking for perfect little windows of opportunity to strike with explosive precision. Dual Blades, on the other hand, turn the experience into an Attack On Titan power fantasy where even your simplest attacks contain within them a level of flash and pizazz most other games only dream of. Then, of course, you have the Bowguns - Light and Heavy - which will appeal to the non-committal folks among us who like to take their sweet time and not get too involved in the situation.
Wilds is a game dedicated to the pursuit of creating an experience that is only as engaging as the player wishes it to be. If you want to be a psychopath and micromanage your life around the Charge Blade then you are welcome to, just as the game is more than happy to facilitate the Hammer enjoyers who don't want to think too hard. There are certain challenges that will require at least a couple brain cells to complete, but in all honesty, while Wilds by no means hands you your wins, it doesn't stand in your way either. It wants you to win, and do so stylishly.
I spent a large portion of my review of Obsidian’s Avowed complaining about the ways in which that game resists immersion by streamlining its experience so aggressively that it loses some sparks. If I were a consistent woman, I'd turn that critique right over to Wilds. It literally added an auto-run button, so you don't even need to know how to navigate the map anymore. Your seikret will slowly bring you to your destination, no questions asked. Capcom have also tuned this experience to be as smooth a sail as possible, but I don't feel the frustrations here as I do with that previous game.
Why is this? Am I stupid? Maybe, but I think there's a difference in intent here. Monster Hunter Wilds wants you to get into a loop of stocking your equipment, setting out for a quest, hunting a monster, carving its materials, and investing them in weapons and armour, ready for the next quest. It is truly just this, on repeat, for upwards of 40 hours, and it's incredible. I have become utterly obsessed with gathering all the armour sets in this game. I'm writing this review now because I finished the entire storyline - both low and high rank - but I am very much still playing this game regularly, and still having a wonderful time.
Repeating monster fights is a treat because every encounter feels so dynamic, due to the staggering numbers of systems overlapping and intersecting with one another, serving to cultivate new stories with every encounter they host. Very rarely do two fights play out the same, due to weather differences, weapons used, environmental changes, lack of or presence of teammates, and the list goes on ad infinitum.
I think Capcom have hit a stride with the multiplayer implementation too; it's now so easy to hop in and out of my friends’ worlds to help with quests, and they can do the same for mine with minimal trouble. Moreover, with the open world design introduced in Wilds, it's easy to pop into the game for a quick 20 minute hunt of whatever monster appears on the map. The addition of spontaneous, organic decision making is such a game changer for this series. Everything is just so…seamless. I adore it.
That being said, it took me a while to come to terms with what Monster Hunter Wilds is: a game for switching your brain off. You will not, and should not, be thinking that hard while playing it. If you hit the base prerequisites for not dying - good armour and weapon, plus restocking potions - you will be completely fine in basically every encounter. You are not advised to overcomplicate, and this extends to the story as well.
Admittedly, Wilds appears to have put marginally more thought into where hunters stand within the world they operate. Your purpose is to hunt monsters, and the game goes out of its way to figure out a scenario where doing so with reckless abandon is actually okay for the most part. The final cutscene after the conclusion of Low Rank hilariously shows that the previously thought extinct Arkveld has somehow figured out how to reproduce and lay eggs. Monster Hunter Wilds plays the “life finds a way” card. Don't worry Hunter, you can kill as many monsters as you like, they'll figure out how to keep existing somehow!
I'm being a bit of a bitch, but in a way, I kinda appreciate the shamelessness of this. Capcom knows why you're here, and so they don't waste too much time humming and hawing about the ethics of the whole operation. You're here to kill monsters, and that is ostensibly a good act within the text, so just have fun with it! Hunting monsters is, after all, a whole lot of fun. They made sure of it.
However, and Monster Hunter fans are inevitably going to hate me for saying this, but this does place the intellectual bar for entry at around the same level as Call of Duty or…sports! There is plenty of complexity to be found which makes the game more sophisticated and satisfying to overcome, but ultimately, you are encouraged to turn off your critical thinking skills and let the game guide you by the hand to the nearest rollercoaster ride.
Ultimately, the difference is purely in aesthetics. Personally, I find the imaginative world and designs and viscerally pleasing weapon styles of Monster Hunter far more compelling than CoD’s rather generic military shooter sensibilities, and there's only so many times you can watch a ball get kicked around before the whole thing feels a bit rote.
I think what helps Monster Hunter Wilds stand apart from its fellow no-thoughts competitors is its endless charm. The story has this beautiful optimistic air to it that I couldn't help but fall in love with. Enormous efforts have been dedicated to food animations, and making meals look like just about the most appetising shit you have ever seen. Seriously, the list of things I wouldn't do for a Monster Hunter cookbook is startlingly short, and murder is definitely not on there. You have a CAT. COMPANION. WHO HEALS YOU IN COMBAT.
If the pastime of sports is the entertainment equivalent of your dipshit coservative uncle who complains about woke at family gatherings, Monster Hunter Wilds is your beautiful "go piss girl, I mean they" himbo cousin who cooks a killer brownie batch and sends you daily workout motivation quotes on FB Messenger.
If you are a layman trying to figure out what all the fuss is about and wondering why I'm ultimately landing on this game being excellent despite everything I've said up until now, it all comes down to one crucial word: whimsy. Wilds shows a world where the odds are stacked profoundly against you, but that's okay, because you have a host of friendly faces in your corner, ready to assist at a moment's notice. Even outwith NPCs, the game incentivises constant cooperation and companionship with real people, and you get to meet so many strange and wonderful folks just looking to have a good time, and help you have fun too. The real Monster Hunter, it seems, was the friends we made along the way.
And if you think that's a terrible ending to a review, then I invite you to let whimsy into your heart, and go out and kill a few monsters. It's for your own good!
