4/5 ★ – beemancer's review of Monster Hunter Wilds.

Monster Hunter Wilds is probably the best feeling Monster Hunter I've ever played, and I've played TWO Monster Hunters. Fighting monsters is incredibly fun. Capcom likes experimenting with new mechanics in each title, and for me these are winners. In Monster Hunter World, I almost exclusively played bowguns, and it isn't until I played Wilds that I realized what was missing from melee for me: focus mode. Being able to actually aim your attacks instead of whiffing anytime the monster readjusts makes the game so, so smooth. There's a lot of stuff you can do in combat, and you'll find you don't really need most of it. There's tons of tools and buffs and a variety of weapons that play very, very differently from one another. There's admittedly not a lot of monsters, fewer than the base version of World, but the variety still feels good. Notably, though, when trying to get your endgame gear, there's only 6 that are really relevant (and if you want to be efficient, there's really only 1). It'd be nice if they just added juiced versions of other monsters that gave more useful gear, because there's way more fun fights than just the apex monsters. The game is pretty, although it probably won't make any top 10 lists for visuals. The ecology of Monster Hunter is really awesome - I love the way monsters interact with the environment and each other during your hunts. This makes for a very cool world to exist in. I really like a lot of the characters I interacted with, too, although they seem to get mixed reception. The OST is full of some absolute bangers, especially on boss fights. Oh, and the character customization is incredible. You can get seriously dripped out. I can't stress just how fun the actual combat is, because I have a lot of complaints about... basically everything else. The UI for this game is atrociously bad. Menus are inconsistent - for example, sometimes checking the skill on a piece of gear will be the 'g' key, sometimes you have to hit 'r' to open a context menu. The map doesn't like to open if there's any notifications on screen - you have to clear them with 'y' before the 'm' key will be unlocked to open the map again. There isn't a good hub world, either. Although they clearly thought about consolidating by letting you access all the NPC traders/gatherers from Nata in your camp, there's several important functions scattered around the world - the supply ship, wyverian melding and whatever the oil forging is called are all in different towns and only available in those towns. Alma is your fastest way to start quests, but sometimes she just wanders off and you have to go into the tent to start a quest. The game is full of little inconveniences like this. Even thought the combat is fun when you've engaged with a monster, even the combat has some glaring issues. First, the environments are way too fucking big. Monsters like to run away sometimes, and sometimes they go very, very far, and you just gotta follow 'em. There's tools that can sometimes help you stop monsters from running, but you won't always be successful in doing so. They should've limited the distance a monster can run to be just adjacent areas or something, because it can really obnoxious when it runs multiple times long distances. This is made worse by the Seikret's terrible auto-pathing. It will generally get you there, but it sometimes gets confused and changes its mind a few times and runs you in circles or has difficulty finding the climb spots and jump points that help you traverse the area. Monsters share this pathing problem, and also sometimes get confused, making their run even longer. One of the best parts of combat is using all your tools and consumables to cool effects, but this game makes gathering the items needed to craft these tools kind of a pain in the ass. This leads to some hesitation in using even simple stuff like flash pods, traps, and tranquilizers because you can't just buy them and need to have the NPCs gather the materials you need to craft them (or go collect them in the field, which some people may be into but it is also slow as hell). The story sucks really bad. Monster Hunter stories always suck, but it's mandatory and it's boring. This game has an awesome world and cool lore, but the story is just stringing monsters together to fight. I gave up about two thirds of the way through low rank and started skipping cutscenes. You'd think the main story quests would at least have fun gameplay, but also no. While the fights are great, almost every single quest involves riding your legally distinct chocobo through the environment on auto-pilot at the slowest speed imaginable. You get to see the area, but it does this on every single quest, and they're basically unskippable cutscenes. The game is very lacking in the tutorial department. I get by because I played a lot of World, but new players seem quite lost. There's a LOT of information, and it's presented poorly. The game doesn't teach you how to use your weapon properly, or really how to use any of the dozens of tools you have. Most of the skills and stats are completely cryptic, rarely telling you how much damage or crit or whatever you get. Overall, there's a lot to complain about... but the game is fun as hell if you don't take it too seriously, and it's even more fun when you play with friends. I can't put it down, and I demand more. Capcom's also got a good history of supporting Monster Hunter games, so we will definitely be getting more... more monsters, more events, and eventually an expansion is basically inevitable. I suspect I'll be picking this up pretty often for a while.