Monster Hunter Wilds Co-Op Review
Monster Hunter Wilds is just mere days away from launching, but with thanks to Capcom, three of Player2’s own have been jumping into the hunt a little early. Here to cooperatively review this massive title are Jason Hawkins, as well as one of our editors, Paul James. Join them as they break down every facet of this hotly anticipated title.
Paul: So Jason, we’ve been hunting for a couple of weeks now, and Monster Hunter Wilds has made some pretty huge promises to fans about what to expect. There’s a lot for us to discuss, but let’s begin with the top level perspective. I’m absolutely in love with this game. It isn’t without its faults, which I’m certain that we’ll get into later, but there is just so much to live about what Ryozo Tsujimoto and his team have created. Jason let’s start cracking into this monster-sized title. What do you think, and what makes this game tick for you?
Jason: Every Monster Hunter game brings something new to the table, and no game has done more for the series than World. Wilds pushes that envelope further by making this much more of an open-world experience. Time, weather and other factors affect what monsters are in the world to be hunted, and you can just run out into the map on your legally distinct chocobo, the Seikret, with a backup weapon of choice strapped to it and just go hog wild fighting whatever is available. It’s a lot more freedom that we’re used to from the series. I love that feeling. Every environment feels a bit more ‘lived in’, and I’m a sucker for it. How about you, how are you getting on in the Forbidden lands?
Paul: I must admit that I’ve been tiring of open worlds somewhat, but the way that Monster Hunter’s typically closed environments still exist but are then still connected to one-another to form a larger, more sprawling landscape, akin to what we’ve seen in the RPG spin-off, Monster Hunter Stories, is the perfect middle ground. The Seikret is, as you say the secret Chocobo up their sleeve and an incredible evolution of what the Palamute was in Rise. As a combat experience, I must say I’m delighted as well. I’ve always been a hammer-user and it can be a bit frustrating in other titles due to the frequency with which attacks can be interrupted by enemies, but it seems that Wilds has implemented a “light” and “heavy” attack separation that allows me to keep striking enemies unless I’m ill-disciplined enough to get swatted by a heavier attack. I really appreciate that because if you’re not careful you might get lots of strikes in but still take a pounding for your trouble. The risk reward is more apparent here and I really love that. Managing your inventory, especially while out on a mission is still cumbersome in a way that I don’t love, but it’s an easy thing to overlook. How about you Jason? How does that moment-to-moment feel?
Jason: I 100% get where you’re coming from for inventory. I don’t know who decided that resetting your inventory would be going into a camp, bringing up the inventory menu, clicking the sticks in and then resetting from there was a good idea, but it’s so damn cumbersome. This being said, I really enjoyed the vibe of the maps. During combat, keeping an eye out for obstacles to crash into the enemy, or picking up any of the myriad herbs or throwables throughout a map, or some of the temperature bugs made me remember that I could take a second in any arena I was in with a monster and actually find something instantly useful. It adds an extra layer of strategy that was good, but I also found myself never running out of heals on hand as an outcome of that. There’s a whole layer there I won’t even touch right now. The palicos have also amped up their usefulness to a huge degree, but you’re only allowed one now. This is offset by the squad system, with which you can bring 3 extra hunters (NPCs or PCs), even during a hunt. I tried it once and it works well, but I never found myself relying upon it. Did you give the squad system a crack?
Paul: I’ve tried squads out, though honestly I’m more excited for SOS’ and jumping into peoples games and having others join me once the masses pile into the experience beginning on Friday. My experience up to this point has been primarily single player and that’s been perfectly fine. It has been a wonderfully balanced experience, even in scenarios where you’ve got multiple objective monsters coexisiting, but all needing to be taken down. Hurling dung bombs to push them away from each other, zero in on a target, thwart it and then move on to another has been fun, and there are a few cool scenarios that are presented to the player involving multiple collaborating monsters which are exciting as well. If we’re fortunate enough to get another Iceborne/Sunbreak-styled expansion I’m really interested to see how this is expanded on further. Circling back around to my point about being a hammer-wielder, I must say that I didn’t say I found much utility to the secondary weapon system. I know for some it’ll be great to swap out their favourites, but for me I was relatively unphased outside of swapping a hammer of one element for another hammer of a different element. What did you find these various systems and was there anything else on a gameplay front that lit your fire (or even snuffed it out somewhat)?
Jason: Gosh, this world is just screaming for a Master Rank expansion. I was interested in the second weapon systems, until I realised that any high level play for a weapon type uses a specialised set of gear, and switching between two weapons will completely upset that. It wasn’t until I got to High Rank and started needing to take on two monsters that it started to make sense. I’d never use two weapon types, but I do use two different lances frequently; one for each monster’s weakness. I’d often bring an unaspected weapon and say, a dragon aspected weapon if I didn’t know much about the monster, then switch out as the hunt required. There was a few things that changed that I very much was not used to, and actually kind of thought they might not be in the game in the same way, and that’s food and armour upgrades. Food, I didn’t realise until way too late, is not done at a chef like previous games, instead you make it either yourself via the tent (of which there’s a lot scattered around the map as you find them), or by eating well cooked steaks. I almost got to high rank before I found the cooking menu, I thought it was only via towns when they offer it. The armour upgrade system is super cool though, and doesn’t get unlocked until the second chapter (even though the menu option exists) allows you to continuously upgrade gear with a moving cap. If you’re super set on a low rank set, and it’s very low rarity, you can take it through all the way to the end of low rank and have it be comparable with higher rarity sets. That isn’t huge in low rank, but in high rank it gives so many more options for endgame sets. Amazing stuff.
Paul: You’ve touched on a few things there that certainly have irritated me about the experience. The game doesn’t explain itself very well, and for people acquainted with the systems of Monster Hunter as we are, the vagaries of the menus cause issues. Like you said, the armour upgrade system is visible but untouchable, leaving me thinking I’d done something wrong, while yes, the cooking is easily missed as well. I don’t love that.
You then talk about the gear rarity, yes, the low rank side of things can be bullied a bit with some skilled gameplay, but once you tip into high rank levels, you’ll need to be on the ball, and grinding a bit for the resources you need to upgrade your weapons and armour to be ready for the next monstrosity coming your way. Speaking of the monstrosities, the monster design is fantastic. It really feels like the environments were designed first, while the monsters were then designed to complement the environments – there’s a great synergy between them. The monster design is sensational, the interconnected world is great, character designs are cool too, and so it’s just a shame (and this is honestly my biggest bugbear, highlighting the incredible quality of the game) that the visuals can look so damn rough at times. Everyone dunked on the Final Fantasy VII Remake low-res door back in 2020, but there’s infinitely more low-res surfaces, etc in this game that its honestly a bit shocking. I’ll note that we’re both playing on PlayStation, the PC experience might be a bit different in this regard, but there’s some work to be done to touch up the console visual experience I’d say. Thoughts?
Jason: Yep, I absolutely noticed some of those low poly areas. I think they hide them ok, but there are some places where it’s blatantly obvious. I’m actually a bit more nervous about how PC will fare, as there were a lot of issues in the beta that they say they’ve ironed out. For me, I played on performance mode and it held tight, which was nice. It’s a lot of distraction work though; ignore the environments and focus on the big shiny set piece monsters. Which they are. The flagship monsters are huge and bombastic, the cutscenes look great, the big attacks and even the weather changes look phenomenal. But you do have to try and ignore those muddy textures.
I’m actually incredibly nervous about the food system in particular. It’s explained so poorly in game, and it was hard enough getting people to sign on in World when the chef was right next to the door, I wonder how many people will ignore the system due to how cumbersome it is, and how it’s tucked away. Those bonuses are massive, too. The whole camp system is just a bit more clunky than I ever would have liked. This very much feels like a game that’s both the best and worst of the series. Where some stuff has moved forward: the map design, the monsters and especially the combat flow; the other part feels so far in the past, like the cumbersome menus I mentioned before, and the games inability to teach you core mechanics properly. That’s even without talking about the login system to the game. This was, by far, the most frustrating, but I will also be in the minority here: logging into the game requires PS+, which I don’t have because I don’t use it that much. It prompts me, no less than three times (with deals on screen) to buy PS+ to play, which I have to cancel out of. Then, the servers are down (it’s prerelease so that’s ok) so I need to hit cancel on that prompt another 3 times. This is to play a game which I want to play solo. Why the hell is it like this. I know that this is a live service game, so these bugbears are to be expected but I never suspected it’d be this awful. A lot of this will ease up when the game launches and the servers settle, but the PS+ prompting feels gross.
I did have a feeling when I was playing the game, and I am nervous to broach the subject. I know part of this will be due to how much of the series I have played (this’ll be my 9th mainline game, not counting expansions). Did the game feel…easier? I didn’t have my first cart until High Rank, and didn’t triple cart until right at endgame. I think part of it is how much vigorbugs are in the world, and how good the palico is at support, but to me the game felt a bit easier on the whole. Endgame is still quite tough, so that’s nice.
Paul: Yeah I think your point about difficulty connects to my earlier point about a seeming “light” and “heavy” enemy attack where the level of interuption varies depending on how you’ve been hit. It does certainly make the game feel a lot easier. I was completing missions faster than I ever thought that I would, and with fewer challenges as well, all due to the reasons that we’ve both discussed. That is, of course, and excellent thing for newcomers, but for the established fans, it might frustrate. The higher difficulty stuff will undoubtedly come, but I think they could have pushed the player-base a bit more in the first place.
While I won’t go into specifics, I do appreciate that there feels like more effort has been put into the story of the game. Typically I could tune out during any cutscene or attempt to convey story in the Monster Hunter franchise, but I’ll admit, the plot, as well as the dialogue delivery were much better than I’ve seen in previous games. I’m sure for many it will still be an obstacle to the hunting, but if you’re looking for a little bit more, then Monster Hunter Wilds delivers nicely in this respect. How did you engage with the plot? Was it to your liking?
Jason: I like that they tried more with the plot. Some of it feels a bit silly in sheer ludonarrative dissonance though, but I think that’ll always be the case with these types of games. They can wax lyrical about the balance of the ecosystem as much as they want, but maybe in art imitating life, mankind will always be the greatest threat to the balance. Still, there’s some cool lore dumps here, and certainly some stuff I didn’t expect to see. Is it going to win a Pulitzer? No, but I also don’t think they’re for game narrative. It’s serviceable, and certainly more than we have seen before.
The thing that I’m reminded of quite often is trying to break into long running franchises as a new player. I think this is the best game to play first. Yeah, some of the core stuff isn’t explained, but I think the systems are designed for newcomers. A lot of Monster Hunter players talk about the first time the series ‘clicked’ for them. I’ve been chatting with some other writers, and it feels like for a few of them, this might be the game that does that. World came close, and then Rise was too much of a divergence from what they knew, despite that being a more ‘pure’ Monster Hunter. For all its flaws, and trust me there’s many; this game has some amazingly high highs. The music kicks arse, the combat feels astounding, the monsters are big, fun and full of spectacle. The rest will come. More monsters will come, more twists will come, as will big events. For a live service launch, this is pretty damn good. So good, I’ll be picking it up on PC too, just so I can play with my friends. If playing a game twice ain’t a great endorsement, I don’t know what is.
Paul: Look I won’t be jumping on the PC bandwagon for pretty well-documented reasons over several years, but there is months of playing Monster Hunter Wilds before me. The game takes many enormous strides forward for the IP but then has some minor faults that are in some particularly painful areas. The foundation is incredible though and with an already well-documented roadmap ahead, Monster Hunter Wilds is going to be one of the most consistently enjoyable games of 2025 both at launch, and for the many months to come.
Monster Hunter Wilds was reviewed on PS5 and PS5 Pro with a code kindly provided by Capcom.
