Forum - View topicGAME: Monster Hunter Wilds Game Review
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b-dragon
Posts: 513 |
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I wish I liked MH. It sounds like something I should like. I've played, and enjoyed, MH adjacent games like God Eater 2-3, Toukiden, and Granblue Relink (I'd argue its postgame is much more reminiscent of a Monster Hunter like,) so the genre is not completely foreign. But I bounce off Rise and World both. At first, I thought it was the relatively lower mobility, but since even the Dual Blades in Rise didn't resolve the issue, that is probably not it. So, I think it might be that the core gameplay loop is not my cup of tea, and the characters/narrative haven't provided enough of a hook to get me in. Or my preference for solo play costs me the experience.
It sounds like Wilds tries to address these "issues". But having bounced off the series twice already...I'll give this one a chance when it's on deep discount. |
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FishLion
 Posts: 354 |
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That's my hope as well, the core gameplay loop works for me but it was honestly painful to get in the groove back during MH3 Ultimate so I get why people might not enjoy it. The streamlined gameplay loop I have been seeing in Wilds seems like it could make the gameplay I adore fit in a lot more organically and I am interested to try it. |
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LinkTSwordmaster
 Posts: 582 Location: PA / USA |
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I'm gonna be passing on this one, as I'm not keen on Capcom's engine that is running the game being very anti-consumer - Frame Gen is more or less required to even get the game to run smooth on a modern system, and you're just outright going to have a bad time if you aren't willing to pay for the latest & greatest tech. I personally do not like the removal/shift away that Rise and Wilds has from the slower gathering focus of older titles - stopping and slowing up to immerse myself in these worlds is why I got started playing them, I don't exclusively want these to be an action hero powertrip fantasy.
I'm starting to wince every time I see someone's Monster Hunter preamble start with that, just about as much as I wince whenever I see someone default to calling Warriors/Musou games button-mashers & completely overlook any sort of character building or combo synergy.
The solo thing is a big part of it. Monster Hunter is very much about community (or at least used to be). Just the same as you are destined to have a miserable, lonely time trying to pick up and learn a new fighting game from zero if you don't go and talk to other players, jumping into Monster Hunter and being left alone in solitary confinement while you try to complete the game like a giant checklist is the absolute antithesis of the design philosophy that birthed the series in the first place. I see a couple games there being named, that largely present themselves as giant checklists. I've 100%'d Gods Eater 1 and 2, and while they have a fun/bombastic anime story, they absolutely do not require anything from you other than your time. A vast majority of each game is managing your bullet designs and ammo, knowing when it is safe or not to "bite" the monster, and avoiding damage (even if you bring enough supplies to out-heal something). An under-geared Monster Hunter can still come into a hunt and out-play someone using superior equipment, purely based on how they move or time their actions. A vast majority of that is not only missing from Gods Eater (if you know type advantages like Pokemon, quests end in short minutes), but the enemy variety is low enough you're also going to be trapped fighting the same thing again & again just re-skinned. Granblue (I got a 100% clear with Katalina) has this same problem once the story runs out. There's a good 10 or 20 hours of just fighting reskins, and while the game is a lot more elaborate than Gods Eater, your success in combat is 100% gated by your gear. No attack patterns change, it's that the boss HP and damage output inflates and if you don't inflate along with it, you automatically lose (assuming you already know optimal combo pathing for your character). It's not that these are bad games or not-fun games, but I will very much note that in both cases, Granblue and Gods Eater absolutely do not hard-require that you engage with its larger community to play it, and there is absolutely no room to come in and "make a character your own" in the way a fighting game player can have their own version of Ryu or Akuma, the same way someone might work their weapon on Monster Hunter differently from the person next to them. So why am I bringing all of this up? 8 or 9 times out of 10, when a person is verbally saying "Monster Hunter was one of those franchises that looked cool, but felt a bit too intimidating for me to actually get into", they're not communicating the actual underlying problem. If it was that the UI is confusing, I'll give you that, but Wilds way the hell does not fix that problem (I've played every MH and I'm even having trouble making sense of its UI in the test weekends) - if we like a game enough, we learn the UI or the buttons, even if they're obtuse. If it was that the game is too repetitive and grindy, I'll give you that - if you go farther back than MH4U, you're asked to do a lot of backtracking that could have been solved with a few button presses, and it can be a bit excessive in spots - World tried to remedy this by allowing you to just keep hunting on the same map, then Rise mucked it up by removing it. I would seriously beg and plead, that anyone who finds Rise or Wilds to be fun, that you go back and give World another shot. A lot of newer players will cite that the lack of focus on stopping to gather items makes the newer titles (Rise/Wilds) more accessible, but as a longtime Hunter, it drops the need to engage and invest in the world around you like a hot sack - as mechanically insane & obtuse as Monster Hunter 2 is on PS2, you legitimately get a simulated life that spans waxing & waning seasons, you learn to note where in the environment you can get supplies, why sharing with your fellow hunters is key to survival, and when a monster shows up in an environment, it feels like it means something intimidating has happened - you're not dealing with a reskinned cat or dragon game character, but a living creature inhabiting a world that YOU also coincidentally live in. World does a VERY great job of cutting out the PS2 jank and giving you one of the most unimpeded QoL versions of this immersion. If you are completely new and have never sat with Monster Hunter for more than a few hours - I BEG of you, PLEASE either grab an experienced player and have them start a FRESH save alongside you, or grab a friend to co-op the game with and make sure you test and play as EVERY weapon at least once. These suggestions are non-negotiable. Each singular weapon is an entire different game, the same as playing each different fighter in a Tekken or such. Avoid jumping into quests with 4 human OR NPC players, as you will get lost in the chaos. Start with yourself and a friend, and then slowly add an extra person into your hunts. Learning to work together, to move in unision to accommodate each others' style is a VERY big important step to engaging with Monster Hunter. This is the heart and soul of engaging with the game. You have the medium with it, to grow and share with others your own form and style of playing, and to only engage with the game solo would be like clipping a bird's wings and expecting it to hop everywhere indoors for the rest of its existence. |
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SilverTalon01
Posts: 2425 |
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That isn't true at all. Modern systems will run it fine. If you're running a 20 series GPU or something, that isn't modern. That seems to be the era of GPU most people have who are complaining. Problem is the 20 series released in 2018, the same year as MH World did... on PS4. I'm getting 90 fps with DLSS quality at 3440x1440p without frame gen. Friend with a mid range GPU was getting 90 fps with FSR (not sure which setting) at 1440p without frame gen. Now I don't think the game looks nearly good enough for the level of performance. |
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wolf10
 Posts: 933 |
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The pandemic and all the resulting development delays (not to mention the semiconductor shortage) meant there was a brief plateau where games were coming out targeting older hardware than what was available at launch, but now that we've moved past that a lot of people are getting a rude wake-up call about the PC gaming hardware grind. Then again, I remember the days when Crysis first came out and people were struggling to hit even 40fps on the newest chips, so my spirit was broken a long time ago. If anyone was going to pull a stunt like that in the modern era, it would be Capcom.
I can get about 70(real)fps in in the benchmark running 4k at max settings (with DLSS) aside from the really open areas, but got a rather sizeable performance boost (up to 90fps) bumping down the LOD one notch (because the max draw distance in this game is actually so insane I don't even notice the lower-detail models two miles off in the distance, but my processor sure does). This is on a system I upgraded about a year and a half ago and haven't had to touch since. Modern-ish hardware, I guess. For comparison, the PS5 is "only" running an RDNA 2 GPU (roughly equivalent to a Radeon RX 6000 series) so theoretically any PC hardware younger than 4 years old should be able to manage. A beefier GeForce 20-series can handle it, but visual compromises will have to be made, and an older processor will have a lot of trouble with RE Engine. It sounds like the PS5 version is also cranking things down outside of cinematics, but that feature is available in the PC version as well for the many, many builds that will likely need it. tl;dr: Consoles continue to be the best deal on gaming hardware, and even "pricier" models like the PS5 are still a fraction of the price of a comparable PC build. But is the game worth it? Off of the beta test, I would say yes. I've been playing Monhun off-and-on since Freedom Unite, but World was the first to hook me all the way to the end with its cinematic presentation and improved focus on story and world-building (it's in the name, even!). I bounced off of Rise on account of it being essentially another menu-driven portable spinoff like the PSP games, but Wilds is back with the dynamic opening sequence and cinematic story. I will probably continue maiming dual-blades for the aesthetic, but I can't deny it feels weird that they finally caved and made it mobile like Dragon's Dogma 2 instead of the stubborn insistence on stationary slicing and dicing. I will also probably solo the campaign for the challenge even knowing I'm playing "wrong," because getting any of my longtime Monhun friends together these days is like herding cats. That's the one part the reviews always seem to leave out. 
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