Tokyo Game Show 2024

Monster Hunter Wilds TGS 2024 Demo Has Me Excited Thanks to its Story

The Monster Hunter game series is fascinating to me. It's a game that's designed around the grind of hunting or capturing monsters so you can use their body parts to make better weapons and armor so you can hunt even tougher monsters. It's as if you grind for the sake of grinding and nothing else. And while I've partaken in the series with Monster Hunter 2G and Monster Hunter 4, it's not a series I reach for unless I have a group of friends who want to join me. So, I was surprised when playing Monster Hunter Wilds at the Tokyo Game Show 2024, because it appears the game may have a story with fleshed out characters. I was pleasantly surprised to see more focus on the story in a mainline Monster Hunter game.

As I started up the demo, I was worried I would be put in a camp and told to hunt a very specific monster. Yet, only a few seconds in I was treated to a backstory as to why my character was on his “journey.” True, it's shrouded in mystery, but it wonderfully sets up the idea that you, or rather your character, isn't just hunting monsters, but discovering aspects the uninhabited “Forbidden Lands.”

The idea of a story is what helped me power my way through what appears to be more of the standard Monster Hunter gameplay loop. Essentially, we're hunting monsters again. Which means finding the monster, attacking its weak spot, breaking or cutting off body parts, dodging attacks, and defeating it for loot to make stronger and more durable armor. But there were a few new features that caught me off guard, chiefly mounts, the wound system, and the SOS flare system.

The new mount system really changes the gameplay in that it can alter how you can engage any individual hunt. Specifically, it adds a new form of mobility to your character. This means you won't always be stuck using your own stamina to run away from or to catch up to any of the monsters you're hunting. Additionally, since you can attack from your mount, it adds a new level of strategy when encountering a monster. Unfortunately, the demo of Monster Hunter Wilds didn't showcase the system as much as I would have liked and made me curious how it plays with ranged weapons like the bow, light bowgun, and heavy bowgun.

Of the three new systems I saw, the wound system was the most intriguing. It's a further development to the traditional destroying or cutting of body parts, while also allowing for more damage to be inflicted on the monster you're hunting. It doesn't seem like much at first, but as I was playing I realized the wounds are a great way to reinforce focused attacks. In this way, if you're playing with a party, each member can focus on the wounded section for maximum damage, instead of attacking blindly. Hence, it turns what felt like a chore and way to boost the item rarity by a few percentage points to a mechanism where if you focus fire, you will finish hunts faster.

The SOS flare system is also an interesting addition to the Monster Hunter franchise. It's a godsend for solo players who need that extra support for harder monsters, but at the same time, the demo featured it near the end of the hunt. Therefore, it's hard to gauge the effectiveness of the NPC party or how long they will remain with you during a hunt. For instance, if we use the flare at the beginning of a hunt, will the NPC party stay with you the entire time? If so, how effective will they be at coordinating attacks? If not, then at what point will they leave? Also, is it possible to carry multiple flares during a hunt? There are so many unanswered questions the demo didn't address with the SOS flare other than, “here it is.” But that means the demo did its job in keeping my interest in the game far beyond the allotted play time.

In all honesty, one of the reasons why I rarely touch Monster Hunter games these days is because the gameplay loop and lack of story in the past titles I've played bugs me. But the addition of an interesting setup and a potential story has me interested in the goings on in Monster Hunter Wilds. So, when the game is released in February 2025, I may need to get my friends online so we can do some hunting.