Monster Hunter Wilds shines brightly in its first few hours, establishing a new world waiting to be tamed and several reasons to get back into the hunt. Slay. Craft. Repeat. For two decades these are the three main principles the entire Monster Hunter franchise has lived by. For most Western players, however, instalments prior to 2018 could be considered a warmup act, with Monster Hunter World sanding down many of the series' rough edges to transform it into the global phenomenon it is today. Well, it’s seven years later, and we stand on the brink of developer Capcom needing to do it all again when Monster Hunter Wilds launches on February 28, 2025. Having played it at a preview event for six straight hours myself, I can comfortably say it’s the grand evolution I hoped for. It melds together the best elements of World and Rise, while letting you hunt freely within a truly contiguous open-world. Coupled with the same satisfying gameplay loop, Wilds looks set to raise the bar once again in terms of scale and finesse.
I don’t pretend to be a Monster Hunter expert, but even I can appreciate the complete gutting and removal of the franchise’s stop/start nature. Once you complete a hunt in Monster Hunter Wilds, unless it’s story sensitive, you’ll no longer be pulled out of the map and sent back to base camp – instead, it's up to you to decide if you want to continue roaming or head back. It helps that the game’s new setting – the Forbidden Lands – is made up of various biomes and wildlife that made me want to investigate it more; because while my demo started off in the desert environment Wilds has mostly been advertising up until this point, it was just a few hours later that I was dropped into a dripping, rain-drenched forest in search of my next beast.
Getting around the Forbidden Lands is made much easier thanks to the new rideable beastie, the Seikret. Very much an extension of your customisable hunter, they handle extremely similarly to the Palamutes from Monster Hunter Rise but with some added gameplay benefits. For one, even when travelling to and from destinations with NPCs as part of the story, you can both gather ingredients and craft while riding thanks to the returning slinger which lets you pull in items from far away. The ability to sharpen your weapon on the back of a Seikret using a whetstone also does well to let you prepare and adapt during the heat of a monster battle, always maintaining momentum where previous Monster Hunter games would have you retreat.
Overall, I’d say the inclusion of the Seikret is a welcome one since it makes getting around what promises to be a rather large map (with no loading screens) even easier, in a way that doesn’t render its geography pointless since the grapple hook-like Wirebug is absent. The last time I played Monster Hunter Wilds was during the Gamescom 2024 demo, where my PS5 build was locked to 30fps. While perfectly playable, I had prepared myself for the reality that 60fps wouldn’t be available on console at launch – Dragon’s Dogma 2, hello? – but luckily this isn’t the case. In fact, in addition to both a 30fps and 60fps mode, console players will have the chance to enjoy a ‘balanced’ option which sees the game render at 40fps. I tried all three during my demo, and riding the Seikret was always a smooth experience.
Another major benefit the Seikret introduces compared to Monster Hunter World is the ability to switch between two different weapon types on the fly. For the majority of my session I stuck to the combination of Sword and Shield and Heavy Bowgun, enjoying the benefit of quick slashes when up close to monsters but with a degree of defence. The Heavy Bowgun, meanwhile, allowed me to pop off shots from the back of the Seikret whenever the chase was on. Range with the Heavy Bowgun was regularly an issue – as it should be – yet it worked marvellously when using environments against the creatures, like blasting off a chunk of rock from a cavern in an attempt to pierce the snake-like hide of a Balahara.
All 14 weapon types have clearly been tweaked to suit Monster Hunter Wilds’ slightly quicker pace compared to World, with most of them letting you deal decent damage from above thanks to the leaping attack you can perform off the back of your Seikret. Even when getting up close and personal with an Alpha Doshuguma, I generally felt I was getting a better sense of feedback thanks to the new Focus targeting option, which allows you to directly attack a monster’s glowing red weak point and deal a devastating amount of damage to a specific wound. In previous Monster Hunter entries, I always felt the constant slashing a bit of a chore, without knowing how close to death my foe was, but these new Focus attacks – alongside your Palico and NPC companions calling out their status – lets you have your cake and eat it in this regard.
For all of the appreciated tweaks and streamlining of both new and returning features, however, it’s always been the case that any Monster Hunter game is only as good as its, well, monsters. Wilds addresses this by bringing back some deep cuts such as the farting monkey, Congalala, which is yet again both hilarious yet challenging to fight. Easily the most memorable bouts during my six-hour Monster Hunter Wilds preview were the two spider-like foes; the first being the totally new Lala Barina, a creature able to open its thorax like a bright blooming flower to deal a great amount of damage. Its lair in the Scarlet Forest demonstrates just how stunning Wilds can look when the action takes place away from the desert. The same is true for Monster Hunter 4’s Nerscylla, who brought spice to the fight by lurking underneath its own web, forcing me to look below as well as above when facing off against it.
