Monster Hunter is one of my favorite franchises. On March 11th, the series turned 22 years old. This is a fantastic milestone, and it offers a great opportunity to briefly reflect on Monster Hunter Wilds, and where the series is headed. I am going to briefly touch on some of my points of contention with Wilds’ quality of life (QoL) features and innovations, as well as reflecting on a couple additions that serve the series well. I’ll then open the mic up for you to voice your thoughts on the path Monster Hunter should take moving forward.
I am of the opinion that Capcom’s improvements on what they consider to be “QoL features” is cutting too close to the bone. It doesn’t make Wilds a bad game (quite the contrary), but some of these added features detract from the experience. As an example, I understand that the team wanted to make navigation in Wilds’ biomes easier for players, but giving up the waypoint to your target each and every time you hunt a monster does not constitute as a meaningful QoL change without detracting from Monster Hunter’s core identity.
In earlier entries, such as Tri, or Four Ultimate, you had to work to earn the location of your target — explore the biome and figure out which areas they’d hang out in. You’d then have to throw a paintball at your target to mark it on your map. They made it a bit easier in Monster Hunter World, where you had to trace its tracks the first time you hunted a monster. This is undeniably more in line with the franchise’s philosophy as a game where you hunt monsters.
On top of that, Seikrets are set by default to automatically follow scoutflies to their destination. In my experience, this has brought me a great deal of boredom because why do I have to care about the environment, its ecosystem, and its treacherous paths if my Seikret will just take me where I need to go with no precondition? This makes searching (if you can even call it that) for the monster boring and feels unearned, even if the intent with it is to lessen a difficulty curve for newcomers. The aspect of tracking down the monster has been eviscerated from this entry in the series.
Furthermore, the aspect of preparing before a hunt has been further dumbed down via enabling players to infinitely restock and change their loadout at camp, and while this was introduced in World, it eliminates resource management.
There are a few positives though; many weapons feel better than ever, even if some tweaking ought to be done to make certain weapons feel their very best (Charge Blade, anyone?). Monster Hunter Wilds also continues the tradition introduced in World of giving you an infinite number of whetstones, so you don’t need to mine for them anymore.
I cannot go through every single quality of life feature and assess them here, but this type of conversation serves as a point where we can reflect on what form we want the series to take in the future, and it’s important to have conversations surrounding both agreements and disagreements about what that form is.
Are you a fan of the Monster Hunter series? Are you happy with the direction the series is taking, or are there some refinements to its core gameplay and identity you’d like to see? Let us know in the comments below!
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