Monster Hunter can never become more “streamlined” than Wilds

Monster Hunter is at its best when in the middle of a heated battle. A giant beast’s raging claws coming down on you, like a cat chasing a fly – only you’re the fly. It’s fraught, intense, exciting, and incredibly satisfying when it all goes your way. Can four ordinary houseflies take down a cat? Well, with giant swords and a lot of effort, it’s possible. Monster Hunter Wilds is still home to these fantastic moments, but something about it feels cheap.

I don’t mean in terms of balance or the quality of the game, but the satisfaction. In Wilds, I beat monsters. But of course I do. I’m a hunter. The one who hunts. It’s in the name, right? It feels like I’m entitled to the victory each time simply by showing up and swinging my sword around. But I have to be honest, I don’t feel like I’m working for my victories.

I’m not a Monster Hunter veteran. I’ve dabbled since Tri, but I’d not managed to fight past the opening hours in a MH game until World, and I only played beyond the initial story for the first time in Rise, where things finally sank in for me. It’s a unique experience with the series that allows me to pinpoint exactly what worked about World and Rise for me and not earlier games, and likewise, what the series has lost to get here.

Since I’m not a MH nostalgic, I feel comfortable in saying that a lot of the decisions made in regards to streamlining or approachability have been the right ones. I don’t actually want to spend long periods watching a gathering animation for herbs, lest I be left without any heals on my next hunt. I don’t want to watch a loading screen when transitioning between areas either, or have to remember a pickaxe, or else I can’t gather minerals. I’d also rather keep my infinite Whetstone, too.

A lot of the choices Capcom has made since World have been for the better. I like a little bit of item management and busywork, but I don’t want it to be the gameplay mechanic I spend most of my time with. Along with those positive changes, however, Capcom has been angling Monster Hunter Wilds for a more and more casual crowd. World is the single most popular Capcom game of all time, Rise is second, and the expansions for both are among the top ten. This series has the potential to reach a wider audience than the publisher ever has before — and sales numbers indicate Wilds has done just that. This newfound popularity isn’t because the series has gotten easier, but it has anyway.

From a business perspective, I get it. Monster Hunter is a heavy, overbearing, systems-driven action game. Just flicking through your inventory to chug a potion is a multi-button combination, forget about actually executing a big attack. Monsters don’t come with health bars, and it can be difficult to know if your puny stabs are actually having a reasonable impact. A lot of this frustration is alleviated if you just make the monsters considerably easier to beat, but it cheapens the satisfaction, too.

The toughest possible quest tier in Wilds’ base game always includes a Tempered Arkveld along with another monster, and I basically never feel the need to do any kind of special preparation. I don’t ensure I have a weapon with a specific attribute, or an armor set with a particular resistance, or drinks to alleviate what ails me. I just have high defence, high attack, and charge into battle, which is usually over in less than 20 minutes, even when solo. It’s routine, and that’s the problem.

Monster Hunter has always been a series about you overcoming absurd odds. Whole villages are under threat from one specific monster, and only the trained hunters can protect humanity from genuine dinosaurs. It’s Jurassic Park meets Attack on Titan. Wilds is still that, but now monsters feel as if they could be 360 no-scoped by a teenager with a squeaky voice. The threat just isn’t there.

Or, it wasn’t. With Free Title Update 1, Wilds had Rise’s fierce Mizutsune added to the game, in addition to a High Rank fight with the initially Low Rank exclusive boss, Zoh Shia. With this update, everything went from far too easy to finally challenging. It feels jarring, and my experience here is similar to when World players used Iceborne’s DLC armor to smash through the base game, only to hit a wall when they gained access to the tougher DLC quests. I didn’t quite hit a wall with High Rank Zoh Shia, but after lazily focusing on my defense alone for the whole game, suddenly I had to actually make a character build.

I only outright failed one quest throughout my experience with Monster Hunter Wilds’ base game – when I didn’t understand how to escape Jin Dahaad’s one-hit KO attack – and that feels absurd to me. I distinctly remember struggling – and I do mean struggling – against Magnamalo in Rise’s Low Rank quests. Here, in Wilds, I went from finding the entire game to be a cakewalk to getting shell-shocked by the first Free Title Update.

Wilds is a soft live-service now, meaning it’ll get significant and robust updates over time – and likely a fully-fledged expansion eventually – and I’m positive that those will provide some incredible thrills, but Wilds’ base game, by itself, feels too shallow. I adore Wilds, but the series’ increasingly streamlined and simplified approach to hunting monsters is now at the precipice, and if it takes one more step, it’ll lose something key to what Monster Hunter is, and I don’t think patching in high difficulty content is the cure-all Capcom seems to think it is.