Monster Hunter Wilds review: thrilling action RPG is shockingly chill

Mother nature’s fury is raging. Lightning strikes down around me as I clash with an enormous monster, one roaring at a decibel level that can’t be good for my little Palico companion. I leap into the sky with my insect glaive and propel myself onto the beast’s back. It thrashes violently as I jab my blade between its wings. After a few hits, I crack its thick hide. I jab my weapon into its open wound and spin it like a drill. I don’t know what’s louder: the pained screams of a dying monster or my steel ripping into its flesh.

All I do know is that I hardly have a care in the world at this moment.

I don’t think anyone could classify Monster Hunter Wilds as a “cozy game” with a straight face, but games that aim to relax players rarely offer moments of Zen like this. The latest entry in Capcom’s hack-and-slash action RPG once again tasks players with cutting down hulking monsters and turning their body parts into silly little hats. It should be the recipe for a relentless blockbuster full of tense clashes and edge-of-your-seat thrills. While it does deliver those moments, there’s an indescribable tranquility to it all that’s only achieved once you become one with its lush world. The screeching, the storms, the larger-than-life battles — it’s just the natural order, and you are but a modest insect living your life from the comfort of a tree branch.

Once it gets its claws in, it’s hard to escape Monster Hunter Wilds’ grasp. It balances high-octane spectacle with the kind of meditative RPG progression hooks that live service games dream of. It’s a successful evolution from Monster Hunter World, though one that still can’t quite find the best way to introduce new players to its intimidating world.

Slaying in the wilds

Even though it tells a new story, Monster Hunter Wilds’ gameplay picks up where World left off. It once again throws players into a series of detailed biomes and gives players the freedom to explore it at their leisure and go on monster hunts to earn valuable gear crafting resources. Each area, from its sandy deserts to its poisonous Oilwell Basin, is a living place that never feels static. The compact maps are rich with flora and fauna that make each area feel like a thriving ecosystem built on sensible, natural hierarchies. There’s a greater emphasis on emergent moments this time around too, as dynamic weather means a vicious lightning storm can pop up at a moment’s notice. These aren’t mechanical maps built to house one big monster or two; they feel like busy, living spaces.

Of course, the big monsters are still important. Wilds fills its biomes with a wider range of critters that feel like they belong in each environment. When I head to the jungle, I meet Monster Hunter 2’s Congalala, a farting ape hiding out in between the trees. While old favorites are peppered in, all of the new creatures especially show just how thoughtful the Monster Hunter team is at inventing new beasts. The desert is home to Balahara, a giant sand worm that burrows around me whenever I try to fight it. It’s clear that I’m a stranger in its home and that I’ll need to learn the ins and outs of how it navigates the dunes to beat it.

Observation has always been the key to victory in Monster Hunter and that philosophy returns in full force here. It’s still a core part of battles, as creatures don’t have health bars that telegraph how close they are to death. Instead, I can tell how far along a fight is based on my foe’s body language, as it staggers the more I have it on the ropes. I need to pay attention to my surroundings just as much this time, too. Now armed with a multi-purpose Hook Slinger, I can use my new tool to snag blowgun ammo from a distance or trigger environmental traps. Fights aren’t always just about relentless offense; I can enact deeper strategies by luring monsters into a vine trap or right underneath a precariously placed boulder. It adds a bit of Bugs Bunny mischief to the usual action loop.

That’s not to say that there’s less slashing. Wilds only builds on the series’ combat by adding new tricks. I still need to wail on monsters as aggressively as I can while avoiding massive attacks. What’s slightly different about that flow is a greater emphasis on weak points. Once I attack a body part enough, it’ll become an open wound that I can loosely target by holding down my left trigger while attacking. When I have the cut in my sights, I can press R1 to perform a devastating Focus Strike. Battles feel like more of a dance than ever as a result, as I’m constantly hitting the right steps to open a wound and closing off a sequence with a violent flourish. It gives each battle a series of small climaxes en route to the big kill.

There are 14 weapon classes to choose from this time, from basic swords to an oversized tuba that grants buffs to other hunters. Each one has its own distinct quirks that makes no two weapons feel exactly the same. When I want to do some mindless slashing, I break out my Dual Blades and rapidly hack away, carefully timing out my focus strikes to unleash a whirlwind slash across my prey’s entire body. When I want to get a bit more complex, I break out a Switch Axe, which is two weapons in one. Wilds does a better job at encouraging players to experiment too, as they can now carry a second weapon into battle that can be equipped on the fly while riding on their mount. While I ignored that feature early on, I soon found it useful to strategically swap tools mid-battle to evolve alongside a grounded enemy that begins to move more erratically as its health drains.

Finding the right weapon can be intimidating. I’ve never really settled on a “main” weapon in previous games, but Wilds makes one small change in its onboarding that goes a long way. When I begin my journey, a character asks me to describe my playstyle. I tell her that I like an offense-heavy strategy with lots of unpredictable movement. She recommends I start with the Insect Glaive, which instantly feels like it was built for me. I grow to love its versatility as I can wallop enemies up close, ping them with my beetles from afar, and hop onto their backs using my tricky aerial maneuvers. It’s small considerations like this that help me better understand my place in Monster Hunter’s world. It’s a game about learning and adapting to nature at every turn.

Bigger story

All of these systems get put to good use in Monster Hunter Wilds’ story, which tells the tale of an expedition team in pursuit of the fearsome White Wraith. It’s a concise and convenient way to introduce players to each biome, its key monsters, and each character that will later become a go-to quest-giver. Perhaps inspired by the series’ film adaptation in 2020, Capcom goes all in on spectacle this time. It’s a big budget production with thrilling cinematics that show oversized monsters clashing like kaiju.

Godzilla films are at the top of my mind while playing through it, though not in the way you might expect. While there’s a connection to be made in the way monsters are presented, it’s the way Wilds tries and struggles to weave in human storytelling that brings those movies to mind. The tale tries to focus on the inhabitants of its world, moving players from tribe to tribe in its initial chapters and digging into their customs.

It’s all in service of a story about how humans fit into nature and coexist with it — a somewhat laughable idea for a game about executing hundreds of animals just to turn them into boots. That idea never quite pays off as its NPCs feel lifeless next to Wilds’ intricately animated monsters, who show more personality when they’re just milling around. It’s not unlike Hollywood’s recent Godzilla flicks, which shine when the big guy is on screen and sag when the A-list stars come to cash in their paychecks.

That’s ultimately not much of a problem, because that story isn’t exactly the focus. It’s treated more like a prelude that introduces the basics of Monster Hunter in a digestible narrative built for modern audiences. The initial chapters play out like a straightforward boss rush, as I jump from hunt to hunt with some cutscenes to stitch them together. If nothing else, it shows off how much more fluid Wilds is than its predecessors. I’m not just selecting a mission, loading into a world, getting introduced to a new monster with a brief video, and then loading out when the hunt is over. I go straight from story setup to exploration to battle with no loading between them. Monsters I won’t actually fight until much later weave in and out of the story. It’s just another way in which Wilds feels more alive.

Monster Hunter Wilds doesn’t truly begin until its “end credits” roll. That’s where it gets into a more familiar flow as I’m completing quests and loose hunts to raise my hunter rank, unlock high level story missions, and create better gear from more powerful foes. The main story feels a little stapled onto that flow, as if it only exists as an on-ramp to win over what it sees as a “modern audience” that might find the full RPG grind too intimidating. Though the structure is a little odd, I imagine it will successfully win some new fans. If you simply want to play Monster Hunter as a manageable narrative game, you can drop off after the credits and get your fill of thrills minus the post-game complication.

Surprisingly chill

I imagine that nothing I’ve said so far sounds too relaxing, but Wilds is deceptively laid back — something that’s sure to be a bit divisive. Capcom doesn’t make its series less complicated, but it does aim to smooth off some edges to make sure players are headed in the right direction. I mean that literally. The biggest addition is the Seikret, the Chocobo-like mount that players explore on. With the press of a button, the creature will automatically run to the selected waypoint. If you use that feature to navigate the initial story, you’ll hit the end credits within 15 hours.

That feature can be a gift and a curse. On the downside, it does take some depth out of Monster Hunter. Missions no longer require players to look around for monster tracks or sleuth out where a critter might be. Little prep work is needed at all. I can simply pick a mission or set a waypoint, jump on my Seikret, and go straight where I need to go (contending with just a bit of AI pathfinding confusion along the way). When used, it turns Monster Hunter’s exploration into Pokémon Snap. I’m just guided through an on-rails tour of the environment and I can pluck items with my hook as I pass by them.

It can instill bad habits in players too, as auto-exploration will mean that players will never learn where to mine for key materials like rocks and bones. That pairs with Monster Hunter’s historically awful onboarding process. There may be less friction when it comes to getting around, but Wilds barely explains the intricacies of weapons, how to make basic tools, or virtually anything outside of taking down a monster and carving it up. I was still scratching my head trying to figure out how to perform actions like capturing 20 hours in, and I’ve played quite a bit of Monster Hunter Rise. If anyone tells you that this is an approachable entry point in the series, they are either too deep into the series to make that judgement call or flat out lying to you.

There’s a lot of criticisms I can lob Wilds’ way when I sit back and think about it, but many of them melt away when I’m actually playing. When it’s just me and my Insect Glaive chopping up monsters, I’m in a trance. I barely make a sound when playing. Hours go by as I jump from hunt to hunt, gradually improving my gear at every turn. I spend one chunk of time just wandering around the desert trying to catch bugs with my net, dodging fights altogether. Some of my fiercest battles happen on my PlayStation Portal while I’m watching TV in the background. What begins as an inscrutable UI mess evolves into the ultimate chill out game thanks to progression that’s easy to latch onto with time.

That’s not to say that it’s not a deep action RPG like its predecessors. The endgame is still enormous, with lots of gear to chase and increasingly complex fights that switch up familiar monsters. Players can craft gear for their Palico companion, upgrade armor with spheres, gather ingredients for stat-boosting meals, complete weapon trees, customize each of their pop-up bases, and rack up accomplishments that they can proudly put on their profile. There’s a whole digital life to be lived out in the wilds, and the goal is to conquer it so thoroughly that it becomes mundane.

Your most powerful asset in Monster Hunter Wilds isn’t a Gunlance; it’s routine. The developers at Capcom understand that “repetitive” doesn’t have to be a dirty word in games. The joy of Monster Hunter comes when all that complexity becomes second nature. It’s that moment when a once challenging hunt turns into a daily expedition that you talk over with your friends. Once I reached that state of Zen during the endgame, I no longer felt like a small visitor trying to survive a brutal world. I had become an average animal in a wider ecosystem, carrying out my daily tasks on instinct just like any Doshaguma.

That’s what it means to truly coexist with nature: It is to reach a point where the unfamiliar becomes common, where what was once threatening becomes comforting. Some won’t be able to find their footing even with more streamlined gameplay and scamper away. Others will treat its central story as a short safari and leave once they’ve scored their trophies. But those who seek to truly understand and respect this beautiful world will find a new home in Monster Hunter Wilds.

Monster Hunter Wilds was tested on PS5 Pro.