A Great Game With Frustrating Issues – Monster Hunter Wilds (Video Game Review)

“The unbridled force of nature runs wild and relentless, with environments transforming drastically from one moment to the next. This is a story of monsters and humans and their struggles to live in harmony in a world of duality.” – Steam Synopsis

I love Monster Hunter Wilds. This is easily one of my favorite games ever. I’ve enjoyed it more than I did World and I adored that game. From a gameplay and presentation perspective, this game is amazing. This past month every day Ive been at work I’ve wanted to come home and play this game. So it is such a shame that it has launched in the state that it did. As of me writing this portion on the 8th of April, almost a week after TU1. Over the course of the weekend/week, my game had gone from running progressively worse, to some random crashes, to me now not even able to start it. And the technical state of this game has completely drained any current excitement I’ve had for it, which is such a shame.

This game starts on shaky ground. The presentation is amazing. The game looks great (most of the time), the cut scenes especially. There are solid amount of cool ass moments. The main story took me about 13 hours to complete and the glaring issues became apparent early on and constantly fed into each other. First, the game is easy. Especially during the story, in low rank, it’s very easy, which I kind of get to ease new people in, but it was way too easy. Second, the story had some interesting concepts, but I can’t stress this enough and it’s not hyperbole, in my 24 years of living, this was the worst story in a video game that Ive played. I mashed A on every conversation and the only reason I didn’t skip the cinematics was because there was a chance Id see something kinda cool. As much as I said above how I crave to play this game, during that first week when I was still in the story part, there was underlying dread. I hated the majority of my 13 hours having to slog through the story. Watch a cut scene, mash A through the dialogue after, put the controller down while the game played itself until I was allowed to fight a new monster, beat that monster in 3-5 minutes, repeat for 13 hours. I was beginning to actually hate this game and wonder if it ever got better.

I committed myself to playing deep into the current endgame before I made my full judgement and I’m glad I did, cause once the training wheels were taken off I have had so much fun actually playing this game. It’s still a bit too easy but fun still. The new weapon moves are fun. Being able to aim with the new focus mode is such a welcome QOL feature. The wound system is a neat idea and overall, I really love this roster of monsters. My main gripe with World was its lack of monster diversity. This game has it in spades. Gore Magala, Arkveld, Nu Udra, Ray Dau, Zho Shia are just peak monster designs and great fights among an already great roster that has already added another great monster in Mizu. I absolutely love the gameplay and the roster, plus the weapon and armor designs are peak. Gameplay wise, my literal only complaint is the Seikret. I love the idea and how it speeds up combat. This fast-paced feel is way more my speed. I enjoy more than the slower pace of like World. But that damn animal almost gets me killed every hunt because no matter what direction your character is going in, or how fast. If you call your seikret it will come full speed from wherever its position was and completely align your momentum with it. Meaning if you called it while you’re moving right trying to get out of the way of an attack and its coming from the left of you, it will come full speed at you and completely change your momentum and direction in the opposite way which is very annoying but there might be a setting for that. I hope there is.

In a perfect world, this paragraph would be my normal wrap up followed by an easy recommendation: 10/10 must play. Sadly, in reality, I have to talk about the worst part of this game. I played Cyberpunk 2077 on release, the night it came out on the same hardware I have now (which was actually top of the line-ish back then) and while that game had its own problems, I have had a much worse time performance wise in this game than I had in all of my 50 hours in Cyberpunk. The worst part of it all is that it’s gotten worse since TU1. My game won’t even start. When I can play, it will randomly crash. When it’s not doing that, there’s no way for me to hold anywhere close to a solid 60 fps without some type of up-scaling and frame gen, even then it came turn into a stuttering mess. Pop in issues are just normal for any game, especially big worlds or open worlds. Not only does this game have pop in issues, loading into areas sometimes will have the character models looking like PS1 models. Straight up OG Lara Croft polygon models. This is so unacceptable for not only a full price triple a game, but for the franchise that has now become Capcoms biggest. Monster Hunter is no longer limited to Japanese fandom. This game and franchise is worldwide. This series is bigger than Resident Evil, bigger than Street Fighter, bigger than any other franchise Capcom has under their belt and this is the second time (Worlds release on pc was better but not good) that they’ve released a game in such an awful state.

I waited until after TU 1 dropped before starting to write this just to see how the additions felt. A lot of QOL things got added, which is nice. The Grand Hub was much needed, I wish there was a toggle to always go back there/spawn there. I love the sense of community loading in and seeing everyone. Much better than the various scattered camps. Wounds have been toned down, and it feels a lot better than before. It makes the fights last just a bit longer, but also tones down the wound attack spam. Zo Shia getting added to HR and Mizu being added are two great great additions. Zho Shia is an amazing fight and Mizu is already one of my all-time favorite monsters. I wish performance was better but from a content perspective, this was a good patch to me.

So yeah, this game is fun when I could actually play it. This is some of the most fun that I’ve had in a gaming experience. I love the monster roster, the new gameplay additions, I didn’t even touch on the music but it is amazing, and when the game isn’t looking like a ps1 launch game, it’s actually gorgeous with its high fidelity models, lush environments, and breath-taking weather and monster effects. It’s just that all of these great elements have such a big asterisk around them. Such a big if around everything that it’s a shame how frustrating the issues in this game bring it down. And it’s honestly hard for me to give it a proper rating. In my heart I couldn’t recommend this game to anyone on PC honestly, which sucks. I hope they fix these issues very, very soon and the rating below just reflects my array of emotions on this wonderfully flawed game.

Monster Hunter Wilds: 3-10/10

4/10/25 Notes: I downgraded my drivers and tweaked some other settings and I’m actually able to play now! Still getting random crashes and frame issues though. I really hope this game gets the performance patch it desperately needs.