Monster Hunter Wilds – The Fast and The Frustrating

Monster Hunter Wilds is Capcom’s latest beast-slaying symphony, and while it still hits many of the right notes, some are noticeably out of tune. This is a game that tries to evolve by speeding things up, opening up its world, and making the experience more digestible—especially for newcomers. But in doing so, it occasionally forgets what made the old Monster Hunter games so… well, monstrous.

The thrill of the hunt, the chase and the nail-biting fights to get certain parts for your upgrades. The new wound mechanic feels like cheating with the ability to manually aim at those wounds and deal massive damage. While the wound aiming mechanic makes hitting your normal combos even easier if you exploit it.

TL;DR

Monster Hunter Wilds is still a fun Monster Hunter game. It is now an open world with new monsters, new mechanics and new builds to try out. But having to go through the story takes away control from you as the player feels like a fight against the game itself instead of the monsters. Add in terrible performance on the Xbox Series X and it simply becomes frustrating to play. PC fairs better but still lets you down.

Monster Hunter Wilds Review – Needs Time to Cook

Ultimately we were let down with Monster Hunter Wilds. The terrible performance took a big hit on our enjoyment of the new instalment in the series. Even after our sponsor offered us a different platform to test upon, the hype was gone and even Monster Hunter Wilds PC performance was a letdown. We tested Monster Hunter Wilds on the Xbox Series X and PC, and our PC setup is an NVIDIA RTX 5080 with an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D and 32GB of DDR5 RAM.

And while it did perform insanely better that was due to Frame Generation and DLSS. Turning the visuals into an older generation-looking game. While we reviewed Monster Hunter Rise on the Nintendo Switch the visuals there were not that good either, but the small screen and fluidity of that game made it way more bearable than Monster Hunter Wilds.

The Story – Look, but Don’t Touch

The Monster Hunter Wilds story is short and in all fairness, the story is always just the tutorial for the game. A speed run can get you through the game in about 10 hours if you skip all the narrative, don’t dive into the conversations and just run from main point to main point. After that the true Monster Hunter: Wilds experience starts.

Monster Hunter Wilds tries to inject a surprising amount of narrative into the experience. The story is front and centre, with long cutscenes, dramatic camera work, and a focus on the people and tribes of the Wilds. The monster reveals have a cinematic flair with a sprinkle of that Monster Hunter humour with overdone expressions or Palico shenanigans.

But the narrative itself is mostly background noise: predictable, serviceable, and just barely interesting enough to not skip. The MacGuffin chase for Nata his hometown is the drive forward but bobs and weaves itself into a story that introduces everyone to the expedition. You see them and the people you meet grow.

The biggest gripe? The story is a control hog. Instead of letting the player experience events organically, Wilds insists on yanking the reins away. Multiple sequences wrest control from your hands just to show you something that could’ve been shown more elegantly—or skipped entirely. At times, it’s less about telling a story and more about forcing you to sit through it. It’s a shame because there’s potential in world-building and creature lore.

You see that precious Herb you need in plain sight and want to go get it, nu-uh follow this NPC and stick with them. Looking around at the scenery? No, you MUST watch what we want you to see. While going through the story we felt like we fought the camera and story as much as the monsters.

Gameplay – The Fast and the Frenzied

The core gameplay loop is still unmistakably Monster Hunter. You hunt big, scary things, skin them for parts, and craft stylish gear that screams, “Look at me, I am the Monster now”.  But this time, Capcom cranked the pace to eleven.

The new Seikret mounts let you zip around the seamless open world faster than ever, with auto-pathing taking you straight into the jaws of your next target. All while you can look around and use your grappling hook to restock on materials.

The combos for weapons have slightly changed and breathe life into familiar weapons. Veterans will find enough nuance to chew on, while newcomers can button-mash their way through early hunts without feeling punished. It’s approachable, accessible, and very clearly designed with new players in mind. That’s both a strength and a weakness.

While new players will love the smoother learning curve, longtime hunters may find the experience lacking teeth. The thrill of a 40-minute slog against a flying Wyvern, carefully baiting traps and healing mid-fight, has largely been replaced by “hunt, dodge, mount, kill, next.”

The biggest new addition to combat is the Wound mechanic. Where you can inflict wounds on a monster by attacking a certain part enough. Once a monster has a wound you deal extra damage to that wound. But you can also activate a Focus Strike and aim at the wound to destroy it with a Focus Strike combo.

Dealing big damage and getting some monster parts. But using the focus strike reticle you can also aim your normal attacks, making the game way easier. Destroying a wound also interrupts a monster which is wildly overpowered.

Become the Monster

What hasn’t changed is the grind—and thank the Old Gods for that. Upgrading your weapons and armour is still an addictive dance of build optimization and glorious loot management. Every piece you craft feels like an accomplishment, Capcom knows this is their bread and butter, and they haven’t messed with it much, rightly so.

The open-world system lets you roam around and Monsters will appear and disappear on the map. You can freely start quests from your map and hunt with ease to collect more parts and materials. This feels more fluid than ever as there are fewer menus involved further feeding the speedy flow Monster Hunter Wilds has.

The same goes for meals, you can set up pop-up tents on certain locations on each map that are essentially mini-hubs where you cook your own meals with HP, Stamina and stat boosts as you like. And when you are ready to upgrade a fast-travel system is in place to quickly get back to Gemma, our blacksmith.

The Open World – When the Game Opens Up, So Does the Fun

Here’s where Wilds redeems itself a bit. Once the story shackles are off, the open world becomes a playground for glorious monster mayhem. Traversal with the Seikret mounts feels smooth and makes grinding materials a breeze, and the different biomes bring their own flavour to the hunt and offer diverse materials for your grind. It’s not quite Tears Of The Kingdom, but it’s the most alive the series has felt in years.

Post-story gameplay lets you chase Hunter Rank upgrades, find rare and tempered monsters, and explore the more dangerous corners of the world. That’s when the game finally finds its groove and lets you play the way you want. With many more build options, new monsters and maps on the way the future for content within Monster Hunter Wilds does look bright.

Performance – The Wildest Ride Monster Hunter Wilds Has to Offer

And now, the part that hurts the most is the performance. Monster Hunter Wilds runs like a Seikret with a broken leg on Xbox Series X. Framerate drops and crashes plague the experience to a frustrating degree up to the point where the console turns itself off due to overheating.

We experienced multiple crashes, including hard reboots that made us question if our console was plotting revenge for pushing it beyond its limit. The only viable option was playing in the ultimate performance mode. And while we usually do this for most games, Monster Hunter Wilds looks so bad and blurry it felt like we played on the Nintendo Switch.

The PC fared better, but only barely. Even with an RTX 5080 and a Ryzen 7 9800X3D powerhouse, the game didn’t feel properly optimized. Frame Generation and DLSS helped smooth things out, but the overall feel was more “Optimization is a later update” than a polished release.

For a game that’s supposed to represent the technical pinnacle of the franchise with its new open-world structure and fluid hunts, this performance bottleneck will be a deal-breaker for many.

Monster Hunter Wilds Review Conclusion

It’s a refined, faster, more accessible Monster Hunter game—but it loses some of the grit that defined the franchise. It wants to be deeper in the story but does so by wresting control from the player. It wants to welcome new players but alienates its core veterans by becoming too simple. It wants to look gorgeous, but it can’t run properly on a console that should be able to handle it.

There’s still a lot to love with Monster Hunter Wilds. The grind loop is fantastic, the new combat mechanics add flavour while making it a tad too easy, and the open world is genuinely fun once you’re let off the leash. But right now, Wilds feels caught between evolution and compromise with bad performance.

If you’re new to the series, this is a fantastic place to start. If you’re a veteran, you’ll find things to enjoy, you might miss the longer, more tactical hunts. But the quick snappy hunts are addictive and ideal for a short gaming break. Either way, some performance updates later Monster Hunter Wilds could be a way better experience.

Thank you CD Media for our review key and support when the Xbox Series X started letting us down.