With Monster Hunter Wilds review day behind us, an anxious portion of the monster hunting community is spending the days until the game's launch this Friday worrying that the latest entry in the series will be disappointingly easy.
Amidst high scores overall, several critics reckoned that Wilds may have lost some of what defines Monster Hunter, including a real sense of danger that pushes you to continually improve your gear or dig in your heels during a fight. Our friends at PC Gamer agreed that combat has never felt better, but noted that hunting has been heavily streamlined. In IGN's excellent review, Tom Marks, who discussed the game's difficulty elsewhere in comments that have become the centerpoint of other conversations, said he didn't feel much need to upgrade his gear as he cleared most of the content without dying (that is, carting) at all.
"Yes, people get better the more they play, but the games are also, in fact, getting easier," says Eastern-Barnacle-344, 344th of their name. "One of the Youtubers said he killed the spider boss in 5 minutes. Which if that is the case the difficulty is way too low and the game WILL suffer from being too easy," reasons Zenai10. (For reference, I killed both spider bosses, Lala Barina and Nerscylla, in under 4 minutes.)
I said in our review that endgame solo hunts in Wilds could end in as little as six minutes with suboptimal play, and I'd agree with Tom's argument that the addition of parry-esque offset attacks, combined with Focus Mode attacks that pop monster wounds for extra damage and regular staggers, makes Wilds feel easier than previous games. Time the wounds right and you can lock monsters down for extended periods which are often long enough to trigger a KO or trip or paralysis depending on your weapon. (After BS like Iceborne Rajang – yes I'm still mad – I actually enjoy this.) This experience will vary between weapons – I'm a lance main, tucked safely behind a steel wall – but there is a clear trend.
Man vs monster
In some ways, the pendulum has swung back since the early days of Molten Tigrex: hunters have so many new tools that some monsters can fall behind. It's only toward the end of the Wilds roster that monsters start to catch up in this arms race of ours. But as other users have pointed out, this discussion comes up in some way with every new Monster Hunter game – partly because your first Monster Hunter is always your hardest due to inexperience, and also because the games are demonstrably getting easier. We're spending less time fighting against the controls and camera, and when actually fighting the monsters, we have powerful new tools at our disposal.
Monster Hunter Generations added hunter arts with huge chunks of invincibility frames and damage, not to mention the automatic Brave dodge. World introduced Rocksteady and evasion and auto-evasion mantles that can trivialize attacks, while some weapons were so imbalanced that the flagship Elder Dragon would die in one minute. And Rise let us instantly recover from hits using Wirebugs that also fueled yet more i-frame special attacks.
Wilds continues this with new reactive and damage-dealing tools alongside parallels to previous ones (Seikret rescue is the new Wirebug evade). If you went back in time and showed any of this stuff to a Monster Hunter Freedom Unite player, their eyes would pop out of their skull and they'd be on a "back in my day" rant faster than your grandparents in election season.
Monster Hunter Wilds is absolutely easier than Rise, which was easier than World, which was easier than Generations Ultimate, which was easier than 4 Ultimate. Reviews are right to point that out and I don't disagree. That said, outside of hunt times and simplicity, I didn't dwell on difficulty much in my review because it didn't feel so patronizingly easy that it hurt the satisfaction of hunting for me. Rather, this is my new favorite Monster Hunter.
Weapons connect with such power and monsters attack with such variety that my usual routine of practicing matchups and watching my hunt times go down while savoring the core combat felt like plenty of reason to play this game for hundreds of hours. I'm the type of player who actively wants to see the tracking and preparation side of Monster Hunter minimized because all I want to do is fight monsters, and fighting monsters feels better than ever. Wilds has the best combat in the series, so of course it's my personal pick.
I obviously can't speak for everyone. While I love it, after reading more reviews from others I do think some people may find Wilds a bit shallow at launch purely based on what motivates them as a player. This is a pretty easy thing to 'fix' with monster HP and damage and stagger resistance, and I'd wager post-launch patches and mega-monsters will help, just as they have previously. But as someone who's played Monster Hunter for 10 years, always plays games on hard mode, and actively seeks out difficult action RPGs, I am hungry to play a lot more of this game even after beating every quest without much difficulty. That's after the campaign didn't cart me a single time until the final boss – and some other reviewers didn't even cart to that.
Beating Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate from village to Gogmazios entirely solo was a lot harder, yeah, but it was less enjoyable for me, too. Monster Hunter Wilds is not a hard game, but it is incredibly fun, which sums up the situation pretty well.
Monster Hunter Wilds release date and times – here's when the behemoth action RPG unlocks.
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