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Early access to the new monster hunting game Wild Hearts is now available, and while the response to the action itself has been broadly positive so far, there's one big issue: the game does not look good.
While best known for the Dynasty Warriors series, the Omega Force studio at Koei Tecmo has taken on Monster Hunter before with the well-regarded Toukiden series, and is returning to that well with Wild Hearts. The game is published by EA, so while it doesn't technically launch until February 16, fans have been getting in early with the EA Play subscription.
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Wild Hearts Karakuri Building
It takes about 20 seconds in the game's subreddit to see that the conversation right now is all about the game's graphics and performance. There are threads calling Wild Hearts a "blurry mess" on PS5, "dismal" on Xbox Series S, and "muddy" on PC. Platform and visual settings don't seem to make much of a difference - it seems nobody's happy with how the game looks or runs no matter what platform they're on. One thread calls it "one of the ugliest AAA games I've ever played."
The Wild Hearts PC performance issues have been particularly pronounced, and no combination of settings and hardware power seems to be producing acceptable results. That's the platform the devs are focusing on first, and a new message from the devs promises "a CPU bottleneck problem" in the near term and DLSS and FSR support in a future patch.
PC is the focus for now - "we’re able to get those patches out the door the quickest," as one of the devs explains on Reddit, but "the team is working to improve performance on all platforms."
Check out our guide to Wild Hearts fast travel if you're looking to get around faster and save time.
