(Updated as of TU2)

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I often play multiple weapons and have been a long time fan of the franchise since 4th gen. As far as improving combat, I genuinely believe this game has some of the best melee combat in any JRPG on the market at the moment. Monsters feel more in-depth than previous entries in the game, and the hunts are genuinely fun, albeit shorter and more streamlined than previous titles, which I'm not crazy about. This continues the trend of Monster Hunter games becoming a "boss rush" that began from late World/Iceborne Title Updates to all of Rise and now Wilds. I don't hate it, it's just not what I've known the franchise for.

Stay away from public lobbies and only interact with multiplayer through SOS flares , or else you'll lag like crazy. TU2 has improved things slightly for my RTX 4060, but I'm still running medium graphics on frame gen and getting around 60fps. It's playable but needs to be addressed.

The game looks okay. It's not stunning, I think the Guiding Lands from Monster Hunter World looks better than most of the stuff in this game on Medium settings. For how resource intensive the game is, something's definitely gone wrong on their backend. I'm not seeing the payoff between performance cost and how the game visually looks. Title Update 2 fixed most of the 'faded/dusty' colour grading the game launched with, so I'm pretty happy about that. There's still some obvious issues such as flickering leaves that can't be ignored, but these sort of things will inevitably get patched out.

On release, the game was majorly lacking both monsters to hunt as well as difficulty in those hunts. The new 8 starred tempered quests offer something in the way of hard hunts, but we'll need to wait for future title updates and G rank to get anything more challenging. As of right now, if you're new to the franchise, you'll have a pretty good time with no hard walls to progression like previous games. It's a pretty beginner-friendly game as far as the story goes, which ends officially at the beginning of high rank, for some reason. Many of my friends who try this game drop it after high rank begins, which is a shame, because most Monster Hunter players know that's when the game really 'begins' as far as builds and difficulty are concerned.

The dev team for this series is generally known to be pretty good on delivering patches and content through free title updates. Title updates 1 and 2 show that the developers are certainly listening and are actively addressing performance issues. I still hold a lot of love and respect for this franchise. I've personally had a lot of fun playing Wilds and it's definitely been worth the price for me, but I'm lucky to be in a position where I can even run the thing. I can't in good faith recommend the game in its current state to anyone, but this review will likely change when they eventually patch everything in.

[h1] Overall: Genuinely fun game, wait for patches before buying. [/h1] (Updated as of TU2) [hr][/hr] [h3] Gameplay [/h3] I often play multiple weapons and have been a long time fan of the franchise since 4th gen. As far as improving combat, I genuinely believe this game has some of the best melee combat in any JRPG on the market at the moment. Monsters feel more in-depth than previous entries in the game, and the hunts are genuinely fun, albeit shorter and more streamlined than previous titles, which I'm not crazy about. This continues the trend of Monster Hunter games becoming a "boss rush" that began from late World/Iceborne Title Updates to all of Rise and now Wilds. I don't hate it, it's just not what I've known the franchise for. [h3] Performance [/h3] [u] Stay away from public lobbies and only interact with multiplayer through SOS flares [/u], or else you'll lag like crazy. TU2 has improved things slightly for my RTX 4060, but I'm still running medium graphics on frame gen and getting around 60fps. It's playable but needs to be addressed. [h3] Graphics [/h3] The game looks okay. It's not stunning, I think [spoiler] the Guiding Lands [/spoiler] from Monster Hunter World looks better than most of the stuff in this game on Medium settings. For how resource intensive the game is, something's definitely gone wrong on their backend. I'm not seeing the payoff between performance cost and how the game visually looks. Title Update 2 fixed most of the 'faded/dusty' colour grading the game launched with, so I'm pretty happy about that. There's still some obvious issues such as flickering leaves that can't be ignored, but these sort of things will inevitably get patched out. [h3] Content and Difficulty [/h3] On release, the game was majorly lacking both monsters to hunt as well as difficulty in those hunts. The new 8 starred tempered quests offer something in the way of hard hunts, but we'll need to wait for future title updates and G rank to get anything more challenging. As of right now, if you're new to the franchise, you'll have a pretty good time with no hard walls to progression like previous games. It's a pretty beginner-friendly game as far as the story goes, which ends officially at the beginning of high rank, for some reason. Many of my friends who try this game drop it after high rank begins, which is a shame, because most Monster Hunter players know that's when the game really 'begins' as far as builds and difficulty are concerned. [h3] Final Thoughts [/h3] The dev team for this series is generally known to be pretty good on delivering patches and content through free title updates. Title updates 1 and 2 show that the developers are certainly listening and are actively addressing performance issues. I still hold a lot of love and respect for this franchise. I've personally had a lot of fun playing Wilds and it's definitely been worth the price for me, but I'm lucky to be in a position where I can even run the thing. I can't in good faith recommend the game in its current state to anyone, but this review will likely change when they eventually patch everything in.