Spoiler Free (mostly)

Ok so, let's get the elephant out of the room real quick, the optimisation is absolutely terrible, the amount of background system stuff going on absolutely kills your fps, the game is running denuvo AND their own custom anti tamper system at the same time, which tanks performance by a metric ton. The sad part about this is: as a person who does not care about graphics, the game looks like it should be running at 300 fps. Clothes and environments look like a zoomed in .jpg file. Or molded out of clay. Worlds by far looked better than this.

But you already knew this. Now that that's out of the way, and we've all acknowledged it, let's actually talk about the game. Starting with my complaints:


-Length
The game is... incredibly short. And not in a justified manner. I was basically done with the main content in the first 20 hours of the game, and done with all optional and side content at 60. All assignments, optionals, side quests, already done in the first week of the game's release. I have no more things to do, and the sad part is, not all of it was super memorable.

-Story and Exploration
The story has some insane segments in it where you put off an amazing "I'm Him" performance, yet the monsters all fall flat. Playing world, that first encounter with Anjanath, getting carted probably for the first time, after you've killed a few monsters, the rewards you got for actually going out in free-roam and exploring that forest that you've been progressing in, and the first major roadblock, Diablos, responsible for basically making 1 out of 10 players quit the game... Wilds has none of this. After a few quests in a new area, the entire map is instantly revealed to you. And theres absolutely 0 incentive to explore. You gain nothing out of it except the mushrooms and bugs you pick up. This feels incredibly sad because you can tell the artists and world designers put so much effort into the landscapes that you will never feel the need to visit. And on a side note, the monsters you fight have like... the least memorable names ever.

-Equipment
You're permanantly locked to a Ghilie Mantle, and only 1 extra mantle of your choice. Of which theres only 4 of anyway. Palico gadgets and whistles are completely gone, your palico just has gimped versions of every single gadget that don't do much. You don't get to pick and choose your favorite one, or upgrade them level by level. At the endgame you get a few quests from your palico and you unlock about 3 of them, that's it.

-Difficulty
The game simply isn't hard. I'm not a capital G gamer, i dont get off on being left bruised and annoyed by a video game, but I dont remember a single time in Low Rank that a monster did more than 20% of my hp in a single hit. Through out the entire campaign i might've drank like, 20 potions. And I absolutely never felt the need to upgrade my first armor set i got from the spider. I was killing the last boss of Low Rank with a set from the 2nd monster in the game and barely taking any damage. And in the RARE instance of being even slightly close to death, either your palico or your AI support hunter buddies heal you back to full instantly anyway.

The entire game feels so on-rails, it was driving me nuts. I got my hands and feet and **** held all the way through.

-Meals
Palico cooking is GONE. No meowscular chef, no granny kitty. You eat honey on cabbage. Or meat with cheese on it. You cook it yourself in a little portable cooker. It sucks. It never feels good, doesn't look good, and the ingredients required to cook the -not to mention useless- buffs you get are so grindsome and boring and rare. Sometimes people from the safehavens you unlocked will invite you over for a meal for slightly less useless buffs that if you squint your eyes real hard you might actually notice an effect. I have no idea why they thought this was a good idea.


...I don't wanna make it seem like i hate the game, which i don't, i think it's a great game that could've been so much better if they wanted it to be:


-Combat
The new focus system feels incredible. I'm sure greatsword players and chargeblade players (like me) feel somewhat divided about just being able to do a 180 degree turn with your TCS' and your SAED's, completely elliminating any skill required to aim the abilities, but the feedback you get off hitting these special focus strikes feels absolutely incredible. The new moves on most of the weapons are done so well, balanced perfectly and feel so satisfying to pull off. Some weapons take a little getting used to, like insect glaive which feels way more grounded now, and like youre covered in molasses with how slow some of the moves come out, but overall I love it. Hunting has never felt better.

-Hunting
No more scoutflies or worthless tracking! The ability to just open your map, click a monster, and instantly begin your field research (quest) to hunt that monster feels incredible. It's fast, it's responsive, it's fun and it doesn't interrupt your gameplay. It all feels very fly. The support your AI teammates provide you is also incredible. Especially Olivia, who has pulled off some insane moves like flashpodding monsters divebombing me out of the sky. It all feels very harmonious and beautiful. I've never had more fun hunting monsters.

-The Seikret
Oh my god I love this little bird horse so much. I've known him for 2 days and I would die for him. He's so good. Gives every weapon a very reliable way to get mount attacks, makes exploration a breeze, opens up a bunch of paths in the map that only the seikret can go through to make you feel like a true beastmaster, the gliding with his little wings out gives you some incredible views of the maps that are so perfectly designed for some real cool scenery screenshots, all around just one of the best additions to the game.

-Equipment
I'm also putting equipment into one of my liked aspects, because the weapon and armor design is amazing. The problem with World was that most of the monsters' trees, specifically their weapons, if they were deemed "Not important enough" by the story, it'd just be an iron weapon with their colors and pelts slapped on it until the end of the tree, introduced in iceborne. (And even then for some weapons). The armors also look very well designed. Some of them suffer from the graphical pullbacks of the game making them all mushy and blended together making it impossible to make out the details of the armor, but it's fine. Not really an issue until you're in cutscenes anyway.

-Jewels and Grind
Grind is cut down a lot. A lot of the bloat from World and Rise is removed, grinding is made easier by the open world map and monsters that drop things in your wishlist being highligted and getting drops everytime you heavily wound a monster and so on. Jewels are changed entirely being seperated into offensive jewels that go in your weapons and defensive jewels that go on your armor slots, weapons having innate skills on their own just like armor pieces, making you be able to swap armor sets and weapons on the fly for some variety in builds without having to unslot and re-slot all your jewels just to try out a different set-up of skills. I'm a big fan of both the cut-down grind, improved drop system and the new jewels.

Overall... great game, maybe worth the money, very fun, but it just could've been miles better. And nothing feels worse than playing the barebones skeleton of a masterpiece. When you're through with the story and the main quests, having been drip fed so many mechanics you would've unlocked in the first few hours of the previous installments, you kinda just feel a little empty with this feeling in your gut like: "...wait so where's the rest of it? what now?"

Hopeful.

Spoiler Free (mostly) Ok so, let's get the elephant out of the room real quick, the optimisation is absolutely terrible, the amount of background system stuff going on absolutely kills your fps, the game is running denuvo AND their own custom anti tamper system at the same time, which tanks performance by a metric ton. The sad part about this is: as a person who does not care about graphics, the game looks like it should be running at 300 fps. Clothes and environments look like a zoomed in .jpg file. Or molded out of clay. Worlds by far looked better than this. But you already knew this. Now that that's out of the way, and we've all acknowledged it, let's actually talk about the game. Starting with my complaints: [h1] oh boy... [/h1] -Length The game is... incredibly short. And not in a justified manner. I was basically done with the main content in the first 20 hours of the game, and done with all optional and side content at 60. All assignments, optionals, side quests, already done in the first week of the game's release. I have no more things to do, and the sad part is, not all of it was super memorable. -Story and Exploration The story has some insane segments in it where you put off an amazing "I'm Him" performance, yet the monsters all fall flat. Playing world, that first encounter with Anjanath, getting carted probably for the first time, after you've killed a few monsters, the rewards you got for actually going out in free-roam and exploring that forest that you've been progressing in, and the first major roadblock, Diablos, responsible for basically making 1 out of 10 players quit the game... Wilds has none of this. After a few quests in a new area, the entire map is instantly revealed to you. And theres absolutely 0 incentive to explore. You gain nothing out of it except the mushrooms and bugs you pick up. This feels incredibly sad because you can tell the artists and world designers put so much effort into the landscapes that you will never feel the need to visit. And on a side note, the monsters you fight have like... the least memorable names ever. -Equipment You're permanantly locked to a Ghilie Mantle, and only 1 extra mantle of your choice. Of which theres only 4 of anyway. Palico gadgets and whistles are completely gone, your palico just has gimped versions of every single gadget that don't do much. You don't get to pick and choose your favorite one, or upgrade them level by level. At the endgame you get a few quests from your palico and you unlock about 3 of them, that's it. -Difficulty The game simply isn't hard. I'm not a capital G gamer, i dont get off on being left bruised and annoyed by a video game, but I dont remember a single time in Low Rank that a monster did more than 20% of my hp in a single hit. Through out the entire campaign i might've drank like, 20 potions. And I absolutely never felt the need to upgrade my first armor set i got from the spider. I was killing the last boss of Low Rank with a set from the 2nd monster in the game and barely taking any damage. And in the RARE instance of being even slightly close to death, either your palico or your AI support hunter buddies heal you back to full instantly anyway. The entire game feels so on-rails, it was driving me nuts. I got my hands and feet and **** held all the way through. -Meals Palico cooking is GONE. No meowscular chef, no granny kitty. You eat honey on cabbage. Or meat with cheese on it. You cook it yourself in a little portable cooker. It sucks. It never feels good, doesn't look good, and the ingredients required to cook the -not to mention useless- buffs you get are so grindsome and boring and rare. Sometimes people from the safehavens you unlocked will invite you over for a meal for slightly less useless buffs that if you squint your eyes real hard you might actually notice an effect. I have no idea why they thought this was a good idea. ...I don't wanna make it seem like i hate the game, which i don't, i think it's a great game that could've been so much better if they wanted it to be: [h1] some praise! [/h1] -Combat The new focus system feels incredible. I'm sure greatsword players and chargeblade players (like me) feel somewhat divided about just being able to do a 180 degree turn with your TCS' and your SAED's, completely elliminating any skill required to aim the abilities, but the feedback you get off hitting these special focus strikes feels absolutely incredible. The new moves on most of the weapons are done so well, balanced perfectly and feel so satisfying to pull off. Some weapons take a little getting used to, like insect glaive which feels way more grounded now, and like youre covered in molasses with how slow some of the moves come out, but overall I love it. Hunting has never felt better. -Hunting No more scoutflies or worthless tracking! The ability to just open your map, click a monster, and instantly begin your field research (quest) to hunt that monster feels incredible. It's fast, it's responsive, it's fun and it doesn't interrupt your gameplay. It all feels very fly. The support your AI teammates provide you is also incredible. Especially Olivia, who has pulled off some insane moves like flashpodding monsters divebombing me out of the sky. It all feels very harmonious and beautiful. I've never had more fun hunting monsters. -The Seikret Oh my god I love this little bird horse so much. I've known him for 2 days and I would die for him. He's so good. Gives every weapon a very reliable way to get mount attacks, makes exploration a breeze, opens up a bunch of paths in the map that only the seikret can go through to make you feel like a true beastmaster, the gliding with his little wings out gives you some incredible views of the maps that are so perfectly designed for some real cool scenery screenshots, all around just one of the best additions to the game. -Equipment I'm also putting equipment into one of my liked aspects, because the weapon and armor design is amazing. The problem with World was that most of the monsters' trees, specifically their weapons, if they were deemed "Not important enough" by the story, it'd just be an iron weapon with their colors and pelts slapped on it until the end of the tree, introduced in iceborne. (And even then for some weapons). The armors also look very well designed. Some of them suffer from the graphical pullbacks of the game making them all mushy and blended together making it impossible to make out the details of the armor, but it's fine. Not really an issue until you're in cutscenes anyway. -Jewels and Grind Grind is cut down a lot. A lot of the bloat from World and Rise is removed, grinding is made easier by the open world map and monsters that drop things in your wishlist being highligted and getting drops everytime you heavily wound a monster and so on. Jewels are changed entirely being seperated into offensive jewels that go in your weapons and defensive jewels that go on your armor slots, weapons having innate skills on their own just like armor pieces, making you be able to swap armor sets and weapons on the fly for some variety in builds without having to unslot and re-slot all your jewels just to try out a different set-up of skills. I'm a big fan of both the cut-down grind, improved drop system and the new jewels. Overall... great game, maybe worth the money, very fun, but it just could've been miles better. And nothing feels worse than playing the barebones skeleton of a masterpiece. When you're through with the story and the main quests, having been drip fed so many mechanics you would've unlocked in the first few hours of the previous installments, you kinda just feel a little empty with this feeling in your gut like: "...wait so where's the rest of it? what now?" Hopeful.