Recent reviews by Yung Dandy

TLDR: If you want to experience a Monster Hunter game, this is not it. If you want a fun game for 100 hours and don't mind the price, then Wilds is for you.



There are two core groups of Monster Hunter fans regardless of what point they joined the series;

1) Immersion Hunters. These player value the immersive hunting experience and are largely interested in gameplay elements that facilitate this such as tracking monster, monster behaviours and monster/endemic ecology in the maps.
2) Monster Fighters. These guys enjoy the series for it's unique combat and focus on positioning and commitment once you have pressed a button. Speedrunners are included in this category. They want monsters to be good, fair fights that reward matchup and weapon mastery.

Usually these two groups are arguing with each other regarding which games are good, the immersive lot tend to enjoy World/Iceborne more with the Monster Fighters preferring Rise/Sunbreak, This is a simplification on my part but a useful one at that.



When World/Iceborne was out the players who favoured immersion were happy and the more combat focused hunters from Generations Ultimate found things a little lackluster.
When Rise/Sunbreak came out thew opposite was true.
With Wilds release both groups of players are unsatisfied. The game is missing important immersion enhancing features such as side quests and emphasis on gathering while also missing the difficult but fair combat that made previous titles so enjoyable to replay. I think this can be demonstrated with the reception the game has received from content creators with Ratatoskr representing the immersion fans and others like Juzzi and Mahnster Hunter representing the combat enjoyers.

The amount of side missions in the game is ridiculously little and it's the 1st Monster Hunter I have come across that doesn't have an egg fetch quest, which is a staple any veteran will tell you is in every game. While the game world looks fantastic, the players interaction with the world makes it feel more like a playground instead of a wild ecologically detailed environment the hunter must survive in.
The combat has gutted the core design and left the game easy and shallow. To give you a rough idea of how bad this is IGN detailed the game being too easy as a core criticism of MH Wilds in their review. Imagine that, the game is too easy even for games journalists.



A game getting a larger audience is only good if it doesn't come at the cost of it's core design. The industry has seen many highly acclaimed series end in the gutter due to design decisions diluting the core design to market to a wide audience. Examples near and dear to my heart include Mass Effect, Dead Space, Halo and Rainbow Six Siege. I think this is exactly what MH Wilds has done. It feels the least Monster Hunter out of all of the titles and I forecast the huge influx of players currently interested in the game will lose interest once another large game releases such as GTA 6, this would in theory leave behind the committed, diehard players but these players ironically have been the first to ditch Wilds since it offers none of the experiences they valued from older games. As such once the popularity dies away the remaining community will be a husk of its former glory. The old players have already returned to Rise/Sunbreak and World/Iceborne and new players will quickly ditch Wilds and explore the extensive back catalogue of games including 4 Ultimate, 3 Ultimate and Generations Ultimate.



The issues with Wilds can't be fixed with updates, side quests and monsters can be added later on but this doesn't fix the vast majority of the playerbases 1st playthrough. An egg quest isn't fun when you have already unlocked everything and have 100+ hours in the game. They worked in World and previous titles because they unlocked canteen ingredients and thus gave you a substantial reward. There is nothing worth unlocking like this in Wilds. As for the combat design issues these can not be fixed with newer harder monsters because the monsters aren't the issue. The focus system gutted the most defining feature of Monster Hunters combat. positioning, as you can now guarantee you hit every finishing move or combo. The wounds system also ruins things because it allows hunters to chain cc monsters and spam their most damaging combos. The monsters don't do anything but get cc'ed and die and the exceptions are required to be so fast and hard hitting that they simply aren't fun or engaging to fight against (Tempered Gore Magala). This can not be fixed with additional updates in the same way you can't fix a curry that has too much spice by adding a different spice. The game has overtuned the hunters and placed Capcom in a difficult space, either take away their key combat additions from Wilds or someone magically redesign monsters to account for the new combat mechanics. The former being unlikely due to marketing reasons and the latter unlikely due to financial ones. Capcom can release Giga Chad Rainbow Fatalis or Vibrating Moody Brachydios but they won't rebalance the hunter and return the core combat design that made the previous titles such deep reservoirs of content.



At the moment the Monster count is one of the lowest in the series and the optimization leaves much to be desired. I actually think these issues will get resolved with Title Updates and the Master Rank DLC, it sucks that the game release the way it did but thats an issue with the industry as a whole and not something the devs should be held responsible for. It's not the devs fault that Capcom forced the game to release before the end of the financial year to beef up with profit numbers and please their investors. As a side note the game was originally meant to be released before Christmas 2024 and if you look into the info gathered by r/monsterhunterleaks it's pretty evident that content from the base game was removed and placed into Title Updates.


Monster Hunter Wilds is a fine game, buts its mid. It has diluted the Monster Hunter formula to become more marketable, yes the game is more accessible than previous titles and easier to get into but like most things in life, the very features that make it obtuse are in fact the very features that make it special. Monster Hunter Wilds is in fact neither Monster Hunter nor Wild. It is in fact Creature Journey: Playground.

Dope game. It's Monster Hunter, you know the gist. Compared to World its more combat focused and less immersion focused.

Core game design is very fun but overshadowed by poor balancing and updates from the devs.

Even though this game is PvE the devs take issue with weapons if they are used regularly by 30% of the playerbase. What this means is that the devs constantly nerf the most fun and viable weapons and tactics to force you to use the weaker weapons. Add to this the fact that the devs keep increasing the amount of enemies spawned and the time to kill for all enemies and what you get is a fun action game that gets boring very quickly.

After the quirky fun of being rag dolled wears of you are left with a game that constantly throws enemies at you in an unfair and unfun manner backed by devs that will punish the community for finding interesting new viable builds by nerfing weapons so that they are no longer good.

Its frankly very tiresome. I think most people expected AH to be a better company than they are, as it stands their game is fun in spite of their influence and not because of it.

I can't really recommend this game because whatever fun you experience will be outweighed by the exasperation of having the devs remove your favourite playstyles due to them being "meta" or "unrealistic" and just generally making the game less fun and more grindy.

I think its pretty clear AH does this to force the playerbase to by more warbonds, after all, why would you spend 10 quid on a new flame warbond if you already have a fun and viable flamethrower.

AH is a money hungry company and as consumers we shouldn't enable their poor business practices.

"The right to discuss is a privilege—it is not an entitlement you earn by playing the game" - CA

The right to a positive review is a privilege—it is not an entitlement you earn by making the game – CA’s Customers

Pretty good game.

Good balance of realism and gameplay to make something that feels believable but is still very much fun.

The game is missing a lot of core features such as a campaign or multiple factions however it is early access and what is there is really fun.

From what I have seen from the developers discord and update posts as well as the frequency of updates and a fairly organised roadmap I personally am happy buying the game with the assumption that there will be a lot more added in a reasonable time frame. If you aren't comfortable paying for an early access game for the promise of more content later then just wait a bit as the game should be worth the small price tag fairly soon.

That said what is in the game is genuinely very fun and fairly unique. A lot of people will no doubt compare this game to Homeworld and while its an understandable comparison the games are very different.

This game has much more emphasis on tactics as opposed to the Homeworld games which I would say focus on strategy a lot more.

From my understanding as well Homeworld has more of a rock paper scissors mechanic with its ships whereas Nebulous isn't so well defined. Most ships can defeat most other ships as long as you take an engagement that favours yourself i.e. play to the strengths of your ships while minimising the strengths of your enemies. There are no hard counters per se.

Comparing Nebulous and Homeworld emphasises Nebulous' biggest weakness at the moment and thats the lack of a persistent world/campaign/anything outside of the ship battles. In the game the maps are giant spheres and if you go outside the sphere your ship will withdraw from combat. There is basically no reason to do this at the moment which is a sad state of affairs as the inclusion of something persistent outside of the battles would add a whole new angle to every engagement. Should I take this fight or retreat and keep my ships for another day? I genuinely believe this is something the devs will address in later updates as they have already started a community conquest event with a persistent territorial map between two factions that changes based on the outcome of battles. This to me shows they are already aware of the bonus such a mechanic would have and that its on their radar.

Would genuinely recommend this game, I haven't even touched on other things such as the music (fantastic but lacking in variety) or the presentation and graphics (also fantastic but needing a little polish) but I am already having a blast playing this game.

Safe Punjabi no virus

8 Beam Destroyers / 10 Missile Corvettes

Was pretty good but gave me conniptions.