I’ve played the opening five hours of Monster Hunter Wilds and can’t wait to play more. That’s a massive change from how I’ve typically felt after playing previous games in the series.

Although I’ve attempted to get into games like Monster Hunter 4, Monster Hunter World, and Monster Hunter Rise, I’ve quickly dropped off each game. Hunts are very stressful and complex. While people adore this formula, I could never get over the initial learning curve in any Monster Hunter game I played. That changed when I got to go hands-on with Monster Hunter Wilds’ opening hours.

While players got to experience a bit of this part of the game through the open beta earlier this year, Capcom flew Digital Trends out to its headquarters in Osaka, Japan, last month to play the starting hours of Monster Hunter Wilds on PlayStation 5 uninterrupted and speak to its developers. I was nervous that I wouldn’t enjoy what I played, but a combination of improvements to the narrative, gameplay, and game flow make Monster Hunter Wilds feel like the entry that will finally pull me in.

Nata bad story

Monster Hunter Wilds’ story is gripping from its opening moments. I’m quickly introduced to Nata, a human boy whose tribe is seemingly wiped out by the White Wraith, a powerful monster that lives in the Forbidden Lands. An expedition of hunters exploring the Forbidden Lands finds Nata, and players are dispatched there to explore this new region, meet its inhabitants, and get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding Nata’s origins and the White Wraith.

Giving the player-created hunter a voice and a more active role within the story is a wise choice. It made me feel much more invested in what was happening as if I was crafting personal relationships with everybody on the expedition. According to director Yuya Tokuda, making Nata a central character made sense as a thematic throughline for Monster Hunter Wilds’ story.

“Humans interacting with nature is something that we wanted to illustrate with Monster Hunter Wilds,” Tokuda tells Digital Trends. “In Monster Hunter World, the hunters were investigating the nature, and that’s where they interacted with it. But in showing how humans interacted with nature, not the hunters, we wanted a non-hunter human being to become core to the story to show what exactly hunters are in the story and how humans live in the world and coexist with nature and the monsters.”

A game like Monster Hunter Wilds needs to make me care about why I’m hunting these creatures. The opening slice of the narrative had a stronger impact on that than in any other Monster Hunter game I’ve played, which is why I’m eager to go back to the Forbidden Lands and see past the five-hour mark where I stopped playing.

Small, welcome improvements

While the story is what initially got its hooks in me, smart improvements to the gameplay are what will likely keep me playing Monster Hunter Wilds. Capcom has fully retained the formula that made this series popular in the first place. Hunting monsters is still an involved process that requires players to use smart strategies and the environment to their advantage. If you aren’t prepared for hunting and aren’t considerate in how to approach a giant monster, you will die.

The approach has already captivated over 100 million players, but I’ve found it hard to get into. Tutorials in past Monster Hunter games have been overwhelming. I’ve found experimenting with different weapons to be cumbersome, and I felt like I needed a wiki to understand the best way to take down a specific monster. Thankfully, Monster Hunter Wilds makes a concerted effort to address all those issues.

Over the course of the first five hours of Monster Hunter Wilds, I hunted seven different monsters: Chatacabra, Quematrice, Lala Barina, Congalala, Balahara, Alpha Doshaguma, and Uth Duna. Each of these varies wildly from each other (the spider-like Lala Barina is my favorite) and, as a result, works well at naturally teaching players everything they need to know. The game also doles out tutorial pop-ups piecemeal across these fights, so learning mechanics never gets overwhelming.

There’s also the new Focus gameplay system, making it easier to lock on to enemies and spot their weak points. That meant I always knew what to do to take down a monster as effectively as possible, even as I enjoyed the prolonged hunts. It’s also possible to take two weapons on a hunt now (one stays on your Seikret mount), which encourages experimentation and allows me to get a feel for a wider variety of weapons than I would’ve in the same timespan in a different Monster Hunter game. I found myself to be a fan of the Heavy Bowgun in particular.

Seamless hunting

Monster Hunter Wilds is the most approachable Monster Hunter game yet, but in a way that doesn’t seem like it will be off-putting to the franchise’s most hardcore fans. Instead, those gameplay improvements, smart tutorializations, and strong narrative work in tandem to keep players engaged. The fact that players can freely explore the Forbidden Lands regions twice as big as the ones in Monster Hunter World, see large herds of monsters, and start hunts in the middle of exploration also makes it feel like a more appealing open-world style of game.

The developers I spoke to repeatedly highlighted how they wanted Monster Hunter Wilds to feel like a seamless experience. Capcom intentionally did so from character creation to the start of the game, from cutscene to gameplay, and how it makes players feel equipped to take on any monster they face early on.

“Before you know it, you’re better at hunting without even noticing it,” Tokuda says. “Finding the right balance of educating players at a very natural rate that doesn’t interfere with their progress of the story was something that we focused on.”

I think that focus works to Monster Hunter Wilds’ benefit, as this is the first Monster Hunter game that I’m truly itching to play again. I now understand what makes the series great, and believe Monster Hunter Wilds will help others who have had trouble finding their way come to that same realization. If you bounced off previous Monster Hunter titles like me, keep an eye on Monster Hunter Wilds when it launches next February.

Monster Hunter Wilds will be released for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S on February 28, 2024.

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