Hands-On: Monster Hunter Wilds Is Promising and Fun (Even if I'm Bad at It)

Back in June during Summer Game Fest in LA, I got to sit down for a press-only hands-off preview of Capcom's upcoming Monster Hunter Wilds. Now, here at Gamescom 2024 in Germany, the first hands-on preview opened with behind-closed-door sessions. I'll preface all of this by admitting that I'm a bit of a Monster Hunter novice, having only played a little of the wildly popular Monster Hunter Worlds a few years ago, but from what I've seen these last two dives with Wilds has me really wanting to give this entry a serious try.

My hands-on preview consisted of two different demos, the first taking place seemingly at the beginning of the game. A lengthy cutscene revealed that a new region of the world had opened up and our team of explorers were starting an expedition to find a, until now, thought-to-be extinct monster. As we began our approach to this new land, we witnessed a young girl being chased by a pack of sand crawling worm-like creatures.

After a brief chase sequence saving the girl, named Nona, while riding our bird-like Seikret mount, we learn that her brother is missing somewhere nearby. At this point we were able to choose our starting weapon. Thankfully for me, someone quite new to the series, the game offers you a short questionnaire in addition to the weapon list to pick from. The questions range from what kind of fighter you'd like to be: strong and slow, quick and agile, prioritizing defense, etc. and will recommend a weapon based on how you're hoping to play the game. For me, this resulted in the Insect Glaive, a long spear that uses bugs to buff yourself and unlock different attack combos. 

This led to the first actual combat section of the game when we encounter the injured boy being attacked by a Chatacabra, a large and spikey, blue-colored beast with a long and deadly tongue -- and our first boss monster. There were a number of exciting mechanics introduced in this tutorial fight. For example, using your gun you can shoot stalactites in the cave ceiling and cause them to fall down and damage the monsters. 

Another mechanic I constantly ended up using was the SOS call that allowed you to send out a signal for NPC hunters to join you in the fight. This was immensely helpful since I spent more time missing all of my attacks than I did actually damaging the beast. The glaive lets you launch yourself in the air and time your attacks to slam down on the creature, but I kept missing the timing and sending myself flying past the monster. I also had a hard time getting the insect mechanic to work. It really felt like this was a hard weapon to learn but, if given the time, could lead to some really exciting combat.

When I was able to land some blows, the most satisfying was easily the new mechanic: weak points. By holding down L2/Left Trigger, you enter focus mode where your attacks are more precise, and if you've damaged one spot on the creature enough, it'll glow red. Hitting these weak spots at this time will make your character do a brief, cinematic attack to really drive home just how much damage you're causing and will often knock the enemy over, allowing you to follow up with some free hits. This gave the combat a fun flow rather than just spamming the attack button.

As this was a tutorial fight, there wasn't much threat of actually losing it and a lot of the action was quite slow between information prompts. What really got me excited was when the PR person from Capcom moved me onto a different demo machine to play a later game hunt. This was against a herd of Doshagumas -- big, brawny bison-like creatures -- and we specifically wanted to take down the Alpha of the pack. To start, the game instructed you to use various projectile attacks/weapons to scare the smaller of the Doshaguma creatures away since fighting them all at once would be exponentially more difficult. 

Once I cleared the Alpha from the group, the fight began. This demo station also had me set up with a different character so I took this chance to try a different weapon, this time a great sword. To my luck, I was actually worse with this than the glaive. I typically avoid heavy weapons in action games since I often prefer faster characters and quick attacks. The great sword in Wilds was one of the slowest I've experienced in a game, which made it hard to actually land my attacks on the rampaging beast. I quickly found myself missing the much more agile glaive that I disliked earlier.

The Alpha Doshaguma would often run from me (and the NPCs I called in with SOS) so we often had to mount up and chase after it. One nice thing about these chases is that our Seikrets will auto follow the beast, allowing you to switch to a projectile weapon and get some damage from afar. Herding the beast into different areas also allows us to take advantage of different environmental effects, such as lightning strikes or quicksand pits, but it also means we enter into different monsters' territories. My favorite part of these combat sections was sending a beast into a specific location, just to see another massive monster show up out of nowhere and start attacking alongside me. I could watch these two creatures duel it out instead of feeling bad about how slow my sword attacks are (but hey, it's a team effort right?). 

Calling your Seikret also allows you to use one of the coolest new features in Monster Hunter Wilds: switching weapons. You can carry two main weapons on your hunts, though you'll need to re-mount your Seikret to swap, giving players much more versatility when taking on big beasts. My rideable bird carried additional items in its saddlebags, which I could transfer to my character when following a fleeing wounded monster. It's a cool way to break up the monotony of fights -- and best of all, so long as you've got a heading (like chasing the aforementioned injured beast), your Seikret will automatically navigate there, leaving you free to manage items and catch a breather.

It's worth pointing out that these demos had several severe visual glitches, but that's to be expected since the game is so far away before coming out at an unspecified date next year. Nona's character model completely disappeared once I saved her from being chased, leaving me and the surrounding characters appearing to speak to thin air. Many of the monsters would also flicker in and out in terms of material details. Oftentimes scales would completely disappear and then reappear with no real pattern. 

Much like the Insect Glaive, Monster Hunter Wilds feels like a game that is hard to learn but will pay off immensely once you wrap your head around it. Being able to call in support characters to fight alongside you, bringing two weapons on the hunt and having additional monsters join the fight to really ramp up the chaos is a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to the game coming out next year so I can try, once again, to find a weapon that works better for me.

Monster Hunter Wilds is coming out sometime in 2025 for Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC.