On day three of my visit to Capcom in Osaka, Japan, I once again sat in a dimly lit conference room. I was playing Monster Hunter Wilds, empty cans of coffee and tea strewn around my station. “You must be tired of being stuck in here playing,” said a friendly employee. All I could think was: “I wish I could play more.”

This is after I played the first five hours of Monster Hunter Wild’s story and hunted four monsters in the Oilwell Basin in a different play state. I just couldn’t get enough; there are so many nuances to master with the new weapon and gameplay features and I’m the type of person who wants to scrutinize everything and figure out exactly how everything works through repetition and experimentation. I’m a guides writer – it comes with the territory – but because of my limited time, I needed to focus on the main story. That’s fine. After this hands-on, I know I’ll enthusiastically spend hundreds more hours in the game once it’s out.

Is Monster Hunter Getting Easier, or Are You Just Better?

I beelined it through the story to make sure I could see every monster there was to see, and in doing so, I didn’t make optimized equipment; instead, I crafted and upgraded what I could as I went. That’s the basic loop of Monster Hunter: Hunt monster, make better equipment, hunt stronger monster, and sometimes, hunt something multiple times to get what you need. With my minimal preparation, I hunted the first seven monsters without much trouble and never once carted* (aka, knocked out): Chatacabra, Quematrice, Congalala, Lala Barina, Balahara, Doshaguma, and finally, a repel quest for the Leviathan Uth Duna. When I played Monster Hunter: World for the very first time, even Tobi-Kadachi gave me trouble, so I was surprised to encounter such little friction while playing Wilds.

I was actually so surprised that I went back and replayed the story in Monster Hunter: World through Anjanath, the seventh large monster. Well, the answer is that I’ve just gotten a whole lot better since I first played World, even though by that point, I had been playing Monster Hunter since the very first one on PlayStation 2. I easily ripped through everything up to Anjanath, who then made me sweat a bit before I defeated it on my first try.

It’s funny, because I felt the same as when I played Monster Hunter Rise. I thought to myself, “This feels so much easier,” and in some ways, this could be because of the fun, zippy Wirebug mechanic and other factors, but that feeling was largely due to my increased skill as a player after 600 hours in World and Iceborne. That’s not to say I’m now some pro-level Monster Hunter–I’m certainly no speedrunner–but I’ve improved enough to notice. I’m bringing this up because I often see this lamentation in the community, questioning, “Perhaps, is Monster Hunter simply getting easier?” I would suggest that we may just be growing into better hunters.

The developers’ goals don’t suggest they intend to make Monster Hunter easier.

Things are certainly becoming more streamlined and accessible (see: Optimal Health and Status Recovery that removes the need to choose exactly how to heal, and the Focus Mode that makes it easier to aim) but the developers’ goals don’t suggest they intend to make Monster Hunter easier. Art director and executive director of Wilds, Kaname Fujioka, said the difficulty in Wilds generally follows suit from World. Series producer Ryozo Tsujimoto added: “We’ve been incredibly careful in Wilds to guide players to the fun of Monster Hunter without changing the core of the series,” and I very much feel that.

Wilds immediately directs players into the meat of what Monster Hunter really is: hunting large monsters that could be set-piece bosses in other games. he main missions smoothly integrate mini small monster hunts and gathering as part of the story, which is a wonderful way to teach players about these necessary activities without them feeling like a roadblock. I’m conflicted about all of these…upgrades. I find myself always wanting to pull a “Back in my day…” and describe some archaic, ludicrous thing we used to have to do just to get by to be able to enjoy the game…like delivering explosive Powderstones from the top of a volcano while avoiding Gravios and Ioprey…and then doing it three more times because the quest didn’t count as cleared unless you were the one who posted it, and your whole party of four needed to clear it to join the next quest.

I suppose I’m trying to say Monster Hunter has come a long way, and making it less convoluted and stripping away its “nonessential” bits and pieces has made it more palatable to a much larger crowd. Now, it’s largely just delectable meat with the occasional bone and dessert: there are no bitter vegetables to power through to be able to enjoy everyone’s favorite parts (except, maybe, grinding for a specific material.) And while on one hand I’m overjoyed that so many people have grown to truly enjoy something I love, there was something about being one of the few who prided themselves on eating their vegetables with a smile on their face.

Even so, the evolution of Monster Hunter has continued to impress me. The nostalgia I have for how things used to be doesn’t cloud my judgment enough to make me misremember how I actually felt about needing to gather dozens of mushrooms and herbs and Wyvern eggs before I could finally hunt: “This is boring and tedious and my god please just let me kill a monster.”

Wilds delivers the thrill of hunting a monster extroadinarily fast. The main story immediately spits you into the thick of things, and you’ll have hunted your first large monster in the first twenty minutes after customizing your character and Palico. There are no Kestodon Kerfuffles to contend with–you are one of the chosen hunters to protect your fleet from the big bads, and so that’s what you do.

The action of these monster-hunting quests is seamlessly woven together with narrative tasks that drive the story and exciting cutscenes that drop you right into the fray. Travel is often accompanied by NPCs who progress the story with dialogue, so little time is wasted. The entire experience feels full and is structured like a more traditional RPG, as you aren’t posting quests from a board and loading into a map like in previous Monster Hunters. At the same time, you still have robust freedom to explore and discover things on your own without having your hand held too tightly. I’ll need to play more to discover exactly how the new decoration system and ingredient farming work, but it does appear you’ll still need to keep up on eating and inventory management yourself to be the best hunter you can be. I do hope there are challenges ahead that will require adequate preparation to succeed, as that’s where I think Monster Hunter shines brightest, but I do believe I may have encountered at least one of those in the Oilwell Basin.

Alone in the Depths

We discuss the Oilwell Basin and the four monsters I hunted there at length in our interview with the developers. Rompopolo, Ajarakan, Gravios, and the area’s apex, The Black Flame, Nu Udra inhabit the Oilwell Basin, which is designed to be more vertically connected, rather than the more horizontally laid out Windward Plains and Scarlet Forest. Though it’s a rocky, cave-like locale filled with lava and mucky oilsilt, it’s inspired by the deep sea and the inhabitants of the ocean floor. This is much more apparent during the Plenty, where deep into the Oilwell Basin takes on an ethereal blue hue to contrast its muddy palette during the Fallow and bright, burning red-oranges of the Firespring.

The change in climate sometimes made me feel like I was in entirely different places, and this was even more pronounced in the Oilwell Basin. The changes in these three-mode cycles, plus the drastic visual changes between day and night, add even more variety to these vast, large, diverse maps— meant to be two to two-and-a-half times the size of the maps in World. And we’ve only seen three, but I’m sure there must be more. I feel like I barely got a handle on the layout of the Oilwell Basin while hunting, and will likely need to make a concerted effort to learn its flow and remember where things are, like the very helpful environmental traps, including a perfectly placed Sleeptoad beneath precariously placed stalactites in the ceiling of a cave.

When I beat it down enough, it deflated–a hilariously sad sight I was delighted to experience.

As for the monsters I faced there, they were a unique and impressive bunch. Rompopolo is absolutely grotesque, using its needle-like mouth to spew poison and the sharp appendage on its tail to inject gas into the ground, making use of the flammable oilsilt to cause large AOE explosions. It made great, unique use of its environment. When I beat it down enough, it deflated–a hilariously sad sight I was delighted to experience.

I can see Ajarakan giving some players a bit of trouble. It’s an ape-like fanged beast that’s aggressive, fast, and strong. It also just looks cool–how its body glows when it gets ramped up is magnificent, as is one of its strongest attacks, where it spins in the air and crashes down, like a fiery Sonic the Hedgehog homing attack. If you let it grab you, it will roar in your face before brutally dragging you across the ground and tossing you like a rag-doll.

Though Gravios, a returning monster, has been a pain in the ass to fight in previous games, with its hardy HP pool and super tough defenses, I found fighting it in Wilds much more enjoyable. Its hitboxes are more finely tuned, and the developers were able to gradate the toughness of its body more specifically, so it was easier to land hits on the points I actually wanted to get at. I also didn’t get hit by seemingly unfair hip-checks, which was a welcome change. Gravios has a new attack the developers were happy to be able to implement, too: a beam focused on the ground that turns the immediate surroundings into molten rock that persists for a few seconds with a fiery effect.

An Impressive, Fiery New Foe

When it comes to the apex, Nu Udra: wow. That thing is awesome, and it also really threatened to kick my ass. It’s the only monster that carted me during my playtime with Wilds, and I had the hardest time getting a read on its movements and intentions. Nu Udra is an octopus-like cephalopod that uses a skeleton (in game-design terms) entirely new to the Monster Hunter series, so of course I wouldn’t have any familiarity to rely on. Its tentacles can all move independently of each other, it moves with a graceful slickness, and it hits hard with its body and flame attacks. Its unpredictable, multi-directional attack patterns seem to encourage teaming up with friends, or at least NPC Support Hunters, too.

Nu Udra is also uniquely beautiful–the sensory organs on the tips of its tentacles glow when it intends to use them in an attack, and occasionally covers itself in oilsilt and engulfs itself in flames–another cool use of the environment by an Oilwell Basin inhabitant. One of its attacks even resembles a dangerous fireworks display. Truly, Nu Udra is an impressive sight to behold: a slithering, octopus-like, menacing creature engulfed in flame, hellbent on your destruction. How exciting! I’m really looking forward to how this creature is incorporated into Monster Hunter Wilds’ story, too.

I had no real context around the monster hunts in my time in the Oilwell Basin, as I could only really experience the hunts themselves after the Quest Start and before the Quest Complete screen, so all I can really tell you is that the monsters I fought in this build were in high rank, as was my equipment.

The builds I played (in graphics mode on the PS5) also performed significantly better than the Open Beta Test. The monsters and environments acted as they were meant to, for the most part, and I didn’t experience any jarring graphical issues or bugs. This comes with the caveats that I was offline playing in single-player and that I, personally, probably wouldn’t notice if there was a small graphical stutter while fighting for my life. But if you’re in it for the gameplay, I can confidently say that Monster Hunter Wilds works well and looks good–in my opinion. I’m especially impressed by the fire and lava effects I saw in the Oilwell Basin– for example, the compressed fire beams from Gravios and Nu Udra engulfing itself in fire in real time.

One of my biggest curiosities is how Wilds’ story progression will work in multiplayer, as it’s one of the best parts about Monster Hunter, and something I haven’t been able to experience in Wilds outside of the Open Beta Test. But, I’m told you’ll be able to play through the story with friends without the roadblocks encountered in World, which is the most important factor for me.

The impressive variety of monsters in Monster Hunter Wilds, both in appearance and behavior, and the environments I’ve seen have so much attention to detail that it’s clear how much care the developers put into the series. This is especially so after speaking with them about it. Wilds developers implemented ideas they had been working on since back in World after players responded positively to it in the Witcher 3 collaboration, and they took advice from Final Fantasy XIV’s producer Naoki Yoshida while working with him on the FFXIV collab–which you can read more about here. Truthfully, I could yap about Monster Hunter for days, but I’ll leave it at this–I can’t wait to sink another 300 hours into a new Monster Hunter.