I’m an Insect Glaive main in Monster Hunter. Always have been, always will be. I love the finesse. I love the acrobatics. When I’m flying through the air swinging that big stick around, it evokes a beloved childhood memory of the time I put a Donatello action figure in the dryer – heavy-duty cycle. What majestic creatures, me and Donatello. This is my happy place.
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I’m not sure most players would agree.
I was recently talking to a fellow hunter about Monster Hunter Wilds, and when I told them I was a life-long glaive main, they scoffed. “It seems like you’re doing so much just to do something so simple. I don’t need to do 14 backflips and a summersault every time I try to attack. Why not just bonk ‘em with a big hammer? Easy peasy.”
“Yeah, it is a lot of work,” I said. “That’s the whole point.”
Bring Tedium Back To Monster Hunter
“Doing so much just to do something so simple” could be Monster Hunter’s official tagline – at least, it used to be. I don’t mean to get all ‘back in my day’ about this. I am sincerely thrilled that Wilds is attracting so many new fans, and the fact that it’s a lot more streamlined than past entries is obviously appealing to them. But a lot of the tedious tasks that the series is known for are what made Monster Hunter what it is. Capcom threw the baby out with the bathwater this time, and I think it’s time to bring some of that friction back.
If Monster Hunter Wilds is your first game, let me give you a few examples of what I’m talking about. If you want to know about a specific monster’s weak point and elemental resistances in Wilds, all you have to do is open the menu, open to the Monster Field Guide, and read the monster’s entry. Easy peasy.
Here’s how that same process works in Monster Hunter World. First of all, you can only access the Monster Field Guide by talking to the chief ecologist at base camp, so if you’ve already departed, you’re out of luck. Second, just because you’ve fought a monster doesn’t mean you know everything about it. Why would you?
Before you can see all of the materials it drops, its weaknesses, and resistances, you have to research the monster. You can earn some research progress by picking up tracks, but you earn a lot more progress by fighting the monster repeatedly. The more levels you gain, the more you’ll discover about a particular monster, and if you want to truly master Monster Hunter World, you’ll need to repeat that process for all 71 monsters.
Wilds eliminates this entire mechanic, and for a lot of people, that’s a welcome change. It used to be a lot of work to learn about the monsters, but Wilds just gives it to you for free. Does this make hunting faster and more approachable? Yes. But does it make it better? I don’t think so.
This kind of streamlining fundamentally changes the Monster Hunter experience. Yes, it’s much easier to bounce from hunt to hunt to hunt, but do any of them mean anything? Are any of them memorable? When you remove the research aspect you lose a lot of the storytelling, role-playing, and world-building that made Monster Hunter so compelling. That depth and immersion is what kept people playing World for hundreds of hours. Wilds narrows that appeal down significantly in order to create a less demanding experience, but I think that does a disservice to everyone, both new and returning players alike.
Sweating The Small Stuff Makes Monster Hunter More Fun
If that example made you think ‘good for you, but I’m not doing all that’, then you’re really going to hate this next one. Let’s talk about Botanical Research and item farming. In World, you had to grow your own crafting materials at base camp. At the start of the game you could only plant a couple of herbs, but as you progressed and completed side quests, you eventually unlocked extra plant slots, as well as a variety of fertilizers and supplements that would help your materials grow faster and more plentiful.
This system required frequent micromanagement between hunts until you eventually unlocked Soft Soil, and fertilizer that extended all other fertilizer effects by five hunts. With the right set up, you could organize your farm such that all you needed to do was refill your Soft Soil once every five hunts and the rest of your fertilizers would last infinitely. This was the process for maintaining a supply of vital consumables like mega potions, antidotes, and armoskins.
What’s the equivalent system in Wilds? You talk to a villager, tell them which material you want, and when you come back later, they give it to you. In the end game, Nata becomes a hub for all of the villagers, so you just have to pay him an occasional visit and collect all the free materials from every villager you’ve assigned items to. There’s nothing to unlock, no projects to manage. Just choose the items you want and you’ll receive them. Easy peasy.
I know Wilds makes things so much easier, and the way I’ve explained World’s farm, you might even think that sounds terrible. But I promise you, the more systems you engage with, the more satisfying Monster Hunter is. Things like monster and botanical research become part of your preparation loop, and engaging with them makes you a better hunter. You didn’t just grow by unlocking stronger weapons and hitting buttons faster, you actually had to think and act like a hunter.
Monster Hunter Wilds is still a blast, but it’s missing an element of mindfulness that made the older games such incredible monster-hunting simulators. Wilds is an exceptional action game, but there are loads of exceptional action games out there. The frictions that made Monster Hunter unique were what made it special. Every time one of those things gets removed – tedious as they might have been – Monster Hunter just becomes more and more like every other game.
- Released
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February 28, 2025
- ESRB
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T For Teen // Violence, Blood, Crude Humor