Monster Hunter Wilds review: It’s a wild ride, indeed!

Published On: 13 March 2025 | 12:59 IST

Monster Hunter Wilds is already a great addition to the long-running franchise, and you don’t need me to tell you that. The game has hit more than 1.4 million concurrent players on Steam and sold more than 8 million copies in 3 days of launch. It is probably one of the most anticipated games of the year and will be one of the most successful games of the year. So let’s use this review to answer 1 simple question: If you are new to the Monster Hunter franchise, is this the one to start with?

Table of Contents

Gameplay

The core gameplay loop of Monster Hunter Wilds is simple – slay monsters, collect resources, craft cool armour, upgrade abilities/weapons, and fight a new bigger monster. I’m not even going to pretend I know what the fire-breathing dragon in the game is called or what the big polar bear/dragon hybrid is called. But what I will tell you is that the tides of battle were turned in my favour when one of my monster encounters was interrupted by another monster, and I could sit back and watch the monsters hash it out before joining in the fight myself – a very fun experience.

You can play the game as a single player, but the real fun is teaming up with your friends and taking down the monsters together.

Before you get into your first battle, you are asked about your playstyle, and based on that, the “ideal” weapon type is recommended to you. However, you can always go back and manually choose the weapon of your choice. I highly recommend playing around with different weapon types, as you may be someone who prefers a heavy weapon but may end up liking the dual-blades for their fast-paced close-quarters attacks.

The variety of weapons on offer is quite extensive, ranging from the great sword to the long sword, sword and shield, dual blades, hammer, hunting horn, lance, charge blade, heavy bowgun, bow, and so on, each offering its unique playstyle, stats, pros, and cons. As you progress, you can customise and upgrade the abilities of the weapons and even have two weapons in combat to mix things up. You can also get familiar with the strengths of different weapons and change things based on the monster you are taking on for an optimal monster-hunting experience.

While I played the game solo, the real charm is in banding with friends for this journey. Even during your solo play, if you find a monster to be too challenging, you can send up an SOS flair and call for other players to join your fight and turn the tides in your favour.

There is a lot of depth in the gameplay, and traversal has been simplified a lot. You can simply ride your mount, and it will auto-navigate to your next objective. You can manually control the mount using the analogue stick to pick up items along your journey and explore the environment. Items you collect can be traded in for resources/upgrades and may also be the objective of some side quests.

Each monster hunt feels like a boss fight of its own and won’t be over in a matter of minutes. You will need to take your time and plan a battle and work towards “wounding” the monster and then ensuring you gain some damage multipliers on the wound with your special abilities.

Overall, Monster Hunders Wilds’ core gameplay loop, combined with the vast variety of monsters, is engaging and keeps players coming back for more.

Graphics and Sound

Where there are some technical limitations, I wouldn’t fault the game, as the focus is one big monster battle after another, which, for the most part, run very well. You will explore five different biomes, ranging from deserts to rainforests and more. Each environment has harsh weather conditions that affect it, which gives it a unique look. Once you calm the weather, you get some good-looking, lush environments. Think of it like the corrupted lands in the 2008 Prince of Persia transforming after you lift the corruption.

The monster design and the character designs in the game are very good, even if some of the environments look like they have low texture resolutions. I played the game on a PS5 connected to an LG B9 OLED TV that supports HDMI 2.1. I also played the game on the PS Portal during this review.

While the overall graphics are good, the game’s monsters are the true stars. One looks like it has the head of an angry chicken and the body of a T. Rex, while another is an overgrown frog with a big tongue. There’s even a dragon, and some look like overgrown bugs, while others look like they’d be right at home in Elden Ring. The diversity is quite amazing.

When it comes to the overall performance of the game, you can either prioritise resolution – limiting the game to 30FPS, or prioritise frame rate for 60FPS, or a balanced option for 40FPS cap (limited to displays with HDMI 2.1, 120Hz). I mostly played on Balanced mode when playing on the TV and switched to Performance mode while playing on the Portal. While I did encounter the occasional stutter and some noticeable frame rate dips, it was nothing that deviated from giving an immersive experience.

Moving over to sound, the voice acting is a bit over the top for me. But apart from that, it’s passable. What is immersive is the swishes and clangs of your weapons, the spectacular cries of the monsters, and the background score that holds it together. There are some really good environmental sounds as well, such as the thunder and lightning in the rain forests and the swish of the sandstorm that really stands out when you play the game using a nice pair of headphones.

Story

You are a monster hunter, and your guild arrives in the “Forbidden Lands” following the identification of a stranded child in the desert. You subsequently encounter some villagers being chased by a monster and immediately intervene to help them. You set up your Guild, and the simple tale of finding the stranded boys’ family starts to unravel the game’s story. Don’t expect a story to have deep plot twists and for me it was more about moving from one monster to the next connected by the threads of the tale. The lack of a deep story is fine as the meat of the game lies in the gameplay, which is quite engaging.

Verdict

Overall, Monster Hunter Wilds is a great entry point for those looking to begin their monster-hunting experience. The game’s difficulty is accessible to new and casual players so they can hone their skills. While the genre may not appeal to all, the numbers prove there is a large audience that wants to jump in and become legendary monster slayers. On the downside, the story did not interest me much, and the voice acting was a bit over the top for me, but your mileage on these aspects will vary. Keeping the post-launch content, including new monsters and difficulty in mind, this game will be on your console’s storage for months to come.