This is a transcript excerpt covering the score awarded to Monster Hunter Wilds on the So Videogames podcast, Episode 433. For the original, expanded coverage, please listen to episode 431.
BRAD: One more game and then we’re gonna wrap the show here. Monster Hunter Wilds, Carlos. Now, I talked about this earlier. I’m happy to circle back. And in fact, this is good timing for you because I have now played enough to where I feel comfortable giving it an official score, which I will do here on the show.
CARLOS: I will too.
B: Alright, but since I already covered a little bit, we will talk about your experience first and then we’ll circle back to my stuff. I think folks kind of know that I’m like the monster hunter guy, which is all fine, well and good. But, Carlos, tell us a little bit about your background. I have you, in my mind, pegged as being not the monster hunter guy, so tell us about your relationship with the series. Where are you coming from on this?
C: Well, I’ve talked about on the show, if you remember, over the course of many years, but it’s been a while. But I generally don’t like it. I don’t like the, uh, sharpening of swords, which they still have, which is still really dumb. A sword is still sharp. Doesn’t need to be sharpened. But they make it easier, as you probably obviously know, that you can sharpen it on your horse or your mount. so that makes it easier.
B: I do call it a horse, by the way, despite the fact it looks like a dinosaur. I call it my horse.
C: And so, in general, you know, I played Monster Hunter Worlds, liked it because it was a little more accessible. And I think I didn’t beat that, but I did like it a little more. But I still was annoyed because I just don’t ever want to like, you know, collect all that shit and do all the things. There’s like lots of things to do and collect and plan. I don’t want to do any of that strategy. You know, I just want to fight things. So I’m generally not that monster person. This is probably my favorite one because it’s just a no brainer. I think the devs were like, okay, let’s bring everybody in and make and like streamline the campaign. And that’s what they did. They made it “easier”. It is. And I mean, the main dragon I was fighting — spoiler –Their main bad monster thing. At the end of the campaign, I was like, oh, I got this. You know, like there was like no thought in my mind. I was like, oh, I don’t know, you know? I was like, yeah, I, I’m fine, you know. And so when I beat it, it’s like when the game starts that bullshit and, you know, you can go four more or three more chapters of stuff. So I might go back with my friends, you know, maybe even you and like and do some multiplayer stuff because I like my character. I had a pretty good time with it. It’s not my favorite game still, but I liked it. I thought the campaign story was just garbage. Uh, I so didn’t care about that kid. Just get him out of here, man. Get him out of here. I don’t care what he thinks and what he’s feeling. I just never cared about that kid. and the fact that we were doing everything for him. And I don’t love the idea of the ending. You know, I’m not going to spoil it, but that, you know, hidden message of what the story is about. No care. No care.
B: What? I don’t remember what the what secret is.
C: Guardians or whatever. The things that are in the little eggs.
B: What was the message?
C: Minor spoiler. Right now, for one minute. Yeah, they created those monsters. And that’s like a big reveal. They created monsters to protect them, and they’re in, like, eggs. Like clones. But who cares? Who cares? No one cares.
No, I didn’t care anything about the story. Had a good time. Beat it. Which I’ve never done. So that’s something, right?
B: Yes, that’s definitely something.
C: One big con, and you’ve probably already talked about it. But you beat the game. You beat this massive monster. You feeling badass? They make you do your first mission after you beat the game. And I died like, a million times to the bird guy because you gotta capture it. And it’s like, oh yeah, you can capture things. Did you know that? Here’s how you do it. Well, they don’t really tell you very well. And then the bird just pecks me to death, and I just die over and over, and I go, oh, cool. Great thing for an end game thing, buddy. Capture this thing that’s gonna peck. I hated that.
B: I think you’ve kind of hit on one of my big, big complaints of this game. So, like, I have ups and downs with this game, right? Like, I think it’s better than Monster Hunter World.
C: Yeah, I do too.
B: But also, Monster Hunter World is one of my least favorite Monster Hunters, like in the entire series. So it was kind of a low bar. I talked about it before. I’m not going to get super into the weeds here, but like so to give you context of where I’m at, I rolled the the initial credits. I want to say it was about 15 or 16 hours. So you can like get to the end. The first part of the the main campaign where you can just put the game down and be like, you know what, I had a good experience. This was fun and I’m gonna bounce. So that’s about 15 hours in. I’m now I’m like at 55 hours in. And so after you roll the credits the first time, there’s like like I mean, yeah, not to not to belittle anybody or anything, but like that’s really like the tutorial. The campaign is 15 hours of a miserable tutorial, but once you get past that, the real Monster Hunter begins with more options, more missions, more systems and different weapon upgrades. You get all sorts of like systems that open up that weren’t there before. So I think that’s kind of my big gripe about this game is like, they put this really, really boring — I hate the fucking story. I hate the story. I hate that the story, like, makes you watch so much walking and talking. I don’t care about the characters. It actually interferes with gameplay because there’s several times I wanted to go do a mission, and I couldn’t do a mission because I had to go through the story mission first, or I’ve got a quest to turn in and the guy to give it to isn’t there, because you got to watch the cutscene first, and it’s like it’s a problem.
I find it very irritating, but they also don’t prepare you for the real game, like the trapping thing like you just mentioned. You’re exactly correct. The very first mission after your credits is go capture something and they don’t tell you anything about capturing that. It barely even exists in the game until that point. It’s like, why did you, like, make me play 15 hours and you haven’t covered it at any point up until this point? So that part was a problem. Um, yeah, I have issues with this. But now. But I will say, to be fair, on the other side of the coin here, um, once you get past the first “ending” at 15 hours and get into the main portion of the game when the story takes a backseat, this is the experience that most Monster Hunter players are looking for. They give you, like, more armor types, more, um, upgrades, like more different systems, like you unlock like a whole other, like 2 or 3 other systems that you’ve never even seen in the game up until that point. And you have a bunch of side quests open up like it’s all like side quests all the time. Like, I don’t know if you noticed, but in the main campaign you get exactly. And I counted. You get exactly one side quest in the first 15 hours. All the rest of it is all main story quests, and then once you get past that, you’ve got like 50 side quests you can do, which is like more variety, gives you more choice.
You can go after different monsters you want to go after. So I think that makes the game better once you get into the what I see anyway as a long time Monster Hunter guy, what I kind of wanted from the game doesn’t appear until like 15 20 hours in. At that point, I started really enjoying myself where I’m like, okay, here’s the stuff that I wanted. Here’s the meatier stuff. The deeper stuff, it does get a lot harder. I’ll say that for sure. It gets way harder. Um, and that’s fine too. I’m not a difficulty whore, but I, you know, I, I do want to have like, a reason to strategize. I do want to tweak my armor a little bit. I want to use some gems and, and do some powers and attributes and stuff that you don’t really ever have to engage with in the first 15 hours or so. So there’s a lot of stuff here. I think it is a legit monster hunter at some point, but getting through 15 hours is kind of a big ask. It’s like you said, boring story, boring campaign, but the gameplay is okay. But still, for me anyway. It didn’t didn’t really open up for quite a while. So I guess Carlos, besides the capturing thing, you think you’re going to go back? Do you think you’re going to like, engage with the other systems, or what do you think you want from Monster Hunter at this point, now that you’ve kind of rolled credits?
C: The only thing is, I know that there’s three more chapters that I haven’t done. So, like, I like story bits, like we just said in the beginning. So I might want to do those right. And I might want to play with my friends. Like I have a couple friends who are playing it and I’m like, okay, maybe I’ll do that because I never do multiplayer, but in general, I got it, you know, like if that’s what they wanted me to do is to understand it and then be done. Well, success, you know, because I’m like, I might not have to go back.
B: Yeah, but you feel like you got a pretty good experience just from going through the story campaign and rolling credits. Yeah. Like you feel satisfied?
C: Yeah. I think it was worth the purchase or whatever.
B: All right. That’s that’s pretty fair. So for me,I was going to come back and give this game my official review because like I said, I’m like 50, 55 hours or something. I’m literally like, I think two fights away from the actual end of the campaign. And there’s more, of course, there’s more game, there’s optional battles, there’s new stuff updating all the time. They just added a brand new monster into the campaign, So forth and so on. so I think with everything I said in this show, everything I said in last show and what I know is still in the game to come, I think I feel pretty comfortable giving this game like an eight… an eight out of ten, but that’s with the caveat that you have to get past the first 15 hours of it. And that’s a huge ask. Like, I don’t say that lightly, and I never want to be the “it just gets good later” kind of guy, but in this case it really is true — for a good monster hunting experience, it doesn’t heat up until 15 hours in, which sucks. But I’m here now and I’ve been having fun, so I think an eight is the right way to go.
C: I agree.
B: I’m gonna give it an official 8.
Rating: 8 out of 10
Buy Monster Hunter Wilds: PC – PS – XB
Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Capcom. It is currently available on PC, PS and XB. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS5. Approximately 65 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the full campaign was completed. All 65 hours were spent in either offline multi (with bots) or online multi (with real players.)
Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Blood, Crude Humor, and Violence. The official description reads: This is an adventure role-playing game in which players assume the role of a monster hunter attempting to save the people and ecosystem of forbidden lands. From a third-person perspective, players explore a fantasy world, complete quests, interact with characters, and battle fantastical creatures (e.g., dragons, dinosaurs, giant insects). Players use swords, hammers, axes, and bows to defeat enemies in fast-paced, melee-style combat. Battles are accompanied by impact sounds, explosions, and blood-splatter effects. One cutscene depicts a large monster using a flatulence attack, causing a brown cloud to knock back characters; some monsters are depicted urinating and defecating in the environment.
Colorblind Modes: There are colorblind modes available in the options.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: All dialogue is subtitled and the game comes with closed captions (and various display options) for supporting information. This game is fully accessible.
Remappable Controls: Certain functions are remappable. The controls in Wilds are extremely complicated. There’s no one control diagram that shows everything, and most controls are context-sensitive, with many buttons having multiple functions based not only on the situation, but also on which weapon is being used. Players can toggle and switch many functions, but I would not say that the controls are fully remappable. In general, the left stick moves, the right stick handles camera, and the face/shoulder buttons handle a variety of other actions. Again, everything has multiple functions, so there’s no easy way of explaining it all — just assume every button and stick is used multiple times in multiple ways.
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