Monster Hunter: Wilds

[Sebbak]

Does anyone on here play the Monster Hunter games? I'm relatively new to the franchise (played World/Iceborne and Rise/Sunbreak) and to say I'm looking forward to Wilds is an understatement. Played hundreds of hours of World, and God knows what I'm going to sink into this one

For those that don't know what the games are; you are a Hunter, which has an almost mythical status and the very short version is you hunt monster to get monster parts, which allows you to make better gear (weapons and armour), which allows you to hunt better monsters, which allows you to get better gear, and so on.

The monster fights can be genuinely tough affairs (some are absolute bds!), and can take a long time to complete. You can chase them all over an area as they run/fly/swim off to new areas as you fight them. There's whole ecosystems that they fit into, they hunt other monsters and sometimes the big ones fight each other which can be an awesome spectacle/hilarious. It's definitely one of those when it clicks, it really clicks type games. In World there was an early-ish monster that give me a lot of aggro (Odogaron) due to its speed. What started as a stressful fight ended up being one of my favourite monsters to hunt; once you learn their patterns of movement and attacks etc, it really becomes a proper dance between hunter and monster, and can give some genuinely cinematic moments in fights.

Anyway, if anyone is vaguely interested in the franchise, I'd definitely recommend watching some videos to get an idea of how the game plays. Here's the latest launch trailer:



The monster designs, fight mechanics, world building and just the way the ecosystems all work is fantastic in my opinion. The games are pretty huge, so too much to waffle on about here (pet cats, weird bird mounts, cooking meals that look amazing before a hunt, 14 very different weapon types).

I'm doing the grown up thing of taking a couple of days off of work to blast the game on release, so if anyone wants to do any hunts together, let me know. I'll try not to die too much

Edited by Sebbak on Friday 21st February 00:11

Edited by Sebbak on Friday 21st February 00:12

[Mastodon2]

Absolutely. Cannot. Wait.

I played probably 1400 hours on World and Iceborne, then probably 700 on MHGU, with another 1000 on Rise and Sunbreak.

In pure gameplay terms, the minute to minute combat and exploration and the overall gameplay loop, it's my favourite game franchise of all time. It was a series I always wanted to play but because it was only on handhelds, I never got to try until World, then I realised how much I'd been missing out on.

MH is now the major seller for Capcom, World has sold nearly 21.5 million units. The amount of care and attention they put into these games is insane.

I'm really looking forward to being able to equip two weapons going into a hunt now. I've always been a hammer main, but I've dabbled in sword and shield, hunting horn, charge blade and gun lance. This time around I'll probably use charge blade as my main weapon and take a hammer as a secondary weapon. Gun lance is a weapon that I feel doesn't come into its own until you're quite far into the game(s) as ifs heavily dependent on armour skills that you most likely can't access until you're well into high rank.

[Sebbak]

Mastodon2 said:

Absolutely. Cannot. Wait.

I played probably 1400 hours on World and Iceborne, then probably 700 on MHGU, with another 1000 on Rise and Sunbreak.

In pure gameplay terms, the minute to minute combat and exploration and the overall gameplay loop, it's my favourite game franchise of all time. It was a series I always wanted to play but because it was only on handhelds, I never got to try until World, then I realised how much I'd been missing out on.

MH is now the major seller for Capcom, World has sold nearly 21.5 million units. The amount of care and attention they put into these games is insane.

I'm really looking forward to being able to equip two weapons going into a hunt now. I've always been a hammer main, but I've dabbled in sword and shield, hunting horn, charge blade and gun lance. This time around I'll probably use charge blade as my main weapon and take a hammer as a secondary weapon. Gun lance is a weapon that I feel doesn't come into its own until you're quite far into the game(s) as ifs heavily dependent on armour skills that you most likely can't access until you're well into high rank.

I've not got that many hours in, think I'm knocking on for about 600 or so (I was a bit late to the party), but I agree, the detail in the games and gameplay loop is fantastic. Did you play the Beta at all? I know a lot of the weapons had things changed up here and there. I mained dual blades for the most part, but I was moving towards charge blade in World/Iceborne and will take that through to Wilds.

I was maybe thinking as Hunting Horn for the backup to allow some buffs here and there, plus I've always found the idea of beating a monster up with a giant tuba pretty funny. I also played Lance for a while, as it was fun to try and 'tank' the monster and have it focus on me while other people got the job done.

Never really tried the ranged weapons as they're not really my bag, but I think I'll give everything a go in Wilds just to see if anything else stands out.

[Mastodon2]

Sebbak said:

I've not got that many hours in, think I'm knocking on for about 600 or so (I was a bit late to the party), but I agree, the detail in the games and gameplay loop is fantastic. Did you play the Beta at all? I know a lot of the weapons had things changed up here and there. I mained dual blades for the most part, but I was moving towards charge blade in World/Iceborne and will take that through to Wilds.

I was maybe thinking as Hunting Horn for the backup to allow some buffs here and there, plus I've always found the idea of beating a monster up with a giant tuba pretty funny. I also played Lance for a while, as it was fun to try and 'tank' the monster and have it focus on me while other people got the job done.

Never really tried the ranged weapons as they're not really my bag, but I think I'll give everything a go in Wilds just to see if anything else stands out.

I played the beta for Wilds but only as far as doing the first little intro sequence just to check it was running well. I'd heard some people online saying PC performance was variable so I wanted to check before committing, because I'd just play it on console at 4K 60fps if PC was going to have optimisation issues. It looks like that won't be the case however, though to be fair my PC should run just about anything perfectly so maybe it's not a good measure, but it did look nice when I ran the beta. Mainly I just wanted to get the character creation done as I can end up agonising on it a bit and when Friday comes, I'm wrapping up work, taking the Mrs out for dinner and then when I get home, it's MH Wilds time and I want to get right into it. Thanfully, character creation from the beta carries over into the full release.

Hunting horn should be a solid backup weapon, I don't know quite how they'll manage it in Wilds. I suspect they might go back to how it was in Worlds but maybe with a little extra quality of life added in. In Rise, they tried to make HH easier to use, so that you could get buffs out without needing to stick to certain combos so closely and playing to songs to activate the queued buffs was a lot smoother and easier. The devs had wanted to get away from the 'playing songs in the corner while the rest of the team fight the monster' gameplay style which was somewhat prevalent in World, but they maybe went too far in the other direction as the horn was a total powerhouse in Rise, on equal terms or better than most weapons in terms of damage, while also applying KO as a blunt weapon and havinig really easy access to very powerful buffs. I think they might tone it down a little bit now so you need to go back to being prudent as to when you try to activate the buffs you've queued up.

I've tried the ranged weapons a bit in Worldborne, didn't bother in Risebreak. I liked the bow in World and Iceborne and the gun-type weapons felt ok, I know they're pretty short-ranged and they have the optimal range window thing so you have to manage your distance rather than running as far from the monster as you can, but really I like to be in the monster's face. That's one of the reasons I like gunlance so much, tanking huge hits on the shield and then countering with a full burst combo for massive damage just feels better to me than shooting at range, no matter how impactful the ranged ammo types might feel.

[Rick_1138]

I've just started MHW after it been sat in my shelf since my son was born 5 years ago or so lol.

I'm literally on 2nd quest running in a private server option.

There so many tutorial pop ups lol.

I've decided on twin daggers as I like the speed.

Is wilds a semi mmo affair like worlds or a single player game?

[Sebbak]

Rick_1138 said:

I've just started MHW after it been sat in my shelf since my son was born 5 years ago or so lol.

I'm literally on 2nd quest running in a private server option.

There so many tutorial pop ups lol.

I've decided on twin daggers as I like the speed.

Is wilds a semi mmo affair like worlds or a single player game?

It's similar to World in that you can play with other players/you see them running around the social hubs etc. It differs though in the way that the world 'works'.

There's less to-ing and fro-ing to base every time you complete a hunt; you can complete them out in the field and start another one/go gather stuff etc without heading back, so you can stay out in the field much longer. They're also making so that the social hub and hunting zone for each area is one large open area, so there's less loading in and out of things. You just leave the camp straight into the map and you can move freely between them. Definitely worth checking out some Beta videos if you're not worried about them revealing some new monsters.

Although it's extremely tempting to play solo the entire time (and there's no issue with it obviously, play how you want to!), the community on the whole is very helpful, so if you do get stuck on particular monsters, definitely join a server and post the quest. You'll get people joining to assist you in taking down the monster, and some players are ridiculously good. I find a balance between solo play so you can get used to how a monster moves/fights etc and then group play to take down the really tough ones is a good mix. Some monsters later on pretty much require a group unless you're very well equipped and a very good player.

As for the tutorials... they don't go away in Wilds but they do calm down eventually! Worlds has multiple game stages, so there's things to learn for a long time. You'll start at Low Rank, then there's High Rank, then Master Rank and the way the world functions later on changes quite drastically. It's hard to explain without spoiling stuff, but there's hundreds, if not thousands of hours of play time in Worlds quite easy and I'd expect the same in Wilds once it's had a bunch of updates in the same way World has.

[Mastodon2]

There is no benefit to playing in a 'private server'. Even if you want to complete every quest solo (which is how I prefer to hunt each new monster at least a handful of times), having other players available to answer your SOS flares is handy should you ever need it, not to mention it's just fun to hunt with others, the MH community is generally super helpful, I don't think I've ever encountered toxic behaviour in probably 2000 hours playing the series.

There's a lot of tutorial popups, but you should pay heed to them. MH is a game with a lot of mechanics and systems, if you try to ignore the tutorials you'll be missing a lot of useful info to allow you to engage with those systems.

The complexity is probably one of the main reasons some people bounce off the game. Generally they're very good at introducing systems in a way that allows you to begin using them in a way that makes sense, but it can be overwhelming if you like simple games.

You can ignore a lot of the mechanics and systems if you wish, but you'll be making things way harder than you need to and you'll have a lot less fun with the game.

Be sure to check out some other weapons once you get more comfortable with the game. Dual blades are great, especially when matching the right elemental type for a given monster's weakness and they feel quite 'comfy' for new players as they're fast and don't have a lot of animation commitment like some other weapons. MH is unique in the way that each weapon tends to have its own unique style and mechanic, some are easier to get into than others.

[Rick_1138]

Tbh I don't have an issue with playing with others in this setup it's more as gaming is very limited and it's a game I put on when my son (5) wants to play a game (teaching reading game on ipad) he likes me to play a game too and monster hunter us one of the few I can play with him as most games I have are 15-18+.

So there's a lot of stopping and starting as you can't pause either it's easier just a solo setup.