Monster Hunter Wilds is the latest and perhaps most popular Monster Hunter game yet, at one point reaching 1,384,608 concurrent players, the fourth-highest peak player count in Steam history. Though some players have expressed concern about the game’s difficultly, fans seem to be in agreement that it is absolutely fun, as well as incredibly friendly to new players. In fact, big changes made to mechanics and game design choices that once gatekept a lot of new players from the Monster Hunter franchise have quite possibly made Monster Hunter Wilds the best game for new players to start enjoying the series.
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There are many updated systems and other changes made to Monster Hunter Wilds that can make the title feel far more welcoming for new players than past entries in the series. Many of these changes address what can be considered by franchise veterans to be the biggest “gatekeepers” for newer players in older games; a steeper learning curve, slower-paced gameplay, and unnecessarily restrictive mechanics.
The steeper learning curve in older Monster Hunter games can be attributed to a handful of factors. Increased damage from monsters, trickier hitboxes, and greater punishment for losses. But perhaps nothing contributes to the learning curve in older games more than how they handled intentionality.
Intention was incredibly important in older Monster Hunter games, demanding not only a lot of attention paid to how you prepare for a hunt, but the actions you took during. Nothing quite bothers me in a Monster Hunter game like hitting the wrong attack at the wrong time. Every decision in these older games can feel as though it requires deliberate thought and execution, often feeling punishing if you fail.
This is toned down quite a bit in Monster Hunter Wilds, and the area in which it is most noticeable is with combat. The addition of focus mode, a feature that allows you to aim your attacks, drastically reduces the frequency of wasted movements and actions during a hunt. Focus mode and the addition of weak points not only make the game feel less punishing, but can make the hunt experience a lot more immersive for new and old players alike.
Actions like using items or healing required commitment, as you couldn’t cancel these actions to evade, or often even move while using them. This demand for deliberate actions could often also bleed into the second problem keeping new players from enjoying older Monster Hunter games; slower-paced gameplay.
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Not only could players not move while healing, but rolling was often slower, affected more severely by weight and given a longer cooldown. Often in Monster Hunter games, you’re unable to roll forward or backward, limiting your ability to dodge to side-to-side movement. The addition of the ability to heal while moving, roll out of a heal, and especially using your Seikret for actions such as sharpening your weapon has made hunters in Monster Hunter Wilds feel more mobile than ever, which in turn makes the combat feel smoother and faster paced.
Outside of more sluggish combat mechanics, older Monster Hunter games could also feature more padding, something Wilds is relatively light on, which further ground down the speed of gameplay to an unsatisfying halt.
Some older limitations that many players consider unnecessary also contributed to the game’s feeling of deliberate planning and newbie-hostility. One older design aspect that may shock you was the fact that players were once unable to restock their supplies, or even cook during a hunt, demanding that you pack carefully ahead of time. Compare this to Monster Hunter Wilds, where you can, for example, simply collect two pieces of honey while on a hunt, which automatically turns a potion in your inventory into a mega potion.
If I were to summarize older Monster Hunter games in comparison to Monster Hunter Wilds, it would be like this: less convenient and more punishing. Many of the changes made to Monster Hunter Wilds, which can often be described as quality-of-life improvements, by definition make the game a little easier by making it more convenient and less punishing. By doing so, Monster Hunter Wilds has not only made the game feel better to play for veterans with less nostalgia for the game’s older mechanics, but also more welcoming for newer players, making it the best game in the franchise for many to start playing.
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Image courtesy of 2th Century Studios -
image courtesy of 20th Century Studios
