Monster Hunter Wilds Review: Heading In A Bold New Direction, With One Or Two Missteps

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is very different. Even after playing both of its open betas, I was shocked by how different the final game was from everything I had been expecting. Not that I expected it to be an exact clone of, with its small-but-mighty world and acrobatic combat, or even a direct follow-up to, which brought mass worldwide appeal to the franchise at the cost of its characteristic difficulty. isn't anything like classic, either — the series has come much too far in the 20-something intervening years to go back.

In many ways,feels like a soft series reboot — it certainly makes enough changes to the core gameplay to qualify. It simplifies some aspects while complicating others, making it an excellent series starting point that also has a lot to offer longtime fans. In doing so, it creates a beautiful, immersive world, full of detailed creature designs and death-defying feats of battle. It's a world that's easy to get lost in, although it's hindered by performance issues and a story that plays out like a 15-hour tutorial.

It's already been widely theorized, but in case you missed it: eschews the usual hub-and-hunt structure for a more open concept. You don't have to post a quest and hail a wingdrake every time you want to fight a monster; you can literally walk directly out of the hub area and into the (mostly) open world. Monsters roam freely at all times, and if you see one you want to hunt while out in the open world, you can simply start attacking, and the associated quest will begin automatically.

Monster Hunter Wilds is set to be one of the largest games in the franchise yet, being one of Monster Hunter's most highly-anticipated releases yet.

Although the regions are still technically separate, you can walk from one end of the map to the other without ever needing to return to base. It's a brilliant system, elegant in its simplicity and unlike anything has ever done before. Still, I suspect this system will be a bit divisive. It's great for material farming, but disrupts the