Monster Hunter Wilds: The Final Preview – IGN First

ign.com:

On day three of my visit to Capcom in Osaka, Japan, I once again sat in a dimly lit conference room. I was playing Monster Hunter Wilds, empty cans of coffee and tea strewn around my station. “You must be tired of being stuck in here playing,” said a friendly employee. All I could think was: “I wish I could play more.”

This is after I played the first five hours of Monster Hunter Wild’s story and hunted four monsters in the Oilwell Basin in a different play state. I just couldn’t get enough; there are so many nuances to master with the new weapon and gameplay features and I’m the type of person who wants to scrutinize everything and figure out exactly how everything works through repetition and experimentation. I’m a guides writer - it comes with the territory - but because of my limited time, I needed to focus on the main story. That’s fine. After this hands-on, I know I’ll enthusiastically spend hundreds more hours in the game once it’s out.

I beelined it through the story to make sure I could see every monster there was to see, and in doing so, I didn’t make optimized equipment; instead, I crafted and upgraded what I could as I went. That’s the basic loop of Monster Hunter: Hunt monster, make better equipment, hunt stronger monster, and sometimes, hunt something multiple times to get what you need. With my minimal preparation, I hunted the first seven monsters without much trouble and never once carted* (aka, knocked out): Chatacabra, Quematrice, Congalala, Lala Barina, Balahara, Doshaguma, and finally, a repel quest for the Leviathan Uth Duna. When I played Monster Hunter: World for the very first time, even Tobi-Kadachi gave me trouble, so I was surprised to encounter such little friction while playing Wilds.

I was actually so surprised that I went back and replayed the story in Monster Hunter: World through Anjanath, the seventh large monster. Well, the answer is that I’ve just gotten a whole lot better since I first played World, even though by that point, I