Our Most Wanted Games of 2025 – #2 Monster Hunter Wilds

thesixthaxis.com:

It seems insane to me that Monster Hunter Wilds is sitting second in our Most Wanted rundown. Not because it’s going to be bad – I’m fairly certain it will be the best Monster Hunter game since the last one – but because for years and years, Monster Hunter was this weird, niche co-op series that was huge in Japan and played by a minimal number of weirdos (like me) everywhere else. Monster Hunter is now Capcom’s biggest franchise, and it’s fair to say that the hype surrounding Monster Hunter Wilds is so big, it probably had something to do with Assassin’s Creed Shadows moving its release date back yet again. That’s right — Assassin’s Creed.

While Monster Hunter Rise was an epic sojourn back into Nintendo-centric Monster Hunter games, it was technically limited by arriving natively for the Nintendo Switch. Monster Hunter Wilds though is fundamentally a direct successor to Monster Hunter World – an incredible, era-defining action RPG that I awarded a rare 10/10 to back in the day. Add in the benefit of this console generation, with the game set to launch for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC all at once, and we’re already lined up for what will be the most technically advanced Monster Hunter ever.

That’s not to say that some of the advancements from Monster Hunter Rise have been forgotten. While we can bid farewell to the flashy Wirebug moves – I don’t know how long it’s going to take me not to try and airdash out of trouble in Monster Hunter Wilds – we are getting an all-new mount to speed us around the open world of Wilds. This time out, rather than those good-boy Palamutes, we’re all going to be riding massive feathered creatures known as Seikrets, who, alongside running really fast, can also glide slowly down from great heights.

It feels as though they’re going to help open up the world, which, rather than being broken down into separate stages, will have different hunting areas to explore. It’s an expansion of the idea we saw in the Guiding Lands of Monster