Wild Hearts is an exciting open-world take on the monster-hunting genre – Hands-on impressions

gamepur.com:

Ahead of the February launch of Wild Hearts, we had the chance to play through an alpha version of the game to get a taste of what it would be like to dive into the upcoming hunting game developed by Koei Tecmo. Although it was far from complete, we played several hours of the game, trying out the diverse set of weapons and using them against the gigantic monsters rampaging across Azuma, a fictional landscape created by Koei Tecmo and heavily inspired by feudal Japan.

Although limited to a small area in Wild Hearts, the expansive exploration felt that it had much potential to make the map a key feature rather than a backdrop to a monster fight. Unlike other hunting games where you begin at a hub city, select a monster, and then hunt it on a map, Wild Hearts will be an open world where the hub city, Minato, is briefly visited but never required to go after a monster. A hunter can explore the entire map, finding monsters as they look around, tracking them down, and fending off the land.

Related: Our first look at Wild Hearts gameplay shows off its colossal monster-fighting combat

The story of Wild Hearts focuses on our character as a hunter, going the largest prey in Azuma: the Kemono. These gigantic beasts bend the environment to reflect their preferences throughout the land, typically destroying anything in their path. The central city in Azuma, called Minato, requires our protection from these monsters, which means hunting them down in the vast environment, fending off the land, and tracking down multiple resources to supply our unique item, the Karakuri.

Many of the tools a player uses while away from Minato would be created using the Karakuri, which is readily available at the start of the game. It’s a device that can