Wild Hearts Review in Progress

ign.com:

Do you dream of the chance to get dropkicked by a lava-monkey the size of a building? Of course you do, and goodness gracious is Wild Hearts excited to make that dream a reality. Omega Force and EA’s take on co-op monster hunting is a remarkably familiar one, mixing on-the-fly building mechanics into enormous elemental animal fights across its gorgeous feudal Japanese locations. But even when its crystal clear inspirations can sometimes lead to comparisons that aren’t always flattering for Wild Hearts, the few dozen hours I’ve spent with it so far have been a ton of fun, and I’m excited to keep grinding for materials as I progress toward the end of its campaign and into the endgame.

Let me be perfectly blunt: it’s nearly impossible to talk about Wild Hearts without bringing up Monster Hunter. That’s not to say this is an egregious rip-off or completely unoriginal, as it provides plenty of interesting additions and fun little twists all its own. But in pretty much every way that counts, Wild Hearts is so fundamentally Monster Hunter that you could very easily mistake it for the newest game in Capcom’s series if it weren’t for the name. That’s true of its giant monster-slaying missions, its crafting-based equipment progression with drastically different weapon types, its campaign structure continuously escalating and remixing previous encounters, and even its fine but ignorable story of a hub town investigating why local creatures have unexpectedly started attacking outside of their usual territory.

Importantly, Wild Hearts at least plays this recognizable part very well, making it one of the easiest recommendations I could make to any current Monster Hunter fan looking for new prey. Its combat captures that excellent mix