Wild Hearts review – the Monster Hunter that never was

metro.co.uk:

game never made.We always feel there’s not enough collaborations in the games industry, of unconnected developers and publishers working together to make something outside one or the other’s comfort zone. Given that almost never happens, the idea of EA publishing a Monster Hunter clone by the makers of is one of the strangest pitches we’ve ever heard for a video game.

Even stranger is the fact that it’s turned out as well as it has.We’re not Dynasty Warriors fans and find their cheaply made, mindless action unappealing on almost every level. Some of the spin-offs, such as, have been tolerable but the only games by developer Omega Force we’ve actively enjoyed are the two from the PS Vita era, when every Japanese publisher in the country was trying to make their own Monster Hunter clone.Exactly how Wild Hearts came to be we don’t know but the obvious assumption is that Omega Force, and their owners Koei Tecmo, wanted to make a new Monster Hunter style game but didn’t have the budget to make it work on modern home consoles.

This is a problem for many Japanese developers, who can’t afford to make games for anything other than Switch unless it has a good chance of selling well in the West. So the fact that EA has embraced the collaboration, and the game has turned out so well, is very encouraging.We don’t mean to suggest that Wild Hearts will only be of interest to Japanese gamers; Monster Hunter may have been that way for a long time but became its breakthrough hit, that established it as a major worldwide franchise.