I have approximately 1,200+ hours across the franchise, including time spent arguing about motion values in spreadsheets that absolutely should have been used for real employment. I say this not as a flex, but as a warning: I am exactly the target audience for Monster Hunter Wilds… and this game still managed to exhaust me in a way that feels less like hunting apex predators and more like debugging a group project where no one read the design doc.

Monster Hunter Wilds is what happens when you take a historically tight gameplay loop built on deliberate friction, weighty combat, and systemic interdependence — and then sandblast all the tactile feedback off it while loudly insisting this is “evolution.”

It is not evolution. It is feature creep wearing a photorealistic skin suit.

Let’s start with performance, because performance is not a “technical issue,” it is the substrate on which the entire Monster Hunter experience rests. Frame pacing here behaves like a heart monitor during a jump scare compilation. You are not reacting to monster telegraphs; you are reacting to whether the engine decided to remember what time is. Input buffering becomes interpretive dance. I have had smoother combat interactions with laggy MMO raid bosses from 2007.

When your game’s central fantasy is “precision under pressure,” you cannot have the renderer spontaneously deciding to roleplay as a slideshow.

And yes, I’m aware of the usual PC optimization discourse. I tweaked settings. I adjusted configs. I performed the sacred rituals. The problem is not hardware. The problem is that the game’s technical foundation feels like it was stress-tested exclusively on optimism.

Combat — historically the crown jewel of the series — feels like it has been run through a “broad appeal normalization filter.” Weapon identity is still present, but the kinesthetic feedback has been diluted. Impacts lack conviction. Hitstop is inconsistent. Animations communicate motion but not force. Instead of that signature Monster Hunter rhythm of commitment and consequence, we get something closer to “suggestive contact.”

I should not be wondering whether my Great Sword connected. That weapon is supposed to feel like it alters local weather patterns.

Monster behavior also suffers from a strange design contradiction. We are told this is a living ecosystem. In practice, it’s more like a carefully scheduled theme park parade where each creature has a designated time slot to appear relevant. Emergent interaction is implied, not realized. Systems exist, but they rarely produce surprising outcomes — they produce curated outcomes. It feels less like hunting in a dynamic world and more like triggering pre-approved environmental cut-ins.

The maps are gorgeous, yes. They are also overdesigned in the specific way that confuses scale with engagement. Verticality exists, traversal options exist, environmental hazards exist… and yet the moment-to-moment decision making rarely deepens. The world is dense with elements that look systemic but behave decorative. It is environmental aesthetic masquerading as environmental mechanics.

UI/UX design continues the long and storied tradition of Monster Hunter interfaces feeling like they were designed by an academic committee studying menu theory from first principles. Information hierarchy is an afterthought. Workflow friction is abundant. Routine tasks require enough navigation overhead to qualify as light clerical work.

I should be preparing for hunts, not filing paperwork in a fantasy bureaucracy.

Multiplayer — the literal soul of the franchise — feels like it was engineered by someone who conceptually understands cooperation but has never tried to coordinate four human beings in real time. Session friction, connection awkwardness, inconsistent flow between activities… it’s all just slightly more cumbersome than it needs to be. And “slightly” repeated across every interaction becomes death by a thousand loading prompts.

Progression is where the existential dread sets in. Historically, Monster Hunter progression is a dopamine engine fueled by mastery and meaningful gear differentiation. Here, upgrades frequently feel incremental rather than transformative. Builds lack dramatic identity shifts. The reward loop hums, but it does not sing.

You know that feeling when you craft a new weapon and immediately want to test it because it meaningfully changes how you approach a hunt? That sensation has been replaced with polite acknowledgment. “Ah yes, numbers increased. How reasonable.”

The tragedy is that the audiovisual craftsmanship is genuinely impressive. Creature design is phenomenal. Environmental art is absurdly detailed. Audio during peak combat moments can be outstanding. There are flashes — sincere flashes — of brilliance that remind you why this series commands such loyalty.

But those flashes exist within a framework that feels structurally undecided about what Monster Hunter is supposed to feel like.

Wilds appears determined to reduce friction without understanding which frictions were essential to the identity of the experience. In doing so, it neither preserves the old intensity nor fully commits to a streamlined alternative. The result is a game that is technically ambitious, aesthetically impressive, and mechanically… curiously weightless.

This is not a bad game in the catastrophic sense. It is far worse: it is a game that is persistently almost great.

It is the ludonarrative equivalent of an asterisk.

If you are deeply invested in the franchise, you will find moments worth dissecting, optimizing, and debating online for hundreds of posts. If you are looking for the next defining Monster Hunter experience, this currently feels like an extended beta for an idea that hasn’t finished deciding what it wants to be.

I wanted to be obsessed.

Instead, I am… academically disappointed.

Suddenly got locked out of the game because of Denuvo DRM and have to wait for 24 hours. Such a bad experience just because I had to update Valve Proton. The multiplayer experience is just as clunky as in World where you cannot seamlessly play the story with a friend.

Ride monster. Life good. Monster fight back. KILL MONSTER!! Monster gone. Think about monster...regret :(