Monster Hunter Wilds hands-on preview – Capcom take over the world

Monster Hunter Wilds screenshot — Monster Hunter Wilds – certain to be the biggest entry yet (Capcom)

GameCentral gets to play Capcom’s next evolution of Monster Hunter, featuring the return of a classic arachnid.

Despite being Capcom’s second-best selling series behind Resident Evil, the conversation around Monster Hunter always comes back to accessibility. The series has been a juggernaut in Japan for decades, but it didn’t achieve popularity in the West until 2018’s Monster Hunter: World, which went on to become the highest-selling game in Capcom history.

For most other franchises, this kind of success would negate the need to smoothen out design kinks for newcomers; yet, much like FromSoftware’s brand of punishing friction, Monster Hunter’s infamously steep learning curve requires constant re-evaluation. In Monster Hunter Rise, a side-step sequel to World, the big gambit for new players was the faster Wire Bug movement system and Palamute mounts, with both serving as a way to cut down on the trudge between its set piece battles.

While it was successful in enticing more new players, there was a sense that some of the depth had been lost in the transition to a speedier pace. Monster Hunter Wilds, based on a six-hour hands-on session, feels like it’s trying to find an agreeable middle ground between the two – and it might just be the most accomplished Monster Hunter experience yet.

Our play session encompassed the opening five hours (along with some later-game hunts) and, based on this introduction, one of the big takeaways is the heightened cinematic flair. Monster Hunter’s recent entries have always felt epic in scope during battles, but Wilds feels like it’s determined to leave a much bigger impression from the start.

As anyone who jumped into the beta will know, Wilds begins with a sandworm chase in the desert, atop the game’s new rideable companion: Seikrets. These bird-like creatures appear to be similar to the Palamute companions in Rise, but they serve a somewhat different purpose. Unlike Rise’s mounts, Seikrets don’t fight alongside you in battle. Instead, they act like horses, allowing you to ride around and attack while mounted, as well as carrying an additional weapon you can switch to mid-combat.

in the absence of Wire Bugs, Seikrets are the key to Wilds’ flexibility. They cut down on the time scrambling to the next major encounter, but the option for a quick gallop to safety, or to switch tactics with another weapon mid-scrap, opens up new strategic possibilities. Tired of battering away with the great sword? Call your Seikret, switch to a bow, and rain down arrows while on horseback – all within the space of a few seconds.

Admittedly, there is a learning curve to controlling your Seikret. We often found ourselves calling them and switching weapons by accident, resulting in a fiddly scramble to re-adjust as a furious ape bounded towards us. Even as you wrestle with Monster Hunter’s convoluted interface though – which is perhaps still the biggest barrier to newcomers – the thrill of the close calls and visual spectacle keeps the frustrations somewhat in check.

It helps that this is the most immersive Monster Hunter has ever been. Previous games have stuck to the same rigid and segmented structure: take on a hunt from the quest board, kill the monster, jump back to camp to craft fancy armour. But here, for the first time, it all takes place within a seamless open environment. It sounds like a small change, and you are still ultimately taking part in the same gameplay loop, but the ability to ride out from your camp without a loading screen spoiling the immersion only accentuates the monster hunting fantasy.

There’s also a greater effort to hide Monster Hunter’s naturally repetitive mission structure. In the early hours, you’ll travel to a nearby settlement to connect with the locals, only to aid them when a gaggle of monsters comes charging into town. Or you can find yourself captured by a group of comical forest creatures, which culminates in a typical large-scale encounter. It’s still Monster Hunter’s bread and butter at its core but dressed in ways where it feels like a traditional story campaign, rather than just a sequence of quest board hunts.

The abundance of cut scenes within missions is another boon for its presentation – even if it does feel unnecessary at times. There’s a lot more emphasis on showcasing the characters and story, and while some of the cut scenes flex this bizarre universe’s personality, we imagine most players will be hammering the skip button so they can get back to thwacking a dragon.

Monster Hunter Wilds’ improved rhythm partially extends to the combat itself, thanks to the newly added Focus mode. As you clobber a beast, weak spots will glow red in classic video game fashion, which you’ll then be able to lock onto to perform Focus strikes for added damage. During our playthrough using the bow, the gratification from using charged-up smatterings of arrows became our driving dose of dopamine – especially in the nick of time as a monster barrels towards your position.

The monsters themselves are the showpieces of every Monster Hunter, but the stellar animation and variety in creature designs reaches new heights here – especially in the two later-game hunts we tried beyond the opening. The first was Rompopolo, a repulsive-looking blend between a wyvern and a mosquito coated in oil in a bubbling hot basin. Design-wise it’s creature feature horror in all the best ways but it was mechanically interesting too, requiring a quick-footed approach as it sends out bubbling oil bursts through the ground.

For anyone who played Monster Hunter 4, the other beast was returning arachnid Nerscylla. Another nightmare design of spiky, spindly legs and extendable pincers, which can paralyze you in webs as its icky baby spiders encroach on your position. It’s a hellhole for arachnophobes (although there is a spider filter graphical option), but a spooky contrast to the mammoths, sandworms, and camouflaged leviathan, Uth Duna, which was the closing spectacle of our session.

If we were more curious than excited heading into Monster Hunter Wilds, the hands-on led to a reassessment of social commitments around February 28. There’s still a question as to whether the cinematic presentation is adding to the experience, or just getting in the way, but when the core hunts are this refined and entertaining it’s hard not to feel like the phenomenon is about to strike even bigger than ever.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (previewed), Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £64.99
Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Capcom
Release Date: 28th February 2025
Age Rating: 16