Monster Hunter Wilds, the latest installment of the long-running series, is coming on February 28th, and as usual for the series, it brings a host of features which distinguish it from previous games in the franchise.
Without wasting more space, let’s talk about what’s new and improved about the latest monster-hunting adventure!
1. Wounds and Focus Strikes
To put it shortly, Wounds and Focus Strikes feel like an inversion of Clutch Claw tenderization from MH World: Iceborne.
In Wilds, as a monster receives more and more damage, wounds will start opening on its body wherever it got hit often enough. Open wounds will show up on the monster’s model, and they also increase your damage output when you strike them.
Additionally, you can exploit these wounds with a special attack called Focus Strike, which deals devastating damage and tends to additionally reward you with spectacular animations.
Focus Strike is a part of a new mechanic called Focus Mode, which allows you to carefully aim with your weapon. In the open beta you could even use it to change the direction of your True Charged Slash mid-slash, so that should be great news for all fans of the slower weapons of Monster Hunter.
2. Dynamic environment
Another new feature coming with Wilds are distinct phases the biomes go through in real time, drastically changes the environment and the conditions of the fight.
The phases are
- Fallow – a desolate period of natural resources being scarce and predators getting hungry
- Inclemency – a period of active, dangerous change going over the biome to revitalize it
- Plenty – the biome is at its most healthy and survivable
Each biome has its own version of Inclemency (such as Windward Plains’ Sandtide or Scarlet Forest’s Downpour), and each changes drastically between phases. The monster presence also changes, some might only come out only at a certain time, like Rey Dau roaming during Sandtide. It also includes the behavior of small and endemic creatures, like bird migrations ahead of the storm.
3. Seamless open world
Thankfully, in a pinch we will be able to just weather the proverbial and literal storm by returning to the base for a second.
Wilds takes a big departure from the typical world structure of the series. Rather than having separate locations for the home base and each biome, in MHWi you can just ride out from your HQ out into the wilderness, no overt loading screens involved. This also reportedly involves moving from biome to biome, as long you’ve cleared whatever conditions will be required to unlock them. It’s an exciting prospect, and it will surely contribute greatly to the immersive nature of the setting.
The maps are also going to be more vertical and complex, so it’s a good thing we’re getting a new mount!
4. Seikret
Seikrets are the third iteration on the idea of player mounts in Monster Hunter. In Iceborne we had small monster taxi, which was handy, but not hugely interactive. MH Rise introduced us to Palamutes, which were awesome: fast, fully controllable, and even helped in combat once we dismounted.
Now it’s time for an evolution, and it has feathers. Very early on in our Wilds adventure we get acquainted with a Seikret, a large feathery lizard, looking like a (mostly) bipedal cousin of Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Varactyl from Return of the Sith.
Your new feathery friend might not be as fast as a Palamute (these beasts could RUN!), but in return it can carry a secondary weapon for you and navigate on their own when you want to spend time managing your inventory or sharpening your hammer. You can even use your regular weapons from the saddle, which is going to be handy when a monster decides to move to another region of the map.
Of course, it’s a Monster Hunter companion, so the Seikret is going to get a pretty decent customization, including colors, pattern, and decorations, so start planning what you want your mount to look like.
Seikrets might well give Chocobos a run for their money.
5. Skills are split between weapons and armor
Since in Wilds we can change weapon on the fly while riding the Seikret, the equipment skill system needed reworking so that it can still support having two potentially different weapons.
Before Wilds, both your offensive and defensive skills came with the armor (and later: jewels), but it wouldn’t work here. Armour giving heaps of Focus is great for Greatsword, but becomes dead weight when you switch to Light Bowgun. To avoid this, in MHWi weapon-boosting skills will come with weapons themselves, while armor can focus on bolstering your defences.
This way you will be able to stay on top of your game without unfun sacrifices (fun sacrifices still might be in place).
6. No more gender-locked armor
Speaking of avoiding unfun sacrifices, armor sets are no longer gender-locked!
That’s right, no longer are we locked out of fully HALF of the armor sets before we even know what we’re missing out on! In Wilds, if you decide you want to put a proper set of trousers on your female hunter, of give your hunterman a lighter helmet from the female set: you can! If you want to spend the resources you can craft all the pieces to mix and match as you please.
Does that mean we’re going to get four options per piece after getting to Alpha and Beta sets? Yes it does, as first shown during the February 4th showcase! To make things even better: that same showcase said there’s no more tedious gridning for Layer Armor either, it’s going to get unlocked automatically as you craft High Rank armor.
As another fashion-related side-note: the weapons are reportedly also going to be unique for every monster, avoiding the lackluster designs from MH World.
7. More pronounced story
Finally, something for people who would like a little bit more narrative meat for their adventures.
While a bunch of Monster Hunter games had some story to one degree of another (there are even two Monster Hunter Stories RPGs!), it’s never really been an essential part of the experience. Wilds seems intent on trying something different, so we’re going to get a story that’s more developed and committed, which includes a hunter who gets proper spoken lines, rather than just grunts.
Not a lot is known about the plot so far, but it is going to involve the hunter Guild sending an expedition to “Forbidden Lands” following the story of a child rescued a few years prior. We’ll see what mysteries and monsters lie in this forgotten land after the game launches.
Get ready for a wild adventure
Monster Hunter Wilds is shaping up to be an incredible, expansive game, easily a match and successor for Monster Hunter World. These new features alone would make the game exciting, and we didn’t even mention the returning ones, like fourteen weapon types, phenomenal monster design, or the importance of preparation.
MHWi launches worldwide on February 28th for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S, and if you want in on the fun immediately, check out the pre-order deals on G2A.COM for an additional bit of customization options!