Opinion: Monster Hunter Wilds Open Beta — forbidden for newcomers

Monster Hunter Wilds is close to release. The launch of the next monster hunter simulator is scheduled for February 28th. In honor of this event, Capcom decided to hold an open beta so that all interested parties could get acquainted with the new product and finally decide on a purchase. Our author, Dmitry Pyatakhin, has never played any of the parts, but decided to try the beta to get involved. Did it work out? Details below.

So, hello everyone. I really missed the Monster Hunter series, but the reason is trivial. When I first heard about the best monster hunting game, advice immediately followed to play it in the company of friends. Unfortunately, there was no one in my circle who wanted to join, so I decided not to spoil the experience and just skipped the project. Since then, little has changed, but since the announcement of Monster Hunter Wilds, I have been somewhat interested. This is primarily due to the powerful story trailers, hinting that this time there is a clear explanation for hunting monsters, rather than just a formal pretext.

The beta starts from the very beginning of the game, so everyone can see the introduction and gain access to the first desert biome. Players are immediately thrown into a well-staged action when your newly created hunter with an anthropomorphic cat companion rushes to help a girl running away from a whole pack of sand monsters. Rocks crumble, a riding chicken skillfully jumps over the debris, and the character uses a hook to skillfully drop rocks on the pursuers' heads. Cool, what else can I say.

However, almost immediately after, you are offered to choose one of, attention, 14 types of weapons and go to defeat the first more or less serious boss. And this is where I started having problems. The cute anime assistant asks questions to help choose a weapon. What do you like more — speed or strength, the ability to parry or dodge? Or maybe you are a gourmet and want to become universal? There is everything, and how could there not be. The choice ranges from a standard sword with a shield to hybrid weapons with two interchangeable forms. I got the latter — a sword-axe or axe-sword, call it what you like, it looked promising. The blade is suitable for quick attacks, while the axe is good at breaking armor — beautiful. Right next to it is a barrel for studying combat controls. The game gently suggests taking the new stick out of its sheath, but what happened next was just hell.

It turned out that the controls in Monster Hunter Wilds are, to put it mildly, specific. You need to attack with the triangle button (I played on PS5). There's also a button for a special strike, and you need to press block and then attack, and also focus, which supposedly makes the character aim precisely, changing the entire attack moveset. Moreover, if you press all the buttons at once, something happens too. And this doesn't even take into account the weapon form change. I never figured out what to press to quickly turn the sword into an axe, I tried, really. It happened purely by accident. The beta doesn't have a control layout for gamepads, only for keyboards, so there was nowhere to look closely. And although combo hints appear on the screen, they only last for a short time, during which you can't read anything except the regular attack.

I also immediately found a bug. In the settings, you can choose which direction the character attacks — where he looks or where the camera is facing. I immediately checked the camera option, hoping the hero would turn automatically, but no. My hunter continued to attack where he was looking. It's not hard to guess what this affects. After any dodge or roll, you need to spend a few seconds turning around instead of immediately attacking. It feels very clunky.

As I found out a little later, different types of weapons have different combos. So it's not necessary to take a hybrid with a million buttons; a regular sword is a bit simpler to master. There's just one nuance — the game didn't tell me this. This is the main problem, but we'll discuss it later. Armed, I went to beat up a stone toad, but there I encountered another unpleasant discovery. Fighting is simply... boring. All these combos turned out to be very sluggish, and the toad strikes back just as sluggishly. I understand the fight was supposed to be a tutorial. And they did tell me how to restore health and send an SOS signal, which other players or support characters can respond to. However, on the same radial menus, there are many other indicators the game is in no hurry to explain. There are also resources lying around whose purpose is unknown. I learned about the existence of additional weapons purely by accident.

After defeating the toad and another cutscene, I was given access to the open world. The hunters' camp is mostly closed, and it's unclear if it will open in the beta; there's no special storyline (yet). Just go and kill a monster, but now a different one. Overall, I have zero complaints since the game is about hunting, but I still didn't learn how to hunt. How to make traps, how to use the environment, which swords are needed for what — all of this is unknown. The second battle was even more boring than the first, taking place in a field and completely devoid of any interesting features. Not to mention that your cat companion suggests using the environment when you're standing knee-deep in grass with two trees nearby. At this stage, my patience ran out, and I turned off the game.

***

Despite the pleasant graphics and good optimization, I have absolutely nothing to say about the game. Monster Hunter Wilds is entirely designed for fans who have already spent many hours in previous parts of the series. New players are not very welcome here. The plot, as before, seems more like a formality. At least, that's how it seemed. Battles might become difficult and multi-layered, but I never figured out how to make that happen. In general, the beta fulfilled its purpose. I confirmed that I definitely don't need to buy the new game. If you, like me, decided to jump into the series only now, it's better to think again.