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One of the wonderful memories I have of the Wii U, a sentence you don’t read often, was deciding to pick up a game in a franchise I’d never played before but heard much about. Hours and hours later, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate became one of the titles I played the most on the console. Then, Monster Hunter World blew the franchise to new heights, followed by the easy-to-hook genius of Monster Hunter Rise. How does the latest game stack up?

Monster Hunter Wilds is touted as the largest Monster Hunter game ever, and it feels like it. This map is massive, filled to the brim with neat creatures to hunt and even larger creatures to hunt you. While you watch large monsters hunt smaller ones or bands of more miniature monsters pounce on unsuspecting giants, the world feels like Monster Hunter World expanded. Of course, significant changes and carry-through elements of past games are here. One carry-over: a story that leaves a bit to be desired.

Monster Hunter Wilds begins with just enough mystery and fun characters to create a good story. For a game where the main focus is slaying monsters, looting their corpses, and making armor and weapons out of their remains, the story sounds like it shouldn’t matter. In all reality, it doesn’t, but an element I loved about Rise was the servicable plot around me while I did the old Monster Hunter gameplay loop. In Wilds, you’re given a decent amount of story at the top, then let loose.

As part of an expedition, you enter The Forbidden Lands as a hunter, but soon encounter an abandoned child. As you seek to find their community, you come across a monster, and the rest is history. Tied to a tremendous secluded civilization subplot, the story in Monster Hunter Wilds, like all games, is a vehicle for tutorials and new experiences. In this game, you also end up with a Seikret, a mountable creature similar to the Wyvern in Monster Hunter Rise.

Seikret allow you to get away in moments of distress to heal, escape, or sharpen your blade. They also provide you with the ability to switch to another weapon. Let’s say, for example, you need the speed of dual blades but the power of a heavy bowgun. Bring both! Your Seikret is an excellent tool for many time-buying measures, but as a clunky means of mobility, the game still forces you to strategize on the ground as you take on larger-than-life threats.

Of course, you will run into issues when you’re underprepared for a fight. A feature I love in Monster Hunter Wilds is the ability to shoot a flare and bring backup online. If you’re offline, you can use the flare gun to bring backup from camp. It’s an enjoyable way to get more people into the mix, and if you’re into it, online connectivity brings a social aspect to the game. Let’s hope you’re not struggling with every monster, however, which is likely if you take advantage of two new systems in Monster Hunter Wilds.

Firstly, Wilds brings in a new wound system where you can open up weak points on a threat and target that area specifically in combat. As the wound deepens, you’ll find that limbs, legs, and entire parts will fall off, weakening your foe. Focus Mode is controlled by aiming specifically while in combat, but it feels relatively imprecise. There are so many times I aimed to strike a monster’s weak point only to deal with a character that felt hard to control, let alone direct in a specific direction.

The lack of fluidity in controlling your character in Monster Hunter games is a complaint I’ve had for the past few entries. As more modern, open-world combat mechanics have given way to grander visuals, it always makes me feel like the game controls similarly to entries released a decade ago. No matter how many skills I add to my armor or weapons as a new feature of Monster Hunter Wilds, the game never feels as good as I want. Despite that, it hardly kept me from putting 50 hours into my experience.

Collecting environmental items such as plants or bugs still provides a fun experience to customize to your playstyles. A dynamic weather system also allows for things like resources to suddenly become scarce, making it essential to collect as much as you can as you move through the map without assuming it will always be plentiful. Collecting things for cooking meals, be it back at camp or in pop-up camps you place around the map, has always been a fun immersion aspect for me and continues to be in Wilds.

Other than control, my only other major gripe with Monster Hunter Wilds will sound ridiculous to some reading this review. Given the boom the series experienced in World and the accessibility of Rise, I was disappointed to find that no moment in Monster Hunter Wilds surprised me. As a melding of the two approaches to this franchise, the game is formulaic as expected but not the great leap forward I hoped a third hit game in a row would amount to.

It doesn’t make it a bad game by any means, but I think it does hold it back from being an all-time experience. With DLC on the way, we may be surprised by what’s to come, similar to Iceborne‘s jaw-dropping set pieces or the challenge of master rank quests in Sunbreak. For a game series, I genuinely love to expand its map and add a few minor systems to its arsenal. I’m just ever so let down by the leap we’re missing in the latest entry.

As I said, this is a great game, and my last criticism is more of a personal one than an objective observation. Monster Hunter Wilds will not disappoint long-time fans, and its gorgeous graphics and fantastic array of beasts to hunt will keep folks busy for weeks to come. If you’re new to the series, this is likely the best place to start as well. As a long-time fan, I can tell you that there’s nothing quite like Monster Hunter games. Once they get you hooked, you’re hooked, and it’s an absolute blast.

An Xbox Series X review copy of Monster Hunter Wilds was provided by Capcom for this review.

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Monster Hunter Wilds

69.99

8.5

Score

8.5/10

Pros

• Great new wound system to aid your hunting strategy
• A story that truly is enough to keep you intersted
• Gorgeous graphics and wonderful diversity in ecosystems and areas
• Another incredible Monster Hunter experience

Cons

• Control feels loose and lacks precision, particularly when aiming in new Focus Mode
• No major wow moment that leaves you feeling like we're seeing something grand for the series