Monster Hunter Wilds is quickly becoming my most-played early access game of 2024. Following an open beta which ate 15 hours of my life last month, I recently visited Capcom headquarters in Osaka, Japan to spend five hours with a newer but still-unfinished build of this monster-hunting action-RPG. It was, as director Yuya Tokuda stressed in an interview, not as polished as the final build of the game will apparently be. But it was excellent – refreshingly smooth after the rocky beta, though I could only play on PS5, and almost everything I wanted.
More than ever, Monster Hunter Wilds seems ready to take on its greatest challenge: following up Monster Hunter World, a breakout hit that brought a long-simmering cult classic to a roiling boil. The bones are the same but the presentation is sharper, modernized but still undeniably Monster Hunter. By all accounts, Monster Hunter Wilds feels like the year-devouring behemoth I want it to be, which means five hours simply wasn't enough. I reckon I'm gonna need another 500.
