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A surprisingly fresh take on the Monster Hunter formula - Wild Hearts Review

29K View2023-03-03

The old saying goes that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but what they never tell you is just how difficult imitation is. With Wild Hearts, developer Omega Force has not only succeeded at the absurdly challenging task of imitating the Monster Hunter games, but it has actually managed to carve out a compelling identity of its own.

At Wild Hearts’s outset, after creating my character, I was thrust into a land known as Azuma. Specifically, I was wondering through the dense forests, dark caves, and shallow rivers of Harugasumi Way, one of the game’s four main regions. It wasn’t long into my exploration before I was confronted by a beast—a giant rat, to be exact, but not a normal rat. This creature is known as the Ragetail, and it had what appeared to be a massive flower sprouting out of its eye and some sort of fruit growing out of its tail.

Like the Monster Hunter games that it openly and unabashedly borrows its core gameplay loop from, Wild Hearts is all about going on hunts against giant, intimidating creatures. Where the game wisely sets itself apart, though, is in the design of those creatures. The plot is about nature itself rebelling against humanity, losing control, and corrupting the wildlife. That means that all of Wild Hearts's big boss fights—around twenty as of launch but with more coming as free DLC—are regular animals that have been fused with nature in striking ways.

Ragetail is a great introduction to this concept, but it gets so much cooler from there. Some of the beasts I had to take on include: Kingtusk, a giant boar who can summon the vines that seem to have merged with its body; Gritdog, an adorable raccoon who pelts its opponents with rocks and can shift the very ground under their feet; Deathstalker, a terrifyingly fast wolf that can create walls of ice for protection; and my personal favorite, Dreadclaw, a rooster who has fused with a tree and drifts across the battlefield performing karate kicks. That’s just beautiful enemy design.

Beyond being memorable in their own right, Wild Hearts’s boss creatures (called Kemono) provide the exact experience that this type of game requires. That is, they were scary and challenging, especially the first time I encountered each one, but they follow patterns that open up the path to overcoming them in a profoundly satisfying fashion. I had to figure out what weaknesses each Kemono had, memorize their animations to predict which attacks were coming next, and dig deep into my box of tools to survive each lengthy fight.

That toolbox is quite large, by the way, and it includes one especially notable addition compared to Monster Hunter and other games in this style. In addition to one of eight different weapon types—ranging from a katana to a bow to a staff that can transform into five different forms—Wild Hearts’s player character comes equipped with the power to build Karakuri, which are basically small, on-the-fly structures that can be used both for exploring the landscapes of Azuma and to give an advantage during battles with Kemono.

Think of it as the game sprinkling in just the teensiest bit of Minecraft or Fortnite with the Monster Hunter foundation. And as much as I frankly suck at building in both of those games, Wild Hearts makes it a quick, painless process that adds an entertaining and essential wrinkle to battles. The giant boar is charging at me? I could throw up a quick wall of crates for it to run into, stunning itself and giving me a huge opening to deal damage. The annoying squirrel Kemono has perched itself up on a rock pillar to stay out of reach and shoot bolts of water at me? I was able to put together three spring Karakuri to create a giant hammer that would smash that pillar to smithereens. There’s six basic Karakuri types and over a dozen of the bigger “Fusion Karakuri,” and experimenting with how to best put them all to use in each battle was some of the most fun I had in the game.

I say some, because the absolute most fun I had was teaming up with strangers to take down Kemono. Joining up with someone online in Wild Hearts is as easy as opening the map, selecting a quest or hunt, and choosing multiplayer. I didn’t actually test the game’s online functionality until I was over ten or fifteen hours deep, but it quickly became my preferred way to play. Matchmaking is fast and smooth, and the game provides a bunch of “quick chat” options for communicating without a mic. Of the many online hunts I’ve done so far, I only had a single bad experience, where the host apparently was frustrated that another hunter and I weren’t catching up fast enough, so we both got booted.

I feel like I could go on for ages about the tons of little ways that Wild Hearts smartly tweaks the Monster Hunter formula—the ease of crafting and the general amount of materials received from each hunt; the size of the four massive zones (plus the bonus post-game zone that opens up after finishing the story); the exploration options available in these zones and the way you can build permanent Karakuri shortcuts to slowly turn them into places you can run across in minutes; the small but useful AI-controlled Tsukomo who will help out in fights when you’re playing solo; and so on and so on and so on. Mostly, though, I’m just surprised at how every one of these elements has come together so seamlessly in a first game of this type.

Wild Hearts isn’t a replacement for Monster Hunter, but it imitates the formula better than any other game has to this point, and it does so while introducing plenty of its own distinguishing touches. I can only hope that Omega Force and publishing partners Koei Tecmo and Electronic Arts see the potential in this game and keep on building, because there’s so much more I’d like to witness in both the upcoming free DLC and in potential sequels. More Kemono, more Karakuri, more zones, more everything. Keep this hunt going, please, because Wild Hearts is greater than just imitation or flattery; it’s its own damn thing, and that thing is a blast to play.

SCORE: 4 STARS OUT OF 5

PLAY IF YOU LIKE:

• The Monster Hunter series. I mean, duh. Like I said in the review, Wild Hearts isn’t a replacement and doesn’t quite reach the heights of recent entries like Monster Hunter Rise, but it’s still really damn good and should satisfying MonHun fanatics.

• Inventive creature design. I cannot overstate how much positive energy Wild Hearts earns for its amazing Kemono designs. These creatures are wonderful and memorable, and I already cannot wait to see more.

💬 Will you be joining the Kemono hunt in Wild Hearts, or are you skipping this game? Let me know in a comment!

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