Critiquing the Monster Hunter Campaign: Why Wild’s Falls Short of World’s High Standards

When it comes to the Monster Hunter series, I’m something of a latecomer. For years, the series stayed out of my reach because it was on handheld consoles I couldn’t care less about. Not to mention, they looked like they ran… well, terribly.

Everything changed with Monster Hunter World, though. That game is what reeled me into the series, and I’ve been a dedicated fan ever since. As I was diving into Monster Hunter Wilds, I clocked in over twenty hours and decided to focus on the main campaign first, leaving sidequests for later. Sadly, that turned out to be a bit of a disappointment.

Monster Hunter campaigns aren’t typically celebrated for intricate storytelling or clever twists. Instead, their main role is to guide players through an introduction to the tons of systems and mechanics they’ll need over the course of hundreds of play hours. Essentially, these campaigns offer an introduction to each game’s collection of beasts.

Here’s how they usually unfold: you and your squad are tracking a mysterious monster whose presence is disrupting various regions. Along the way, you encounter other monsters that sidetrack your mission. Eventually, you confront the initial threat, have an epic showdown, and wrap up the campaign. This acts as a prologue to the real challenge, unlocking High Rank and the true Monster Hunter experience.

This formula fits both Wilds and World, but it’s the finer details where one can shine as a thrilling adventure while the other barely makes a splash.

What made World’s campaign memorable was its storyline. The introduction of Zorah Magdaros, a new, enormous monster, was fascinating. With its massive size, this beast required an entire village’s efforts just to slow it down. Imagine battling various monsters on its back with plenty of room to spare.

Developers clearly took a bold step with Zorah, trying to bring a fresh type of encounter to Monster Hunter. Many fans weren’t thrilled. Battling Zorah involved strategies like building ramparts, loading cannons, and doing tasks that felt removed from traditional Monster Hunter gameplay.

But I enjoyed these segments for their unique spin. They broke up the usual monster hunts and helped propel the story. Each time Zorah moved to a new area, it would unlock for exploration, letting players witness the impact on the local environment. The mystery of Zorah’s migration kept players engaged, eager to unravel the story.

Contrast that with Wilds’ campaign. There’s no Zorah-level threat in sight. The flagship monster, Arkveld, pops in and out without much explanation, only to disappear and not resurface for some time. And that’s not even the climactic antagonist. Instead, you encounter a slumbering giant only one mission before the end, losing the build-up of a shared threat.

There’s no sense of a unified effort from different factions against a common enemy. At times, new monsters appear in missions seemingly out of nowhere, as if Capcom couldn’t stage their introductions immaculately and instead shoehorned them into certain missions on the fly.

In Wilds’ campaign you get the feeling of perhaps a more interconnected narrative initially existing but then being axed. Conversations among NPCs and some cinematic dialogue suggest a deeper subplot, but it’s never explored.

Even the storyline about an ancient civilization and their weather-altering tech that led to their downfall feels half-baked. It’s delivered sporadically through cutscenes and comes across more like backstory fit for a lore compendium than a game narrative.

The campaign’s shortcomings mirror some of the core issues in Wilds itself: trimming off charm and distinctive quirks in a bid to be more user-friendly. But perhaps those updates targeted the wrong aspects.

As players continue to engage with Wilds, the remnants of its main campaign may soon fade into the background as its highs and lows come into focus. However, I can’t help but ponder how a true successor to the World campaign might have unfolded.