By any realistic measure, I’m fairly new to the Monster Hunter series. For years, I stayed away because the games were tied to handheld consoles I wasn’t interested in, and frankly, they looked like they had performance issues.
My first taste of the series came with Monster Hunter World, and it was a game-changer for me. It hooked me, and I’ve been a fan ever since. Now, with more than two dozen hours clocked into Wilds, I’ve decided to tackle the main campaign before diving into the side quests. And let me tell you, that was a bit of a disappointment.
Monster Hunter campaigns aren’t exactly celebrated for their storytelling or clever twists. They’re mostly designed to guide you through the multitude of systems and mechanics you’ll depend on for the subsequent 100+ hours. They essentially act as a grand tour of each game’s unique bestiary.
Typically, the story unfolds like this: your team is tracking a mysterious creature that’s causing disruptions across various regions. Along the way, other monsters interrupt your pursuit until you finally uncover what’s behind your original target’s disturbances. You eventually face off against the big creature, the campaign wraps up, and you move on to High Rank, where the real Monster Hunter experience awaits.
Generally speaking, this summary fits the Wilds campaign about as well as it does World’s. Yet, it’s in the specifics—the finer details—that one campaign captivates while the other barely leaves an impression.
The strength of World’s campaign lay in its narrative drive. Zorah Magdaros introduced a new kind of monster—so massive that it took an entire village just to hold it back. It was so huge that multiple battles could take place on its back. This was an ambitious venture for the team, an attempt at crafting a unique encounter within Monster Hunter. Many players, however, didn’t enjoy it. The battle involved building defenses, running around to load cannons, and doing things that were quite different from the typical Monster Hunter experience.
Personally, I enjoyed it precisely because of that difference. Zorah’s unique gameplay segments broke any potential monotony from the usual monster battles before it could settle in. Plus, its journey across the game’s world pushed the narrative forward.
Every time Zorah moved to a new area, it unlocked that part of the map for you to explore. You’d witness firsthand the impact it had on the environment. The game kept you in suspense throughout most of the campaign, shrouding Zorah’s true mission in mystery, which added an urgency to the story and kept you guessing.
Now let’s look at the Wilds campaign. There’s no overarching threat like Zorah. Arkveld, the game’s flagship monster, makes a few appearances to do unexplained things before it disappears again, only to resurface after an hour or two. It’s not even the final boss—that spot is reserved for a colossal creature you only discover a mission before facing it.
There’s no grand coalition of different groups uniting against a common threat here. In fact, some monster introductions feel like Capcom struggled to weave them into the storyline naturally, so they just awkwardly insert them into missions, forcing you into battles then and there.
There’s an underlying sense that some plot element once connected the various camps of characters before being cut. NPC dialogue and some cinematics hint at deeper developments, but you never get to experience them.
Even the intriguing tale of the ancient civilization and their weather-altering technology that ultimately led to their downfall falls flat. It unfolds in sporadic cutscenes more fitting for a lorebook than a main narrative.
The Wilds campaign mirrors the broader issues with the main game. It strips away much of the series’ charm, smoothing over rough edges in an attempt to be more accessible. However, I’m not convinced those were the right aspects to change.
Soon enough, many players might overlook Wilds’ main campaign as the rest of the game’s strengths and flaws emerge. But I can’t help but wonder what a true sequel to the World campaign could have offered.
