This hasn’t been the wet, hot, summer extravaganza Monster Hunter Wilds was hoping for. Despite Capcom breaking glass on an event themed bikini for its fan-favorite blacksmith Gemma, community vibes remain off and the publisher is getting grilled on why more players aren’t flocking to the franchise’s first installment built from the ground-up for current-gen consoles.
The good news is that all of the panic has led Capcom to push forward some of its plans for a big September update. A new level of quest difficulty and new random skill Talisman rewards will now arrive in mid-August, hopefully reinvigorating some of the grind when they do. Along with rebalanced weapons and other improvements and adjustments, players should have new loot to grind for and more challenging hunts to contend with.
The bad news is that Monster Hunter Wilds still isn’t where it deserves to be on PC in terms of performance, and the general sluggishness with which new content updates have arrived has arguably led lots of players to bounce of into other multiplayer games. Monster Hunter Worlds had a faster cadence of new updates culminating in the much-celebrated Iceborne expansion 18 months later. In addition to having a spottier post-launch calendar, many fans also feel like Wilds has had deeper problems it needs to address right out of the gate, especially on PC.
“Regarding catalog titles, although sales were soft for Monster Hunter Wilds, the latest title in the series released in February this year, Monster Hunter Rise, a previous title in the same series, continued to see sales growth,” Capcom told investors during its earnings presentation this week. In fact, the four-year-old game almost sold more than Wilds over the last three months as the latter has fallen off a cliff even while rival games like Elden Ring Nightreign continue going strong, likely thanks at least in part to great word of mouth.
Multiple shareholders asked Capcom about the situation during a meeting earlier this month. “There have been concerns raised regarding recent titles, including insufficient content volume and optimization issues,” said one. “What are the Company’s plans for addressing these matters going forward?” Another asked, “Are the development staff aware of the feedback being shared on social media and message boards regarding Monster Hunter Wilds?” The company said it reviews all feedback but didn’t have anything more concrete to offer at the time.
While an “overwhelmingly negative” rating on Steam with just 14 percent of the last 14,000 reviews being positive is certainly doing the game no favors, I think some of the issues go deeper than just a lack of optimization on PC. Monster Hunter Wilds’ main campaign is fun and breezy but also streamlined to the point of making much of the game feel perfunctory. The battles and combat are top-notch, but the overall progression and expiration leave much to be desired. It’s a good game but not the type you rush to convince your friends to play with you at the moment. We’ll see if August’s updates can begin turning that around.
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