Monster Hunter: Wildly Disappointing

Title Update 2 for Monster Hunter Wilds has been out for 5 days, and the verdict is in. Instead of the upward trend most games see with free content drops, Wilds has continued its steep freefall into one of the most poorly-received Capcom games in recent memory.

Let's look at the numbers.

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An incredible 88% of the most recent 19,000+ reviews on Steam are negative. That is an achievement in failure all by itself. The game's overall worldwide review score now sits at a miserable "Mixed" rating, making it one of the worst-reviewed major titles Capcom has ever released. Dragon's Dogma 2 had a rocky start, but consistent patches improved its standing. Wilds, the flagship of their biggest franchise, is only getting worse.

To be clear on where I'm coming from, my history with this series goes back to the original on the PS2. The only titles I missed were G, Dos and Tri on the Wii (didn't own a wii). My most fun I had remains with Monster Hunter 3rd Portable (The good old Xlink Kai days & translation tools) and MHXX. I did my G-Rank black fatty, red fatty, white fatty solos, back when fatty with armour mode takes 40 minutes a run because none of my friends owned a PSP or even know what MonHun was, when Eternal Schism was GOATed, alongside Silver Chariot, Smouldering Dragonsword, fatty lances etc. I spent a day convinced I could cut Lao Shan's tail because of a weapon's flavour texts...Yet my most rage-induced experience of the franchise still belong to the duo Kirins guild quest from MHF that I had to solo; iykyk. Yeah, I’ve seen and done it all, the series' highest highs and even the garbage that was Frontier. And my least enjoyed game in the entire franchise? Monster Hunter: World.

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I genuinely believe Monster Hunter: World was the most damaging success in gaming history. It brought the series to the mainstream PC audience (the only reason why I had 900h+), but its commercial triumph was built on a foundation of simplified mechanics. That immense success became a creative curse, guaranteeing that Capcom would double down on this mediocre formula.

Now we have Wilds, the inevitable result: a creatively bankrupt sequel competing against its own memory of 2018, not the reality of 2025. In the seven years since World was revolutionary, genre-defining titans like Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate 3 have completely redefined player expectations for open worlds and deep systems. They proved you don't need to sand down every edge to achieve massive success. Capcom developed Wilds as if none of that ever happened.

Capcom certainly made their money. The hype behind a new mainline title ensured it would sell well regardless. But player retention and reviews tell the real story.

I bought the game two months ago after building a new PC. Created my meme character and all ready to bonk them Congalalas... but within 3 hours, I've had enough and knew something was fundamentally wrong.

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Nothing was grabbing my attention, I just didn't care about anything of the game. The story is built on the most generic beats imaginable; I couldn't give a damn about Nada whatever his name was and his clan, or even the settings. It's so cliche that I actually groaned out loud during the first cutscene. Reading other reviews confirmed it: the story is really as generic and pointlessly jammed-in as I thought. Yay for anti-coop story progression! Again.

Then there's the UI. It's a prehistoric monstrosity. World was seven years ago. You cannot release an interface this hostile to user input, designed with only a controller in mind, and have the audacity to call your game "newcomer friendly."

I won't rehash every point that thousands of other negative reviews have made. The performance is terrible. The combat felt stale, largely unchanged from the shallow foundation of World. The new weakpoint mechanic is a core complaint from many veterans: the game is simply brain-dead easy. The feeling for me, was identical to the jarring transition of going from the dynamic arts and styles of MHXX to the dull, basic combat of World. Now, it's the exact same downgrade going from Rise to Wilds.

This is more like a themepark version of Monster Hunter. The vast, "seamless" world is just the scenery, and the Seikret feels less like a hunting partner and more like a rail-car moving you from one shallow attraction to the next.

The data proves this shallow experience isn't working. The player count has fallen off a cliff, losing over 95% of its peak player base on Steam since launch. In fact, the situation was so dire that in the weeks leading up to the June 30th update, the game was struggling to even break a 20,000 players peak, it's lowest was just 13k. The newcomers Capcom desperately wanted have already come and gone, leaving a negative review on their way out. And the old fans? Most of us have dropped off too. It's a massive case of trying to appeal to casuals and ending up failing both them and the veterans.

What makes this entire situation tragic is watching the mountain of goodwill Capcom painstakingly rebuilt over the last decade go up in smoke. They had a genuine redemption arc, earning back trust with hit after hit. But with Wilds, it feels like they're speedrunning their way back to the 'Crapcom' levels of infamy from the on-disc DLC era. The goodwill that got players to defend Dragon's Dogma 2's launch stumbles is gone. I myself, was defending DD2, because there were nuances to both sides, but Wilds? They've burned it.

And that's the real long-term damage. Veteran players remember the old Crapcom, but what about the millions of new players they tried to capture? Their first major experience with this flagship series is a technically broken, creatively bankrupt game that feels designed to extract cash later. That is the Capcom they will remember.

Sure Capcom, you got your record-breaking sales numbers, but with retention this low and word-of-mouth this toxic, who exactly do you think is going to buy your near £200(!) worth of (so far) microtransactions? Who is left to purchase the G-rank expansion that your quarterly reports are undoubtedly banking on?

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