Wilds

Monster Hunter Wilds has been having a rough time of it lately. Over the course of the past week, Capcom’s seventh ‘main’ Monster Hunter title has racked up over 2,000 negative reviews. Most embittered reviewers are lamenting the game’s poor PC performance, whilst others criticise Capcom for the poor optimisation and lack of PC-specific support.

Others bemoan the much slower update cadence the game has received since launch – which is quite light when compared with the previous two games in the series, World and Rise. A popular post by Monster Hunter megafan and content creator, ShinCry, which you can see below, highlights the somewhat scant offering Wilds has had compared to the previous games in the same timespan.

ShinCry’s chart shows the discrepancy between the last three mainline Monster Hunter games. | Image credit: ShinCry

Whilst most of the reviews are fixated on the technical (specifically citing crashes, stuttering, and visual bugs in Wilds), others are getting frustrated with the lack of communication from Capcom, that has been somewhat tight-lipped on what – if anything – it plans to do about all the negative feedback. One complaint fans repeatedly raise about the game is the difficulty and the lack of end-game content – something very important in the health of a Monster Hunter title. “[Capcom] charged $70 for a game that feels like it has less content than its precursors,” reads one highly-rated Steam review, for example.

Some even claim that the updates Capcom has added since the game’s launch on February 28th have made PC performance worse. And that’s saying something. All eyes are on the next big content drop in the game, coming 30th June: can this update address all the issues players have with Capcom’s tentpole release for 2025? Probably not, but at least all of us carving enthusiasts have something to look forward to.

Lagiacrus is no joke, and many are hoping it will be a tough fight. | Image credit: Capcom

Officially, we know that we’re getting at least one “fan-favourite” monster as part of Title Update 2: Lagiacrus, the underwater leviathan. Thanks to a (now removed) update on the Monster Hunter Wilds page on the PlayStation Store, however, we also know more about what we can expect from the incoming update.

The page disclosed that we’re actually getting two “fan-favourite” monsters in this update. Datamines around the game suggest this may be Seregios – known to long-time fans of the series as ‘Steve’ for ridiculous fandom-related reasons – which will hopefully prove to be a tougher opponent than many of the monsters seen in-game to date. As well as the leviathan and Steve, which is based on the real-world Secretary Bird, we will also get an Arch-Tempered Uth Duna, layered weapons to satiate the needs of all the Fashion Hunters out there, and a couple more events over the coming weeks and months.

But will this be enough? Capcom still hasn’t said much about planned performance improvements for the title, nor has it promised balance changes or tweaks providing extra challenge to seasoned pros itching for more of a fight. We’re going to get more solid news about this update at this week’s Capcom Spotlight on Thursday, 26th June, but many fans are dubious about their actual issues being addressed.

At the time of writing, Monster Hunter Wilds has just one percent of the concurrent players it did at launch; that’s not surprising in itself, since we’re a good five months out from launch, but given how ‘sticky’ past Monster Hunter games have been, figures like that will no doubt be setting alarm bells off at Capcom HQ.

The numbers paint a bleak picture for Capcom. | Image credit: SteamDB

I love the Seregios fight, and I think the wounds system and slightly more mobile play style in Wilds will really suit the monster. So I know I’ll be jumping back in to enjoy that, and see how it all works within Wilds’ more developed ecosystem. But I play on console, and the version I play does not suffer from the same issues disenfranchised Steam players have been kicking up such a fuss about over the past week.

I also think a more robust and varied set of events can help turn things around for Wilds. So far, many of the special event quests added to the game have offered insignificant or otherwise forgettable rewards for players, and I wasn’t even that enthused by the Street Fighter collaboration that was added to the game in May, and I’m a bonafide Street Fighter apologist.

Capcom has generated a lot of positive consumer sentiment in the past few years. Between great quality games, a selection of interesting products across multiple genres, and – usually – pretty good comms with its players, the publisher has garnered quite the reputation. To see it marred by out-of-character post-launch support for Wilds seems odd. I know game development takes longer, and drinks more resources, than it did back in the World and Rise cycles, but you’d think the publisher would be keen to press that message publicly, instead of sitting back and letting players stew like they are as we’re awaiting the deployment of Title Update 2.

I think Capcom has what it takes to turn the fortunes of Monster Hunter Wilds around. It took seven patches for the publisher to figure out the issues with Dragon’s Dogma 2 back in 2024, and I’m just hoping Capcom can work that same engineering magic with Monster Hunter Wilds before it’s too late.

After all, I do not want to have to wait until the inevitable Sunbreak- or Iceborne-style DLC in order to really get the most out of what I think has the potential to be one of the best games in the series.

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