Wild Hearts Review (Sul)
My review of this game won't offer much more than most others have, I will simply use it as a space for putting my thoughts about this game to letters, and I will use Monster Hunter: World as a baseline of comparison;
In summary, Wild Hearts is at its core a very creative and original approach to the 'Monster Hunter' genre. It is expansive and bristling with vitality, it has a beautiful world, spectacular monsters (called Kemono here), an interesting story with several compelling characters, all overarched by a very interesting article called 'Karakuri'. Karakuri is what sets Wild Hearts apart from the crowd of Monster Hunter games.
Karakuri
This part magical part mechanical article is where Wild Hearts becomes unique. Karakuri is like a conjuration spell, you can conjure various objects with various properties in the game at the cost of a material called 'Celestial Thread' - which can be extracted from the world easily (in rocks or trees), or in combat by attacking monsters, climbing on them and using your hunter's arm to extract celestial thread from them. There's two subsets of Karakuri; regular and dragon. The former is meant to be used at will, to move, to fight, in defense, platforming, flight, etc. You can conjure Karakuri boxes to jump from, either to platform, or to unleash a lethal attack from the sky on a Kemono, you can conjure a torch to set your weapon ablaze, you can conjure springs to lunge a long distance in any direction, you can conjure lanterns to fly around the world, and not only can you conjure Karakuri as they are; you can even conjure combinations of Karakuri, which can then fuse into something else, like a huge wall that will block attacks or charges, or a harpoon launcher that will bring down flying Kemono, or an explosive bomb, and much more.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2995795006
Dragon Karakuri is meant to be used to conjure long-term structures, like a camp, campfire, storage chests, celestial thread towers (radars to spot Kemono), rollers that can be used to drive around the world, etc. Dragon Karakuri is dependent on dragon pits around each world in the game, each structure costs a specific element (fire, earth, water, etc) you have to upgrade dragon pits to increase that element, thereby allowing you to spawn more dragon Karakuri.
Kemono
There's a somewhat decent variety of which, and many of them are truly a glorious spectacle to fight, and the differences that separate them I felt are more stark than in Monster Hunter World. However, past the first couple chapters, a large amount of repetition occurs, with lots of recoloring taking place.
There is also a major story Kemono that is extremely similar to Zorah Magdaros, and while it's not as extremely annoying as that, it's still there.
There are later major Kemono reveals that are very interesting and very difficult, like Amaterasu - which I'd just failed hunting for the 8th or so time.
Overall, I feel like the game needs some more Kemono, right now, it's just fine, and future prospects are not looking so great from what I've seen of this game's post-launch support.
Combat and Weapons
There's 8 different weapon times that more or less play similarly to ones found in MHW, but they're very different in their movements or combos. Simply put, there's a lot more moves and combos in Wild Hearts than there was in World, and the Karakuri adds even more to those weapons; such as jumping and lunging attacks with their own follow up combos, the ability to literally hurl conjured Karakuri at Kemono using the maul, and many more unique interactions that allow you to pull off a lot of crazy moves or reach any part of the largest of monsters.
Fauna, crafting, cooking, survival, etc
While these aspects in MH World felt like they were somewhat sidelined, here they're far more omnipresent. There is a massive plethora of various types of food around the world, either vegetables and fruits you can forage, fish you can catch (no fishing, you just run and catch them, or conjure a dragon Karakuri that scoops fish for you over time), or meat you can collect from various small Kemono you can hunt. There is a hunger meter - how much you can eat before you get full, and there's many foods with various bonuses, to that end, economizing what you eat to get the bonuses you want is a gameplay aspect of this game.
There's various ways to process food; you can dry food, pickle it (you need seasoning like spice, Miso, vinegar, etc), ferment food, smoking (enhances attributes given by food), I believe there's some more to it, but so far this is what it rounds out to from what I've gathered. Pickling and smoking food can give different types of food different bonuses, and there's a lot of possibilities. There's some types of food that can only be acquired by taming some small lifeforms and placing them in cages, and waiting a period before collecting the yield.
Performance
A few days ago, a patch was implemented that alleviated some of the performance issues; particularly the stuttering, it’s long overdue, but there is finally some progress. I've been led to believe this game might perform really terribly, and while it ended up being far above my expectations it's still not great. With DLSS and all settings ultra on a 3080, R5 3600x and 16Gb of DDR4 3200Mhz, it runs between 40-50 frames, sometimes sinking to the 30's depending on the level. To me, this is playable, and I was more than fine going through the majority of the game. I followed some technical advice that purportedly enhances performance (set audio to 7.1).
Controls and Camera
This is one of the great ills that plague Wild Hearts. The controls in this game are unbearably floaty and often irresponsive. Sometimes, inputs won't be executed for unclear reasons, your character turns in a wide circle, highly annoying in the heat of fighting, and the dead zones are awful when it comes to X-Y movement, sometimes when you want to conjure 3 boxes vertically, the instability of moving at an angle will cause the huntress to conjure 3 boxes horizontally.
Camera angles - it will be quite common for the player to find themselves stuck in a corner or under a structure or some kind of natural formation, incapable of seeing everything because of the wild camera angles. The FOV is also annoyingly low even if you max it out, the game would've benefited from a more drawn back camera or more FOV. There is a significant combat mechanic where you can climb Kemono to extract celestial thread from their wounds, if the Kemono is moving violently while you are climbing, well, words escape me here but it's an utter joke what happens with the camera at those instances.
Story
For the most part, it is very contrived from MH World; nature is becoming unbalanced, and the Kemono are encroaching on human settlements or attacking eachother. It is underpinned by themes of Feudal Japan, with warring clans and the existence of a Shogun-like authority which adds a lot of interesting flavor to the world. Your character also has much more presence in the story than World, you can participate in dialogue and formulate your character's personality.
The NPC's I've found most interesting in the writing, there's a nice cast of unique characters with interesting stories which you can unravel by doing their quests or finding items for them.
Let the grind begin
It’s hard to quantify the grind in WH compared to MHW:IB. Iceborne had some insanely rare drops like Attack+4 and Agitator +4 gems. WH has some grinding, but it can be alleviated by eating foods with skills that increase drop rate. Acquiring some Kemono parts requires breaking specific parts of said Kemono while fighting them.
Verdict;
Gameplay 9/10
Story 6/10
Graphics & Art 8.5/10
Performance 4/10