Episode 189 - For Your Daddy - Monster Hunter Wilds

The guild authorizes you to hunt this podcast. Welcome back to
NOCLIP! Today, we’re going to be talking about Monster Hunter
Wilds, the latest mainline entry in the series and the game that
turned many peoples’ computers into puddles of acid. Wilds is a
follow up to Monster Hunter World both in that it was made by the
same team and that it mechanically doesn’t stray too far from the
systems that World established. This is a good and a bad thing,
because it means that the combat in Wilds is much more
straightforward than it was in Rise, allowing you to establish a
flow with each weapon and understand the basics fairly quickly. On
the other hand, it also doesn’t feel like it has innovated much,
particularly in the ways the game seemed to advertise itself on.
Focusing on the larger environments, Wilds seems to have
overstepped its own capabilities a bit, making the new areas harder
to traverse, and without your mount, taking a long time to do.
Additionally, much of the tracking mechanics have been stripped
out, meaning you generally know what you’re hunting and exactly
where it is when you set off, making the more-open world basically
a nonfactor in gameplay. If you’re a fan of the series mostly
because of the combat mechanics, none of these things will be deal
breakers, and the new focus mode and wound system changes the
texture of fights enough to make them feel fresh again, but there
is a lot of truly unnecessary artifice surrounding the game that
can detract. We’re going to be talking about what the story
does(n’t) bring to the table, the wonderful new monster designs,
and the horror that is palicos talking. Thank you for joining us
again this week! Monster Hunter Wilds was one of my most
anticipated games this year, and despite what we talk about in the
episode, I think it still holds up as a fun entry in the series,
even if it isn’t substantially close to some of the previous games
for me. How did you feel about the game? Did you manage to muscle
through the first 10 or so hours to get to where the game opens up
for you, or did you bounce off of it? If you were a new player, did
you find this an accessible game? Let us know in the comments or
over on our Discord server! Next time, we begin Mystery May, where
we roll a die to determine our next episode based on our tables
(which you can view on our website if curious!). We’re starting
with a “short” game (formerly “Pocket”), The Wolf Among Us, so we
hope you’ll join us for that!