by theygamesAs a diehard Monster Hunter fan, I want to give Wild Hearts more of a chance. It’s a gorgeous-looking action game in which you can fight gargantuan behemoths with some ridiculously powerful and, at times, unorthodox weapons. The monsters’ savage attacks require you to use the game’s unique Karakuri system to defend yourself. It’s got a lot of potential, and I wish I liked it so much more, but unfortunately, constant performance issues make those fights feel like trudging through a boggy swamp when they should be snappy and action-packed.
This is a massive shame because, in premise, what I’ve played of Wild Hearts so far feels as fresh as my first time playing Monster Hunter World. You take on the role of a nameless hunter who arrives in the Azuma region only to fall in battle against an icy wolf, one of the many Wild Hearts monsters, or ‘Kemono’. As your hunter lays dying, a masked man seems to put something inside of them, enabling them to use long-forgotten Karakuri – ancient technology that hunters from years gone by utilised to control the beasts.
As I descend the stairs into my first hunt, I get a sense of the scale of this open-world game. The first area of the four maps is a colourful jungle where nature has overrun long-abandoned buildings and monsters roam free. Wild Hearts makes a striking first impression here; vibrant flora dance in the wind and majestic animals graze in the sun. The larger monsters all have an ethereal, elevated quality that Monster Hunter Rise’s equivalents lack. When I square off against even my first monster – a grass-covered mouse called Ragetail with a flower bud at its tail – it feels more like I’m fighting gods than mere beasts.
The excitement soon withers as I discover the game’s biggest issue, at least on PC: constant performance drops. In my experience so far, Wild Hearts has a hard time getting above 20fps while I’m in combat, with further random dips in frame rate making it hard to react. Anticipating an incoming attack is part of the fun of an action game, but when the enemy’s motion is a slideshow, it’s just stressful and frustrating.
And it’s not just the frame rate. In my case, I’m running the game with an Nvidia 3080 Ti, i7-7700K, and 32GB DDR4, and other issues range from occasional screen tears to frequent and nearby texture pop-in. With the rather hefty Wild Hearts system requirements, it’s perhaps not surprising that there will be issues for those using older hardware, but in my experience as someone who meets the recommended specs, the Wild Hearts PC port is a mess.
Timing with weapon strikes is vital in games like Monster Hunter, and this seems especially true with the unlockable Wild Hearts weapons, which appear shortly after my first hunt. I instantly swap the boring katana for the weirdly wonderful umbrella, as its serrated edges and fast movement appeals to my preferred play style. However, the key to making this weapon do any notable damage to a monster is its parry ability, which requires precise timing. With the game’s poor frame rates, I soon find that executing parries in actual combat against a monster is close to impossible, so I opt to use the hammer instead. It also requires precise timing to get the most damage, but I’m able to muddle through despite the performance issues.
As in Monster Hunter, each monster in Wild Hearts has two states. Their enraged forms can use a broader range of attacks, making them temporarily more dangerous, but you can avoid some of these with the clever use of Karakuri. This is the game’s central mechanic, allowing you to erect structures from threads obtained by shattering rocks or chopping down trees. You can avoid some attacks with Karakuri that are harder to dodge, such as erecting a massive wall for a charging Kingtusk to plough into. With a gratifying clunk, the wall holds and sends the giant boar soaring into the air, but not even this overgrown piggy can fly, so it crashes with a reassuring thud, leaving it vulnerable to follow-up attacks.
Activating Dragon Pits that you find near designated camping areas can help you set up outposts, so if you faint, you don’t have to travel far. This also allows you to set up other gadgets in the local area, such as the zipline, to make it easy to get around the map quickly. Setting up bases, shortcuts, and structures to counter monster attacks takes a bit of getting used to for Monster Hunter fans, but it will eventually become second nature.
It is possible to fail these fights by falling in battle three times, much like Monster Hunter, though there’s no time limit by default. I can also rechallenge the monsters I’ve slain from the world map at any time, but doing so adds the 60-minute time limit Monster Hunter fans will be familiar with. I can even bring in two other hunters to assist, but I’ve not tried multiplayer so far, as I’m sure the game will struggle even more with another player running around, especially when Wild Hearts crossplay is concerned.
I’ve got plenty more to see of Wild Hearts before giving it a score, but as it stands I’m not relishing the task. Its frame rate issues and graphical glitches make this RPG game unplayable on PC, and it’s not just me; other colleagues within PCGamesN and PC reviewers across the internet have found the same thing. I’m desperately hoping that a day-one patch will fix these issues, because the game shows a lot of promise. While it may require a bit of relearning for some experienced hunters, there are plenty of fun new ideas that make hunting in Wild Hearts different enough. But in its current state, we can’t recommend picking it up.