Review – Wild Hearts

For nearly two decades, Capcom has sat atop the beast-stalking genre. With their most recent releases, they’ve made strides to appeal to the masses a bit more. Now, the folks at Omega Force and Koei Tecmo have decided to take on the king of the jungle with Wild Hearts, their samurai-era Monster Hunter-like with some unique added mechanics. The inaugural entry in the fledgling franchise has shown it has the chops to hang with the big boys, perhaps even surpassing it in a few ways.

Content Guide

Violence: You’ll be fighting and killing huge monsters known as kemono. There is no blood or gore. When you defeat smaller kemono, however, they’ll lie on the ground and twitch until you finish them off to harvest their materials. This can be a little unsettling.

Sexual Content: There is no sexual content in Wild Hearts.

Drugs and Alcohol: There are some scenes that indicate characters are drinking alcohol or are drunk.

Language/Crude Humor: I don’t recall any foul language being used in Wild Hearts.

Review

Welcome to Azuma, a land full of large, monstrous creatures and warm-hearted people. While wandering through the wilderness, you stumble across a long-passed hunter holding something. When you pick up the seed, you inherit the powers of the karakuri and things change forever. An ancient technology that allows you to create all sorts of tools, the karakuri quickly proves useful as the kemono, the more dangerous monsters in the land, begin to threaten the way of life for Azuma and its inhabitants.

Let’s go ahead and get one thing out of the way: no one will be able to discuss Wild Hearts without making comparisons to the Monster Hunter franchise. With that said, if you know how those games work, you’ll have a pretty good understanding of the flow of things in Wild Hearts.

For the uninitiated, the game typically flows as follows. Whether picking up new quests or outfitting yourself with the latest gear, you’ll prepare for the next hunt in the town of Minata. Once ready, you’ll embark into one of a handful of regions in Azuma to hunt, kill, and harvest various types of kemono. From creatures resembling rats to ravens to wolves and more, the world is full of unique creatures that present their own challenges and fighting techniques.

You’ll gear up with one of eight weapon types running the gamut from swords to cannons to bladed umbrellas and beyond. With each new kemono you conquer, new weapons and armor will become available for upgrade. These can offer higher attack and defense but, more importantly, have elemental effects too. Choosing the right weapons and armor for the next kemono you face could be critical to your success.

In my experience, hunts tend to be straightforward encounters. You’ll track the monster down, trigger combat with it (which allows you to try to call in real-world backup), and you’re off to the races. Using both the weapons and karakuri at your disposal, you’ll fight to wear down the beast’s health over time, chipping away at its health and occasionally breaking off particular pieces of its body to harvest (like a tale or headpiece). The kemono will typically run from one area to another when you begin to wear away at them, ultimately succumbing to let you take a killing blow to end the hunt.

Every kemono is its own unique type of monster and will behave differently when you fight it. Whether that’s laying poison, flying into a rage and trying to punch everything, or something entirely unexpected, you’ll always be given a great challenge. While combat largely consists of you swinging or firing your weapon to wear down the creature’s health, Wild Hearts‘ karakuri system adds a much-welcomed element of dynamism by letting players conjure different structures in the middle of combat, including spring-loaded boxes, walls, bombs, and more. Everything is situational and often requires some setup for execution, so paying attention and engaging at the right time is paramount.

As you conquer kemono, you’ll earn points to upgrade and unlock new karakuri or unlock passive upgrades. This system is vast and can unlock unique abilities depending on the kemono you’re able to fight along with what happens during those fights. Each area also houses fifty hidden robots known as tsukomo. Finding these will give you points to upgrade your own little single-player helper robot which essentially stands in for Monster Hunter‘s palico. While perhaps not as endearing as the palico, the tsukomo are a powerful ally that can come in clutch in a tight spot. They offer attack support, healing, materials for your karakuri magic, and other benefits. It’s definitely worth trying to get them upgraded a bit.

Whether summoning combat-focused elements or world-altering tools like the wind launcher or meat-drying rack, everything comes together in a fantastic, cohesive experience that will drive you to keep jumping in to take down new monsters to re-hunt old foes so you can create different types of gear. The result has become one of my favorite titles to play in recent memory. The gameplay experience itself just feels so good, particularly if you’re familiar with the standard mechanics of the genre.

The game is gorgeous. The kemono have unique, gorgeous visual design that lends deeply to immersion in the world of Azuma. Environments provide fantastic variety, keeping things fresh with a beautiful design aesthetic, too. The game’s music is great, driving you deeper into the hunts as you engage with the world. Unfortunately, the voice acting (and perhaps some of the dialog) feels a bit lacking. That’s never enough to distract from a wonderful gameplay loop, though.

My complaints with Wild Hearts are relatively minor. I’ve encountered a handful of bugs that can cause some frustration in the middle of an intense moment. Some of the characters’ dialog also feels aloof, leading to somewhat nonsensical dialog at times. The story feeling like it walks well-trodden ground can be a little frustrating for genre fans, too; I would’ve liked to see something completely unique from a new franchise like Wild Hearts.

Wild Hearts is a great game that gets a ton right. The monster designs are fantastic and, more importantly, the combat mechanics are fresh and enjoyable. There’s an impressive swath of kemono to hunt and gear to create, too. While I thought the game stumbled on some characters and story beats, I could absolutely see Hunter fans spending dozens or even hundreds of hours tied up in this world. They’ve already promised there are more hunts to come in the months following release, too, so the tale promises to be long and enjoyable. Everyone willing to invest some time in the hunt should check out Wild Hearts. I look forward to seeing this franchise grow in the years to come.

Review copy generously provided by Electronic Arts