Wild Hearts, a Monster Hunter competitor, is almost here, and everything we've seen of the Omega Force division of EA's EA published game is shaping up to be a serious contender to Capcom's crown.
Monster Hunter World has been played by me for over 2,000 hours, not something I would take lightly – but I say it with confidence because it's a game that interests you. I didn't play it for that long because I was simply enjoying it. I've also invested several hundred hours in Monster Hunter Rise, a game that is even more impressive in some ways than World.
After all that time, you notice the small things — and Wild Hearts is poised to make some significant improvements that Monster Hunter would benefit from in the future. These include the ability to play in-game voice chat along with the text chat and emote options typical of Monster Hunter.
Wild Hearts hunts will fail after three faints, but the ability to revive teammates and salvage yourself one of your three chances makes the challenge of defeating the toughest Wild Hearts monsters in a group much more appealing.
The way Wild Hearts camps operate is a welcome upgrade. Much like Monster Hunter, you may also construct additional camps around the world as you please. However, as demonstrated by YouTuber 'Ms 5000 Watts,' you may place them wherever you like and then build out on them as you desire, including the likes of ziplines and other Wild Hearts features.
Once again, that's a nice evolution of the monster hunt systems shown in Monster Hunter World and Rise. Besides this, you can eat food at any time to gain stat buffs, as long as you aren't in combat. However, having the ability to eat at camp anytime is a plus.
Changes such as this allow you to concentrate on your task at hand without being penalised for missing the correct order of tasks – something that is familiar to veterans, but can also present yet another obstacle for newcomers. The Wild Hearts training area (at around 6:28 in the above video), which gives you complete step-by-step instruction on your weapon, along with the Monster Hunter World moveset (something notably absent from Rise)
Wild Hearts aims to allow younger players to engage in the game faster than Monster Hunter has ever managed. Other features include a screen reader, text-to-speech and speech-to-text options, and colorblind controls.
I won't be surprised if you played Dauntless, a more arcade-style game developed by Phoenix Labs and Epic Games, which led to the making of Monster Hunter Rise next. By comparison, Wild Hearts seems to be angling much more directly for the scale, scope, and spectacle that 2018 brought back.
Whether or not Monster Hunter World 2 is released, it's a fairly safe bet that Capcom will want to make the game even better in the future.
Wild Hearts will be available on Steam, the Epic Games Store, and the EA Store on February 16th. In the meantime, check out more of the best games like Monster Hunter, as well as more of the best cooperative games if you want to have a good time with some pals.