Wild Hearts Review

Wild Hearts is a monster hunting game developed by Omega Force and Koei Tecmo (who is best known for the Dynasty Warriors franchise) and published by EA as an EA Original. I’m just gonna get this out of the way; this is very similar to Monster Hunter. It has the same basic gameplay loop of a Monster Hunter: You will be using oversized weapons to slay oversized monsters to create better armour and weapons out of their oversized hides. I'm going to be making a lot of Monster Hunter comparisons in this review, which is sort of unavoidable given the nature of the game, but I'll do my best to keep my bias at the door. So, what does Wild Hearts offer?

Well, let's start with the basics. You play as a hunter, who slays creatures called kemono for a living, travelling to Minato for a reason you can select yourself. Seems pretty simple. I wasn’t much of a fan of the story, but games like these don’t need a great story to be enjoyable. It’s all about the looks and gameplay, and it shows.

The locations are vibrant and varied, with tons of unique creatures to find. The kemono themselves are a sight to behold with some pretty impressive designs. It’s a beautiful game, even on lowered settings. Although, I am disappointed that there aren’t a lot of kemono to hunt.

Combat is fast-paced, where even slow and heavy weapons like the nodachi have tons of mobility options. You'll often find yourself getting back into the fray pretty fast with either a wake-up attack or a dodge roll away. All the weapons initially available to you at the start feel different from another, though the standard Katana feels like a Long Sword with the label filed off, but it doesn’t make it any less fun to use. It’s also very fancy with its moves: all the attacks, finishers, topples, and aerial attacks are very cinematic. However what it has in style, it sacrifices in detail. Hitboxes can be rather janky for both you and the kemono, and you will be encountering some really cheap moves even early on when you’re lacking in tools and effective armour.

Speaking of tools, let's talk about them. All the weapons you can wield each have their own little quirks to get used to. While you do start off with a Katana (which, as mentioned, plays very similarly to Long Sword in Monster Hunter), you can very easily craft a different weapon after your first successful hunt and can unlock more as you progress through the story. The Maul gets stronger if you attack in a rhythm, the Bow requires high skill but offers great manoeuvrability in return, and the Karakuri Staff is five weapons in one. I am a little bothered by the fact you need to craft all the different weapons before you can properly find a playstyle, but it’s more of a nitpick than anything else. I just wanted to test them all out for free before picking what worked for me.

One of the main features of Wild Hearts is Karakuri; constructs that can be created that can help you out in the field, either by quickly creating a wall in the middle of a fight to stop an attack or a spring to leap straight into a kemono as a combo starter. Yes, this is a Fortnite thing, but it still works here. I actually like this system because it encourages creativity and on-the-fly thinking to either turn a bad situation around or to press an advantage. Plus, your Karakuri remains on field even after the hunt is over, so you could get a little support from your past self if the situation calls for it.

And while you can improve your chances of surviving a hunt by using the parts you collect from slain kemono to craft better gear, you can also enhance your hunter by going into the Karakuri menu and spending kemono orbs in a surprisingly long skill tree which unlocks things like more constructs or additional uses of Healing Water. It's a nice addition to the progression system, because it's not a basic power up. You’re not stronger, you just have more and better options available to you. Your equipment makes you stronger, but your Karakuri makes you more effective.

Co-op is a thing that I didn't mess too much with, but it provides a different experience from single player. Jumping into another player's game to help or setting up your own session is simple and smooth. Also, a few things change in multiplayer, such as the fact that losing all your HP in a hunt doesn't automatically cost you a faint; the game allows you to get revived provided your teammates can get to you in time. A nice feature and it makes teamwork all the more necessary.

Onto its performance. And uh… oh boy. The game chugged like hell on PC, as if I’m watching a stop motion animation. I was getting single number frames per second even after setting as many graphics settings as low as I could, and it still ran as garbage as it looked afterwards. Actually, when I restarted the game, it only ran worse. I may not have the most powerful computer in the world, but it is a widespread problem. I tried the fix where you change your audio settings, but it didn’t work. With my initial time with Wild Hearts, I couldn’t play more than three hours before giving up because I couldn’t bear the performance – and I have a high tolerance for low FPS. It’s unenjoyable, unplayable even. Even after delaying this review so that a performance patch could be released things did not improve in the slightest so unfortunately, I can’t recommend it.

Wild Hearts at first seemed like a Monster Hunter clone that I was pretty sure was just another attempt at a live service when it was first announced, but playing it now I see that it does enough to carve out its own identity and creates a fun and fast-paced experience that’s easy to understand but satisfying to master. It does skimp on the details, like oversized hitboxes, frustrating attacks and some really bad camera angles, but it’s a great start. It does what it wants to do, and it does well. I’ll always be a Monster Hunter fanboy, but I will not blame you if you choose Wild Hearts as your entry point in the monster hunting genre. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend the Wild Hearts PC version in the current state it is in. I am not mad, just severely disappointed because I wanted to spend more hours with Wild Hearts, and I know there is a great game here but it just doesn’t run properly. Please get any of the console versions instead, they run much better at the time of writing.