2025 Preview: Monster Hunter Wilds has big beast-slaying boots to fill
Can Capcom dethrone its own best-selling title with its successor?
Capcom has been arguably the best game publisher of the last decade. Resident Evil refreshes and remakes have put survival horror back on the map, Street Fighter continues to be a driving force in the fighting game space, and Dragon’s Dogma 2 was a contender for Best RPG of the Year at The Game Awards.
It’s Monster Hunter that’s become one of the company’s real driving forces, however, even though it took a while round these parts. Huge in Japan from the PSP days, it was only with 2018’s Monster Hunter: World that the West finally embraced the series known for being brutally punishing.
Likely spurred by the growing popularity of grand melee games like Dark Souls, Monster Hunter World has become the company’s best-selling title, with its pseudo-sequel Monster Hunter Rise just below it.
Now, all eyes are on the series’ next adventure, Monster Hunter Wilds, and how it can build on the past while keeping things fresh. Slated to release in March 2025, it’s already bested its predecessor’s all-time peak player count on Steam during a three-day beta. Could it be Capcom’s next near-annual success story?
It wasn’t until Monster Hunter World that Capcom shed harsh animation locks that meant using items or taking pot-shots at a monster carried a high risk of ‘carting’ (dying), putting an immediate end to a half-hour battle. These small changes to long-time complaints, alongside the growing appetite for punishing action games and a shift to multiplayer gaming, likely played a major part in the franchise finally finding its footing in the West.
Opposite teams have developed subsequent Monster Hunter titles since the PSP days. Ideas from the console and handheld titles are typically iterated upon in the next. World was a major departure from the slower pacing of past entries, and Monster Hunter Wilds is expected to send it down another new road.
“In being online and open, Wilds is creating a tighter emphasis on group hunting where you’re likely to tackle ‘just one more quest’ before logging off”
The teams have taken a liberal approach to making Monster Hunter more accessible without losing the heart that first drew players in. Learning and adapting is at its core: not only for how you play Monster Hunter, but also in how it’s developed. Monster Hunter World shed segmented maps and their loading screens, creating wide-open hunting grounds where its myriad monsters finally looked alive and important.
Monster Hunter Rise, a Nintendo Switch title released years later, simplified the maps, removing the complex paths, tunnels, and clutter that slowed its combat. It even built upon World’s Slinger tool, becoming the Wirebug system that echoed Spider-Man to make hunts both faster to find and finish while adding powerful one-button attacks reminiscent of Monster Hunter Generations.
It eased tiring traversal with wall climbing and rapid mounts, the latter of which returns for Wilds, and added stat-boosting collectables around its maps, giving veterans reason to perfect the path to their prey, or for newcomers to use as a crutch as they learn the hard way.
While combat sped up in Rise to accommodate fast on-the-go hunting, the Wilds team has doubled down on the spectacle of slow and steady combat. Patience is now a priority. Heavy attacks can be countered with precise timing, turning a hunter into David taking on Goliath rather than a mosquito nipping at nature’s heels.
A lock-on system that rewards honing in on a wound echoes Monster Hunter World’s controversial and convoluted Clutch Claw, and on-the-fly weapon switching could crack strategies wide open.
In being online and open, Wilds is creating a tighter emphasis on group hunting where you’re likely to tackle “just one more quest” before logging off. With preparation hubs peppered across each map, rewarding hunts can be triggered by charging right into battle, smacking the beast you’ve decided would look better as a pair of power-imbuing pants.
Thankfully, you’re as free as ever to take on Wilds alone. And with the NPC partner system of Rise returning to give its new cast of characters more involvement in your antics, it could be the best way to experience whatever new story Capcom thinks will help justify cutting up your 20th Chatacabra.
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