
The Monster Hunter Wilds beta was open to all over the weekend, attracting an awful lot of attention from old and new players alike. The test was hugely popular on PC — going by Steam user data — and so it's fair to assume that it was also a big hit on PS5, where it was available a few days earlier through PS Plus subscriptions.
However, opinions seem to be a little divided based on the impressions that we've read across the web. Without getting bogged down in too many details, it's abundantly clear that Capcom has work to do with regards to the game's performance. Frankly, the beta was a technical mess on Sony's base system.
But those who really invested in the beta obviously enjoyed it, despite some fairly controversial gameplay changes. It'll be very, very interesting to see how much the developer ends up tweaking ahead of Wild's next beta, which is currently unannounced, but feels like an inevitability.
So, what did you think of the Monster Hunter Wilds beta? Are you sold on the game ahead of its February 2025 release, or do you need to see more? Vote in our polls, and then sheathe your oversized weapon in the comments section below.
What did you think of the Monster Hunter Wilds beta? (837 votes)
- It was fantastic
- It was pretty good
- It was just okay
- It was disappointing, honestly
- It was bad
Do you plan on buying Monster Hunter Wilds? (854 votes)
- Yes, I've already pre-ordered
- Yeah, I plan on buying it
- Yep, probably
- I'm not totally sold yet
- Nope, the beta actually put me off
- No, I'm just not interested
Comments 56
Had a great time killing a pile of Rey Dau. I'm not worried about the look, but only because I don't plan to play on a base PS5.
Hoping they put some hitstop back in + figure out something coherent for how Focus Strike animations resolve
The beta put me off. It was not good. The gameplay felt floaty. The technical issues were more prevalent than Dragon’s Dogma 2. The visuals were a step down from Capcom’s other more recent offerings. I was not impressed, sad to say.
This was my first experience with MH and while pretty fun, I'm not yet sure if it's something that would pull me in for many hours. We'll see in March.
@somnambulance It looks very good on a solid PC. I think you're being too hard on it but it's true the visuals are smeary on PS5
This is a series I really want to like. The setting really appeals to me, but I find the gameplay repetitive.
Wasn't unexpected, but still it's a shame that the game doesn't work on steam deck. Monster Hunter will always be portable franchise for me.
I'm stuck between if I upgrade my PC or pay for a year of PS Plus next year...😖 As a diehard MH fan, I don't see a reality where I don't buy Wilds on day one, though I have some concerns. Overall the beta was good fun all things considered.
Absolutely loved the beta, gameplay feels like a solid progression from world as does the living world and weather systems.
I played early access on ps5 for a few days on performance mode. While the frame rate was generally pretty good, the image quality was absolutely terrible on my 27” monitor. I can’t imagine how much worse it would be if playing on a large screen 4k tv. I can see the ps5 pro’s PSSR making a huge difference in this title at launch.
I switched to pc for the open beta and the visuals were a massive step up from those on ps5, as was the frame rate which comfortably maintained 60fps.
Cannot wait for full release and am fairly confident, as a massive fan of the series, that this will be my 2025 goty.
I shell buy it its MH after all but the beta wasn't good. Visuals are awful, the map wasn't great, too much story and rubbish characters and a weird focus on setpieces. Can easily see this being one of the weakest entries.
It was good but would have been nice to have had the option of doing private game session so you don’t have other players in your game hub if you want to do solo play.
Didn’t play a lot of it as I didn’t want do play with other players
It definitely needs optimization. I switched to quality mode and enjoyed it more. My main gripe was the english speaking palicos, had to turn that off!! All in i enjoyed it and looking forward to the main game.
I thought it was an overall decent showing, though the multiplayer aspect when trying to play with a group of friends was atrocious.
I remember playing Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate on my Wii U back in the day. I liked it a lot and eventually got the 3DS version when it went on sale. Only played a little bit of Rise with a friend for a short bit before he just put the game down.
All that said, the little I played of this was fun but I’d rather just go back and play Rise or even 3 Ultimate for nostalgia. Maybe I’ll pick this up later next year when it’s cheaper… Monster Hunter games are just too big for me to play through completely lol.
I disagree totally with this "Frankly, the beta was a technical mess on Sony's base system". I was playing on a 55 4k LG TV in resolution mode with VRR. It sounds like everyone complaining here put it on performance mode, then chose to moan about it. It was your choice...
terrible not inclusive enough
@DennisReynolds You are aware that is how the beginning of MHW was right or have you misremembered? Long cutscene introducing the characters, setpieces of climbing Zorah Magdaros, and then goes back to hunting monsters starting with Great Jagras. Wilds isn't any different, we have long cutscene introducing the characters, setpiece of riding our seikret to save a kid and then go back to hunting monsters starting with Chatacabra. I'm really confused why you're so fixated on that considering Capcom hasn't exactly been heavily advertising this game as STORY HEAVY, most of what they've been advertising has been the gameplay of hunting monsters.
Loved the beta. I was already sold on the game because I'm a MonHun nut, but I was on the fence if I was going to buy it on PS5 since they released the PC specs. I knew it that it wasn't going to run well, but I never knew it would be this bad. That on top of the 9€ per month if you want to play online are kinda pushing me to buy the game on Steam, even though I prefer to play on the couch.
I can't speak for PC or PS5 Pro, but the performance of the beta on a launch PS5 was pretty disappointing. With over 300 hours in MH World and a lot more in the earlier ones, this just wasn't it, and it all comes down to the performance. The game mechanics are awesome, but the fidelity mode feels sluggish for what this game is, and the performance mode makes it look like a Wii game. It honestly reminded me of the days playing MH4U on the 3DS again with how blurry the visuals got at times in the performance mode, obviously not where we want to be for a current-gen game being made by a seasoned developer like Capcom. I hope the performance gets fixed, or at the very least that the game can be played offline/in private lobbies which will hopefully alleviate a majority of the frame dips and loss in fidelity. Really want to like this game and be able to play it without upgrading to a PS5 Pro!
I wanted to like this beta, but only dropped a small amount of time into it and wasn't ever drawn back to it to try it more. Sad, since I love MH games and this one just didn't feel fun at all to me. Guess I'll just stick with Rise and World for the time being. Maybe with some post-release updates it will grow on me. I did note "beta" in my first sentence to show that I realize this was an early build and not the final product.
Very good gameplay improvements over World.
Very poor textures/performance regression over World.
I absolutely loved how easy it was to start playing with other people, regardless of the platform they play on. Obviously performance sucked a bit but hopefully Capcom will get that sorted by the time the game is ready to ship. I am definitely buying this one because I know I'm going to get hundreds of hours out of it. Even at $70 this won't be a rip-off purchase that I'll only spend like 20 hours on.
I preordered the steelbook edition today. Can’t wait!
@Nepp67 The trailers have also shown of this stuff quite a lot as well, in fact a big reason i was so down on the first few trailers was because of this. The fact your character actually properly talks now also raises concerns over how story focused it is now as well.
Absolutely loved it but that was to be expected. There are no bad MH games. It took a little while to get used to a few things like the focus mode for melee weapons and the health bar but once I was familiar with it. There were hardly any issues. The only thing I genuinely had a problem with was those new weather effects. The sand storms and thunder storms are pretty cool in theory but in practice it just gives the game a really bad washed out look. Maybe it's only this area but I don't like it. It's actually pretty cool to see your character being covered in sand but again, it makes the game and characters look devoid of color. The game play just feels so fun. It was a lot of fun hunting rey dau
I'm going to get it but on PC. I have quite a bit of money saved up so I could get a Pro but it's a big chunk of the money it'd take to get a really good PC (about half to a third) so I'd rather just take the plunge rather than burn that money on hardware that's worse than a PC and will be replaced by the PS6 in a few years.
Not to be all doom and gloom, but this console gen has just convinced me there's no reason to buy consoles anymore other than not being able to afford a PC. Long gone are the days when, say, the SNES or PS1 were their own distinct things from a PC rather than just a lower spec PC with less games, more expensive games, and paid online.
Baaaaaad beta, but then that’s the point of it. Lay off QA staff while letting players do it for you, except now you have to hire more marketing staff to offset the effects of actually letting people play an unfinished build.
@VaultGuy415 I played on PS5. I would argue that Dragon’s Dogma 2 is more visually impressive and certainly the last few Resident Evil games. For it performing as poorly as it did, I expect better visuals, unfortunately. If it was clearly Capcom’s best visuals yet, I could forgive iffy performance easier. If the performance was super smooth, I could forgive lesser visuals. You shouldn’t need a decent PC to play a game for a current gen console that is just starting to stretch its legs.
@DennisReynolds If they really wanted to be heavily focused on the story they wouldn't be making their actors give such weak performances and give more story over the recent gameplay being shown. So far of what we have played with the beta it is your typical Monster Hunter game with the environment playing a bigger role during gameplay.
I bought World on PC when it launched in August 2018. That PC had parts from 2016/2017.
The PC launch version of World felt and looked much better than the beta I played last week. There’s really no excuse for a downgrade 6 years later on a console that’s much more powerful than what I had back then.
My hope is people who are interested in MH discover Rise after playing that beta and decide to give it a try. It’d be nice for that game to get a stronger community ahead of the Switch 2 launch.
Absolutely loved it! Love ALL the changes to weapons. Performance could be better but the game is 4 months out. All and all very satisfied.
@ScottyG I have started MH World after the beta. I’ve read it’s better than Rise. Very good game so far, still plenty of people online as well to help.
@Nepp67 Typical MH game? Not at all, its just doubling down on the weakest aspects of World. A typical MH game barely even has a story yet alone a lead that now properly talks. This game so far just feels more like a dumb downed World designed for the casual player who have only played World and struggled with it.
Incredible gameplay, extremely satisfying and flashy. Not super sold on open world (tired of it being the industry standard nowadays) and would like hitstop back but otherwise phenomenal. The only completely unacceptable thing is the performance — the optimization is utterly unacceptable and I hope that it's just a beta thing. There's no justifying it. It could and should run better on both console platforms, and it could and should be running better on a PC with a 4060. I have no issue with DLSS but frame generation should NOT be mandatory to hit 60 FPS, there is no justification for it. I don't have a $6000 PC and neither does the majority of people, so if it releases in the same condition as the beta then they're gonna be in some hot ass water
@somnambulance DD2 has a fraction of the interactivity and depth of an MH game so your expectations do not make any sense to me. I think Wilds will look very good on PS5 Pro, but I'm worried about base PS5 after playing both versions.
@DennisReynolds Every MH game feels dumbed down compared to the last one; welcome to the circle of MH life. Your comments are identical to what Tri/4U fans said about World.
Rey Dau is a solid fight and focus mode seems better than the clutch claw. I'm confident they will deliver monsters that are very tough (even before MR).
@B0udoir
Visually World is much better than Rise. I really liked the fluid gameplay of Rise though. People called it “Arcady” but it’s really a true successor to 4U/Generations
@VaultGuy415 As someone that was also critical of DD2 but forgiving of it too, I wouldn’t say DD2 lacks the depth of Wilds. DD2 is a pretty complex and robust game in a lot of ways. My problems with that one were more in the dated ways NPCs interacted and the story being sort of meh. But I digress, I don’t think Wilds should struggle to run on PS5. If this game can run on a Series S somehow, we shouldn’t be saying, “Hmm, PS5 Pro and PC are the places to play the game.” At a base level, it should have solid performance on base PS5 and Wilds simply does not. Again, like I said, it feels like most games this generation are still halfway into the generation. We shouldn’t be struggling on a base model because the Pro was introduced. It’s sad to see poor console optimization on this one. Hopefully it’s a beta thing. For me, there’s not much on my wishlist for 2025, so I was going to potentially hop on this one, but now I will not, simply because the beta put me off of it. Love Capcom, can be very forgiving toward them, but this one’s not my cup of tea for a variety of reasons. Glad I tried it first hand to know why it’s not.
@DennisReynolds I agree that it feels slightly dumbed down due to them taking away monster evidence and clues away and then slapping a monster icon onto the monster itself while also having green light bug trails. Other than that? It feels like your typical monster hunter with slightly more focus on story
I found it to be an immense disappointment sadly. Graphically it was pretty awful and while yes it was a beta, it's also a marketing tool that's meant to sell you on the game and Capcom looked at it and thought "that'll do"
But the worse part for me was the ridiculous party system, me and my nephew tried for 30 minutes and we couldn't set it up so we could be in the same world outside of camp.
Partying up in a game should be easy by, send invite...friend joins... let's play but for some reason Capcom makes it way more complicated.
So out of frustration I just deleted the game and told my nephew I'm just going to play Horizon instead.
The beta required ps+ so i didn't get to participate.
My concerns would not be answered by a demo. My concerns are the difficulty and systems. I found Rise Sunbreak amazing. I sunk 300 hours on it.
But, i hated World Iceborne. It was terribly frustrating and designed. Hated the look, the monster design, the weapon design, the systems and how highly tuned solo play was.
So, i am very suspicious of wilds. I don't think i will be getting it at launch. I am much more excited about the next entry.
@DennisReynolds Oh boy... you are selling it to me now. 😆 But, you can't possibly know that without playing the full game.
@Dragoon1994 they have to stress test the servers. You could play the whole thing solo you would only see people at base camp.
@Nem the second round didn't require ps plus
I was slightly disappointed at first. Then turned on performance mode, and life was much better. But it's also a beta.
I downloaded it on Sunday. Went to play it on Monday, but it only had an uninstall button I missed it
MH is definitely not for me anymore, but I love to see Capcom continue to kill it.
They cannot do multiplayer. It was terrible last MH game too. What an awful experience.
Join a lobby, invite friends to your instance, go adventure, start a fight, friends get booted from instance, cannot invite until fight over. This happened several times.
Uninstalled beta, will not buy.
I did not like the technical aspect on PS5, but it was just a Beta. And I have found the feeling when you hit a monster a little weird? Like, you hit it or not, it looks the same. Otherwise, it will probably keep me busy for hundreds of hours.
To be fair i totally missed it.
I've not played it, but almost all the content i've seen about it is negative from combat lacking it's usual oomph, to sup-par framerates and resolutions. Even players that raved about MH: World have been a bit mid on it from what I saw. Though it's always hard to parse, as the gaming internet is usually pretty negative.
I'll buy it once they have a 60fps patch.
@DennisReynolds I also was a bit put off by the npc's, and not really feeling the vibe of it so much as World. I've never been keen on the handler person, but this time was even more grating.
@Matroska Many of us with £2k+ PC rigs will be able to advise that PC never replaces a console.
Until you can get a no maintenance PC without windows to plug under your TV, the PC games playing experience simply can't touch the console experience. I wish it did as you can get best technical performance on a PC if you have the money - but the rest of the system makes it a poor choice for chilled out couch play.
Visuals look 2 gens behind and gameplay is boring and repetitive af. So, the same as all other MH games.
@somnambulance There is no comparison between a DD game and a MH game when it comes to gameplay depth. DD is a relatively simple hack and slash game with most of the dev emphasis put on graphical fidelity. Meanwhile all of MH's weapons have the move variety of a hardcore fighting game character. MH games have orders of magnitudes more enemies and each enemy has many more moves than anything in DD. MH has hundreds/thousands of items for crafting or deploying in battle. I could go on — point is you don't seem familiar with this series (and that's OK).
@VaultGuy415 You’ve got me there! I’m not super familiar with the series. I’m a big Capcom fan, so I try with the series, but it’s not clicked with me. I believe Wilds would be the first Capcom game this generation that I wouldn’t buy, based on how I felt about the beta. World is the one I’d played the most, followed by Rise, but I had never finished either of them. I don’t exactly know many people that play the MH series, so maybe I’m just missing something, but I dunno… maybe I expect too much because the online discourse is loud with MH. I don’t particularly like Atlus games or Like a Dragon either and yet I try and try because I feel like an alien for not being into certain games sometimes. I gave Wilds an honest try though. I just really hope they optimize the game for those that love the series.
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...