Maps in Monster Hunter Wilds are disappointing, but Wild Hearts shows it didn’t have to be this way

The maps in Monster Hunter Wilds are more expansive than ever before, dwarfing even the previous two modern entries. But outside of a few sidequests, you never really have to engage with them in any way. It leads to areas that, despite being full of detail and materials, feel small and underutilized.

Having played through Wilds’s main set of content, I found myself feeling a little underwhelmed and looking for more hunting action. That’s where the March Humble Choice bundle came in, offering me a spare key for EA and Omega Force’s Wild Hearts. It’d been a while since I originally played, so I gave the key to my girlfriend and dived back into this somewhat forgotten hunting game that gets some things right in areas that Monster Hunter Wilds failed at.

For those of you that are unfamiliar with Wild Hearts, it featured giant monsters known as Kemono that were essentially a fusion of animals and natural elements like plants and fungi. You’d hunt them with a selection of weapons, most having unique quirks and meters as part of their kit.

The real uniqueness came from the Karakuri mechanic, which lets you build structures freely. In battle, you can make springs to avoid attacks, or larger structures like traps and barriers. But its the use of Karakuri for mobility that I’m particularly fond of, since it solves a lot of problems that come with larger areas in hunting games.

Dragon Karakuri are larger structures that stay in the map once built, ranging from places to process ingredients to ziplines and air currents for mobility. Camps can also be placed freely, allowing for custom fast travel points (a much better implementation that how it’s handled in Monster Hunter Wilds).

Your ability to place Dragon Karakuri is limited by various types of energy, meaning that you’ll have to manually traverse the environment early on. As you increase each area’s energy by finding areas known as Dragon Pits on the map and upgrading them using materials, you’ll slowly be able to fully map out Dragon Karakuri to make exploration a breeze.

It’s a system that gives a sense of progression in quests outside of just hunting new monsters. Now you can not only craft better gear to speed up hunts, but also optimise the way you’ve laid out Dragon Karakuri to reach all parts of the map quickly.

I really like the way progression is handled for this overall. You’re still required to learn the maps early on due to the building limits, but by the end when you just want to grind huts you should be able to build freely. It solves Monster Hunter Wilds’s issue of auto pathing around with the Seikret, while still allowing you to cut down on walking later on when you’ve been everywhere.

There’s also the added benefit of each player being able to customise their Dragon Karakuri differently, and then having that layout be available to other players that join on hunts. It was fun around launch to see how players set things up, and then borrow some of the layout idea for my own maps.

I’d argue that you also have more reasons to actually explore the world. In Monster Hunter Wilds, there’s no reason to explore, due to a lack of collectables and viable camp spots. It’s especially odd since Rise had collectables in each map, and World allowed you to show off captured Endemic Life in your house.

In Wild Hearts, you’re able to find both extra lore scatter across each area, and upgrades for your handy Tsukumo (the game’s equivalent of Palico). Even if endgame sees you interacting less with the environment, you’re still incentivised to explore before then.

Even if you ignore the Dragon Karakuri and collectables, Wild Hearts still manages to have a better variety of maps than Monster Hunter Wilds. Multiple areas in Wilds are mostly just a variation of caves or ruins, and not particularly interesting ones either. It’s not helped by the game’s muted colour scheme, which looks noticeably dull when compared to Rise or even World.

Wild Hearts, despite having smaller maps, manages to cram them with more notable landmarks while also setting out proper arenas for hunts. It managed to do a lot more with the ruined world aesthetic, without having to rely on map-changing gimmicks like Wilds.

Future updates for Monster Hunter Wilds seem to be addressing at least a few of the game’s issues (no hunting hub, performance, layered weapons, difficulty), but the maps will forever be meaningless. While Wild Hearts has its own issues (especially with performance on PC), it’s still offers a unique hunting experience that understands map design far better than Capcom’s flagship title.

While a Wild Hearts 2 seems unlikely — launch issues hampered the first game’s reach and support ended early — I’d love to see some of these ideas brought over to a new game. Who knows, perhaps Omega Force will return to the Toukiden series at some point.

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