Wild Hearts (EA)
The new monster hunting game that came to us from EA and the developer Omega Force landed last month, it managed to intrigue (and worry) a lot of fans of the classic Monster Hunter series, lest the new game replace it and steal its audience.
So for those looking for a short answer: it's probably not going to happen.
But let's dig in and see why.
Wild Hearts (photo: official website, ea)
A world full of huge monsters just waiting for you to hunt them down
Wild Hearts, which is available on all consoles and platforms (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X\S and the PC) is centered around hunting monsters, or rather animals on growth accelerators, which are called Kimono.
The story revolves around the character we built and designed ourselves who tries to prevent the complete destruction of Minato, the universe in which the story takes place, and save the remaining people there.
Whether you explore the map yourself or stick to the main story, the gameplay will remain battles against the same Kimono monsters, and the only difference is that if you stick with the main story you have to defeat specific Kimonos on the map.
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Wild Hearts (photo: official website, ea)
The game incorporates RPG elements, for example a skill tree, customization and choosing a background story for your character.
You will start the game with a basic katana and armor and as you progress you will be able to unlock new items.
Another and unique element that the creators of the game decided to introduce is construction.
Just like in Fortnite.
But we will talk about it in detail and how exactly it works later.
Wild Hearts (photo: official website, ea)
First and essential problem: the graphics
With all my desire to forgive any game that brings innovative mechanics over the graphics, even Yom Kippur won't help here.
The game presents simply ugly graphics that feel terribly rushed and not particularly invested.
Especially when you look at the monsters, it's hard to tell what's really going on there, and the visuals fall somewhere between dirt and fur from games from 2010 to unfinished or beautiful textures.
The peak comes at night.
At night there is not one factor or element in the game that illuminates the scene in a logical way (such as flashlights, lamps, moon) and there is only a dark blue color that colors the scene and raises all the shadows.
If for example there are games where you're just waiting for a beautiful rain scene to set the mood, here I was just waiting for it to end because I couldn't see anything and it looked like dirt on my screen.
Wild Hearts (photo: official website, ea)
My biggest dissonance in this story is that the game was built exclusively for the next generation consoles.
I thought there might be a nice excuse for the graphics, but it turns out there is no optimization or attempt to make the game accessible to owners of old consoles or old computers.
Furthermore, although I played on PlayStation 5 and did not encounter too many FPS problems, from a short research on the Internet I encountered quite a few complaints from PC players with very powerful computers who experienced significant frame drops during the game, and could not play at high settings at all.
Another example of how the big companies neglect the polishing of the ports of the computer versions these days.
Precisely in terms of the design of the world and the stages, I have much fewer complaints and feel that more thought was put into it.
You will visit abandoned camps with a Japanese design and breathtaking places, that without saying a word to the player shout at you and announce "Ready to fight the most epic boss ever?".
There are cases where it works and there are kimonos that look interesting and threatening at the same time, but unfortunately they too didn't really manage to innovate too much.
"Let's take a rat, a wild boar, a wolf and double the size."
In addition, something that bothers me is that, as a game that competes with the Monster Hunter game, it had the option to innovate and change things, that is, to put the players perhaps in an innovative world or in space and fight alien monsters!
But instead they decided to go "on what already worked" and put us in the forest with grown animals, in my opinion a big mistake.
Wild Hearts (photo: official website, ea)
Let's talk gameplay
After it took me some time to get used to the game's strange and unconventional key layout it started to flow, and fast.
The game offers fast and fun gameplay, your character is relatively agile and makes quick attacks and combos that feel satisfying, but that's not what we gathered for.
This brings me to the unique mechanics that set the game apart from Monster Hunter…
the construction
This mechanic is expressed as a small and simple wooden cube, from which you can magically create practically anything you can imagine.
For example, a larger wooden cube (applause please).
From the very beginning, the game will direct you to create efficient structures, such as a tower that will help you climb to high places that you would not have been able to reach.
As you progress, you will find that these creations are also very useful in battles against the Kimono.
For example, from the cube tower you time a huge jump on the monster and land a spinning blow that does a lot of damage.
When all the stars line up (so-called) and you manage to land those blows - it's really fun!
I was very skeptical about this pan in the game at first, but I can say that it surpassed me.
Wild Hearts (photo: official website, ea)
Later in the game you learn to make more shapes and creations from the cube and make the whole business much more strategic and logical.
Because who really hunts huge monsters with a huge sword when you can build traps around them, and it will make you feel like super hunters.
The construction fan is very fast and does not affect the flow of the game, but be aware - the creations do not come for free.
In order to use the cube, you need to collect a material called Karakuri that can be obtained from trees and stones.
Oh, a word of advice from me: you'll have to build the respawn points yourself in the game, so if you've traveled 20 kilometers north, don't be me.
Build yourself a save point before you die.
Wild Hearts (photo: official website, ea)
The multiplayer
Like any self-respecting game these days, there is a multiplayer mode where you can play with friends, or alternatively with people you don't know.
To my surprise, it is really accessible and works just fine.
Throughout the map you will find teleports that will send you to the universe of other players asking for help in battles, and all you have to do is press one key and you are there.
It works the other way too, you can ask for help yourself by clicking on the map on the kimono you want to defeat and the help is (hopefully) on the way.
The developers put a lot of effort into making the multiplayer mode accessible, and you have to put in zero effort to get to it.
In general Wild Hearts feels like a game that should be played with other people and then automatically it becomes much more fun.
Think that each samurai you play with builds more and more traps with you, until there is no less than an amusement park around the poor kimono.
Add to that a communication wheel and voice chat it really is a very enjoyable shared gaming experience, especially when the kimono finally falls and everyone collects the loot together.
Wild Hearts (photo: official website, EA)
And now for the less fun pan.
the bugs
Unfortunately, the game experience was not without glitches.
Some were too oppressive.
I ran into a bug where I couldn't harvest the karokori material from trees or rocks, and I couldn't build anything until I restarted the game.
Another annoying bug happens in the multiplayer mode when defeating the Kimono: if two players give the last blow at the same time the players get stuck in place for tens of seconds.
Remember when I said "the stars have to align"?
So in order to properly perform the complicated attacks in combination with the cube towers, you will have to jump around the tower 50 times before you actually manage to climb it.
Not sure if it's a bug or if our character is just not reactive enough to the environment.
In conclusion
I may not be the target audience the game developers were expecting.
I'm not a huge fan of the hunter genre, I gave up Fortnite because I didn't connect with the construction concept.
And if all this is not enough - I am also vegan.
So the killing of huge animals didn't particularly wink at me.
It appeals more to players who liked the Monster Hunter series and also in this case the series has existed for almost 20 years in which the developers have to take all the time in the world and look for ways to improve the game, and that's how they reached their level today.
I can't say the same about Wild Hearts and it's hard for me to recommend it right now.
Not necessarily that it stands for full price like the other most successful Triple A games on the market.
He's just not in the same league.
EA still has a lot to learn from Monster Hunter, so the good news for fans of the series is that Wild Hearts won't be replacing it anytime soon.
But who knows?
Maybe in the next game we will start to see construction mechanics.
But we wouldn't build on that.
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