Picture this: you’re walking in a lovely woodland when suddenly a wild boar the size of your local supermarket starts charging at you. In a normal world, you would just pray to your gods before being crushed, but in the world of Heart of the Wild, you are more than capable of taking on these beasts, as your weapons not only carve them with ease, And you can conjure huge walls to block their attacks, and smash their heads with giant mallets.
Here’s the gist of Wild Hearts, Koei Tecmo, and EA’s response to the Monster Hunter franchise. You take on the role of a hunter in Heart of the Wild, tasked with protecting the town of Port and the entire Eastern Continent from kimonos – behemoths infused with the power of nature.
The similarities between Wild Hearts and Monster Hunter are obvious, mostly because Azuma is full of big monsters, and it’s mostly your job to hunt them down alone or with a few friends. Wild Hearts does its best to get away with being called a Monster Hunter clone, though, and it does offer a variety of different mechanics to set itself apart from other games that let you slay gigantic creatures. Karakuri, for example, is a building tool you get at the start of the game that can be used in a variety of ways. In combat, they can give you a spring to jump away from enemies, or a small chest to stand on, and around the world, they can let you enter camps that serve as fast travel points, and flying vines allow you to fly to where you’re hunting Kimonos, as well as blacksmithing, give you the opportunity to change and upgrade your gear. There are countless options for hunting in and out of Karakuri, and there are even combos with basic structures like the aforementioned barricades and pound roads that can be used against the right kimono.
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The Karakuri mechanic is a real game-changer here, and it’s a great example of one of the best things about Hearts of the Wild, which is its depth. Koei Tecmo’s Omega Force division has shown a clear dedication to Wild Hearts, making it an important first step in what could become a successful series. Wild Hearts’ weapons are another way to easily grasp how deep the rabbit hole goes, because once you’re ready to upgrade your weapons, you’ll see a massive tree stretching out in front of you, filled with different customization and build options . These upgrades aren’t just an excuse for you to grind out kimonos and farm their items, because depending on which path you go, you’ll end up with a completely different weapon even compared to someone with the same base weapon. From fiery gunslingers to poisonous katana swords, there are plenty of ways to customize the way you take down your kimono, and when you combine that with the other options Karakuri gets, combat in Hearts of the Wild has a ton of variety. Variety, which will be very exciting for those who like to experiment with building. While it may seem a bit overwhelming at first, after the first few hours of the game, everything starts to come together beautifully.
Perhaps the main appeal of a game like Wild Hearts is its monsters, and while there aren’t a ton of kimonos in the game, it’s because the creatures that roam Azuma’s land get a lot of attention. Each is unique in design and action set, and you’ll have to learn if you want to take them off. They vary in size, speed, and strength, and some even have their own regional variants, like ice fangs, but each feels like they’re deadly and require the right gear and a lot of skill to take down. Especially later when you come across the “powerful” versions of each kimono. While fighting kimonos does give you a sense of the threat these creatures pose to Azuma and Minato, as they are so hard to take down, solo hunting especially can become a little tiring as you have to chase your target four or five across the map times, and then they are eventually pulled low. Each of these clips, where you’re basically just running off to the next battle arena, really pulls you out of the heart-pounding immersion that the hunt can provide, especially when it’s paired with Hearts of the Wild’s excellent When the soundtrack complements each other.
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Later in the game, when you’re perfecting your builds to deal massive amounts of damage, this becomes less of an issue, and might not even be an issue at all if you have two friends who play together a lot. At times, it feels like Wild Hearts leans more toward multiplayer than single-player. Solo kimonos aren’t impossible, but to say tsukumo — the little wooden robot helper you get early on — is just as useful as lying to other players. The sheer amount of damage that kimonos can inflict means that the entire team will have a greater advantage against solo players due to the better distribution of aggression in a trio.
While many who pick up Hearts of the Wild won’t necessarily enjoy its narrative, the game does have a main story, and it doesn’t hurt at all. There are many interesting elements to Azuma’s world, either discovered while exploring the ruins of a once inhabited castle, or hearing more about the politics of the lands far from Minato. However, while the main story is passable and can provide some great cinematic moments, for the most part it’s just fine, and its characters are largely two-dimensional. That doesn’t make them unlikable, but by the end of my run with Wild Hearts, I didn’t find myself particularly attached to most of them.
Wild Hearts is Koei Tecmo’s recent solid first foray into the world of monster hunting, and while it won’t necessarily turn those who aren’t into the genre already, it does offer a lot for those looking for an alternative to Monster Hunter. Great gameplay. Right now it’s a shame it’s been marred by performance issues, bugs, and graphics issues, especially on PC, but hopefully these will be fixed soon so Wild Hearts can be enjoyed as a game.
